Author Archives: Zuzanna Walter

National Nutrition Month: 5 Nutrition-Based Tips for Healthy Aging

March marks the beginning of National Nutrition Month, an annual campaign focused on expanding awareness and education, promoting informed dietary choices, and helping the population develop healthful eating and physical activity habits.

From a functional medicine perspective, nutrition plays a crucial role in overall health and can be leveraged as part of an integrated approach to prevent, manage, and treat diseases. Even slight changes in dietary habits can significantly benefit patient well-being, outcomes, and age-related disease risk. A recently published New York Times article outlined five nutrition-based tips that can be easily implemented to promote healthy aging.

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Post-Pandemic Need for Functional Medicine and Integrative Care

The speed and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic response highlighted the fragmentation of current healthcare systems across the globe and how it significantly impairs the ability to respond effectively. Making matters worse, the impact of the pandemic on population health and the functionality of healthcare systems has been and will continue to be far-reaching and long-lasting.

As the world attempts to rebuild from the pandemic, many individuals are left with serious and lingering health issues that require immediate and consistent attention. Healthcare practitioners are now facing a rising prevalence of chronic disease, growing cases of long COVID infection, as well as pandemic-influenced mental, physical, and emotional crises.

Addressing the devastating psychological and physical aftereffects of the pandemic will require deviation from the current standard of medicine. An integrated approach to patient care heavily grounded in functional medicine is emerging as the solution to healing global public health and repairing the siloed structures of the healthcare industry.

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How Do Hormone Imbalances Affect Physical and Mental Health?

There are many factors to consider when optimizing health and wellbeing, yet one of the most important ones often goes unaddressed in conventional medical practice. As functional and integrative specialists know, hormone levels are a crucial parameter to assess as even the slightest shifts within the endocrine system can have significant effects on the entire body.

Although hormone levels fluctuate throughout the lifetime and many changes are a natural result of aging, specific symptoms and imbalances may indicate endocrine dysfunction. Hormonal imbalances caused by the over or under-production of a hormone can present an array of unwanted symptoms and lead to the development of long-term health repercussions if not managed appropriately.

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