Mercury and Cognitive Dysfunction: Are Fish Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution? Part 1

INTRODUCTION As we have all known for years, environmental mercury exposure, which not only is derived from innumerable industrial sources but from natural outgassing from the earth’s crust, as I reported in my mercury newsletters from several years ago, is still a significant health care concern even though it does not get the front page …

How Does the Impact of Prescription & Over-the-counter Drugs Make the Difficult Functional Medicine Patient “Difficult”? – Part III

INTRODUCTION If you are like me, it is sometimes hard to remember the times before COVID-19 and what our priorities and concerns were in relation to the practice of functional medicine and clinical nutrition pre-COVID.  Therefore, after finishing my extended, multi-year newsletter series on COVID-19 and long COVID in April 2023, I was at a …

A Thought on the Practice of Functional Medicine and Clinical Nutrition as We Enter a New Year and a New Decade: How Does the Massive Escalation of Prescription and Over-the-Counter Drug Use Make Difficult Patients "Difficult" (Hint – It May Not Be What You Think) – Part II

INTRODUCTION I would now like to continue my exploration of pharmaceutical interactions with common dietary and supplement constituents by finishing my review of the Nomani et al (1) paper, which explores interactions of pharmaceuticals with cola-containing drinks (CCDs). In part I of this series I reviewed the first portion of the paper that highlighted these …

A Thought on the Practice of Functional Medicine and Clinical Nutrition as We Enter a New Year and a New Decade: How Does the Massive Escalation of Prescription and Over-the-Counter Drug Use Make Difficult Patients “Difficult” (Hint – It May Not Be What You Think) – Part I

INTRODUCTION Based on both my observations with patients and feedback from you on your patients, it has become clear that, while our successes with clinical nutrition and functional medicine are many, there is still a growing group of chronically ill patients who experience significantly suboptimal quality of life improvements even after following our lifestyle and/or …

Under Appreciated Issues in the Treatment of Chronic Illness – Low Grade, Chronic Acidosis Combined with Potassium Deficiency – Part VI – The Impact of Acidosis on Insulin Metabolism

INTRODUCTION In part V of this series I briefly touched on the interesting, important, and under-appreciated relationship between insulin and potassium metabolism.  Now, I would like to flip back to the other side of the potassium/metabolic acidosis coin and discuss the impact of metabolic acidosis on insulin metabolism.  As we all know, disturbances in insulin …

Under Appreciated Issues in the Treatment of Chronic Illness – Low Grade, Chronic Acidosis Combined with Potassium Deficiency – Part V – Potassium Metabolism and Clinical Application of Potassium Supplements

INTRODUCTION Over the last few months I have devoted the Moss Nutrition Report to my cause of increasing awareness in the clinical nutrition community that, even with the new treatment vistas that have been opened to us through genomics, new generation functional medicine tests and supplements, and exciting dietary protocols such as intermittent fasting and …

Under Appreciated Issues in the Treatment of Chronic Illness – Low Grade, Chronic Acidosis Combined with Potassium Deficiency – Part IV – Why We Need to Pay More Attention to Diet Induced Acidosis

INTRODUCTION As those of you who have been following this series since I began it in May of 2018, there was a somewhat lengthy period of time between part III and part IV, which I am writing now for the July 2019 Moss Nutrition Report.  Why did I take a break from this series for …

Acid/Alkaline Balance and Muscle/Protein Optimization – Is There a Relationship Between the Two?

In the previous five newsletters three have been about the health risk of low grade, chronic metabolic acidosis, primarily related to a low potassium/high acid-based diet and two have been about the importance of muscle and dietary protein optimization.  While, in these newsletters, I was writing about the subjects in isolation, is there, in fact, …

Under Appreciated Issues in the Treatment of Chronic Illness – Muscle/Dietary Protein Update Part – II

In part I of this series I presented a review of the fascinating paper by Argiles et al (1) that presented compelling information that loss of muscle mass during illness, both acute and chronic, is more than just a mechanical issue where the only concerns are movement and pain.  Rather loss of muscle mass is …

Under Appreciated Issues in the Treatment of Chronic Illness – Muscle/Dietary Protein Update – Part I

Upon finishing part III of my metabolic acidosis/potassium series that appeared in the November 2018 Moss Nutrition Report, I had every intention of writing part IV for January of 2019.  However, as the time came to write part IV, I decided that, while there is still a large volume of research on this issue that I …