During COVID our collective personalities changed in unique ways. The changes differed from the first year of COVID (2020) to years two and three (2021-2022). And the changes were very different from those that had been observed after local or regional natural disasters. Personality changes are different from changes in mood. During the pandemic, depression, anxiety, and stress resilience definitely changed – the first two increased, the last one decreased.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has become the diagnosis du jour for adults and college aged students. Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of those with the disorder. However, the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to seek the diagnosis to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers.

Most people over 40 are recommended to get an annual cholesterol test that measures total cholesterol, HDL (good cholesterol), LDL (bad cholesterol) and triglycerides. Individuals with known high cholesterol may be tested every 4 to 6 months.

When people begin to notice memory loss in themselves or their loved ones, they commonly wonder whether anything can be done to reverse the condition. As a functional medicine specialist, I am never content to accept a diagnosis without asking the question, “Why?” Why is this happening NOW?

Conversations about healthy nutrition often end with the observation that eating healthy is expensive. This tends to be true and is in itself a disturbing observation on the nature of our food industry and agribusiness. However, the sentiment is better framed, “Would it be too costly if I were to eat healthy food but less of it in general?” The question is not just the cost of food. The question is also how much food do we need to optimize our health.

As you grow older, benchmarking your bone health becomes increasingly important. Your bones reach maximum density in your twenties and then begin to slowly decline. This decline markedly increases once menopause or andropause occur, during times of increased stress or infection, during times of significant nutritional challenge, and during times of deconditioning or lack of exercise.

The challenge many of us have chosen for the year ahead is to implement healthier behaviors. Perhaps you chose to exercise more or reduce sweets, or stop alcohol or smoking, or to journal more regularly, or reduce the number of hours you watch television. Clearly the list of behaviors designed to improve health can be long. Sometimes we find that the behaviors we seek to implement are beyond our control because we may have a slight or significant addiction to the offending objects or behaviors such as television, sweets, alcohol, tobacco, distraction.

Fatigue. It’s become all too common. From debilitating fatigue (chronic fatigue syndrome) to waking tiredness, fatigue is contributing to significant inefficiencies at work, problems with concentration, personal performance, and relationships.

This exciting study presents data that a Functional Medicine approach to memory decline can help improve that memory loss. The approach is highly individual. In general an evaluation for memory decline needs to include genetic factors, gut functional, toxin load and detoxification process, inflammation, bacteria/fungus/virus burden, metabolic and hormonal balance, stress, brain capacity, exercise, sleep, diet, deficiencies, among others.

In this study, researchers identified that pre-existing collections of this molecule held within the immune system cells of the brain are released when we begin to eat or imagine eating.

Over time many studies have tried to ascertain the drivers of later Alzheimer’s Disease. Usually they have found that cigarette smoking or low educational level have been primary predictors of later Alzheimer’s Disease. This study sheds new light on how we might support our brain health earlier in life.

We have long known that specific exercise regimens can shift our physiology in particular ways – tai chi helps balance, high intensity training reduces weight and improves cardiovascular health, strength training increases testosterone and the strength of the muscles worked. This fascinating study demonstrates the correlation between different types of exercise and specific moods and memory skills.

Recent breakthrough research has identified a gut bacteria that produces excessive amounts of histamine which correlates to gut pain. The researchers took gut bacteria from people suffering from IBS and implanted it in rats.

Depression and anxiety exists on a continuum from worry, fear, dread, shame, unworthiness to stress to super-stress to depressiveness with or without anxiousness to diagnoseable mood disorders. And we fluctuate at any given time along this trajectory.

The Social Safety Theory describes how our social environment influences our thoughts and feelings which then triggers physiologic processes through our sympathetic nervous system, our stress response, our vagal nerve responses, and our ability to conceive of our world. Social Safety is protective.

We’d love to be able to predict just who will get long COVID. We can’t yet say for sure who would get Long COVID but we are developing the capacity to understand it a bit better. This study is an elegant study of genomics and immune activation. If you are into detailed studies of genomes then you’ll love this study.

Moving forward, we can expect COVID to affect us in waves as it continues to mutate. A significant question is how long COVID may lve within us, even if we aren’t able to infect others. This idea of long -term COVID infections could be related to the presence of Long COVID in some.

In the case of EBV, the data is growing that indicates EBV can cause Multiple Sclerosis which is a disease that breaks down the insulation around nerves and causes the nerves to lose functionality. It is a challenge to conclude that EBV can cause any particular disease because EBV infects almost 90% of the population, usually when we are young.

Reducing ultraprocessed foods while increasing minimally processed foods can reduce your dementia risk. Minimally processed foods are those that were/are alive, grown nearby, and look and taste like they would have when they were picked or culled.

At night this molecule (along with others) determines how easily and rapidly we slip into and out of sleep. If we are too reactive, we may not spend much time in restorative sleep or we may slip out of sleep very rapidly. It would appear that a more relaxed brain retains memories more easily.