Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Dr. Zach Bush to explore the concept of biological elegance and what it could mean for the future of health and healthcare.

Zach begins by describing what he calls "nature deficit disorder"—the growing separation between humans and the natural world through industrialization, technology, convenience, and increasingly mechanistic systems. He connects this separation to a broader loss of connection with the biological systems that support human health.

The conversation then turns to one of the biggest blind spots for practitioners: the belief that they must find and deliver the solution for the person sitting across from them. Zach explains how even approaches considered "alternative" or "natural" can become another form of intervention and symptom management when they are treated as isolated solutions. Instead, he emphasizes the complexity and interconnectedness of biological systems.

James and Zach also explore what intelligence actually means. Zach distinguishes biological intelligence from artificial or abstract information, arguing that true intelligence requires embodiment, context, relationship, and connection to the living world. They discuss AI and why organizing information is not the same as understanding the context in which that information exists.

A major theme throughout the conversation is that health is relational. Zach recalls being taught in medical school that if you listen to a patient long enough, they can tell you what disease they have, why they have it, and potentially how to heal it. He believes practitioners should move from being the person who "fixes" the patient toward becoming a witness, listener, and guide who helps the patient recognize the intelligence already present within their own experience.

James and Zach explore the role of groups in healing and how relationships can reveal patterns that may remain hidden in traditional one-on-one healthcare. Zach describes his work with groups of six to eight people and explains why friction and interpersonal triggers can actually be valuable: they can expose experiences and patterns that create opportunities for deeper self-understanding.

The conversation also touches on aging, longevity, and the importance of connection. He challenges the idea that biology can be effectively understood or controlled through isolated interventions and emphasizes curiosity, connection, and listening to the intelligence of living systems.

They close by discussing the future of healthcare, the breakdown of increasingly abstract and mechanistic systems, and the possibility of communities becoming the foundation through which new forms of healing and collective intelligence emerge. Zach also shares his vision for The Origin, a global gathering centered around human interconnectedness and biological coherence.

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About the Guest:

Dr. Zach Bush is a physician whose work explores the interconnected nature of human health, biology, and the environment. In this conversation, he shares his perspective on biological elegance, biological intelligence, nature deficit disorder, relational health, community-based healing, aging, and the future of healthcare. He challenges conventional ideas about controlling biology and emphasizes curiosity, connection, and listening to the intelligence of living systems.

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Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora to discuss her new book, Season of the Witch: The Psychiatrist's Case for Magic.

Dr. Vora's first book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, directly translated her functional medicine approach to mental health. This book came from a deeper, more spiritual inquiry. She describes it as part grief memoir, part cultural commentary, and still a prescriptive functional medicine book. Her central argument is that many of us learned to perform a left-brained, rational type of intelligence while suppressing our mystical, intuitive side. That adaptation opened doors for her through medical school, residency, and a research fellowship. Now she believes it's time to integrate the parts we disavowed.

Dr. Vora shares how she grew up in a secular environment where science was worshipped and skepticism was a virtue. When her mother died suddenly, the view that death is random and final no longer held. She chose to open to the possibility that her mother's spirit continues, and signs and synchronicities followed. Eleven years later, she describes an ongoing connection with her mother. She also cites Dr. Lisa Miller's research at Columbia showing that a sense of something larger protects against depression and suicidal ideation.

Maskell and Dr. Vora explore intuition as "the witch's compass" and the nuanced role of wearables in self-awareness. They also discuss her practices of embodiment and presence, which she grounds in integrity and sovereignty. The conversation closes on community and the collective: leaving the world better than we found it, finding our unique contribution, and learning about love as part of the evolution of consciousness.

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About the Guest:

Dr. Ellen Vora is a holistic psychiatrist who takes a functional medicine approach to mental health. She is the author of The Anatomy of Anxiety and Season of the Witch: The Psychiatrist's Case for Magic, which explores intuition, spirituality, grief, and the cultural conditioning that leads us to suppress our intuitive selves. Trained in conventional medicine, Dr. Vora integrates root-cause care with embodiment, presence, and spiritual inquiry to help patients heal.

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Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Kirkland Newman, founder of MindHealth360 and Executive Director of the IMMH (Integrative Medicine for Mental Health) conference.

Newman's path into integrative mental health began with her own experience of severe postpartum depression after both of her pregnancies. Offered only antidepressants by her psychiatrist — with no explanation for why she was suddenly experiencing panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, and depression — she sought answers from an OBGYN, an endocrinologist, two GPs, and multiple psychiatrists, none of whom investigated further. Her own research led her to hormone specialists, a functional-medicine-oriented nutritionist, and eventually to Sarah Gottfried's work on adrenal and HPA-axis dysfunction. She discovered she had significant hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies (low omega-3s, B vitamins, vitamin D), heavy metal toxicity, and gluten intolerance — none of which had ever been screened for, despite clear symptoms including cardiac ectopic beats that went uninvestigated for a thyroid cause.

Frustrated that this root-cause approach wasn't part of mainstream care, Newman founded MindHealth360 to provide free resources and a global practitioner database, launched a podcast interviewing leading integrative mental health practitioners, and eventually took over the IMMH conference from its founder, Dr. Shaw. Under her leadership, the conference has grown from 50 attendees in 2009 to around 2,000 in-person and virtual attendees today.

Maskell and Newman discuss the shifting landscape of psychiatry — a groundswell of patient-driven demand for root-cause approaches meeting growing frustration among practitioners with the limits of psych medications — along with the broader convergence of psychiatry and neurology into what some are calling "brain medicine." Newman outlines her framework for sustainable mental health treatment across three domains: the biochemical (hormones, nutrition, gut health, infections, inflammation, genetics), the psychosocial/spiritual (relationships, chronic stress, trauma, ACEs), and the lifestyle/behavioral (sunlight, exercise, sleep).

The episode closes with a preview of this year's IMMH conference, taking place October 8–11 in San Diego, featuring speakers including Robert Lustig, Bessel van der Kolk, Dick Schwartz, Robin Carhart-Harris, Dale Bredesen, Kat Toups, Richard Horowitz, and James Greenblatt, with tracks spanning trauma, addiction, eating disorders, hormones, sleep, neurodegeneration, and psychoneuroimmunology, and up to 40–45 CE credits available.

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About the Guest:

Kirkland Newman is the founder of MindHealth360, a free global resource platform and practitioner database for integrative mental health, and Executive Director of the IMMH (Integrative Medicine for Mental Health) conference. Her own experience with severe postpartum depression — and the lack of answers from conventional medicine — led her on a personal healing journey into functional medicine, hormonal health, and nutritional psychiatry. She has since built IMMH into one of the leading conferences in the field, growing it from 50 attendees to roughly 2,000, and hosts a podcast interviewing leading integrative practitioners in mental health from around the world.

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Social Handles:

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/FunctionalForum

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

Fullscript Journeys: https://fullscript.com/lp/journeys-james-maskell

Big Boost Marketing: https://goevomed.com/bigboost

Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Nikki Schultek, founding director of the Pathobiome Research Center at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and founder of the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative, a global research consortium.

Schultek's path into this work began with her own illness 11 years ago — a multi-system chronic condition driven by a tick bite and co-infections including Chlamydia pneumoniae, which went misdiagnosed by 12 specialists for a year before Dr. Charles Stratton at Vanderbilt identified and treated the underlying infections, restoring her to roughly 95% of her former health. That experience, and the fear of not watching her young children grow up, led her to found Intracell Research Group and later become what she calls a "collaboration architect" — connecting siloed researchers across immunology, microbiology, neuropathology, and epidemiology who study different pathogens (herpesviruses, Chlamydia, Borrelia, Bartonella, fungi, syphilis) but rarely collaborate with one another.

The conversation covers the evidence linking infection to Alzheimer's disease: animal studies showing pathogens like C. pneumoniae can induce amyloid-like plaques in wild-type mice; the historical near-miss in which Alzheimer's disease could have been named after Dr. Oscar Fischer, who described bacterial-colony-like structures in tangles and plaques during the pre-antibiotic syphilis era; and emerging research suggesting amyloid and tau may act as innate immune "firefighters" responding to infection rather than purely destructive proteins. Schultek highlights her consortium's 2023 landmark paper in Alzheimer's & Dementia, which catalogued 86 case reports of infectious dementias reversed through targeted antimicrobial treatment.

Maskell and Schultek also discuss the heterogeneity of individual cases — from periodontal pathogens like Porphyromonas gingivalis to tick-borne co-infections — and the need for precision, patient-specific approaches that account for genetics, exposome, and hormonal factors. The episode closes with a discussion of what's needed to move the field forward: greater federal and philanthropic funding, better multi-pathogen and host-biomarker testing, industry investment in targeted (rather than broad-spectrum) antimicrobial therapies, and expanded insurance coverage — particularly for PANS/PANDAS families currently priced out of diagnostic testing.

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About the Guest:

Nikki Schultek is the founding director of the Pathobiome Research Center at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and founder of the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative, a global research consortium studying the role of infectious agents in neurodegenerative, neurological, and neuropsychiatric disease. A former patient whose own multi-system chronic illness was driven by tick-borne and intracellular infections, she now works as a "collaboration architect," bringing together researchers across immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, and neuropathology to advance infection-associated chronic illness research. She is co-lead author of the 2023 landmark paper on the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative published in Alzheimer's & Dementia.

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

Fullscript Journeys: https://fullscript.com/lp/journeys-james-maskell

Big Boost Marketing: https://goevomed.com/bigboost

Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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This podcast is produced by DrTalks.com

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In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Dr. Helen Lavretsky — integrative and geriatric psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and professor of psychiatry at UCLA, where she directs clinical research on integrated mental health and serves as research director for UCLA's Integrative Medicine Collaborative.

Her path into the field began through Kundalini Yoga, sparking 20 years of studying mind-body practices with rigorous neuroscience. Despite initial pushback in academic psychiatry, her evidence ultimately gained widespread acceptance.

She details her clinical model: a partnership where patients choose self-regulation tools based on joy, avoiding rigid regimens. She also shares her landmark Kirtan Kriya research, showing that just 12 minutes of daily chanting meditation over 8 weeks rewired the brain, improved cognition, and reversed aging markers in dementia caregivers.

Discussing her new book, Living from the Soul: The Neuroscience of Spiritual Awakening, she addresses patients experiencing "spiritual emergence"—symptoms like insomnia and body pain often misdiagnosed as psychiatric illness. She links these rising rates to global instability and generational shifts in resilience.

They also explore brain health policy and the "Brain Capital" movement—from UCLA summits and UN testimonies to Texas's $3 billion Brain Health Institute. Finally, they examine environmental risk factors, genetic predispositions like APOE4, and offer a candid critique of long-term SSRI use in older adults.

The episode closes on the future of precision medicine and data-driven Alzheimer's care.

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About the Guest:

Dr. Helen Lavretsky is an integrative and geriatric psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and professor of psychiatry at UCLA. She directs clinical research programs on integrated mental health and serves as director of research for the UCLA Integrative Medicine Collaborative. She is a past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and the author of several books, including her latest, Living from the Soul: The Neuroscience of Spiritual Awakening.

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Social Handles:

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

Fullscript Journeys: https://fullscript.com/lp/journeys-james-maskell

Big Boost Marketing: https://goevomed.com/bigboost

Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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This podcast is produced by DrTalks.com

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In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine's Annual International Conference, host James Maskell sits down with Dr. Geeta Maker-Clark, who opened the conference that morning with its keynote address.

The conversation begins with something unusual: conference attendees — mostly, as Maskell puts it, "type A, cerebral" doctors — got up and danced during her talk, a rare sight at a medical conference. Dr. Maker-Clark, who is part of a West African dance company, explains why: drumming and dance tap into something deeply primal in all of us, tied to ancestral rhythm, grief, celebration, and rites of passage — connections she says were severed largely through colonization. Maskell shares a parallel experience with communal singing, discovered through his men's group, and the two agree it produces a similarly embodied, collective effect.

From there, the discussion turns to rebuilding what's been lost. Maskell describes creating a small home-school and community pod for his daughter, built around Dunbar's number, as a deliberate act of "rebuilding the tapestry" of connection. Dr. Maker-Clark reframes this broader work not as innovation but as remembrance and reclamation — recovering what our cells already know how to do.

The conversation closes on health equity and food. Dr. Maker-Clark discusses her decade running a culinary medicine program at the University of Chicago Medical School, training physicians to talk with patients about food and cultural humility — a model that has now expanded to over 80 academic medical centers nationally. She and Maskell discuss group-based, cohort models of care as a scalable way to deliver this kind of medicine beyond wealthy populations, pushing back on the idea that holistic care is "just for rich people." The episode ends on a note about hope as a muscle — something we have to keep using.

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About the Guest:

Dr. Geeta Maker-Clark delivered the opening keynote at the Institute for Functional Medicine's Annual International Conference. She is a member of a West African dance company and runs the culinary medicine program at the University of Chicago Medical School, training physicians and medical students in nutritional science and cultural humility in patient care — a model now adopted across 80+ academic medical centers nationally. She has a book coming out later this summer.

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Social Handles:

Website: https://www.jamesmaskell.com/

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesedwardmaskell/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/FunctionalForum

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

Fullscript Journeys: https://fullscript.com/lp/journeys-james-maskell

Big Boost Marketing: https://goevomed.com/bigboost

Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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What does it take to earn functional medicine's highest honor?

In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine's 33rd Annual International Conference, host James Maskell sits down with Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M, recipient of the 2026 Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Award in Functional Medicine — awarded to Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M in recognition of his career-long contributions to the field.

Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M shares the story of his journey from OB-GYN to functional medicine leader, crediting Jeff Bland and Bethany Hayes for pulling him into the field early on. He discusses why women's health has reached a tipping point — driven by demographic shifts in menopause and perimenopause and the fading of old prohibitions against hormone therapy — and why he's concerned about the wave of unvetted hormone-health advice flooding social media.

Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M also breaks down the three hottest areas in women's health right now: metabolic flexibility, mitochondrial health, and the judicious use of GLP-1s, plus a cutting-edge use of FSH testing to fine-tune hormone dosing.

Whether you're a practitioner, patient, or simply curious about where women's health is headed, this episode offers a firsthand look at the wisdom behind this year's Pauling Award win.

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About the Guest:

Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M is the recipient of the 2026 Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Award in Functional Medicine, awarded at The Institute for Functional Medicine's 33rd Annual International Conference. Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M is an OB-GYN and longtime leader in functional medicine's approach to women's health, having served on the scientific advisory board of Metagenics and led hormone health education for IFM.

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

Fullscript Journeys: https://fullscript.com/lp/journeys-james-maskell

Big Boost Marketing: https://goevomed.com/bigboost

Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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What does it actually take to build a functional medicine program that thrives inside a conventional health system?

In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine Annual Conference, James Maskell sits down with Laura Sandquist and Kate Otremba, who've spent six years building a large integrative and functional medicine program within Allina Health, a conventional health system in Minnesota.

Laura and Kate share the infrastructure they built to make it work — smart phrases, practice guidelines, and templates that help clinicians translate their functional medicine training into daily practice within the constraints of RVU requirements and insurance billing. They discuss how they addressed access issues through nutritionist-led and practitioner/nutritionist co-led group medical visits, and how a two-day CME training for primary care providers and specialists helped build trust and drive more referrals and holistic thinking across the system.

The conversation also covers their new venture, Whole Health NP, launched to help other practitioners bridge the gap between learning functional medicine and actually applying it — and why this whole-health approach extends well beyond integrative nursing to physical therapists, psychologists, and beyond.

Whether you're a clinician, health system leader, or someone building functional medicine programs of your own, this episode offers a grounded, practical look at what it really takes to make whole health work at scale.

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About the Guest:

Laura Sandquist, DNP, APRN, A-GNP-C, FMCP-M and Kate Otremba, DNP, MN, APRN, CNP, FMCP-M are co-developers of a large integrative and functional medicine program within Allina Health, a conventional health system in Minnesota, where they have worked together for six years. Their work includes building clinical infrastructure such as smart phrases and practice guidelines, launching nutritionist-led and co-led group medical visits, and developing a two-day CME training for primary care providers and specialists to build trust and collaboration across the system. They have since launched Whole Health NP, a company dedicated to teaching practitioners how to translate functional medicine training into real-world practice.

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesedwardmaskell/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

Fullscript Journeys: https://fullscript.com/lp/journeys-james-maskell

Big Boost Marketing: https://goevomed.com/bigboost

Freedom Practice Training: https://goevomed.com/fpc

Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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What if the best way to live a long life isn't a longevity hack — but preventing chronic illness in the first place?

In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine Annual Conference, James Maskell sits down with Dr. Kara Fitzgerald, a naturopathic physician and longtime functional medicine researcher, to talk about her groundbreaking work on reversing biological age.

Dr. Fitzgerald shares the story behind her 2018 clinical study, which found that a diet and lifestyle intervention reversed biological age by over three years — a result that stunned the field, since even epigenetic clock pioneer Steve Horvath didn't believe bioage reversal was possible in humans. She explains how follow-up research traced most of that effect to polyphenol-dense "methylation adaptogens," and why she's now pursuing an NIH grant to understand whether polyphenols can move the needle on both exposomic aging (environmentally driven) and deeper, programmed aging (the kind tied to Yamanaka factor biology).

The conversation also covers the longevity summit she hosted last year to unite the functional and longevity medicine communities, her advice for practitioners building a career in this space — community, clarity of purpose, and in-person connection — and her take on where direct-to-consumer lab testing and wearables fit into the future of patient care.

Whether you're a clinician, researcher, or simply curious about the science of aging, this episode offers a grounded look at what it actually takes to move the needle on healthspan and lifespan.

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About the Guest:

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald is actively engaged in clinical research on epigenetics and longevity using a diet and lifestyle intervention developed in her research and practice. She has published two clinical studies on the potential bioage-reversing effects of an 8-week DNA methylation-supportive diet and lifestyle in middle-aged men and women in the journal Aging.

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

TrueNeura: https://truneura.com/trunuera

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Genova Diagnostics: https://goevomed.com/genova

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What if there was one blood test that could reveal your cumulative inflammatory burden — years before disease shows up on a standard panel?

In this episode, James Maskell talks with Dr. Jonathan Kuo, founder of Hudson Medical and Extension Health, about suPAR (Soluble Urokinase Plasminogen Activator Receptor), a biomarker he's used in over 1,000 patient tests. Dr. Kuo explains how suPAR differs from traditional markers like CRP, why it functions as a "check engine light" for the immune system, and how it's already reshaping the way his practice approaches diagnostics and longevity care.

The conversation covers the research behind suPAR — including studies linking it to kidney disease progression, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality — as well as how the marker responds to lifestyle changes and clinical interventions like therapeutic plasma exchange and peptide therapy. Dr. Kuo also shares his advice for functional medicine practitioners considering adding suPAR to their diagnostic toolkit, and his vision for where this biomarker could fit into preventive medicine in the years ahead.

Whether you're a practitioner looking to deepen your diagnostic framework or simply curious about the future of inflammation testing, this episode offers a grounded, clinically-informed look at a biomarker on the rise.

* This content is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Consult your healthcare provider before making any medical decisions.

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About the Guest:

Dr. Jonathan Kuo is the founder of Hudson Medical, an interventional pain management practice that treated over 50,000 patients over two decades, and Extension Health, a personalized precision medicine practice focused on longevity care. Originally trained as an anesthesiologist and interventional pain management physician, Dr. Kuo's clinical journey led him from pain management into regenerative medicine, peptide therapy, and systemic inflammation testing. He is one of the first and most prolific users of suPAR testing in the United States, having administered over 1,000 tests in his practice, and uses the biomarker as a core part of his approach to identifying and tracking chronic inflammation in patients.

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