Stanwood Integrative Medicine

05/25/2026

Memorial day is a day of remembrance. We are remembering those who have given up their tomorrows so that we can plan for ours. When gathered with your friends and family today, please take a moment to remember our fallen brothers and sisters.

05/11/2026

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend filled with sunshine. I had an amazing opportunity to attend an orthobiologics (aka stem cells but so much more) conference this past weekend. This conference wasn't just about selling a product or even focusing on a specific product but the appropriate use of various products and how to improve overall patient outcomes. One of the best pieces of information was something that we have discussed on this page in the past and it is about the use of NSAIDs and traditional treatments (mostly cortisone injections) for joint pain. The grading of joint pain (the Kellgren-Lawrence scale) will let you know how bad the joint has degraded and this is based on loss of a specific type of collagen Type 2 collagen). The human body stops producing this specific type of collagen in our early to mid 20s and by the time we are in our mid 30s we stop producing type 3 collagen (a building block for elasticity). The use of NSAIDs and cortisone can help reduce the pain but they contribute to further degradation of our cartilage (made by the collagen subtypes). The use of orthobiologics can help reduce the inflammation and provide the building blocks for the body to start to heal itself.

05/07/2026

Happy Thursday! Hang in there everyone the weekend is almost here. I wanted to drop a quick admin note. The clinic is closing early today (Thursday 7 May) and will be closed 08 May. I am out traveling on a conference. I hope everyone has a great weekend and to those amazing mom’s out there….Happy Mother‘s Day! Days may be rough juggling everything but the is a ray of sunshine through the little things like an unexpected hug or the little words that touch our hearts (love you mom). See you all next week.

04/30/2026

While driving back and forth to the clinic, I normally either listen to podcasts (health related...no surprise) or music. I recently listened to a Peter Attia podcast on understanding prostate screening. This was very interesting. Please take a listen and guys...even if you only come in once per year get your PSA done. For those of you on medications like dutasteride and finasteride, you have additional factors that should be considered when evaluating your PSA levels.

“The timing of when you find the cancer is not a minor detail, it's arguably the determining factor in life and death.” —Peter Attia

04/23/2026

Bonus content for this week. I have included a link about regenerative medicine. Dr Scott Martin is full of knowledge and has created a wonderful video that is geared towards patients and not providers.

Hello, I’m Dr. Martin, and in this video, I explain the benefits of regenerative therapies, particularly umbilical cord tissue-derived products like Wharton's Jelly and their role in down-regulating inflammation and supplying essential collagen for joint repair. As we age, our bodies lose the abil...

04/20/2026

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and they enjoyed some much needed sunshine and warmth. I spent the weekend in the dirt, planting, pruning, etc. Today, I wanted to address a topic that has received much attention lately. In the past, I have posted about peptides and I am a firm believer in their utility about a persons overall wellness (or path to wellness). A few years ago, peptides were removed the compounding pharmacies as they were deemed to dangerous (not enough research....this is a different rant for a different day). With the changes in the FDA and the Secretary for the Department of Health and Human services, 12 of these peptides will now be back under review by the pharmacy board. This does NOT mean that they are currently approved and that all the compounding pharmacies can start pumping them back out. Hopefully by the end of the year, we can start seeing more places with pharmaceutical grade peptides available. There are peptides available currently through "peptide companies" but these are NOT pharmaceutical grade and there is a huge difference. This also gives me a quick minute to state that Retatrutide, the newest weight loss medication in the pipeline, is NOT commercially available as a pharmaceutical grade product. If you elect to use research grade products, you are doing so at your own risk. Lastly, peptides are add on products once you have the foundational pieces in place for the most part. There are a few exceptions.

03/29/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJCMR5GOpGM

Happy Sunday Everyone! I have included a link for the ladies in our group to understand that some of the early signs of changes in hormones that may be impacting everything from your sleep to your moods and your overall wellbeing. Some of these signs show up well before the common perimenopausal years. Please take a listen. Dr Yurth is an excellent source to follow. She is a physician that I had the opportunity to meet through Dr Seeds Peptide group.

Hormonal changes in women often begin years before menopause, and in this video I explain why many women between 30 and 45 start experiencing subtle symptoms...

03/01/2026

Well we have now entered into March. I hope that everyone is able to enjoy some of this amazing sunshine and warm weather. Lately, I have had patients that have been coming in to have a discussion or already on peptides and almost all of these patients are either using or desiring to order peptides from an online company. If you don't need a doctor to order your peptides, you should probably be concerned about quality of these peptides. The online companies are offering research grade peptides. The standards for evaluating the level of purity is quite different. Dr Elizabeth Yurth gave a great talk (link available below) on the use of peptides and why we want to be much more selective about getting pharmaceutical grade peptides. Dr Yurth is definitely a thought leader in the space of peptides. Please take a listen...this is a relatively short podcast. She does talk quickly so don't be alarmed.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/60hEsPd9PPRRPLdk941wPY?si=UMxKR4WeTrOJ3Ok28rnfTQ&fbclid=IwY2xjawQReSlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeN9zdm1RqDgMp5fHj6CgeL3Zr2pe43fFyrPqktt5edkxgoC1mjbxMtKhtFek_aem_Es3UCY8q8AVELQkjVgz_RQ&nd=1&dlsi=cf5147894c9c460d

The mindbodygreen Podcast · Episode

02/23/2026

Happy Monday! I hope everyone got to enjoy the brief moment of sunshine over the weekend. Part of the new trends for 2026 is actually a continuation of trends from 2025. A trend is the digital detox. While for some, this may be more difficult due to a variety of reasons, it should still be considered particularly for our younger children and teenagers. There is a very interesting podcast on the Diary of a CEO in which they talk about the brain rot that can occur with the use of social media platforms (yup, I see the irony as I write this) and particular the short form videos (less than 1 minute). I encourage you all to take a listen to this podcast and decide if you need to curtail your social media use.

How is Tiktok rewiring your brain? Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Harvard physician Dr Aditi Nerurkar reveal how tech addiction and short-form video ...

02/15/2026

As we started the new year, I listed some expected health trends for 2026. One of the was the use of micro-workouts as part of your daily routine. As many of us sit throughout the day as part of our job, we need to break up the routine of sitting a little and start to sprinkle in short sets of body weight exercises to help stay fit. I wanted to provide a few examples of what can be included but you can get creative what you are doing. Before, I list a few examples, I wanted to address something that I hear constantly when I ask about exercise, many respond by stating that the x # of steps per day. This is great but our body is also great at becoming more efficient at what we do routinely. We have to shake things up a bit. One of my favorite ways to shake up the walking is to throw on a weighted vest or if you want to get fancy...a ruck sack. This is a great way to challenge the system. Now for our list of body weight exercises:
A. Lunges
B. Squats - if you have problems with balance, hold onto the door jam or the edge of your desk.
C. Push up -you can start against the wall and as these get easier start to change your angle
D. Jump rope
E. If you are in an office building...take a quick flight of stairs or two
F. Wall sits

This is just a short list. There are numerous resources online to ideas of what will work for you. We are six weeks into the new year. It isn't too late to make changes for your health. Let's get moving my friends!