Evolution of Medicine Podcast

Could chronic infections and inflammation play a role in Alzheimer's disease? In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell sits down with Dr. Richard Horowitz, a pioneer in Lyme disease treatment and integrative medicine, to explore the relationship between chronic infections, inflammation, and neurological health. Dr. Horowitz shares his 42-year journey treating more than 13,000 chronically ill patients and explains how his experience led him to develop the 16-point MSIDS (Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome) model. This framework examines potential contributors to...

Throne - The Fecal Wearable

What if your bathroom habits could reveal important clues about your health? In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell sits down with Scott Hickle, CEO and co-founder of Throne Science, to explore how smart toilet technology is making it possible to track digestive health, urinary function, and hydration through AI-powered monitoring. Scott explains how Throne uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to passively monitor stool consistency, color, volume, and frequency, alongside urine concentration and urinary flow rate. By collecting objective data over time, this...

Out of the Practice, Into the Kitchen

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

What if building a successful practice also meant building a stronger family life? In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell sits down with Dave Inglis, author of Chief Family Officer, and Dr. Jennifer Forristal, naturopathic doctor and founder of The Umbrella Project, to explore the connection between family relationships, emotional well-being, and professional success. Functional medicine practitioners spend considerable time developing their practices, improving systems, and supporting their patients. But what happens when the same intentionality is not applied to the...

Tour Review : Community and The Brain Medicine Revolution

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

What if the future of brain health depends on looking beyond the brain itself? In this solo episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell shares insights from his keynote presentation at the Integrated Medicine for Mental Health Conference and explores the emerging vision of the brain medicine revolution. James discusses why cognitive decline requires a personalized approach that considers multiple potential contributors, including inflammation, metabolism, hormones, nutrition, vascular health, the microbiome, and environmental exposures. He explains how functional and precision medicine...

The Medicine of Flow: Healing Through Coherence, Qigong & Collective Energy

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

What if healing was less about forcing the body to recover—and more about creating the conditions for coherence? In this episode of The Evolution of Medicine, James Maskell speaks with Dr. Cynthia Li about her personal recovery from chronic illness and the deeper healing principles that emerged through Qigong, embodied flow, and energetic medicine. After struggling with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, dysautonomia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and post-viral illness, Dr. Li discovered that true healing extended beyond protocols and physical interventions. Through practices rooted in ancient Chinese...

Biological Elegance and Relational Healing

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Dr. Zach Bush to explore the concept of biological elegance and what it could mean for the future of health and healthcare. Zach begins by describing what he calls "nature deficit disorder"—the growing separation between humans and the natural world through industrialization, technology, convenience, and increasingly mechanistic systems. He connects this separation to a broader loss of connection with the biological systems that support human health. The conversation then turns to one of the biggest blind spots for practitioners: the belief...

Holistic Psychiatrist Presents Season of the Witch

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora to discuss her new book, Season of the Witch: The Psychiatrist's Case for Magic. Dr. Vora's first book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, directly translated her functional medicine approach to mental health. This book came from a deeper, more spiritual inquiry. She describes it as part grief memoir, part cultural commentary, and still a prescriptive functional medicine book. Her central argument is that many of us learned to perform a left-brained, rational type of intelligence while suppressing our mystical,...

Postpartum Depression: The Hormone and Nutrition Connection

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Kirkland Newman, founder of MindHealth360 and Executive Director of the IMMH (Integrative Medicine for Mental Health) conference. Newman's path into integrative mental health began with her own experience of severe postpartum depression after both of her pregnancies. Offered only antidepressants by her psychiatrist — with no explanation for why she was suddenly experiencing panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, and depression — she sought answers from an OBGYN, an endocrinologist, two GPs, and multiple psychiatrists, none of whom investigated...

The Pathobiome: Stealth Infections and the Brain

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Nikki Schultek, founding director of the Pathobiome Research Center at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and founder of the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative, a global research consortium. Schultek's path into this work began with her own illness 11 years ago — a multi-system chronic condition driven by a tick bite and co-infections including Chlamydia pneumoniae, which went misdiagnosed by 12 specialists for a year before Dr. Charles Stratton at Vanderbilt identified and treated the underlying infections, restoring her to...

The Neuroscience of Awakening

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Dr. Helen Lavretsky — integrative and geriatric psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and professor of psychiatry at UCLA, where she directs clinical research on integrated mental health and serves as research director for UCLA's Integrative Medicine Collaborative. Her path into the field began through Kundalini Yoga, sparking 20 years of studying mind-body practices with rigorous neuroscience. Despite initial pushback in academic psychiatry, her evidence ultimately gained widespread acceptance. She details her clinical model: a partnership where...

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Schultek's path into this work began with her own illness 11 years ago — a multi-system chronic condition driven by a tick bite and co-infections including Chlamydia pneumoniae, which went misdiagnosed by 12 specialists for a year before Dr. Charles Stratton at Vanderbilt identified and treated the underlying infections, restoring her to roughly 95% of her former health. That experience, and the fear of not watching her young children grow up, led her to found Intracell Research Group and later become what she calls a "collaboration architect" — connecting siloed researchers across immunology, microbiology, neuropathology, and epidemiology who study different pathogens (herpesviruses, Chlamydia, Borrelia, Bartonella, fungi, syphilis) but rarely collaborate with one another.

The conversation covers the evidence linking infection to Alzheimer's disease: animal studies showing pathogens like C. pneumoniae can induce amyloid-like plaques in wild-type mice; the historical near-miss in which Alzheimer's disease could have been named after Dr. Oscar Fischer, who described bacterial-colony-like structures in tangles and plaques during the pre-antibiotic syphilis era; and emerging research suggesting amyloid and tau may act as innate immune "firefighters" responding to infection rather than purely destructive proteins. Schultek highlights her consortium's 2023 landmark paper in Alzheimer's & Dementia, which catalogued 86 case reports of infectious dementias reversed through targeted antimicrobial treatment.

Maskell and Schultek also discuss the heterogeneity of individual cases — from periodontal pathogens like Porphyromonas gingivalis to tick-borne co-infections — and the need for precision, patient-specific approaches that account for genetics, exposome, and hormonal factors. The episode closes with a discussion of what's needed to move the field forward: greater federal and philanthropic funding, better multi-pathogen and host-biomarker testing, industry investment in targeted (rather than broad-spectrum) antimicrobial therapies, and expanded insurance coverage — particularly for PANS/PANDAS families currently priced out of diagnostic testing.

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About the Guest:

Nikki Schultek is the founding director of the Pathobiome Research Center at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and founder of the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative, a global research consortium studying the role of infectious agents in neurodegenerative, neurological, and neuropsychiatric disease. A former patient whose own multi-system chronic illness was driven by tick-borne and intracellular infections, she now works as a "collaboration architect," bringing together researchers across immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, and neuropathology to advance infection-associated chronic illness research. She is co-lead author of the 2023 landmark paper on the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative published in Alzheimer's & Dementia.

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