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Inflammation, Heart Disease and the Cleveland Clinic

Release Date: 06/15/2026

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...

The Forgotten Medicine: Community, Dance & Song

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine's Annual International Conference, host James Maskell sits down with Dr. Geeta Maker-Clark, who opened the conference that morning with its keynote address. The conversation begins with something unusual: conference attendees — mostly, as Maskell puts it, "type A, cerebral" doctors — got up and danced during her talk, a rare sight at a medical conference. Dr. Maker-Clark, who is part of a West African dance company, explains why: drumming and dance tap into something deeply primal in all of us, tied to ancestral rhythm, grief,...

2026 Pauling Award Winner Reveals the Truth About Hormones & GLP-1s

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

What does it take to earn functional medicine's highest honor? In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine's 33rd Annual International Conference, host James Maskell sits down with Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M, recipient of the 2026 Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Award in Functional Medicine — awarded to Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M in recognition of his career-long contributions to the field. Joel Evans, MD, FMCP-M shares the story of his journey from OB-GYN to functional medicine leader, crediting Jeff Bland and Bethany Hayes for pulling him into the field early on. He discusses why...

The Blueprint for Functional Medicine in Big Health Systems

Evolution of Medicine Podcast

What does it actually take to build a functional medicine program that thrives inside a conventional health system? In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine Annual Conference, James Maskell sits down with Laura Sandquist and Kate Otremba, who've spent six years building a large integrative and functional medicine program within Allina Health, a conventional health system in Minnesota. Laura and Kate share the infrastructure they built to make it work — smart phrases, practice guidelines, and templates that help clinicians translate their functional medicine training...

More Episodes

What if the future of cardiology requires looking far beyond cholesterol numbers?

In this live Evolution of Medicine Podcast episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine Annual Conference, James Maskell speaks with Dr. James Carter about the changing landscape of cardiovascular care and the growing role of functional medicine within major healthcare institutions.

Drawing on his experience as an interventional cardiologist and leader of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, Dr. Carter explains why inflammation may be a more important driver of heart disease than many traditional risk factors. He discusses the limitations of relying solely on LDL cholesterol and risk calculators and highlights the importance of assessing inflammation, lifestyle factors, environmental exposures, gut health, and social determinants of health.

The conversation explores the power of listening to patients’ stories and how personal experiences, stress, trauma, and social context shape biology and influence long-term health outcomes.

James and Dr. Carter also discuss innovative care models including shared medical appointments, community-based health programs, church partnerships, and teaching kitchens designed to improve access to preventive care and lifestyle medicine.

Additional topics include brain health, dementia prevention, interdisciplinary collaboration, healthcare transformation, and the future of functional medicine within large healthcare systems.

The episode concludes with Dr. Carter’s vision for creating a healthcare model that combines scientific rigor, compassionate care, and whole-person medicine to improve health outcomes at scale.

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About the Guest:

Dr. James Carter is an interventional cardiologist and serves as Director of the Center for Functional Medicine and Vice Chair of Clinical Services within the Department of Wellness and Preventive Medicine at Cleveland Clinic.

After spending much of his career in community-based cardiology practice, Dr. Carter returned to academic medicine before being recruited to lead Cleveland Clinic’s functional medicine program. His work focuses on integrating functional medicine principles into large-scale healthcare delivery systems while improving access to preventive and whole-person care.

Dr. Carter’s clinical and educational interests include cardiovascular disease prevention, inflammation and cardiometabolic health, lifestyle medicine, shared medical appointments, community-based health initiatives, and the integration of functional medicine within conventional healthcare settings.

He is a leading advocate for addressing the biological, environmental, and social factors that contribute to chronic disease and believes that understanding the patient’s story is essential to delivering effective healthcare.

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Social Handles:

Website: https://www.jamesmaskell.com/

X: https://x.com/mrjamesmaskell

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrjamesmaskell

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesedwardmaskell/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmaskell

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/FunctionalForum

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Evolution of Medicine™ Mission Partners:

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