February is not just Valentine’s Month — it’s also American Heart Health Month. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death globally, but an estimated 80% of heart disease can be prevented through lifestyle and diet changes.(PubMed) This is...
This Longevity Blueprint is a functional medicine guide for the common man. Dr. Girish Kalva, functional medicine physician, has put together a longevity guide to living longer, leaner, and healthier, all with a…
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday! Getting together with friends and family, the seasons changing, pausing to be grateful, the wonderful food and desserts. To make it even better- let's consider some healthy food swaps to enjoy the beautiful and meaningful day-...
November is National Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Awareness Month! Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly takes away a person’s memory, thinking and language skills, movement, perception, reasoning and judgment. Alzheimer's Disease is Not the Same as...
Breast Cancer: A Rising Concern What is your risk of breast cancer? Breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women worldwide. While genetics play a role, most breast cancers are influenced by lifestyle, environmental exposures, and hormone signaling. The good...
National Integrated Health Associates (NIHA) is pleased to announce functional medicine physician Girish Kalva, MD, has joined our integrative medical team. Dr. Kalva is a medical doctor board certified in both Internal and Obesity Medicine. He comes to NIHA with 25...
“I still can’t smell,” is a common post-covid complaint. A lingering long haul syndrome phenomenon is loss of smell- and here is what you can do about it. An interesting complication for some of those who have had COVID-19 is a loss of smell (anosmia) or decreased ability to smell (hyposmia). This condition is called Post Infectious Smell Loss (PISL) and some studies show that it can affect up to 10% of individuals with Post Covid Syndrome.
Many people think of cardiovascular disease in those who have had a heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure or cholesterol problems. And while these are major diseases of the cardiovascular system, it is important to broaden your understanding as YOU may be at risk...
Digestive enzymes are necessary to break down the food we eat. If we are not breaking down food properly, we do not gain the nutrients needed for the body to absorb and turn into energy for good digestive health.
Turmeric has shown effectiveness in lowering LDL cholesterol. The “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) gets a bad rap as a risk factor for atherosclerosis and increasing the risks of heart attacks and stroke, which together are the number one cause of death.
You may think you learned about this in your middle school sex ED class. So why then are so many couples having a hard time getting pregnant? Infertility rates are on the rise affecting around 11% of reproductive age populations and 25% of these couples have more than one contributing factor.
In last week’s group, Weight Loss and Mindfulness, we had some nice sharing about the positive effects of mindfulness on various aspects of life! So now it is appropriate now to inquire into one of my favorite topics (and maybe yours?) – food.
June is Brain Awareness Month, which is a wonderful opportunity to discuss or have a national conversation about our brain health, the part of us which makes us distinctly human. In my recent book Awaken Your Godly Brain, [1], I stressed that 1/6th of our human brain,...
The health of our brain, our beautifully designed master control center, is under attack from many modern environmental issues. Alarmingly, we're seeing increased cognitive impairment from young to old - Autism to Alzheimer's, anxiety, depression, neuro-degenerative...
The key to who gets sick and who does not lies in the strength of their immune system. The healthier you are, the better chance you have at fighting the Coronavirus. To combat coronavirus, or any flu or cold or virus, we must first support the immune system.
One of the ways to tune up your immune system and give you more resistance to the Coronavirus is to heal your intestines. A healthy gastrointestinal tract is often synonymous with a healthy immune system, which strengthens your resistance to any and all infections.
When I was in medical school almost 50 years ago, we were recruited for an experiment to test the common cold virus (i.e., a rhinovirus). I didn’t volunteer even though some extra spending money would have been nice, but my classmates did. Students were selected who had essentially no antibodies to rhinovirus. In exchange for a pittance, researchers at the University of Virginia Medical School divided the volunteers into four groups (if my ancient recollection serves me well)
A quote from the Gene Environment Interaction Fact Sheet [1] from the Centers for Disease Control states that virtually all human… “…diseases result from the interaction of genetic susceptibility factors and modifiable environmental factors, broadly defined to include...
Are you taking medications and wondered if they are the right ones for you? If you have been taking them for a long time, have you been concerned that they might be adversely reacting with each other or taking a toll on your long-term health? Are the doses too high or too low?
How do you choose your primary care doctor? Referral by friends or picked off an insurance list. Some young adults may not really care who they see – as long as they get their “annual exam” and have someone write for an antibiotic when they get sick. Others with chronic health conditions visit their doctor to refill their multiple medications which help control their disease symptoms.
Functional Medicine is a medical approach which involves testing for the underlying causes of disease and designing a treatment plan to address the root cause of the disorder, not just the symptoms. It views and treats the body as a whole, integrated system. Many...
What is Peptide Therapy? Peptide therapy is a newly developed medical treatment that has gained new heights in Functional Medicine for its efficacy, safety and ease of use. These small proteins, or “peptides” are made of a certain sequence of amino acids....
The short answer is…..because we assume it is due to excess calories and not enough exercise. And although these are factors, they are often not THE answer. It is also not about the total calories but rather, where the calories are coming from. In other words, what...
Two kinds of “perfect diets” exist. The far more common, propagandized, “perfect” diet is the one-shoe-fits-all diet that bases their recommendations on a small slice of scientific evidence of one kind or another, such as the Fodmap Diet™ or a Paleolithic Diet ™. The...
Luke Perry’s death was shocking even for people who did not know him, but for death to occur at the age of 52 from stroke is tragic. Those over age 65 are at most risk for stroke, but surprisingly, 10% of all strokes occur in people under the age of 45. It is important for people of all ages to get annual check ups with a knowledgeable integrative or functional medicine physician, so that a good prevention plan can be implemented.
These 4 lab tests for cardiovascular risk will give a better picture of what your risk factors for heart disease or stroke. Let's delve deeper into your true health - starting with your heart health. Your current blood tests may not be enough to give an accurate...
Metabolic Cardiology is a fairly new branch of Functional Medicine. Metabolic cardiology is a non-invasive, simple, integrative medical approach which addresses the prevention, management, treatment and monitoring of cardiovascular disease at the core basic level- which is the heart muscle cell. Functional medicine physicians are always concerned with addressing health issues at the root of the problem.
The human body speaks a “foreign” sensory language. It would be nice if it could speak English, and say, “That pasta you ate last night is fermenting a lot of fungus, and I’ve told you before about your auto-brewery problems, so take extra probiotics today, and eat very lightly, and please, no carbohydrates.” Instead of […]
What Determines Appetite Control? Appetite control is regulated by a complex neuroregulatory system. There are many factors affecting this mechanism to include the composition of your diet, side effect of medications, chronic stress, hormonal imbalances, and even the...
Food sensitivity is often a major risk factor for systemic inflammation immune stress and it can distract your immune system from more important tasks such as destroying cancer cells, parasites, fungus, viruses and invasive fungus. As part of a functional medicine...
NIHA is pleased to announce the addition of Sherif Hassan, M.D., functional medicine physician, to the medical team. Dr. Hassan’s wide and comprehensive experience in medical practice in different international settings coupled with his personal experience as a...
Osteoporosis Definition In this age of information technology we are bombarded with misinformation. Take Osteoporosis, for instance. The word Osteoporosis has a Greek origin. Osteo means "bone" and poros means “porous,” so osteoporosis is a condition in which...
In my over 30 years of practice as a holistic doctor, I have seen both types of patients. Those who arrive to my office with bags full of prescribed medications, and those who arrive with a suitcase full of “natural supplements.” (I’ve even seen fellow doctors do this.) What is wrong with this picture? Sometimes well intentioned doctors prescribe their patients a medication without reviewing what she or he has already been prescribed by another doctor, or sometimes patients neglect to mention a medication or supplement. When that happens, the new prescribed medication may dangerously interact with another the patient has already taken. Hospitalizations due to untoward effects of correctly prescribed medications range from 1.5 to 2.7 million cases per year. The death rate from the consumption of prescribed medications in the USA is estimated to be five times that of the rate for opioid abuse.
Fatigue is one of the most common reasons for a doctor visit, and is often a way for the body to cry out for help. Fatigue can be the overriding symptom in many medical conditions including stress, autoimmune diseases, insomnia, sleep apnea, allergies, hormonal...
President Donald Trump[1] has just proclaimed September 2017 as the National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. One can’t fault any concerned American for bemoaning our #1 national epidemic that continues to escalate with no solution in sight. In true Trumpesque form, the issue is being met head on and brazenly confronted, a welcomed call to action. Deaths from drug abuse kill more Americans by far than any other disorder, with tobacco alone killing nearly a half million Americans per year and underlying much of the death and disability of the classical #1 and #2 killers, heart disease and cancer. Deaths from opioid abuse alone, heavily fueled by the prescription pad, now tally more than the deaths from auto accidents and gunshot wounds combined.
Osteoporosis is a common disease that affects bone health. Osteoporosis and low bone density affect about half of all adults age 50 and over, and places them at greater risk for broken bones from minor falls. However, most older Americans who suffer bone breaks are...
A human being’s genetic blueprint is housed in our 23 chromosomes which is where the name of the genetic test “23andMe” gets its name. Each of our 23 chromosomes has an average of about 1000 genes, and each gene has an average of about 100 quirky substitutions, which are sometimes referred to as mutations or polymorphisms. These millions of quirky substitutions partly explains why we are all so delightfully unique in the way we look, think, act and feel about life’s challenges. Most of these mutations or polymorphisms are not considered to be detrimental, but a handful could be important under certain circumstances and cause serious diseases and other health problems, which is why it is important to know about them.
In functional medicine, depression is not viewed as an isolated, unfortunate situation that can be fixed quickly with a pill and some talk. Functional medicine recognizes that in the human body, every cell affects other cells. As a physician, I want to know what is...
Dementia is a broad category of brain diseases associated with long term, irreversible, gradual decrease in the ability to think and remember which is great enough to affect a person’s daily functioning and which is worse than would be expected with normal aging. For decades, scientists have studied brain tissue samples of Alzheimer’s Disease victims, the largest dementia subcategory, (>50%), and have found distinctive pathological changes in the brain such as “plaque” and “neurofibrillary tangles” that are thought to somehow be causative of the disease. The new sciences of Omics sheds new light on Dementia and is challenging long held views about its causes and treatments.
Depression may be helped with a functional medicine approach that can replenish what is needed in the brain. There can be a medical condition, neurotransmitter imbalance or nutritional deficiency which may contribute to depression, anxiety or mental health issues. Dr....
Methylation, a Chemical Reaction Critical to Life We are carbon-based creatures, chock full of carbon containing molecules. So it should come as little surprise to you that one of the most important chemical reactions in all of life simply sticks one carbon and 3...
Most people believe symptoms are the disease so they often take drugs, herbs or supplements to suppress symptoms in the false belief that a medical or psychiatric problem is resolved if symptoms disappear. These myths may stem from deep, unconscious fears handed down...
Updated June 12, 2025 Functional Medicine Defined Functional medicine searches for the underlying imbalance, or root cause, which can contribute to illness or chronic disease. Special lab diagnostic testing, called functional testing, help identify and correct...
Functional Medicine, which is neither Conventional nor Alternative Medicine I have practiced functional medicine since it was invented over 30 years ago and during these decades I have reluctantly tolerated and overlooked being mislabeled as an “alternative medicine[1]” doctor. Healthcare consumers and practitioners alike often fail to recognize that functional medicine has virtually nothing […]
"The whole is more than the sum of its parts" -Aristotle Think of your body as a grand orchestra assembled to play an elaborate symphony together...each system is a different instrument. While we recognize many individual "players" in the body, they all function as a...