Author: Karline Jensen
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Diet, Supplements, and Lifestyle for Hypothyroidism
If you have hypothyroidism — or suspect you may — you may have wondered whether what you eat, the supplements you take, or your daily habits could make a real difference. The answer, supported by a growing body of research, is yes. A functional medicine approach to hypothyroidism goes well beyond medication management to address…
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Understanding Thyroid Lab Tests: A Functional Medicine Approach
If you have been told your thyroid is fine because your TSH is normal, but you still feel exhausted, cold, and mentally foggy, you are not alone — and you are not imagining things. TSH is a useful starting point, but it is only one piece of a much larger picture. A functional medicine approach…
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Inflammation
Inflammation can be triggered by microbes, foods, trauma, or toxins, but when the immune system is well-supported, the result is tolerance rather than over-reactivity. Supporting Resolution Ginger and Boswellia can help with inflammation. Dietary fiber (50 grams/day) can help to move toxins out of the body and reduce the amount of toxins that are reabsorbed…
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Inflammation, Alcohol, and Pain
Pain is, at its core, a signal of inflammation. Understanding how the immune system generates that inflammation — and how alcohol use specifically adds fuel to the fire — makes it easier to understand how inflammation contributes to chronic pain, and what might help resolve that inflammation. How the Immune System Creates Inflammation When toll-like…
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Yoga and Immune Balance
Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are central to immune tolerance, and it turns out a daily yoga practice is one way to support them. That finding — along with ideas about cytokines and immune balance — is central to my thinking on lifestyle recommendations. Yoga and the Treg/Th17 Balance in Rheumatoid Arthritis Gautam et al. (2023)…
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Internet Filter Tests and Intestinal Permeability
I recently learned there’s a way to test an internet content filter to see how well it’s actually working. I know a good content filter matters — no teacher wants a student to hit something inappropriate while doing a Google search for class — but I’d never thought about testing the filter itself. I’d always…
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Intestinal Permeability, Celiac Disease, and Tight Junctions
Intestinal permeability — how easily substances pass through the intestinal barrier rather than being kept out — plays a central role in celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. Remission Can Mean a Return to Normal Barrier Function Hollon et al. (2015) exposed intestinal biopsy specimens to gliadin and measured the resulting change in permeability across several…
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Nightshade Sensitivity: The Immune Mechanism, and Interventions
Some people experience joint pain as an inflammatory reaction to nightshades like tomatoes and peppers. Understanding the immune pathway behind that reaction — and what separates a reactive response from a tolerant one — points toward some practical places to intervene. The Immune Pathway Behind Nightshade Sensitivity Nightshade proteins are transported across intestinal microfold cells,…
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Food Allergies and Tolerance
Your immune system monitors everything that enters your body from the outside world, including food. Within the intestines, the default, healthy response to food is tolerance. But when someone has a food allergy, their immune system responds to that food more like it would to a bacteria or virus, treating it as a threat. That’s…
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Newspaper Reporters and the Immune System: Explaining MHC
Antigen-presenting cells are like newspaper reporters — except instead of one clipboard and one beat, each reporter carries a whole stack of clipboards, one for every topic. Those clipboards are the MHC (major histocompatibility complex) molecules. The “tips” they gather are peptides — small fragments of protein from viruses, bacteria, food, or anything else that’s…
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