Did your blood test for a health problem say you’re perfectly healthy even though you suffer from fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, digestive issues, joint pain, or other symptoms that make you miserable? Does your doctor give you a prescription for antidepressants or tell you to seek therapy because your problems “don’t exist.”
Many doctors dismiss people’s health complaints because of an incomplete blood test that only looks for full-blown diseases instead of trends toward disease. In functional medicine, however, we use a blood test for assessing risk of disease before it develops. This way you can do something about it before it’s too late. For instance, a fasting blood glucose over 100 mg/dL can identify a risk for diabetes long before a diagnosis. Or more complete thyroid testing can explain hypothyroid symptoms when a standard test shows results are “normal.”
Functional medicine uses a blood test for a return to health
Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of symptoms instead of overriding them with drugs or surgery. One tool we use to accomplish this is to interpret blood tests using functional ranges, which outline the parameters of good health.
In contrast, the ranges most doctors use are based on a bell-curve analysis of all the people who visited that lab over a certain period of time, many of whom are very sick. These lab ranges have broadened over the last few decades as health of the American population has declined. As a result, more and more people with real health problems are told they’re fine because their lab results fall within these wide ranges.
Do you really want to evaluate your health in comparison to all the sick people who visited your lab, or do you want to look at a blood test for what constitutes good health?
Looking for blood test patterns
Because functional medicine is based on an in-depth knowledge of human physiology and how various systems in the body work together, we also look at a blood test for patterns instead of just looking at individual markers. By doing this, we see how these different systems influence one another to cause a constellation of symptoms.
For instance, looking at different white blood cells reveals whether an immune reaction is chronic or acute, and whether a virus, a bacterial infection, allergies, or parasite may be causing it. Other patterns can help us identify fatty liver, leaky gut, different types of anemia, or even a possible autoimmune disorder.
Blood test for functional medicine is more thorough
A blood test for functional medicine also includes more markers that standard blood tests. For instance, many doctors only look at TSH, a basic thyroid marker, when running a blood test for hypothyroidism. In functional medicine, however, we know that Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease that attacks and destroys the thyroid gland, is responsible for 90 percent of hypothyroid cases in the United States. Therefore we also test thyroid antibodies to screen for autoimmunity along with other thyroid markers for more information.
A blood test for a functional medicine approach can also help us know what other tests may be necessary, such as a gastrointestinal panel or further testing for anemia.
Principles of functional medicine
Once the potential problems or risks have been assessed, the functional medicine practitioner uses a variety of science-backed, non-pharmaceutical approaches to restore health. These include:
Adjustments to the diet
Lifestyle changes (such as eating breakfast, proper sleep hygiene, physical activity, or reduction of stress)
The use of botanicals or nutritional compounds to improve physiological function
Other natural medicine approaches customized for the patient based on lab testing
“Hi this is Dr. Ruscio and let’s talk about fatigue.
Fatigue is something that pretty much everyone is going to be affected with at some point in their life and some people will struggle with fatigue. Now what options are there besides reaching for coffee, tea, red bull, and 5 hour energy, what have you? Well there are quite a few things we can do to help the fatigue process and different people will have fatigue for different reasons so what I’m going to do is run through the causes of fatigue and the symptoms that correlate with each cause to help you figure out what might be causing your fatigue.
Fatigue can first be caused by hormones. Now sex hormones can cause fatigue. Imbalances of testosterone and estrogen can cause fatigue. So what will this look like? Someone with fatigue who also is having problems with erection or drive or sexual function as a man or as a woman who’s having problems with sexual function also but is experiencing vaginal dryness, dry hair, dry skin, dry nails, that may be an estrogen mediated form of fatigue. It’s important to keep that in mind because fatigue for these people may be as simple as rectifying imbalance in testosterone or estrogen.
Now thyroid hormone imbalances can also cause fatigue. Someone with a thyroid hormone imbalance induced by fatigue or inducing fatigue may also experience that they have colder hands or feet or they have intolerance to the cold. They may also notice that they’re constipated. They may notice that their cholesterol is going high. They may notice that there is a thinning in the lateral third of the eyebrow or puffiness in the face, just to name a few.
Stress hormone imbalances can also cause fatigue. Cortisol or epinephrine, or adrenaline, both these hormones while they are stress hormones and we don’t want to have very high levels, but we want to make sure we don’t have very low levels either because the right amount of stress hormones will help give you energy. If people are low on stress hormones, which is actually more common than you might think, I see it all the time in clinical practice; this is certainly something that can be contributing to fatigue.
Insulin resistance also and the way that insulin resistance works is you need to get sugar into your cells so you cells can burn it as fuel. If your insulin resistant that means you cells are resistant to letting fuel enter into them so they can use that fuel as energy. One of the keynote characteristics of insulin resistance is people who are tired but also tend to crave sweets or crave starch. Blood sugar regulation ducktails into the insulin resistance piece. Blood sugar regulation can be thrown off into a condition called adrenal fatigue or when people have low levels of stress hormones and how this all ties in is stress hormones in addition to giving you energy help your body keep blood sugar in the appropriate ranges.
People who have low levels of cortisol stress hormone are also at risk for what’s called hypoglycemia where they have low blood sugar and that can certainly have fatigue. Like we just mentioned a little while ago insulin resistance can also throw off blood sugar because insulin helps get blood sugar from your blood stream into your cells to be used as fuel. If your cells are resistant to insulin signaling then your cells are essentially starving for fuel, and if your cells are tired you’re going to be tired.
Now anemia can also play a role and we have our iron anemia or our b-vitamin anemia and the most common cause of anemia is usually a dietary deficiency oftentimes found in vegetarian dieting or people who have gastrointestinal problems. People who have celiac disease or subclinical gluten intolerance will have damage to their intestinal lining and that will impede their ability to absorb iron specifically and some of these people may also have something known as pernicious anemia which is an autoimmune condition which part of your stomach is being damaged that is needed to absorb be-12 via a factor known as intrinsic factor.
Chronic infections can also cause fatigue. Chronic infections can cause fatigue through two different routes. Now chronic infections, what they’ll look like is in some cases people who have energy for a few days and for a few days they’re tired. This is cyclical fatigue and what this has to do with is a life cycle of certain infections: as the infections goes into a more proliferative phase where it is causing more damage people get more fatigue because they’re immune system tries to rise up, beat down the infection. Once the infection is beaten down their energy gets better until the infection tries to rise up again… Then the immune system has to come back up and when the immune system has to up ramp itself that causes a lot of fatigue in the body because it requires a lot of energy. Infections if they’re in the digestive tract certain worms for example can interfere with the absorption of things like some of your b-vitamins and iron also so infections can cause that anemia factor we talked about a little while ago.
Certain toxins can also be an issue. Mercury toxicity can interfere with hemoglobin production in the body and the ability or the viability of your red blood cells to essentially do their function, carry oxygen. Also toxins can cause problems with your brain chemistry and can cause problems with your hormones. Toxins cause problems with fatigue in a multitude of areas. People who have been exposed to toxins maybe people who work as hairdressers in salons, people who work in an industry where they’re exposed to a lot of chemicals may be at risk for toxin induced fatigue.
Food allergies, someone who has food allergies is someone who is going to eat and then notice they get fatigue shortly thereafter. They may or may not also have digestive symptoms like gas, bloating, loose stools, intermittent diarrhea and things like that. Certainly food allergies will cause an inflammatory response in the intestines and an inflammatory response in the intestines can cause a whole myriad of problems but it certainly will cause fatigue. So if you eat and you notice your fatigue shortly thereafter that’s a tell-tale sign that you have a food allergy inducing fatigue.
Also, problems with brain hormones like serotonin and dopamine. This is someone who is fatigued but they also feel like they’re sad or they also feel like they’re overwhelmed or they also may even feel a little bit of anxiety because the brain hormones are imbalanced causing these neuropsychiatric symptoms that accompany fatigue.
Also, finally, sleep and exercise: Sleep and exercise have a multitude of effects in the body but maybe the strongest one is that sleep and exercise will both help keep your hormones in good levels and help keep your hormones balanced.
So, this is a list of the different things that can cause fatigue and I outlined some of the symptoms that are associated with them so hopefully that gives you a little bit of information that can help you navigate this topic of trying to figure out what’s your causing fatigue.
This is Dr. Ruscio, I hope you found this helpful.”
“Hi this Dr. Ruscio and today I would like to talk with you about weight gain.
Weight gain of course, hugely popular issue, everyone has a solution gadget or gismo for weight loss. Today I would like to talk with you about some simple concepts that have been shown to be highly effective for weight loss. The first and the most important concept that we have to understand and achieve in order to lose weight effectively, and I should say lose fat effectively and really keep it off is to achieve this concept called calorie partitioning.
So, what calorie partitioning looks like is this: Every time we eat food, we end up having calories in our bloodstream and calories, generally speaking, can go one of two ways. They can go into your mitochondria, where the mitochondria will then burn them for energy and so you’ll have energy and you won’t gain fat because your calories are being burned for energy.
On the other side of the coin your calories can go into your fat cells and if you have too much calories going into your fat cells, then you get tired because you’re getting fat. What’s really a tragedy is that sometimes people will have no motivation to exercise and they think it’s because they’re lazy, but more often than not it’s because their calories are going in to their fat cells and they’re getting stored as fat. No calories are going into the mitochondria to be burnt as energy and so people are tired because they’re actually getting fatter.
The really important concept is to try to figure out how can we steer most of our calories or partition them into the mitochondria so we burn them as fuel and so we don’t gain fat, so we therefore have energy also. The way we really achieve this is by having a good hormonal milieu where we have growth hormones where they should be; catecholamines, meaning things like epinephrine, dopamine, noradrenaline, where they should be; and also adequate levels of the hormone glucagon and we’ll go over that in a little more detail in a second.
On the other side of the coin we want to avoid having high insulin levels because insulin will steer calories into the fat cells. Again, you’ll be tired and you won’t have that much energy because all of your calories will be going into your fat cells. How do we achieve this? The most important initial concept is to limit your daily carbohydrate intake to a total intake of 100g or if you’re really trying to be aggressive, 50g per day. The reason for this is because the strongest stimulator of this partitioning is going to be your carbohydrate intake. So the best way to achieve this, again, is to keep your calories in the below 100 or 50 range depending on how aggressively you want to attack this. Also, eat every 3 to 5 hours, generally speaking and opt for more ancestral or traditional foods. Things like healthy sources of protein, healthy fats, and lots of vegetables and some fruit.
This is also known as the paleo diet. The paleo diet is a great diet to be eating from a multitude of perspectives. Now if you want more information on this I will give you a few links. Now one important thing to know is that there are three macronutrients. There are proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. If you limit carbohydrates, naturally you have to have an increase in consumption of protein and fat. One of the questions people sometimes ask is: are you saying I should eat more fat and if so doesn’t fat make you fat and won’t fat cause heart disease?
Really this is somewhat of an erroneous group of assumptions to make. While going into that is really beyond the scope of this video. You can see this video here where I’ve reviewed a study published by the researcher Christopher Gardner over at Stanford. He did a great job at elucidating the fact that fat really will not make you fat, generally speaking fat is certainly not bad for your heart if used in the appropriate context so you can see more of that video there which I entitled “low fat vs. low carb.” For more information on how this whole relationship between diet, your hormones, and calorie partitioning all works you can watch my video on diet, hormones, and blood sugar.
So what if you’re someone who tries this and it doesn’t work for you or if you’re someone who has been doing this and it still isn’t working? Usually it’s going to work for everybody to some extent but not everyone will get all the way toward their fat loss goals. That may be because three things are present.
Now the first is digestive problems usually there is an infection or some kind of food allergy. Infections are things like candida or fungus, bacterial dysbiosis, worms, amoebas, parasites, and these things are actually more common than you’d think. Or food allergies, and the most common allergies are gluten dairy, soy, eggs, nuts, artificial sweeteners, and corn, just to name the big ones there. Both of these things will cause someone to have high levels of inflammation. When inflammation is high it can really cause perturbations or problems in this calorie partitioning.
There’s another very important area to look into and that is of your hormones. There’s something called the sex hormone to stress hormone ratio. Oftentimes people are under too much stress or they’ve got internal inflammation. Things like infections that we’ve talked about or food allergies that are caused and their stress hormones go way too high and they have excess of stress hormones relative to their steroid or stress hormones. Stress hormones in high levels cause your body to break down muscle and gain fat. Sex or steroid hormones are euthanizing anti-aging they cause your body to maintain muscle mass and lose body fat so the ratio of these is very important. Having a ratio that is positive on the side of your steroid or your sex hormones is very important so that’s another thing for us to look at cause that will again affect this calorie partitioning like we’ve been talking about.
The third is toxins and toxicity. Now a number of papers have been published showing that different environmental toxins can affect metabolism through different avenues. I reviewed a study published in obesity reviews that showed that certain toxins can affect thyroid function and that can poison the ability of the body to get past a certain limit point of fat loss. I also reviewed another study where plastics, different environmental chemicals have been linked with thyroid problems, weight gain, and diabetes. There are some resources for you within these three causative factors for more reading and/or viewing to get yourself more information.
You can also visit my blog where you can find all this information categorized neatly to help you navigate this. The take home message is the first most important thing you can do is achieve good calorie partitioning so you have your calories going in your mitochondria being burnt for energy and not being stored as fat. That is first and foremost achieved by limiting your daily carbohydrate intake. Secondary to that there are other things like problems with digestion, problems with the sex and steroid to stress hormone ratio and problems with toxicity that may be causing someone not to ideally respond to limiting their daily carbohydrate intake. So this is just a preview to what can be a much more lengthy discussion of each one of these items in detail but hopefully this gives you a basic idea and wets your appetite to looking into this further and try some of this
This is Dr. Ruscio and I hope you found some of this information helpful. Thank you.”
I started working with Michael Ruscio, Dr. Ruscio, probably about 4 months ago. My symptoms before were that of depression. I was moody all the time, low energy levels, could never get up in the morning. It would literally take a lot of coffee to get me up in the morning. My hormones were just off the charts. Energy levels up and down just kind of crazy actually.
I started seeing Michael. I was referred to him by a friend and he put me on this program that I've been doing the last four to five months. All these tests that we’ve done, all these things that he’s put me on are all organic and all natural medicine. I’ve noticed a huge difference in myself. My energy levels are what they used to be like when I was a younger teen and my moods are definitely a lot more stable. I don’t have an issue getting up in the morning. I get up at 6am every morning and run. I’m training for a marathon right now.
I owe it all to Dr. Ruscio. He’s helped me so much. I feel so grateful to be where I am right now… in the past… I thought it was depression. It wasn’t. It wasn’t depression. It was an imbalance inside of me that we together, him and I, have worked to balance out. That’s where I am today and I’d recommend this program to anyone out there who has felt the same way that I’ve just explained I felt.”
Suffering from anxiety is like being held prisoner in a place where worry infuses every thought, your heart pounds, and the world seems jarring and disorienting. With anti-anxiety medications among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States, Americans are clearly suffering. Though medications relieve the symptoms, they don’t address the cause.
Some causes of anxiety are obvious: stimulants such as caffeine, weight loss pills, energy drinks, or supplements that increase energy. Psychological or emotional stressors, such as having to speak in public or prepare for a major exam, can also bring on bouts of anxiety.
However, chronic anxiety can have lesser-known causes that, if managed, can relieve symptoms and negate the need for medication. Although the cause of anxiety can sometimes be neurologically complex, other times it can be as simple as making some changes to your diet and lifestyle. Below are a few lesser-known causes of anxiety.
GAD autoimmunity and anxiety
GAD stands for glutamic acid decarboxylase, an enzyme that triggers production of the brain’s primary calming chemical, called GABA. Some people develop an autoimmune reaction to GAD, which means their immune system erroneously attacks and destroys it. As a result, they can’t make enough GABA to calm the brain and anxiety goes up. GAD autoimmunity is also linked to obsessive compulsive disorder, motion sickness, vertigo, facial tics, and other symptoms. GAD autoimmunity is more common in those with gluten sensitivity or celiac disease and a gluten-free diet can alleviate symptoms.
Gluten and anxiety
Gluten has other links to anxiety. It’s hard to believe something as innocent as your morning toast or a bowl of spaghetti could cause anxiety, but recent research shows that is the case for many people. Gluten has been shown to trigger inflammation in the brain and autoimmune attacks against brain tissue, which can cause anxiety. Although a gluten-free diet is an important first step, many people find they also need to eliminate other foods such as dairy, eggs, or other grains to dampen immune flare-ups and anxiety. An anti-inflammatory autoimmune diet is a good beginning to address brain health.
Blood sugar imbalances and anxiety
It’s amazing how many chronic health issues stem from a blood sugar imbalance caused by eating a high-carbohydrate diet. Every time you eat too many carbs in the way of breads, pasta, rice, potatoes, desserts, pastries, soda or sweet coffee drinks you send blood sugar and insulin surging and crashing. When this happens daily it can create a multitude of neurological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, mood swings, irritability, and fatigue. Skipping meals and drinking too much coffee also feeds this cycle. A lower-carb, whole foods diet with enough healthy proteins and fats can keep energy on an even keel and tame anxiety.
Unmanaged Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism
The majority of cases of hypothyroidism in this country are autoimmune, meaning the immune system attacks and destroys the thyroid gland. When an autoimmune attack flares, damage to the gland spills thyroid hormone into the bloodstream, which can amp up metabolism and cause symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, and heart palpitations. In this case proper management of the autoimmune thyroid condition can help subdue anxiety.
These are just a handful of possible causes of anxiety typically overlooked in the standard health care model. Ask my office for other strategies on managing anxiety using natural means.
Is there a torture worse than hitting the sack exhausted from a long day only to toss and turn for hours, unable to fall asleep? Or perhaps you fall asleep but later bolt awake and can’t fall back asleep?
By the time women hit their mid 30s or early 40s, many struggle with sleep. Either it’s difficult to fall asleep, difficult to stay asleep, or both. Although sleep difficulties can have many causes, fluctuations of female hormone prior to and during the transition to menopause can steal many hours of precious sleep.
Female hormone imbalances and sleep problems
When a woman enters perimenopause, her production of estrogen and progesterone begins to decline. Ideally the adrenal glands, which produce stress hormones, take over production of these hormones to ensure a smooth transition into menopause. Unfortunately, most women today enter perimenopause (pre-menopause) in a state of chronic stress and their adrenals glands are either producing too much or too little of stress hormones. To take on the added job of producing sex hormones is simply more than they can handle. That’s when sleep issues can kick in, as balanced levels of estrogen and progesterone are necessary for healthy sleep. Other symptoms may include hot flashes, night sweats, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and more.
Women may also experience sleep issues during certain times of the menstrual cycle when hormone levels fluctuate.
Low progesterone and problems sleeping
Low progesterone seems to have become increasingly common among women and can play a large role in sleep problems. Progesterone is referred to as the “calming hormone” whereas estrogen is more excitatory, and low progesterone is associated with sleeping difficulties.
Chronic stress can impact progesterone levels. Every time you experience stress your adrenal glands release cortisol, a stress hormone. When demand for cortisol is constantly high the body borrows pregnenolone, which is needed to make progesterone and other hormones, to make cortisol instead. This is called “pregnenolone steal” because the body steals pregnenolone from the hormone cascade in order to keep pace with the demands of stress.
Stopping pregnenolone steal may help improve hormone function and improve sleep. Strategies for stopping pregnenolone steal include an anti-inflammatory diet, which eases the body’s burden of stress. You may also need to work on restoring gut health, taming chronic inflammation, or managing an autoimmune disease appropriately, approaches that benefit from the guidance of an experienced practitioner.
Estrogen and sleep problems
When estrogen is too high and progesterone too low, it can cause sleep problems for the obvious reason—there is too much of the excitatory estrogen compared to the calming progesterone and the brain can’t calm down enough to rest. A proper ratio between the two is important.
However, low estrogen can also contribute to sleep problems. Estrogen is intimately connected with serotonin, a brain chemical associated that is converted to melatonin, a sleep hormone. Low estrogen may lead to low serotonin activity and contribute not only to sleep problems but also depression and anxiety. The female brain is highly dependent on sufficient estrogen for normal function in general, and low estrogen can also cause symptoms that include brain fog and memory loss.
Strategies to support hormone balance
Tending to adrenal function and other health issues may help correct hormonal imbalances. This includes not only reducing lifestyle stress, but also eliminating dietary stressors. Eating a diet lower in carbohydrates to prevent blood sugar swings, avoiding foods that cause an immune reaction, not drinking too much alcohol, tending to bacterial gut infections and other aspects of digestive health, and supporting immune balance are all whole-body approaches that can foster proper hormone function and improve sleep.
Ask my office for help in supporting healthy hormonal balance, and improving sleep.
Popping in a DVD for a baby or toddler can provide a brief but blessed break for the harried parent, and playing an educational video takes some of the sting out of the guilt. Unfortunately, even an educational video featuring classical music, shapes, colors, and early words may do more harm than good according to researchers. A child’s brain needs constant physical activity and interaction with the environment to develop properly, and time in front of the screen suspends that development, even if it’s an educational video or computer game.
Research shows the younger a child begins spending time in front of the screen, the lower they score on language tests, despite being taught language on educational videos or television. Unfortunately, almost 90 percent of children spend two to three hours per day in front of a screen by the time they are two years old.
Educational videos overlook brain development basics
A parent who wants her child to read or learn numbers early overlooks some basics of brain development. The timing of left and right hemisphere development is of utmost importance during these first years of life.
A child’s right brain is dominant through about age three. The right brain governs the ability to read emotions, see the big picture, intuition, creativity, and imagination. Experts say teaching more left-brained activities, such as language, critical thinking, logic, and math is not appropriate during this critical right-brain period of development.
In fact, childhood brain issues such as ADHD or autism spectrum disorders reflect lopsided growth of the hemispheres, with the left brain often dominating a weaker right brain. This explains why these children may be academically gifted but have difficulty with such right-brain tasks as reading social cues.
Although watching educational TV or videos won’t necessarily cause a brain development disorder, experts say it can delay the development of crucial wiring and even delay language development.
Better educational alternatives to TV and videos
Physical activity and healthy interaction with the environment are the most vital aspects to a properly developing brain. Babies and toddlers do not need traditional education on TV and videos. Simply becoming part of the world around them is highly educational for them. Ample access to physical movement appropriate for the child’s age (i.e., do not put a child who should be learning to crawl in a walker or leave her strapped in a car seat for much of the day) is vital for proper brain growth, as is playing with age-appropriate toys, loving interaction and touch from caregivers, the ability to safely observe and explore his world, and protection from overstimulation.
Healthy brain development starts in the womb
Although the early years of life are critical to brain development, brain health starts in the womb and is significantly affected by the mother’s health (and, according to newer research, the father’s age—children of men older than 50 are significantly more likely to have autism).
To maximize a baby’s brain power, both parents should start with functional medicine principles before the baby has even been conceived. These include stabilizing blood sugar, eliminating foods that cause inflammation, detoxification, balancing hormone, adrenal, and thyroid health, and repairing the gut, which is the seat of the immune system. The health of the mother’s immune system significantly impacts the development of her baby’s brain, and many women today unknowingly suffer from autoimmune or chronic conditions that imbalance their immune system.
Ask my office for tips on how best to support health nutritionally prior to conception, during nursing, or after your baby is born.
