The Integrated Pharmacist

Welcome to another episode of the Integrated Pharmacist Podcast. This is my first in a new series based on disease states rather than a specific modality or product. My goal is look at the major health concerns through the lens of complementary and alternative medicine and find evidence to substantiate that approach to health. I'd like to begin with diabetes. Diabetes is essentially the body's inability to deal with sugar. Often, the targeted chemical in the body is insulin. Insulin is like the key that unlocks the sugar gate to each of our cells. When it isn't working properly, sugar builds up in our blood where it can cause complications throughout the body. For patients with Type 1 diabetes, their bodies don't make insulin. Most often, this is because their immune system developed a response to the pancreatic cells that produce insulin. In other words, their bodies attack their pancreas to the point that they cannot produce insulin on their own anymore....

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Integrated Pharmacist Podcast. First, I'd like to apologize for the brief hiatus. Between studying for board exams and moving across the country for residency, I haven't had the resources to produce an episode. But I am happy to be back at it. My current position as a pharmacy resident in functional medicine has sparked a number of potential topics. On the top of the list is a controversial supplement called Co-emzyme Q10 or CoQ10. CoQ10 is a special kind of molecule that assists in the processes of energy creation so that they happen more readily. If enzymes reduce the threshold of certain reactions, the coenzyme is like the key to unlock the enzyme door. We know this specific coenzyme is used heavily by mitochondria - that's the energy-producing factories inside all of our cells. In a process called the electron-transport-chain, CoQ10 helps our cells produce more energy from the food we eat. With ...