Functional Medicine for Real-World Impact: The School of Applied Functional Medicine (SAFM)

A German-trained physician shares how functional medicine helped her finally understand why lifelong eczema persisted and what changed when she stopped chasing symptoms and started addressing immune overload.

In this episode, Tracy Harrison speaks with Julia Martin, MD, HC, about the gap between conventional medical training and real-world healing. Julia reflects on living with eczema since childhood, becoming a licensed physicia...

What if your most powerful clinical tool is not another lab panel but the way you partner with patients around what their bodies already know?

Functional medicine PA Zoie Phillips joins Tracy Harrison to share how choosing integrity over a conventional career path led her to a values-based, telemedicine practice where patients act as true partners rather than passive recipients. She walks through her decision to commit to functio...

Hidden toxins in your air, products, technology and even inner dialogue may shape your patients’ physiology far more than their diet or exercise, and this conversation asks you to look at those influences through a sharper functional medicine lens. 

In this episode, Tracy Harrison breaks toxicity down into categories such as indoor air quality, fragrance and phthalates, plastics and microplastics, overlooked heavy metals and the ...

Dairy’s trusted role in patient diets shifts as Tracy Harrison breaks down how it can drive inflammation, immune reactivity, and persistent symptoms that rarely get linked to food in clinical practice. She explains why lactose intolerance is far more common than most patients realize, how whey and casein can contribute to skin issues, congestion, joint pain, fatigue, and histamine overload, and why some patients tolerate goat or sh...

Most chronic disease protocols fail because the body won’t heal until it feels safe - and that sense of safety starts with the vagus nerve.

Tracy Harrison takes a closer look at what it really means for the body to be ready to heal. Why do some patients follow every recommendation yet still struggle to make lasting progress? What if the real barrier isn’t what they’re missing, but how their nervous system is responding to the wor...

Functional medicine can only create real change when practitioners move beyond collecting information and start developing the confidence, efficiency, and teamwork that bring healing to life.

Tracy Harrison invites practitioners to think honestly about what it means to do this work well. How do you turn deep scientific knowledge into practical, lasting results for real people? How do you keep your passion alive without running yo...

Limiting beliefs have a way of sneaking into the work of functional medicine practitioners and Tracy Harrison is pulling them into the light. Have you ever felt like you had to do everything on your own to be credible, or that you should wait until you know absolutely everything before you start? Tracy makes the case for why those assumptions hold you back and how confidence is built through real practice, not endless preparation.

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Food sensitivities often play a bigger role in chronic health problems than many practitioners realize. 

In this episode, Tracy Harrison unpacks how foods that look perfectly healthy on the surface can still trigger immune responses that drive inflammation and dysfunction. She explains the differences between IgG and IgA mediated reactions, explores why intestinal permeability matters, and points out the impact of common medicati...

So much of functional medicine celebrates the latest science, but how often does that knowledge actually change a patient’s life? Tracy Harrison invites us to look closer at the gap between information and transformation. Why do so many people collect new diagnoses, run more tests, or add another supplement yet still feel stuck? What gets in the way of real change, and how can practitioners guide patients through it?

In this epis...

The antioxidant trap challenges the assumption that more supplements always mean better health. Tracy Harrison explains how oxidative stress, often seen as harmful, is also essential for normal physiology and for activating the body’s innate antioxidant defenses. She shows why hormesis, the right amount of stress in the right context, builds resilience, while too much can tip the body into harm.

Tracy challenges common myths, inc...

Infertility can be one of the most painful challenges a person faces, yet it’s often the body’s way of signaling that something deeper is out of balance. Could the struggle to conceive be pointing to hidden metabolic issues, hormone imbalances, or stress patterns that have been building for years?

Tracy Harrison looks at infertility through the lens of functional medicine and shares how five common but often overlooked imbalances...

Most thyroid labs look fine on paper, but your patient’s cells may be screaming for help you can’t see.

Tracy Harrison offers a wake-up call for healthcare practitioners: long-term healing can’t happen without addressing the hidden hormone dynamics that standard labs often miss. In this episode, she explores why persistent symptoms in chronically ill patients, especially post-pandemic, may be tied to unrecognized dysfunction in t...

Perimenopause isn’t a syndrome to treat. It’s a complex, shifting transition that most women in their 40s are already navigating, whether they realize it or not. For practitioners working in functional medicine, failing to recognize and address the nuances of this phase can mean missing the real root of your clients’ symptoms.

In this episode, Tracy Harrison lays out five critical practitioner blind spots that lead to frustration...

What happens in the gut doesn’t stay there. It can quietly ignite inflammation, disrupt immune balance, impair cognition, and set off chronic conditions that leave practitioners chasing symptoms instead of causes.

In this episode, Tracy Harrison delivers a call to action for practitioners to look beyond surface-level symptoms and trace chronic dysfunction back to the digestive system. She breaks down the often-missed connections ...

More exercise. Extra supplements. Cleaner eating. Sometimes the advice we rely on most can quietly work against the people we’re trying to help.

In this episode, Tracy Harrison discusses why functional medicine demands more than just protocols and good intentions. She shares real clinical scenarios where common strategies like high-intensity workouts or high-dose vitamin D can actually worsen symptoms when underlying issues like ...

Flow might not be something you measure on a lab panel, but when it’s blocked, your patients feel it.

Tracy Harrison unpacks seven places where flow gets disrupted in the body, often in ways that go unnoticed in clinical care. What happens when oxygen doesn’t circulate well because of poor posture or undiagnosed sleep apnea? Could chronic symptoms trace back to something as basic as hydration, or a lymphatic system that isn’t mov...

Most detox advice does more harm than good unless you understand how toxicity really works in the body.

Tracy Harrison takes on one of the most misunderstood topics in functional medicine: why detox protocols often backfire, especially in patients with chronic illness. Should detox ever be the first step in care? What happens when you mobilize years of stored toxins without first making sure the body can handle it?

This episode...

Most patients think losing their gallbladder solved the problem. Functional medicine practitioners know it was only the first clue.

Tracy Harrison takes a closer look at what’s actually driving gallbladder dysfunction, and why removing the organ doesn’t remove the risk. Too often, upstream issues go unaddressed, allowing the same hidden dynamics to continue affecting the body. She walks through six of the most common contributors...

Most autoimmune protocols fail because they chase symptoms while the real problem simmers quietly underneath.

Tracy Harrison offers an honest take on what’s often missing from autoimmune care. What if the immune system isn’t broken at all, but just responding exactly as it was designed to, in a world it no longer recognizes? This episode challenges the idea that symptom relief is the same as healing and urges practitioners to loo...