Today on Dr. M’s Women and Children First, we’re joined by Dr. Sam Yanuck, a clinician-educator who has spent more than three decades translating immunology from the bench to the bedside. Dr. Yanuck has been in private practice since 1992 and is the creator of Cogence Immunology, one of the most widely respected functional immunology training programs in the world. Through Cogence, he has trained over 6,500 clinicians internationally to think mechanistically about immune signaling, chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, and the complex, often nonlinear patterns that define chronic disease.
He is also an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, where he consults with faculty, mentors medical students, and supports clinicians navigating some of the most challenging immune-mediated cases in practice today.
What sets Dr. Yanuck apart is his insistence on precision. His work focuses on understanding the immune system as a dynamic network—one shaped by timing, context, feedback loops, and individual biology—rather than a collection of isolated lab values or diagnoses. In his clinical model, chronic illness is not random; it reflects an identifiable matrix of immune, metabolic, environmental, and regulatory factors that can be mapped, understood, and addressed.
In today’s conversation, we’ll explore how modern immunology reshapes clinical thinking around autoimmunity, chronic inflammatory disease, and long-term health—especially in complex patients where standard frameworks fall short.
This is a deep dive. If you care about mechanism, signal over noise, and treating patients with both scientific rigor and biological humility, this episode is for you.
Today, we’re stepping outside the sterile lab and into the wild world of evolutionary biology — where our immune system didn’t emerge in a vacuum, but in dirt, in danger, and in the delicate dance between microbe and mammal.
Join me and Dr. Sam Yanuck -the clinician, the teacher, and one of the best translators of complex immunology into something both clinically useful and biologically beautiful.
Dr. M
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