Last week we were talking about toxins to avoid when you’re trying to conceive . This week we’ve got another toxin on the docket. The toxin is acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol (known as paracetamol in Europe). No doctor should ever recommend Tylenol again. Not to pregnant women. Not to newborns. Not to small children. “But my doctor says Tylenol is safe.” I am a doctor myself and a nice southern girl. I don’t like to criticize other doctors but I’ll be honest with you: your doctor does not know what he does not know. Tylenol has not been shown to be safe for children. If your doctor would spend just half an hour reviewing the peer-reviewed medical literature about Tylenol, your doctor will realize it has not been proven safe. Acetaminophen may very well be a main trigger for certain childhood neurological disorders, including autism, as well as childhood asthma . Just ask a team of research scientists and medical doctors from Duke and Harvard Universities whose...

Are you trying to conceive?  Are you obsessively checking the hashtag #TTC, charting your ovulation, and buying pregnancy tests in bulk? If you’re reading this article, chances you’ve been having a lot of horizontal time with your partner (eh hem), because you are trying to conceive a baby.  I’m a family physician, which means I see patients at every age and stage of their lives. I give advice to 20-year-olds with painful menstrual cramps, help 70-year-olds who are having trouble sleeping, and counsel women who are trying to conceive.  I’m also an integrative physician, which means I take a whole-person, natural-minded approach to health issues, which can really help when women are trying to conceive.  Integrative, say what? If you’re new here, you might never have heard the term “integrative medicine” (also called “functional medicine”) before. Integrative medicine combines the best of conventional western medicine with the best of other heal...

Dementia is an ever growing, looming epidemic and we are watching our parents and grandparents disappear into this awful illness.  There were 30 million patients affected by Cognitive decline in 2012.  That is crazy!!  Until now, there were no cures or treatments to reverse this condition.  This is why I love Functional Medicine. There are so many causes of dementia to include vascular causes (hardening of the arteries), inflammation, diabetes, toxins, genetics, trauma (See the movie Concussion), hormone deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies and more.  Yet, all we have been offered is one pill to address one part of the cause.  I don't know about you but my body is pretty complex!  There is no magic bullet. In March, I attended the Institute of Functional Medicine's first conference on Reversing Cognitive Decline.  They discussed the MEND trial out of UCLA , nine of 10 participants displayed subjective or objective improvement in their memories, ...