Brain & Mental Health
Dive into expert articles, insightful blogs, and the latest
research to empower your health journey.
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Time on Brain: The Willpower Muscle
Last June my wife, Michelle, announced that she was going to run the Yankee Homecoming Ten Miler in July. It is a well-known race run annually as part of the Yankee Homecoming celebration in Newburyport, MA. It is notorious for hills and sweltering heat. She had not run in twenty years, but with training, she…
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Navigating the Intersection of Stress, Pain, and Addiction: Seeing Hope Through the Lens of Functional Medicine
IFM’s Annual International Conference The 2019 Annual International Conference for the Institute for Functional Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, was, as always, a wonderful time to connect with friends, colleagues, and like-minded health care providers. It was also full of great lectures that provided us with tools to help our patients who are struggling…
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Your Brain and Immunity: The Fascinating Connection You Need to Nurture
People often ask me, “What kind of medicine do you practice?” And when I say Functional Medicine, some people don’t really understand. So, I say I’m a psycho-neuro-immuno-endo-gut-ologist, which is because all the systems in the body are interrelated. Sometimes when you specialize, whether you are an immunologist or an endocrinologist or a cardiologist, you…
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Getting to the Root: A Functional Approach to ADHD
All of us know someone struggling with ADHD. This common disorder poses many challenges for the person affected, but the good news is that there are plenty of actions that can be taken to reduce symptoms, increase attention and focus, and support brain health. On this episode of Getting to the Root, Dr. Elizabeth Boham…
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5 Tips for Better Brain Health as You Age
I think a lot of people would say “I want to be physically well as I age, but more importantly, I want to have my memory. I want to be alert, oriented, and engaged with people around me.” That means having a healthy brain that ages well. When it comes to brain health, mitochondria…
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ADHD and Negative Self-Talk
Last year, I suffered a traumatic brain injury. It wasn’t a typical dramatic accident that led to it, I simply hit my head while I was working out and later realized it was much worse than I thought. The following months were full of difficult symptoms and overwhelming setbacks, including lots of stress, anxiety, and…
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Getting to Know Our UltraTeam: A Personal Interview With Dr. George Papanicolaou
What sparked your initial desire to pursue and practice Functional Medicine? When I was practicing conventional medicine, the emphasis was on treating the disease, not the whole person. The market forces of the health care system pushed me to see more patients in less time, which left me just enough time to name the disease…
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Is it Seasonal Affective Disorder?
Winter is in full swing. Many of us have been dealing with negative temperatures and gloomy skies for what feels like eternity, and with that can come a gloomy mood. While it’s normal for moods to ebb and flow, a stagnant down feeling throughout the colder months could be seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. SAD…
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The Physiology of Hope
In my work as a Functional Medicine nurse and health coach, I routinely help my patients find hope. When someone is discouraged and I help them feel more hopeful, I know they are much more likely to get well. I always intuitively knew this was true, but what does research say about hope’s impact on…
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Coping with Grief and Loss
Grief is the intense response to losing someone you love. This life changing experience can cause a flood of emotions and you may wonder how to find the strength to move life forward. The article Coping with Loss: Bereavement and Grief, states that grief is likely to be expressed physically, emotionally, and psychologically. For instance,…