Tag Archives: prevention

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #54 Repost – Doug Thompson, DDS – Teeth and Systemic Health

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Today’s guest is Dr. Doug Thompson,  a 27 year veteran of dentistry since he graduated from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in 1996. Dr. Thompson is a teacher, researcher and trail blazer in the field of modern dentistry. Today we travel down paths that lead to explanations as to why oral health is so important to systemic and truly whole human health.

We look back in time and follow a timeline to the present-day research that says that we have scientific knowledge through laboratory study that the oral microbiome, the bacteria that reside with the oral cavity, as well as the oral system’s function has far reaching effects on the heart, the intestines, pregnancy and general metabolic health. Over the decades, Dr. Thompson realized that the science needed a portal to the masses and other dental professionals.

Usher in the project called the Wellness Dentistry network circa 2015 which is an internet-based community of dentists with a keen awareness of how oral conditions affect whole-body health. It is a forum for Dr. Thompson and colleagues to use research to develop advanced practice ideas to thwart systemic health concerns that may arise from oral health dysfunction.

On his website, Integrative Oral Medicine, Dr. Thompson states that he believes in an interdisciplinary treatment model that coordinates dental care with other medical practitioners for total body health care for his patients. He employs advanced DNA bacterial testing methods and other leading-edge dental science to enable early risk assessment and personalized treatment planning. To me this remains the future of all healthcare disciplines, collaboration, cooperation and patient centered.

Let us dive into the oral cavity with Doug Thompson.

 

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 25 – Sivers and Literature Leading Life

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“Last week someone asked why I prefer books. My immediate answer was that I love their quiet, non-commercial nature. No ads. No hype. Just quiet wisdom with deep rewards for a focused mind.

But today I realized something more profound: Each of my biggest life-changing moments came from a single sentence deep inside a book.” (Sivers D. 2026)

I still prefer to hold a book in my hands, the weight of it, the rough-hewn pages beneath my fingers, the quiet ritual of turning one page after another.

Reading, for me, has never been simply about absorbing information. It is the privilege of living for a while through another person’s eyes. We borrow their world, their memories, their fears and joys, and somehow return to our own lives seeing them a little differently.

And then there are the words themselves. Sometimes I stop not because of what happened in the story, but because of the way someone chose to say it. A sentence can be so beautiful that it deserves to be read twice.

Perhaps that is what I love most about books.

For a little while, the world gets quiet, someone else begins to speak, and I get to simply be in love with words.

For me, the changes are not as profound as Derek noted in his response. (hit the link below to read his life altering passages) For me, most passages were more in line with philosophy and health.

and more….

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #118: Nicholas Kelly, RD – Hope, CF and an RD

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My guest today is Nicholas Kelly, a registered dietitian, speaker, and someone who has spent essentially his entire life navigating medicine from the other side of the exam table.

Nicholas was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in infancy. That diagnosis meant growing up with a chronic disease that required constant attention: medications, treatments, nutrition, hospitalizations, and an intimate relationship with a healthcare system that most children never experience.

But what makes Nicholas’s story so compelling is what he has done with that experience, a story that has inspired me.

He ultimately became a healthcare professional himself, giving him the unusual perspective of being both clinician and lifelong patient. And through his TEDx talk, Healing Through the Human Experience, and his broader work, he has challenged clinicians to think more deeply about something that can easily get lost in modern medicine:

What does healthcare actually feel like to the person receiving it?

Our conversation moves well beyond cystic fibrosis.

We talk about resilience, identity, nutrition, the evolution of CF treatment, the patient-clinician relationship, and the moments when healthcare gets that relationship right and when it gets it very wrong.

We also explore what happens when a child who has spent his life being defined, at least partly, by a serious disease grows into an adult and begins to decide for himself what that disease will, and will not, mean for his life.

Nicholas’s story is ultimately about much more than living with cystic fibrosis.

There is an amazing story within the story about his mother. Listen and find out what she did for him.

Beautiful.

It is about living fully in the presence of uncertainty, finding purpose through adversity, and reminding those of us who practice medicine that treating disease and caring for a human being are not always the same thing.

This is my conversation with Nicholas Kelly.

 

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #116: Russell Greenfield, MD – The Art of Listening

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Welcome back to Dr. M’s Women and Children First.

One of the recurring themes on this podcast is that the future of medicine won’t be discovered through faster-paced healthcare alone. It will be discovered by slowing down, listening more carefully, and embracing a patient-centered approach that seeks to understand the whole person—not just the disease. Ultimately, the future of medicine begins with a better question: How do we truly hear a patient’s story so that we can better serve the person sitting in front of us?

Today’s guest has spent his entire career helping answer that question.

Our conversation today centers on one of the most overlooked aspects of healing: why so many people struggle to begin the healing process in the first place—and more importantly, how we, as clinicians, parents, and patients, can help that process finally move forward.

Dr. Russell Greenfield is a board-certified emergency medicine physician and a Diplomate of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine whose career has been dedicated to transforming healthcare from a disease-centered model into one focused on whole-person health. He has served as Medical Director of Integrative Medicine for major health systems, including Novant Health and the Weisiger Cancer Institute, held national leadership positions within the Veterans Health Administration’s Whole Health Initiative, and continues to advise organizations across the country that are reimagining what healthcare can become.

What makes Dr. Greenfield’s journey especially unique is that he was one of the select physicians chosen to complete a residential fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona—the birthplace of academic integrative medicine. At a time when very few physicians were willing to challenge the traditional boundaries of healthcare, Dr. Greenfield immersed himself in a model that recognized nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, relationships, purpose, and environment as fundamental pillars of health, while embracing the remarkable advances of modern medical science.

For me, this conversation is especially meaningful because many of us in medicine are asking the same question: How do we move upstream? How do we stop waiting for chronic disease to develop and instead create the conditions where health can flourish?

Today we’ll explore the art of becoming an experienced listener in service of the patient before us. We’ll discuss why curiosity often matters more than certainty, why healing frequently begins long before the prescription pad comes out, and how understanding a person’s story can unlock opportunities that laboratory tests and imaging studies alone may never reveal.

Whether you’re a clinician, a parent, or simply someone searching for a deeper understanding of health, I think you’ll come away from this conversation with a renewed appreciation for one of medicine’s most powerful tools: listening.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 20 – Healthcare Policy

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Failing Them

Why Are We?

We are failing our children, the next generation.

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time studying cellular biology and mitochondrial function in order to understand worsening disease trends. Thus, I want to revisit a landmark study that is one of the most comprehensive assessments of pediatric health ever conducted in the United States. Rather than examining a single disease or health outcome, Dr. Forrest and colleagues integrated data from multiple nationally representative surveys, mortality databases, and electronic health records encompassing millions of children to evaluate whether the health of American children has changed over the past 17 years. The answer was strikingly consistent: across virtually every major health domain, children in the United States are becoming less healthy. The investigators examined mortality, chronic physical and mental health conditions, obesity, functional status, sleep, puberty, physical symptoms, and emotional well-being between 2007 and 2023. Nearly every indicator worsened over time.

“From 2007 to 2022, infants (<1 year old) were 1.78 and 1- to 19-year-old individuals were 1.80 times more likely to die in the US than in the OECD18. The 2 causes of death with the largest net difference between the US and OECD18 were prematurity and sudden unexpected infant death for infants 12 months or younger, and firearm-related incidents and motor vehicle crashes for 1- to 19-year-old individuals. From 2011 to 2023, the prevalence of 3- to 17-year-old individuals with a chronic condition rose from 39.9% to 45.7% within PEDSnet, and from 25.8% to 31.0% within the general population. Rates of obesity, early onset of menstruation, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms, and loneliness all increased during the study period.” (Forrest et. al. 2025)… and literature review.

Enjoy,

Dr. M

 

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 16 Issue 19 – Pain

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Pain

Do we listen to its signal?

Pain: Your Body’s Built-In Warning System

Pain is one of the body’s oldest and most important protective mechanisms. It isn’t your enemy. It is a messenger.

Imagine walking barefoot across your living room and accidentally kicking the corner of the coffee table. The sharp pain that shoots through your toe isn’t there to punish you, it is there to protect you. Within fractions of a second, nerves carry a signal to your brain, telling you that cells and tissue have been injured. Your body immediately encourages you to stop what you’re doing. Protect the area and allow it to heal.

This is acute pain, and it serves an essential purpose for both protection and survival.

The problem arises when we stop thinking of pain as information and begin viewing it as something that simply needs to be eliminated. Over the past several decades, this mindset has increasingly influenced modern medicine. Around the turn of the century, pain was widely promoted as the “fifth vital sign,” emphasizing the importance of recognizing and treating it. While this movement helped address the undertreatment of pain, it also contributed, in some settings, to an emphasis on suppressing pain rather than understanding why it existed in the first place.

From an evolutionary perspective, pain is not a design flaw, it is a sophisticated communication system. It evolved to capture our attention, protect us from further injury, and encourage behaviors that promote healing. When we focus solely on silencing the signal without investigating its source, we risk missing the very message our bodies are trying to deliver, and deliver it will.

Pain is information

Every pain signal is your body’s way of saying, “Something isn’t quite right.”

Sometimes the cause is obvious like a sprained ankle, a cut, a burn, or a broken bone.

Other times the message is much more subtle.

….

Dr. M

Dr. M’s Women and Children First Podcast #114: Aimie Apigian, MD – Biology of Trauma

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Today’s podcast guest is Dr. Aimie Apigian, a physician who has become one of the leading voices in helping us understand the biology of trauma.

Dr. Aimie is double board-certified in Preventive Medicine and Addiction Medicine, with advanced training in biochemistry, public health, and functional medicine. She earned her medical degree from Loma Linda University, where her education also included behavioral health, child psychiatric therapy, play therapy, and addiction family counseling. Before medical school, she studied Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Washington, where she worked in the laboratory of renowned cancer researcher Dr. Larry Loeb.

She is the national bestselling author of The Biology of Trauma, featuring a foreword by Dr. Gabor Maté. The book has appeared on the USA TODAY Best-Selling Book List and has received multiple national book awards.

What makes Dr. Aimie’s work unique is her ability to bridge neuroscience, functional medicine, attachment science, and trauma therapy into a practical framework that explains how our bodies store survival patterns after stress and adversity. Rather than viewing trauma as simply a psychological experience, she teaches that it is a biological state—one that can be identified, measured, and, importantly, healed.

She is the creator of the Biology of Trauma® framework, which integrates somatic therapies, parts work, nervous system regulation, and targeted biological interventions into a structured sequence designed to restore the body’s innate capacity for healing. She is also the founder of Trauma Healing Accelerated™ and the host of the popular Biology of Trauma® Podcast, where she has educated thousands of clinicians and individuals around the world.

Today, we’re going to explore what trauma actually is from a biological perspective, how it influences immune function, metabolism, chronic disease, and childhood development, and perhaps most importantly, what it truly takes to move from surviving to thriving.

Dr. M

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