Immune Health

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #106: Nayan Patel, PharmD – Glutathione


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Welcome back to Dr. M’s Women and Children Firsts Podcast. Today’s conversation sits at the crossroads of chemistry, skepticism, and clinical innovation.

Our guest is Nayan Patel, a pharmacist with more than three decades inside the world of drug formulation and delivery. He is an alumnus of the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy, where he now serves as adjunct faculty, teaching advanced biochemistry and compounding science. Over the years, he has become an international educator on one molecule that refuses to stay quiet: glutathione.

Dr. Patel is the founder of Auro Wellness, launched in 2011 with a specific mission—stabilize glutathione and solve its delivery problem. His work led to the development of the Auro GSH™ Antioxidant Delivery System, a topical approach designed to improve absorption of this notoriously fragile molecule. He is also the author of The Glutathione Revolution, a deep dive into how glutathione influences detoxification, aging, energy production, and immune resilience.

If you’ve spent time in integrative medicine, you’ve heard glutathione called the “master antioxidant.” That phrase can sound like marketing, but the biology is real. Glutathione is a three–amino acid peptide central to redox balance, mitochondrial function, immune signaling, and cellular survival. It does not just neutralize oxidative stress; it regulates how cells respond to it.

The challenge is delivery. Oral glutathione is largely broken down in the gut. IV glutathione works, but it’s impractical for most families. Precursors like NAC depend on intact metabolic pathways that may not be operating optimally in states of chronic stress or inflammation.
Dr. Patel asked a disruptive question: what if the bottleneck isn’t production—but delivery?

Today we unpack the science and the skepticism around transdermal glutathione. Can a molecule like this meaningfully cross the skin barrier? What does stabilization actually require? And how does independent pharmaceutical innovation differ from traditional drug development pathways, which are often constrained by economics as much as biology?

For those of us caring for women and children—where oxidative stress, immune dysregulation, mitochondrial strain, and toxic burden intersect in everything from complicated pregnancies to neurodevelopmental challenges—this conversation matters. Not as a silver bullet. Not as a miracle spray. But as an exploration of foundational physiology and thoughtful delivery science.

This is a discussion about how molecules move, how systems adapt, and how asking better questions can reshape clinical practice.
Let’s dive in.

Dr. M

Auro Wellness

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #104: Maeve O’Connor, MD – Allergy and Immune Literacy


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Today, I’m joined by Dr. Maeve O’Connor, a board-certified allergist and immunologist practicing in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Dr. O’Connor’s training reflects both rigor and range. She completed dual undergraduate degrees at the University of South Carolina Honors College with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish before earning her medical degree at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. She then completed her internship and residency at the University of Texas and its affiliated hospitals in Houston, where she served as Chief Medical Resident.

Her subspecialty training in Allergy and Immunology was completed at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver consistently ranked the number one respiratory hospital in the United States where she developed deep expertise in asthma, allergic disease, and immune dysregulation. She further expanded her clinical lens through fellowship training in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona from 2013 to 2015.

Clinically, Dr. O’Connor works at the intersection of pediatrics, immunology, and real family life where eczema isn’t just a rash, food reactions aren’t just labels, and immune symptoms rarely fit neatly into algorithmic boxes. Her work emphasizes careful diagnosis, evidence-based treatment, and avoiding both over-medicalization and missed pathology.

In a time when allergy medicine is often reduced to test results and avoidance lists, Dr. O’Connor brings a grounded, thoughtful approach helping families and clinicians distinguish what’s truly allergic, what’s inflammatory, what’s developmental, and what’s simply noise.

Today, we’ll explore how allergic disease actually presents in children, why mislabeling is so common, how early immune signals shape long-term health, and how pediatricians and specialists can collaborate more effectively without fear-based medicine.

This is a conversation about immune literacy, clinical nuance, and doing better for children in a world where their immune systems are under increasing pressure.

I’m excited to welcome Dr. Maeve O’Connor.

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #103: Sam Yanuck, DC – Cogence

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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 9,900 clinicians internationally to think mechanistically about immune signaling, chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, and the complex, often nonlinear patterns that define chronic disease.

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

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 27 – Immune Aging

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The Evolutionary Tug-of-War – Inflammation’s Double-Edged Sword

“Environmental factors, particularly infections, have fundamentally shaped human evolution by selecting for protective inflammatory response mechanisms that enhance survival. This evolutionary pressure has created a core biological paradox: inflammation is indispensable for host defense, yet its dysregulation significantly heightens disease and mortality risk. This fundamental tension raises three fundamental questions about human aging and immunity: (1) How have selective pressures driven the evolution of mechanisms to balance inflammation’s protective benefits against its harmful consequences? (2) Why does substantial variability in healthspan persist despite historically stable rates of aging? (3) Does evolutionary prioritization of reproductive fitness inherently limit longevity?” (Manoharan et. al. 2025)

Let’s talk about the fire inside us. Inflammation is our body’s 911 system: lightning-fast, life-saving when a bug invades or a thorn rips skin. But leave that alarm blaring 24/7 and the fire torches the house.

Evolution faced this paradox: crank the immune dial high enough to survive infection and childbirth, yet install brakes so we don’t self-destruct by 40. Manoharan’s team just mapped those brakes in 17,500 humans and called it immune resilience (IR) or the ability to fight hard, clean up fast, and stay cool afterward… and linguistic aging associations…

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 20/21

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Flu season is around the corner and we should take a look at the virus for preparation purposes.

Influenza

Every few years, I revisit this virus in my writing, not only to keep it on your radar in preparation, but also because of the significant illness and death it continues to cause. It’s never wise to dismiss its potential impact. Influenza reliably returns each year, difficult to escape even with strict isolation.

The flu is different from the common cold in many ways as the flu has:

1) Rapid onset with high spiking fevers

2) Muscle and headaches

3) Little to not sneezing and sore throat

4) Rapid and robust cough onset

Influenza season is beginning in the United States this fall. Who gets sick? In short, people of all ages. Seasonal influenza has a reproductive rate of just over one, meaning that each infected person typically spreads the virus to one or two others through coughing or sneezing in close proximity. The virus also survives on surfaces for up to 24 hours, creating another common route of transmission, especially in children. Young kids frequently touch surfaces and each other, then touch their faces, providing the perfect pathway for infection. Because of this, schools remain a major hub for flu transmission across the country.

Preventing the virus from taking root in your body is the key to avoiding a bad outcome.

Things that I think of as critical to avoiding or preventing this infection:

1) Keeping your vitamin D level greater than 50 ng/ml is an important way to prevent influenza infections. Get tested and supplement accordingly. As always the sun is your natural route to normal D levels

2) Get adequate sleep based on your age to keep your immune system in great shape. Sleep is very important for immune health…… and more on asthma driving mental health issues.
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 18

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Breastmilk is Dynamic

Cellular and transcriptional diversity over the course of human lactation

This recent 2022 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Nyqiust and colleagues is a site for sore eyes.

It offers a remarkable, high-resolution portrait of how the cellular landscape of human breast milk (hBM) shifts over time. The authors capture something both scientifically rich and uniquely human: the dynamic, living composition of milk as it adapts to the changing needs of mother and child.

The abstract: “Human breast milk is a dynamic fluid that contains millions of cells, but their identities and phenotypic properties are poorly understood. We generated and analyzed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data to characterize the transcriptomes of cells from hBM across lactational time from 3 to 632 d postpartum in 15 donors. We found that the majority of cells in hBM are lactocytes, a specialized epithelial subset, and that cell-type frequencies shift over the course of lactation, yielding greater epithelial diversity at later points. Analysis of lactocytes reveals a continuum of cell states characterized by transcriptional changes in hormone-, growth factor-, and milk production-related pathways. Generalized additive models suggest that one subcluster, LC1 epithelial cells, increases as a function of time postpartum, daycare attendance, and the use of hormonal birth control. We identify several subclusters of macrophages in hBM that are enriched for tolerogenic functions, possibly playing a role in protecting the mammary gland during lactation. Our description of the cellular components of breast milk, their association with maternal–infant dyad metadata, and our quantification of alterations at the gene and pathway levels provide a detailed longitudinal picture of hBM cells across lactational time. This work paves the way for future investigations of how a potential division of cellular labor and differential hormone regulation might be leveraged therapeutically to support healthy lactation and potentially aid in milk production.” (Nyquist et. al. 2022)

And more information on breastmilk immunology and a recipe.

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 15 Issue 15

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Systemic Maternal Inflammation and Neurodevelopment: The Role of IL-6 and IFN-γ in Autism Spectrum Disorder

I just returned from Estes Park, Colorado where I presented a lecture on the Growing Brain/Mind – a tour through the underpinnings of childhood neurological changes that we call Autism. The timing is perfect for this article to be written.

In an era when chronic disease in children is rising at an unprecedented pace, the search for root causes must include an honest inquiry into the conditions present during fetal development. The review article by Majerczyk and colleagues, Systemic Maternal Inflammation Promotes ASD via IL-6 and IFN-γ, brings forward a critical piece in this puzzle that I began to explore a few years ago when writing a book. It connects the dots between maternal immune dysregulation and long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes, specifically autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Through a synthesis of clinical data and animal research, the authors make a compelling case for the centrality of two inflammatory messengers, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), in shaping fetal brain development during gestational stress. The key words here being GESTATIONAL STRESS, the recurring scientific theme for ASD development, not vaccines… and some literature reviews.

Dr. M

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