In this live Evolution of Medicine Podcast episode from the IFM conference, James Maskell speaks with Dr. Kristine Burke about the rapid transformation of functional medicine and its growing integration into mainstream healthcare systems.
They explore why inflammatory markers like CRP took decades to enter standard practice, and how this reflects a broader challenge in translating research into real-world medicine.
Dr. Burke shares her journey from conventional family medicine into functional medicine after seeing patients experience major cardiovascular events despite guideline-based care. This led her to focus on residual risk, root causes, and systems biology.
The conversation also covers emerging biomarkers such as SII, SIRI, and suPAR, which may help detect systemic chronic inflammation and disease risk earlier than traditional approaches.
A major theme is the shift toward network-based care – where clinicians collaborate through shared systems, multidisciplinary teams, and structured data to improve outcomes in complex chronic disease.
The episode closes with reflections on global growth in functional medicine, the urgency of early intervention in cognitive decline (“time is brain”), and the expanding role of clinical collaboration in shaping the future of healthcare.
About the Guest:
Dr. Kristine Burke is a physician trained in conventional family medicine who transitioned into functional medicine after recognizing the limitations of guideline-based approaches in managing chronic disease.
She specializes in cardiovascular health, complex chronic illness, and cognitive decline, with a strong focus on systems biology and root-cause medicine.
Dr. Burke has contributed to the development and clinical application of functional medicine frameworks, including lifestyle-based interventions, metabolic and inflammatory risk assessment, and multi-system clinical reasoning.
She is also involved in TruNeura, a collaborative initiative focused on reversing and preventing cognitive decline through early intervention and systems-based care models.
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About the Host:
James Maskell is a healthcare entrepreneur and founder of The Evolution of Medicine. For over 20 years, he has worked to scale functional medicine through community-driven models, group visits, and practitioner infrastructure. His work focuses on moving medicine upstream – toward prevention, lifestyle intervention, and systems-based care.
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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:
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Transcript:
When we receive someone who’s coming to the clinic with cognitive decline already, we basically are looking at it like a cancer diagnosis. It’s a fatal disease, and the longer it goes untreated, the more damage is done. And so we really wanna start, you know, first building those lifestyle pillars so that we have the foundation for healing, and then we wanna look at supporting them with the nutrients and the mitochondrial support and the hormonal support that they need to be able to heal.
And then we really wanna start focusing on modulating the immune system and getting rid of the toxins, the chemicals, the biologic toxins that are creating that oxidative stress and those chronic… activating those chronic inflammatory pathways- Yeah … that generate more damage. Hello, and welcome to the Evolution of Medicine podcast.
We are in a new location. We are at the Institute for Functional Medicine’s Annual International Conference, and we have an incredible live podcast studio where over the last three days we have been speaking to speakers, innovators, people who are taking functional medicine to new and interesting places.
Now, I am really excited for today because we’re gonna do a little bit of a wrap-up of the conference from last year. But I’m also excited because, if you can see now, I have a special guest with me, Dr. Christine Burke. Uh, many of you know Dr. Burke through many of the stories. She’s been a frequent guest on the Evolution of Medicine.
She’s also been my doctor. She’s also responsible, uh, for the incredible story with my father, and also we are working together on TruNeura to build the first clinical network that can reverse and prevent cognitive decline. And over the last little while, I’ve been trying to tell Christine, “Look, I need a partner here in The Evolution of Medicine podcast because this has already happened twice today.
Doctors come on and they just assume that I know all the biochemistry that they know, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, okay, that sounds interesting.'” Like, I don’t know if I could ever push back on any of these ideas- … because, like, it’s just not in my wheelhouse. So I need to have an expert, and you’re the expert. So welcome.
Thank you. First time as the co-host of The Evolution of Medicine podcast, Dr. Christine Burke. Thank you very much. Well, we’re here at, uh, at IFM, and we’ll have an opportunity to talk about, you know, the, some of the- the- the talks that you’ve seen, that- that- that you’ve witnessed, but I wanna just reflect first and foremost.
So on the first day we were here, we’re getting set up, and there was a special session they’d never done before for only people who this was their first time, and it was a big room. And that there are more than half the people that are here are new. So what does that tell you about, uh, you know, what that means for the functional medicine movement?
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really exciting that half of 1,000 attendees are the first- are first-time attenders. And so there’s just this really burgeoning interest in functional medicine, in, uh, practitioners seeking another way of practicing medicine or seeking ways to help their patients heal. Like, we’re all getting very acutely aware that we’re not creating health in our current healthcare system.
One of the other stats is that 40% of the people who are here this year are working inside institutions. So it’s not just the independent practices and the small group practices, but actually, and, uh, over the next few weeks, you will hear from all of the innovation that I’m seeing that’s happening, um, all across the country and all over the world as people look to find ways to wedge functional medicine into, uh, nursing, into pharmacy, into medical schools, into, you know, larger health systems, into international countries.
Um, you know, there’s such an international flavor here. So that’s an exciting moment, that it’s not just the sort of the functional medicine that you started in 20 years ago where it’s only really small practices. There’s, there’s a, there’s a new wave. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we even had a talk here on integrating functional medicine principles into the National Health Service, and we’ve had other ones in the military and so it is really exciting to start to see it spread into these institutional, um, entities.
Yeah. So, uh, some of the… I just wanted to ask you about a couple of things that I know you’ve started to get. I haven’t been to many of the talks because I’ve been here doing this. Um, but I know you had a, a pretty exciting moment with, uh, James Carter, who I have interviewed and will be coming soon, um, you know, very soon on the Evolution of Medicine podcast.
I know, you know, before you were a cognitive decline expert, you’ve been a vascular expert, and I know no one ever had a heart attack in years in your practice. So what do you know that the Cleveland Clinic Center, the Cleveland Clinic didn’t really know, and what’s happening now that it’s, it’s coming around?
Yeah, no, it was just really exciting to hear him talk about the evolution of bringing the inflammatory markers into the cardiovascular prevention paradigm, and to hear him talk about the story of that evolution and how, you know, the, um, one of the m- main national cardiology organizations almost 20 years ago had talked about how CRP, C-reactive protein, the inflammatory marker, how that predicted vascular events, and then promptly told us all not to measure it.
And then 20 years later acted like it was a new discovery. Yeah. And so when he was telling that story, I was thinking that’s how it’s felt to me because when I first learned about how much those inflammatory markers can impact our ability to predict who’s at risk and to change that, uh, that event trajectory, and then thinking like, “Well, everyone’s gotta start integrating this because it’s just, it makes such a huge difference in the outcomes that you can get.”
And then here we are 15 years later, and it’s just getting- Yeah … started. So it is, it’s amazing how long the lifespan is of knowing something is effective until it gets incorporated into conventional practice. It really is, that 15-year statistic that you hear, I have now lived that a couple of times. The truth will out, right?
Yeah. Eventually it is true that inflammation plays a big role, so eventually everyone has to come around to that- Exactly … when you look at the outcomes. So tell us a little bit about what your, your talk was about and, uh, what you brought to this year’s conference. Yeah. So I had an opportunity to talk about my journey into functional medicine and kind of my transformation, if you will, from a conventional family medicine physician into the curiosity about, which really w- the genesis of that is what we were just talking about.
It was a patient I had that we had done all the things. We’d checked all the boxes. We’d followed all the guidelines. All the medications were in order, and then he had a serious heart attack, and that led me to question what I was doing. If we were doing all the things and I still had someone have a serious event, what were we missing?
What was that whole, you know, the idea of residual risk that just got really real for me? What are the things that we’re choosing not to pay attention to that are drivers of this disease? And then that’s what I wanted to focus in on. So that was really what got me started into that cardiovascular arena, and then I got to talk about a couple of my complex chronic illness patients before I knew how to do anything with those patients, and how they each urged me on to learn more and to learn what I needed to be able to do to help them.
Yeah. And how eventually that led me to where I am now. And, you know, obviously the Amanthia trial that you’ve been part of, you know, all of those clinicians trained here with IFM. What is it about the IFM training that you think sets y- or set you up to be able to get outcomes with such a complex chronic illness?
Yeah. It’s a really good question. I think, you know, the focus on the foundational lifestyle components, which we use as the pillars of lifestyle in our, uh, TruNeura framework, and then the systems biology framework that allows you to start to understand the interconnectedness and the interdependencies of all these different systems within the physiology.
Yeah. And then when you start to understand those, then you can see, you know, whether it’s metabolic, uh, drivers, if it’s blood sugar, if it’s, you know, nutrients and mitochondrial insufficiency, if it’s hormone deficiencies, if it’s toxins and environmental exposures. But to start to see how each of those things feed into these final common pathways of disease- Yeah
even though those diseases can look completely different and those patients present with really different conditions or symptoms, those same root cause drivers are involved. And so having that training from that outside in perspective of looking at all of the physiology and then how it connects together, that’s really what allows you to start to see how you unravel these complex diseases like cognitive decline.
Yeah. Uh, well, we were sitting next to each other when, you know, Jeff Bland was speaking. Just a quick word on Jeff, 80 years old. I mean, I think both of us have, have experienced a little bit of the magic that he has brought to both of our careers, and, uh, anything particular that, that caught you from his talk this time?
Ugh. I just always love is listening to Jeff. Like, his, his intellect, the inspiration that he brings to how he thinks about things, the way he connects disparate things and brings them together so that you can see them in a new light. Like- Yeah … every single time I listen to him, there’s something amazing.
Well, I’ll give you a specific example of that, what exactly what you said. Um, you know, as you know about- Eight months ago, we were sitting listening to Dr. Bredesen talk, and he said Alzheimer’s is network insufficiency, and I was like… It just went off in my head, ’cause I felt like I’d written a book about social network insufficiency, so to have, you know, it portrayed in that way.
But then on Jeff’s slide up there, that black slide that showed the six areas, I was like, “Oh, this was always network insufficiency.” Mm-hmm. It just wasn’t communicated like that. Yeah. The nodes of the matrix, you know- Absolutely … these are networks that are losing sufficiency, and you measure how they’re losing sufficiency, and you look at it.
So it sort of reimagined for me, um, you know, the, an easy way to sort of describe, uh, what’s happening here, because I think we sort of maybe have got in our own way in trying to overcomplicate something that, um, is actually quite intuitive, I think, to, you know, to people when, when they think about it. So, uh, it seems like the messaging is getting better.
IFM has new videos. 100,000 people have been trained. It seems like there’s, uh, there’s real momentum. And, uh, you know, we had a dinner on Wednesday night, and one of the guys that showed up there, which is really amazing, is someone who wants to bring functional medicine to Japan. You know, I think just as I’ve been thinking about it and got to know him and see, feels like- It’s amazing that in a country where they have the highest life expectancy, you know, he could communicate to me really well why functional medicine was still missing from whatever they were doing.
Obviously, the public health is going pretty well. Mm-hmm. But there’s something about functional medicine that there’s an appetite for over there that he wants to, to meet the needs of. And, um, it’s quite exciting to, to see that there’s, there’s value that could go both ways in that, in that relationship.
Well, and I think also what that brings to light is that even when we can extend life expectancy, if we have an extended health span where people get to enjoy good health for as long- Yeah … as possible, there’s still an appetite for that, of course, because we want to live well all the way to the end. Yeah.
Not just live longer, but suffer. Well, it’s a good point, ’cause there’s a lot of dementia in Japan. A lot of dementia. Yeah. High, really high rates there. So I’m excited, and um, you know, we will be sharing over the next little while. But if you are listening to this and you’ve ever thought to yourself either, A, I’d love to go to Japan, B, I’d love to be at the first functional medicine conference in a new country.
And by the way, that is extremely exciting. I just wanna share ’cause I’ve done that a couple times already. On November 22nd this year, there is gonna be the first functional medicine conference in Japan, and I’m intending to go, and we will have more details coming forward if you wanna join, um, and come and meet those practitioners and be part of that sort of, um, collective moment where brains from, uh, America and brains from all over the world come to Japan and sort of infuse with that culture.
I think it could be a kind of a cool event, and I’m excited to, to be part of it. So, uh, it’s been great to be here. You know, one of the things that, uh, over the last 10 years we’ve done a, a functional forum, you know, from the, from the IFM conference, apart from the three years where there wasn’t a conference.
But I would make, at the end, an hour-long session. And so I’d speak to three people, and we’d do little interviews, and then get the other ones on there, and you’ve been on a few times before. But now that I’ve been here and done all this, I just think there’s like, there’s so much amazing stuff that’s happening as functional medicine does get widely adopted.
Mm. It’s been amazing to be able to actually spend most of my time doing this, and I wanna thank Fullscript and Genova and all the other sponsors that have made this possible because, uh, I think that as you hear these interviews come out over the next few weeks and the next few months, you’ll realize kinda what you’re missing by not being here, which is that there’s really, really hopeful lessons in how functional medicine and these concepts are making it out.
So be here next year. If not, enjoy over the summer, um, the Evolution of Medicine podcast, where we’ll be bringing you some incredible, uh, speakers and content, and, uh, very excited for all of that to come out. All right. So once a month, I do a, uh, sort of a solo episode here just to sort of recap, um, what I see has been happening, and this month I’ve done five events, um, all across California.
I’ve done an event in Santa Barbara, um, Santa Monica, San Francisco, San Diego, and, uh, also in El Dorado County, and you know, the, the, the theme of it has been time is brain, which is your thing. I just took it. Uh, but you know, it does speak to, you know, there was a, there was a real resonance with that concept, and I actually didn’t realize when I heard it that it came from stroke.
Great. Right? Um, but ultimately, um, the concept that we are trying to get across to practitioners through those events is, one, that when you’re dealing with brain related and particularly with cognitive decline, um, you have to work quickly, and so that w- that was, that was bi- a big part of the theme. And, um, maybe you just wanna sort of, uh, share a little bit about, like, how that works with you in clinical practice.
So I just wanna take a minute to talk about the incredible mission partners that we have here at The Evolution of Medicine that have made this possible. So first and foremost, I wanna thank- Fullscript and Fullscript Journey. So Fullscript’s been an amazing partner for 10 years. We only pick partners that can help us achieve our vision and help you achieve your practice vision.
And Fullscript have been an incredible partner for a decade, but their new offering Journeys, and this is why we called it The Evolution of Medicine Journeys, is allowing practitioners to combine the relationships that they have with the newest technology to sell direct-to-consumer lab testing, and use it as a funnel to bring into your practice, and it’s a game changer for the whole industry.
So go to goevomed.com/journeys, and you can get started on building the Journeys for your practice, an optimal way into your practice. We’re gonna have some conversations about it. This is a game changer. Next, Genova. Genova, um, have been fans of The Evolution of Medicine for a long time. We’re big fans of them, and they now have a lot more specialty testing.
They have a lot more tools, and it’s a key part of, uh, understanding the body ecologically. So go to goevomed.com/genova to find out more. Come on over here and I wanna show you about the other mission partners. You know, if you’ve been following us for a while, you know that these are organizations that we trust that add a lot of value.
Freedom Practice Coaching. Um, I have been sup- supported by them since the beginning. And, you know, so many of the issues that practitioners face in building a successful practice, scaling a successful practice, come down to having the right support with people who have been there and done that. Go to goevomed.com/fpc.
Um, BigBoost Marketing. Uh, Uli and his team are the best in the business when it comes to really understanding how to market your functional medicine practice. Go to goevomed.com/bigboost and see how they can help you. And then what you’re gonna be hearing a, a lot about is the formation of clinical networks.
And ultimately, TruNeura is our first effort at that, which is to build an integrated clinical network, combining independent practices from across the country into a network that can reverse cognitive decline. And if you go to goevomed.com/truneura, you can get a demo. You can see what it means to be part of an integrated clinical network.
That’s mentorship, that’s software, and that’s making it easier for you to get incredible outcomes in a disease state where there are no other options. So thanks to our mission partners. Let’s get back to the content
Yeah, so, you know, when we’re, when we receive someone who’s coming to the clinic with cognitive decline already, we basically are looking at it like a cancer diagnosis. It’s a fatal disease, and the longer it goes untreated, the more damage is done. And so we really wanna start, uh, create, you know, first building those lifestyle pillars so that we have the foundation for healing, and then we wanna look at supporting them with the nutrients and the mitochondrial support and the hormonal support that they need to be able to heal.
And then we really wanna start focusing on modulating the immune system and getting rid of the toxins, the chemicals, the biologic toxins that are creating that oxidative stress and those chronic, activating those chronic inflammatory pathways- Yeah … that generate more damage. So it’s, it really is time is of the essence because the more we a- the longer we allow those things to continue, then the more damage to the tissue is done.
So we wanna halt it as soon as possible, and then we wanna start that rebuilding process. Yeah. So, you know, that was the theme, but really the under-theme for us is, I think, you know, building a, a clinical network of practitioners- Yeah … that are aligned, um, already in California. Now, we’ve got some great people already.
So- We do … obviously you’re there. Dr. Ryan Arnold is holding it down in Santa Barbara. And honestly, like seeing, um, he brought to dinner his whole ecosystem of support partners, so that, like the chiropractor that he refers to. There’s a specialized fitness place in, uh, in Montecito that is specifically for older adults wanting to build muscle, and we know how important that is there.
So- Absolutely … he’s really built this incredible, you know, community there. It was amazing to meet Yoshi Rahm, um, at dinner the other day, Julie Helm, and others that are, that are already here. Um, but you know, what I’ve seen, one of the magic things that I saw on Wednesday is, so Dr. Ryan Arnold, he’s in California, Dr.
Anna Sata is, uh, in Maryland, and, you know, their relationship is purely Wednesday morning on Zoom. And yet, when we walked into a room together, it was like best friends. Totally. And I think there’s something about coming around a cer- you know, a purpose, a learning together- Exactly … and going through something together that is, you know, really cohesive for friendships.
Yeah. Well, and not just the learning together, but sharing the vulnerabilities together, tackling the problems together, help, you know, helping to solve each other’s stuck points. Like, all of that outside of the learning, right? Yeah. All of that does exactly what you’ve been talking about, right? It just creates a community for us where you feel heard, you feel supported, and you feel like you, you have a, you have a team, you have a pack around you.
Yeah. Well, something amazing that I’ve experienced in the last few months that I’ve been speaking to with, with IFM community, and also, um, you know, I’d love for, for more people to understand, is that, you know, the, the mentorship side of functional medicine I think is broken, right? It, or it never really worked because- Mm-hmm
you know, even if someone’s standing behind you and following you around, they’re not really, like, getting what’s going on in your p- in your brain. So, you know, it’d be hard to find that mentorship structure, and it’s, it’s not easy for the clinician to deliver the mentorship. Right. It’s not easy to be the mentor.
Mm. And it’s just quite at random how people would, would learn. Um, what we, what I’ve seen this year in the mastermind is that when you present a case, and not just two or three PowerPoint slides, but a full set of data, typically what I’ve seen with, with, like, sort of online Zoom sessions going over cases, is that it creates more questions than answers.
Mm-hmm. Because you don’t know. Like, if you give a case in, in two PowerPoint slides, there’s so many unknowns. Right. And good clinicians will be, “Well, what about this? What about that?” ‘Cause their pattern recognition tells them that these are often things that I see with this kind of issue. So to have a full data set, and to be able to see it all laid out and scored and organized, I, what I see is, um, is doctors building confidence very quickly in being able to take on chronic illness, one, because they feel that they have a community where they could bring this kind of case, but two, because the reinforcement of the ordering of, you know- Right
what to do in what order is being shared and is being consistently communicated. Mm-hmm. And I think, like, we, there’s something that’s happening there that I think is informative for how functional medicine should be learnt and should be mentored and should be, um, educated on. I know you’re biased on this because this is, you know, this is a thing that you made.
But, like, ultimately- Just a little bit … yeah, biased on it, but- I, yeah, you’ve seen the magic I have. Yeah. Exactly, and I agree with you, and I think, you know, one of the things when we were developing TruNeura that I talked to you about a lot in terms of what I wanted it to be able to do was presenting the data in the same way, in the same order each time, because that’s what helps you learn the pattern recognition.
Yeah. And we see that now when, from people who weren’t comfortable in certain areas, like weren’t comfortable in biotoxin illness, or weren’t comfortable with mold, or with the, you know, the tick-related infections, Lyme, Bartonella, et cetera. And as we talk through these and kind of demystify them in a way- Yeah
and we’re approaching them the same way over and over again, it really just helps people to build that confidence. Yeah. And it also is so much less random, right? It’s not like you, you have this lab report, and then there’s this thing that’s abnormal over here, and this thing that’s abnormal over here, and then you’re trying to figure out how it all works together.
Like, we’ve done that clinical structuring, that organizational piece, so you can see the things that interact together and that are important to address together as a group. Yeah. As a network. As a network. Just like you said. Yeah, well, that, that, that word has come up, and I actually see that IFM uses that word in, in different places that I hadn’t even, you know, uh, talked about.
They talk about a referral network, right? Mm-hmm. For the 2.3 million people that went to the website looking for a practitioner. You know, one of the things that, that I think is being addressed now, which I’ve always wanted, you know, the energy of the functional forum was always, well, and you were one of the first people to run it, but, like, if I put a group of clinicians in a room together, you know, they can give each other confidence that this is the future.
The problem there is it’s a bit random. You know, you’re having dinner. Maybe you, you know, there, there’s value, but it takes time to accrue. Mm-hmm. Um, certainly that, that this is a much more efficient way to create cohesion between practices, and I guess one of the things that, that I’ve just, you know, seen is that, um- The benefit, like, i- if we looked at our clinical networks, there’s so many ways in which all the practices don’t need to go it alone.
Mm-hmm. And, you know, uh, working together on solving clinical cases is one example of network value. But, like, as I’ve gone through, I did an event in Colorado, and now I’ve had this conversation all across California. I think there is, like, now aches and pains that practitioners feel that they don’t really know that they feel, um, that I feel that are, are, are much better solved by a network.
You know, so many examples, but, like, i- in, in Colorado it was the example of we’ve had a conversation here with pharmacists and, you know, um, uh, uh, polypharmacy- Mm-hmm … is such a huge issue in this exact patient population, and wouldn’t it be great? I mean, you’ve got an amazing team, but you don’t have a pharmacist.
Right. And wouldn’t it be great to have a pharmacist? But, like, expecting everyone to suddenly employ a pharmacist is kind of crazy because it takes a while to work out, well, how do I make this person pay for themselves, and how do I do that possibly? But, like, to have the ability to bring in a specialized polypharmacy consultation just one time.
You don’t have to employ them. They just come in. But they’re employed by the network of clinicians that have a certain volume of patients. There’s just an inherent efficiency in that- Yeah … that is gonna be very difficult to replicate expecting everyone to go and do it. Right. Absolutely. You know? Yeah, and there’s l- many examples of that, like even the example that you gave with the, um, the focused exercise community.
Yeah. We have one in our area too that we use that focuses specifically on what the exercise regimen that we used in the research trial, and then we’ve expanded that to be able to include that for our regular patients as well. Yeah. And so having someone that understands exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, but, but, you know, we…
I can’t employ a full-time gym and trainer. Yeah. But, but we can utilize this shared community resource that’s been focused in on our needs. It’s really cool. Yeah. Well, the other, the other thing that came up today, and I didn’t tell you about this, I’m gonna pitch you live. But I had, uh, Carol Penn, Dr. Carol Penn, come and talk here, and she’s been doing a talk of, uh, mapping qigong to the functional medicine matrix.
And, you know, there’s just something about seeing the videos of, you know, groups of older Chinese people doing qigong in the park, where you’re just like There’s something about my core humanity that I’m missing by not having that sort of practice, and we’ve been, you know, talked about group visits or group medical visits, but there’s something about, like, embodied movement in groups for older people- Mm
that I feel like that’s, there’s something in there for us. Yeah. You know? There is something in there for us. Yeah. That’s a real cool idea. But yeah, we, that was a 10 out of 10 interview, and that’ll be coming soon, because I really enjoyed that, and, you know, in his last years, Gabe was really into qigong, and we went down and did, like, a whole qigong training.
I could see, you know, there is something valuable here. But to see it, like, mapped onto the functional medicine matrix, and then now, you know, I’ve been so much, so much more conscious about the older population and the needs of the older population, um, that’s been, you know, been huge for me, um, for that.
Any- anything else you want to share about your experience from the conference or, you know, the events, uh, you know, uh, that, that we’ve seen, or the, the network? Anything that, um, stands out? Yeah. You know, I think it’s just always so It just refills you to come and be in this big community of people that are all trying to make a difference for humanity, and just to see all the different ways, the creativity that people have had, the different communities that they’re able to plug into and to help, uh, communities of patients.
And I think it’s just very inspiring to see how, how people are really out there doing this work. I think it’s really the, the, the idea that functional medicine is only for a certain class of person or only a certain demographic or otherwise, that’s been blown apart for me on this event. Seeing all the different ways in which it’s being developed, the way it’s being adjusted, the different professions getting into it, um, it’s been great.
And something happened here that I didn’t expect. You know, if you try and get people at a functional medicine conference in America to dance, generally it’s a disaster. Everyone’s a little bit stiff. But in the first session today, whatever Gita Maker Clark did, you know, however she set it up, I saw, um, I saw something happen that I hadn’t seen in America.
I’ve seen it in Mexico. When I went to that Mexican conference, people would really throw down in the break, but I hadn’t seen it here. So, uh, you know, something special was engaged, uh, engaged that moment. Um, I want to just, you know, just to, to… That’s right. So last week on, um, on the, on the podcast, on the show, we did the first functional forum that we had held back in February in San Francisco, and that event we had your colleague Kat Toops talk about, you know, the success of the Avanthia trial.
We had a number of other, um, speakers and presenters there, like David Rabin and Molly Maloof and, uh, and Ryan Arnold. And one of the things that, um, that came up on that, uh, event was we were sort of launching to the world, or at that moment to that group, but now it’s come up last week, uh, SUPR. Mm. And SUPR is a new biomarker for systemic chronic inflammation.
And, um, you know, since we put it out last week, we’ve had hundreds of practitioners saying they’re into this because I think they understand the limitations of some of the biomarkers that we have for inflammation and, and how they move. And I remember we did a session actually that Jeff Bland had talked about at PLMI, where he was talking about, what is it, SII, SIRI.
SIRI. What are those? What were the purpose of those, and what sort of impact do you think it could make to have, uh, a bi- A marker that looks at systemic chronic inflammation. Yeah, so the SII, systemic inflammatory index, and the SIRI are just ways that we can repurpose the information that we get in a standard CBC, a standard blood count, so that we can understand a little bit better the inflammatory drivers that are going on.
So one uses lymphocytes, one uses platelets, so you get a little bit of different… And monocytes, and so you get a little bit of different, um, information from the two of them, whether it’s more likely a bacterial driver, for example, like that type of an infection, or it’s more likely the innate activation of the immune system, and then that can help you to understand risk.
And then Dr. Chris Magrida, in his presentation, he was talking about how he can use that, those indices to actually predict which kids with right lower quadrant abdominal pain are likely to have appendicitis, and he can use that to differentiate which kids need immediate intervention and which he can follow and check in on the next day very, very safely.
And that’s amazing. I mean, that’s, that’s paradigm shifting in terms of how we manage these patients. So really exciting that we can take cheap information that we’ve had for a really long time and, uh, you know, twist it around a little bit and get something that can give us such amazing predictive value.
One of the things that I didn’t understand when we started talking about cognitive decline that you’ve revitalized my mind on is really what we’re talking about is identifying, one, is there chronic systemic inflammation? And then two, if there is, where is it coming from and what’s driving it? I mean, that is the, the protocol, right?
Right. Yeah. And, you know, ultimately what, what Chris is talking about there otherwise is that population health predictions for chronic illness based on an understanding of their, like their long-term systemic chronic inflammation, um, I think could be very helpful for taking functional medicine, you know, into its sort of rightful place, which is what we’ll be talking a lot of times, which is like how do we predict future disease, and how do we stop it from getting to disease by understanding what’s driving it?
Right. Exactly. And if we can start to learn how we can use these indices to predict who with chronic illness, chronic, you know, like heart failure or other things that maybe aren’t infectious, but be able to predict who the people who are likely to decompensate are, then we’ve gone another step further, not only in helping to alleviate or reduce the suffering of those people, but also in unburdening the tremendous expense that those hospitalizations create for the healthcare system.
And that’s just one small example. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, look, this has been really fun. I knew it would be. And, uh, you know, when, when we all have a little bit more time on our hands, maybe we’ll do this more regularly. Look, if you liked Dr. Burke and I as a dynamic for the Evolution of Medicine podcast, let me know so I can forward all those emails and say, “See?
This is the way we should do it.” It’s actually great to, you know, to have, um, you know, someone who can, you can get into all of the clinical side of things because, um, you know, my, my penchant has been for more of like the practice management and technology stuff, ’cause that’s something that I feel I can really get my head around.
And, you know, the clinical stuff is interesting, but I, uh, there are some, some limits to, to my understanding. Um, but it’s really been really great. And look, uh, I wanna, I wanna know, you know, it’s a big deal to come here and be, um, you know, to be, to be sort of saluted by being put on stage to show other practitioners, “Look, this could be a career that you could have.”
Yeah. And to pick you in that role I think is, is powerful because I think there’s a lot about, you know, your journey that is something that, you know, would be easier to do today. If you just started, you could, you could go on that journey, get into functional medicine, develop specialist knowledge because of passions, take it through, and then, you know, hopefully be in a position to make a real impact in, you know, in a couple of different disease states.
Uh, so I think that’s, you know, that’s really powerful. And I just wanna give a shout-out to what’s about to happen here at the Evolution of Medicine podcast. For the last two and a half days, I’ve been sitting in this, you know, incredible, um, incredible corner of the conference. Um, we’ve done about, what? 26, uh, live podcasts.
Um, not all of them will be coming to you because, uh, I don’t… I’ve got, you know, we only do one a week, and there’s gonna be a lot more, uh, coming out. But the good news is we’ve captured some absolutely incredible talks, and I will be, you know, picking the best of them and sharing with them over the summer.
Please stay tuned. And if you love the Evolution of Medicine podcast, please share it with other clinicians, because I think what you’ll see, what, what this conference has done for me is to, um, revitalize what I think is possible within the functional medicine ecosystem. And, you know, what I’m really excited about is by bringing in this sort of diverse network of opinions, like we- We are, what the foundational layer is, we have to understand disease through understanding function.
Mm-hmm. Right? There’s the range of function- Yeah … and how to bring back function. Yes. Now, I don’t think that the, we, I don’t think we found all the ways to do that. Yeah. I think we found ways to do that. Yeah, I would agree. And even for, even for, you know, the work that, that we’re passionate about here, in order for that to become a standard of care, we need to find new ways to identify what’s driving the pathology and how to get it back, you know, back in.
And I think that coming to an events like this will give you ideas. Coming to Japan might give you some ideas on how to do that too. Um, but ultimately there’s, there’s an amazing melting pot of, uh, content that’s happening here. So, uh, thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the Evolution of Medicine podcast.
We’ve been here at the Institute for Functional Medicine’s annual international conference. Over the next few weeks and months, you’ll be seeing some of the best interviews that I’ve done here. Stay tuned. Tell your friends. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time. So we are here asking practitioners about their practitioner journeys, and the reason why is because Journeys is a new product from Fullscript.
Journeys allows you to set up your own lab offerings as the top of the funnel. Give the patients what they want. They wanna know about themselves, and it’s the easiest way to bring them into your practice. We have all types of practices from across the country that are building their own unique lab panels for their own unique practices, selling them to their community, and acting as a great funnel into their practice.
This is a massive innovation. I think this will accelerate the evolution of medicine. You can go to goevomed.com/journeys to find out more. Set up your own journeys in half an hour, and transform the health of your community. Go get ’em. So that was the podcast. What an epic session. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Evolution of Medicine podcast.
We will be back again next week, and thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time
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