Nancy O'Hara MD, MPH, FAAP

Nancy O'Hara MD, MPH, FAAP Dr. Nancy O’Hara's functional medicine practice integrates the care of children with neurodevelopmental disorders and various chronic illnesses.

Excited to be speaking at the MAPS Fall 2026 Conference!If you’re a clinician looking to deepen your expertise, connect ...
05/26/2026

Excited to be speaking at the MAPS Fall 2026 Conference!

If you’re a clinician looking to deepen your expertise, connect with leaders in the field, and stay current on the latest in integrative and functional medicine, this is an event you won’t want to miss.

I’m excited to offer an exclusive registration discount — use my affiliate code featured in the graphic below to receive 20% off registration.

Join us this Fall for:

- World-class speakers
- Inspiring colleagues
- Cutting-edge clinical education

Looking forward to learning, growing, and advancing patient care together.

Hope to see you there!

05/21/2026

One of the most helpful shifts for kids with anxiety (and OCD) is learning:

“This feeling isn’t me. It’s something my brain is doing.”

Dr. Sarah Bren shares a simple, powerful tool: personifying the worry brain. Giving it a name. Drawing it. Turning it into a character.

And then using playfulness to reduce its power:
Make it smaller. Make it goofy. Give it a squeaky voice. Take away the intimidation.

This isn’t about minimizing a child’s distress.

It’s about helping them relate to it differently — with a little more separation, a little more agency, and a little more bravery.

If you want more practical tools like this, listen to Episode #57 of Demystifying PANS/PANDAS: “How Parents Can Stop Feeding the Worry Loop.” It’s a really supportive, actionable episode for parents and practitioners.

05/20/2026

When a child is anxious, parents naturally want to help. But sometimes the way we help can unintentionally keep the cycle going.

Dr. Sarah Bren explains it beautifully:
Support isn’t just “this is hard.” And it isn’t just “you can handle it.”

It’s both:
✅ Validation (“I see how hard this feels.”)
+
✅ Confidence (“I believe you can cope — even while you feel anxious.”)

When we validate without confidence, we tend to rescue or accommodate. When we push confidence without validation, it can land as demanding or dismissive.

Check out the newest episode of the Demystifying PANS/PANDAS Podcast. This episode is a really useful guide for parents navigating anxiety, OCD, and worry loops — and it introduces the SPACE model in a way that’s clear and doable.

05/19/2026

This week’s podcast episode is for every parent who has thought:

“Is this anxiety… or is my child just angry all the time?”

Dr. Sarah Bren gives language that’s so helpful: anxious kids don’t always look like “scared mice.” Sometimes they look like explosive porcupines — irritable, reactive, overwhelmed, and constantly riding the edge of a meltdown.

Because when a child’s nervous system is overloaded, it often shows up as:

- irritability
- rigidity
- emotional dysregulation
- constant pushback or “rage-y” behavior

This is one reason anxiety can be missed — and misread as purely behavioral.

Tomorrow’s conversation is practical, compassionate, and full of tools for shifting the patterns that keep families stuck.

Tune in tomorrow for Episode #57 of the Demystifying PANS/PANDAS Podcast: “How Parents Can Stop Feeding the Worry Loop.”

I’ll be speaking at Lyme Connection and would love to see you there!This is an opportunity to take a honest look at the ...
05/18/2026

I’ll be speaking at Lyme Connection and would love to see you there!

This is an opportunity to take a honest look at the realities of tick-borne / vector-borne illness — including why diagnosis can be so challenging, why symptoms are too often dismissed, and how these infections can be connected to significant neurological and neuropsychiatric presentations.

🗓 Thursday, May 28
🕕 6:00–8:30 PM

If you’re a clinician, caregiver, or someone seeking clearer answers, I hope you’ll join us.

Register using the link in my bio.

If you’re stuck in the loop of…new symptoms → new theories → new rabbit holes → still no clear plan…I made the Membershi...
05/14/2026

If you’re stuck in the loop of…
new symptoms → new theories → new rabbit holes → still no clear plan
…I made the Membership Program for you.

Because most families (and clinicians) don’t need more information.
They need the right information, organized — and a way to think clearly when things feel chaotic.

Inside the Membership Program, you get:

A growing library of teachings + trainings on PANS/PANDAS, Lyme/vector-borne illness, mold, neuroinflammation, and root-cause care

Practical guidance to help you understand what might be driving symptoms and what questions to ask next

A supportive community of parents and practitioners who understand the reality of these cases

For Lyme Disease Awareness Month, NEW members can join for 50% off with code LYME50.

Learn more on my website (link in bio) and use LYME50 at checkout.

05/13/2026

For a long time, Bartonella was thought of as a risk mainly for people with heavy animal contact or high vector exposure.

Dr. Breitschwerdt shares how his thinking has evolved: exposure may be far more common than we assume — and yet, most people clear the infection without ever developing chronic illness.

That nuance is important.

It helps us hold two truths at the same time:

Bartonella exposure may be widespread

Chronic, relapsing illness may involve a more complex mix of immune function, inflammation, and persistence

This is exactly why careful research and better clinical tools matter — especially for families living with ongoing neuropsychiatric symptoms that don’t fully resolve.

For the full conversation, listen to Episode #56 of Demystifying PANS/PANDAS Podcast: “Bartonella and PANS: What Clinicians and Families Need to Know.”

05/12/2026

Bartonella can be hard to catch on standard testing.

Dr. Breitschwerdt explains why his team has used a “triple draw” approach (three samples within seven days) to improve detection — because Bartonella may be intermittently present in the blood and may prefer to “hide” in tissues.

This is one reason families can be told “it’s negative” and still feel like the clinical picture doesn’t add up.

And it’s also why we need more research, better diagnostics, and more nuanced clinical reasoning — especially when children remain stuck in cycles of inflammation-driven symptoms.

Listen to the full discussion and find more episodes on the Demystifying PANS/PANDAS Podcast 💙

Please join me at LYME CONNECTION for a look at the complexities of Tick-borne disease, from diagnostic hurdles to medic...
05/11/2026

Please join me at LYME CONNECTION for a look at the complexities of Tick-borne disease, from diagnostic hurdles to medical denial and the links of these diseases to serious neuropsychiatric conditions.

Thursday May 28: 6:00-8:30pm

Register using the link in my bio!

05/07/2026

One of the reasons Bartonella can be so challenging is that it doesn’t fit neatly into a “tick-only” narrative.

Dr. Breitschwerdt explains why Bartonella needs to be viewed through a broader vector-borne disease lens — and why he suspects it may be transmitted by a wider range of vectors than many clinicians realize.

That matters because when we narrow our thinking too quickly, we may miss:

relevant exposures

patterns that raise suspicion

and opportunities to ask better diagnostic questions

This isn’t about fear. It’s about accuracy — and about improving the way we investigate complex, relapsing illness.

Check out the full episode on the Demystifying PANS/PANDAS Podcast!

05/06/2026

Bartonella and the brain.

Dr. Ed Breitschwerdt shares why he’s convinced Bartonella can be a major contributor to a spectrum of neurological and neuropsychiatric illness — and why exposure history is often more complex than we assume.

In the full episode, we cover:

Why Bartonella may be driving rage, sleep disruption, confusion, anxiety, and chronic relapsing flares in some children with PANS

Why Bartonella is so difficult to detect (intermittent presence in blood, tissue hiding, limitations of standard testing) and why multi-draw + molecular approaches may improve detection

Why we need to think beyond “ticks” and consider Bartonella in the broader context of vector-borne disease, chronic infection, inflammation, and immune dysfunction — and why better research is urgently needed

If you’ve been stuck in a cycle where symptoms flare, improve, and then return — and the usual explanations don’t fully fit — this episode will give you a clearer lens.

Episode #56: “Bartonella and PANS: What Clinicians and Families Need to Know” is available now on Demystifying PANS/PANDAS Podcast. (Link in bio)

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