Many would confidently assert that antibiotics have changed the course of medical progress while others would just as vigorously assert that antibiotics can change the course of one’s life in less-than-positive ways. Yes, antibiotics have saved the lives of many who would have otherwise succumbed to some overwhelming infection. Yes, even without resorting to the…
Both conventional and functional medicine can agree that most people in our nation need more fiber. The average American diet includes more and more processed ingredients with less and less old-fashioned fiber, leaving many missing out on fiber’s benefits. We can all agree that most patients can see benefits like lower cholesterol, better gut health…
Most people know that their best chance at triggering an unwanted yeast infection would be to take some good old-fashioned antibiotics. These yeast infections caused by a particular type of fungus may manifest in various bodily locations but they all seem to share a common mechanism. Antibiotics, by their very design, kill off bacteria that…
Mold and Lyme garner greater attention from both chronically ill patients and functional medicine practitioners, but they are not alone in the biotoxin world. Spider bites and bartonella, the bacteria behind cat scratch disease, are also generally recognized as triggers for the Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). Lesser attention, however, is paid to toxic algae…
As the world continues to live through another day of COVID 19, the medical world continues to report new findings attempting to explain the symptoms of COVID 19. A common adjective used to describe COVID 19 disease has been ‘weird’. This virus seems to have taken on a multitude of superpowers to affect a wide…
Irritable Bowel Syndrome patients may grow a little irritated when allergists tell them that a particular food cannot be causing their GI symptoms. The allergist looks at either a skin allergy test of a blood IgE antibody test and says “all normal”. The IBS patient, however, knows that the food in question undoubtedly causes them…
Check out part one here. Aloe vera includes a number of chemical constituents derived from the plant which provide a number of benefits to the GI tract with ingestion. (Mills 2005) Various studies have demonstrated benefits including bowel regularity and various inflammatory conditions (Brawn & Cohen 2015; ,Bone & Mills 2013). It is considered safe…
G.I.DetoxTM from Bio-Botanical Research Inc. offers a multi-modal detox in a single product for our biotoxin patients suffering from mold toxicity, Lyme, disease, toxic algae, and Bartonella among others. Over time, we may shift focus to a single agent such as clay or charcoal or cholestyramine alone when we find only 1 toxin remaining, but…
Researchers are continuously uncovering the mechanisms behind what prior observations had demonstrated about the links between our diet, our gut, and our immune systems. A recent report in Nature explains another fascinating mechanism by which bacteria in our gut take amino acids in our diet to make a sugar that influences our immune system’s natural…
As discussed in the prior article, although the GI tract would appear simple as a one-way street from mouth to anus, the story of mycotoxins turns out to be a real plot twisting complexity. In part 1 we began with an outline of how our gut bacteria affect the incoming mold toxins. In this edition,…