Functional Medicine Reality Podcast

If you've ever glanced at your wearable in the morning and felt a small wave of anxiety over your recovery score, this episode is for you. And if you've spent years feeling like your body is stuck in some kind of alert mode, tired but wired, never quite settled, this conversation might put language to something you've been feeling for a long time without knowing what to call it.

Why This Episode Matters

Heart rate variability, or HRV, gets talked about constantly in wearable culture, but most people have never had it explained...

If your symptoms have never fully added up, if you've been handed a fibromyalgia diagnosis that didn't feel complete, or if you've watched someone you love go through the medical maze with Lyme disease and come out the other side still struggling, this episode is for you.

Lyme disease is the single topic that opened the door to functional medicine for me nearly two decades ago. And it's one I keep coming back to because it remains one of the most complex, politically charged, and misunderstood conditions I encounter in practice. In this solo episode I share...

If you've ever been told your labs are "normal" while you still feel exhausted, foggy, or sick in ways no one can explain, you already know how little "normal" actually promises. It turns out the same is true for the buildings we live in.

Why this episode matters

For anyone managing chronic illness, especially mold sensitivity, MCAS, or unexplained fatigue, your environment is often an overlooked piece of the root-cause puzzle. In this conversation, Dr. Mark Su talks with real estate developer Lou Minicucci of Minco Development Corp, along with recurring co-host Mike...

If your stomach drops every time your doctor's office calls, or you find yourself spiraling into worst-case scenarios before a test result comes back, you're not broken and you're not overreacting. Medical anxiety is real, and it's especially common for people who've spent years navigating chronic illness, uncertain diagnoses, or being told their labs are "normal" when they know something is wrong.

Why this episode matters

Most anxiety advice tells you to "just breathe" or "stop worrying." That's not helpful when your nervous system has been shaped by years of appointments, imaging, and...

You did everything right.

You pushed for testing when your doctors wanted to wait. You found a Lyme-literate practitioner. You went through the antibiotics, got through the rough stretch of feeling worse before better, and slowly started to climb back toward yourself. Months later, you're about 80% recovered.

And then you stalled.

If that sounds familiar, this episode is worth your full attention.

Joia Mattheson is a functional nutritionist, a licensed dietitian, and a former civil engineer who brought both analytical precision and hard-earned personal experience to this conversation. She came to...

Ready to stop guessing and finally get a clear plan?

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If you've ever taken a probiotic for weeks, felt nothing, and quietly concluded they just don't work for you, this episode is for you.

You are not wrong that something isn't working. You...

You've said it before. Maybe quietly, maybe to a close friend, maybe just in your own head.

"I think I might have ADHD."

And then nothing happened. There was nobody to follow up. Nobody to sit down with you and actually explored it. So you kept going, kept functioning, kept wondering.

This episode is for you.

Why This Episode Matters

Adult ADHD, especially in women, is one of the most underdiagnosed conditions in medicine right now. Not because it is rare. Because it looks different than the...

If chronic illness has made you feel like a burden to the people you love, you are not alone, and you are not imagining how hard this is.

Illness does not stay contained to the body. It moves through a household. It strains marriages, tests friendships, and quietly reshapes who you are in relationship to everyone around you. The fear that runs alongside it, the hypervigilance, the late-night symptom spirals, the feeling that you are asking too much, those things are just as real as any lab result. And most practitioners never make space to talk about...

You went to the hospital. You got care. You came home.

And then the bills started arriving, one after another, for amounts that didn't add up. And somewhere in your online patient portal was a diagnosis you had never been told about, for a condition nobody mentioned while you were lying in that bed.

If that has happened to you or someone you love, you are not alone. And you are not missing something obvious. The hospital system was simply never designed to explain itself to the people moving through it.

In this...

Once a month I open up one hour to five people only. Real questions, real answers, real direction. 

Grab your spot at go.rootseekhealth.com/askdrmark.

You've probably been told the story about stimulant medication goes one way. You take it, you focus better, maybe you sleep less, maybe you lose your appetite. That's the whole conversation. But what if the real story is bigger than that, and most people never get to hear it because nobody in the exam room takes the time to tell it?

If you've ever Googled "mold illness treatment" at midnight, desperate for answers, you already know how overwhelming it gets. The supplements, the sprays, the lab reports with pages of frightening health warnings, it can feel like you're drowning in information and still no closer to knowing what to actually do. This conversation is for you.

Dr. Mark Su sits down again with Mike Schrantz, IEP, the environmental professional he trusts most when it comes to what's actually happening inside the buildings where his patients live. Together they walk through real examples of mold-related products, lab reports, and...

If you've ever stood in the supplement aisle wondering whether any of it actually works, or sat across from a doctor who handed you a prescription without explaining why, this conversation is for you.

The question of pharmaceuticals versus supplements comes up constantly in functional medicine, and the honest answer is more nuanced than most people expect. In this episode, Dr. Mark Su breaks down the real-world comparison between prescription medications and natural supplements, not from a place of dogma, but from years of clinical experience working with patients who are navigating both worlds at the same...

Got Lab Results But No Real Answers? 

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You've probably stood in a supplement aisle, or scrolled past an influencer ad, and thought, I have no idea if any of this actually works. Maybe you've spent real money on things that did nothing. Maybe your doctor shrugged when you asked. That confusion is not a personal failing. It's the supplement industry doing exactly what an under-regulated industry tends to do, and today we're pulling back the curtain on all of it.

In this conversation, I s...

Got Lab Results But No Real Answers? Download your free guide: rootseekhealth.com/labs

If you've ever walked out of a doctor's office feeling like you were handed a prescription instead of an answer, you're not alone. That rushed, "here's a pill, see you later" experience is something a lot of people are navigating right now, and it leaves you with more questions than when you walked in. This week, Dr. Mark Sue sits down with Luigi, a sharp, self-advocating young guy in his twenties who came with a handful of real, relatable health questions and a...

Got Lab Results But No Real Answers? Download your free guide: rootseekhealth.com/labs

Ready to find out what's actually going on in your body? Book a consult at rootseekhealth.com.

What does alcohol have to do with functional medicine?

More than you might think.

In this episode, Dr. Mark Su sits down with patient and guest MaryJo for one of the most honest, human conversations the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast has had yet. No agenda, no judgment, just two people peeling back a topic that comes up in...

Got lab results but no real answers? 

Download your free guide and finally understand what your body is trying to tell you: rootseekhealth.com/labs

Episode Overview

Mold. It's one of those words that makes people freeze, panic, or reach for their wallet before they even know what they're dealing with.

In this episode of the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast, Dr. Mark Su sits down with Michael Schrantz, Indoor Environmental Professional (IEP) and founder of Environmental Analytics, for a real, unscripted conversation with an anonymous patient, r...

What if the knee pain you've been blaming on age is actually a statin side effect?

That's a question worth sitting with. And it's one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode, because I see this pattern in real people, in real conversations, all the time. Someone's been on a statin for a few years. They're moving less, feeling foggy, their joints ache. And when they bring it up, they're told it's just part of getting older.

It doesn't have to be that way.

In this episode, I walk you through...

I'll be upfront. I walked into my first encounter with Dr. Todd Watts as a full-on skeptic.

I'm an MD. I like data. I've literally told vendors at conference booths, hey, I'm not buying anything, fair warning. That's just who I am.

But I remember standing in that conference room years ago watching Todd present on parasites, a topic I had barely touched in fifteen years of conventional practice, and something just landed. I thought, that guy is solid. Something genuine is happening there. I didn't know much about him at all, but I trusted...

Hey friends, what if we stopped fighting over labels and actually started treating the mechanisms behind what's making people sick? That's the question driving today's conversation with Dr. Jessica Lasky-Su from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Here's the thing. Her team is working at the edge of some really fascinating science, genetics, epigenetics, proteomics, metabolomics, antibody profiling. And what we dig into is how long COVID research, viral exposures, and autoimmunity all connect. This isn't just academic, right? This shift in thinking could change how we approach everything from chronic fatigue to neurodegeneration.

What does “I feel good” mean after years of chronic Lyme and a major surgery that reshapes your body and your identity? We sit down with Mary Jo to unpack a tender, determined third chapter: living well after treatment, navigating a post-hysterectomy reality, and rebuilding confidence without ignoring limits. The result is a rare blend of practical playbooks and soul-level honesty—how to budget energy to avoid push-crash, why anti-inflammatory eating clarifies symptoms fast, and where simple modalities like sauna and cold plunges fit when you’re ready to nudge good toward great.

Mary Jo walks us through...

In this episode, I sit down with Sebastian, a family friend and college student, for an open and thoughtful conversation about health, food, mental clarity, and the overwhelm of modern wellness information. This is a rare and refreshing look at how the younger generation is thinking about health and asking questions many adults never learned to ask.

Seb shares how his interest in lifting, performance, and nutrition gradually turned into something deeper. What started as a focus on strength and physique became an exploration of sleep, food quality, anxiety, gut health, and mental well-being. Along the way...

In this episode of the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast, I sit down again with my friend and colleague Mike Schrantz, an Indoor Environmental Professional I often call the “Doctor of Homes.” I’m the “Doctor of People,” and together we work at the intersection where sick buildings and sick bodies collide.

Today we step into a thorny topic that affects a lot of patients and a lot of practitioners: human mold testing, specifically urine mycotoxin testing.

If you have ever had a urine mycotoxin test, or if you have been told your resul...

One of the questions I am asked most often by patients is this:

“Don’t doctors get paid to prescribe medications?”

It is a fair question. And if you have ever left a medical visit feeling rushed, unheard, or confused about why a prescription was offered when you wanted to talk about lifestyle change, you are not alone.

The short answer, from my experience, is no. Doctors are not paid directly for writing prescriptions. I have never seen that arrangement in my own career. But the longer and more important answer is where things...

Hey friends. This is one of those foundational conversations that quietly shapes everything we do in healthcare, yet it’s rarely talked about outside medical training.

In this episode, I walk you through the concept of differential diagnosis, what it is, why it matters, and how overlooking it can delay healing or, in some cases, cause real harm.

Differential diagnosis simply means creating a thoughtful list of all the possible causes of a symptom before jumping to conclusions. It’s not about being overly technical. It’s about being thorough, humble, and clinically respon...

Welcome back to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. I'm Dr. Mark Su, and today we're pivoting from the chronic inflammation world into the longevity space. I'm here with Cooper Paul, a pulmonary hypertension specialist at a major academic hospital in Boston and a true longevity medicine enthusiast who's taught me an incredible amount over the last few years.

Here's the thing. We all know exercise is good for us. But what if I told you there's data showing that going from a low VO2 max to an elite VO2 max can decrease your risk of dying in...

Welcome back to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. I'm Dr. Mark Su, and this is part two of my conversation with Mary Jo Anderson. If you caught our first episode together, you know we covered the long, painful road to getting a Lyme disease diagnosis. Today we're diving into what happens after you finally have answers.

Here's the thing. Getting a diagnosis doesn't mean everything magically gets better overnight. Mary Jo's story is proof of that. And I think her willingness to share the messy, nonlinear reality of treatment is exactly what so many people need to...

Alright, so here's one I get asked constantly: Do I really need to throw out all my belongings if there's mold in my house?

If that question's been keeping you up at night, or if you're stuck wondering whether dealing with mold means going bankrupt and starting over, take a deep breath. This episode's for you.

I brought back Mike Schrantz, one of the most networked indoor environmental professionals in the country. He's what I call a "doctor of houses and buildings." And we got into the real, practical reality of what mold remediation actually...

Hey friends, this one's for both practitioners and patients who've been around the functional medicine world for a while.

Here's the thing. When you've been dealing with chronic symptoms for months or years, it's really easy to fall into patterns. You start assuming every flare-up is the same old story. SIBO acting up again. Mold toxicity. Food sensitivities.

But what if it's not?

I'm talking about the differential diagnostic list, which is just a fancy way of saying: all the possible things that could be causing your symptoms. And here's where it gets...

I’m Dr. Mark Su, a conventionally trained physician, functional medicine practitioner, and lifelong student of the why behind symptoms.

This podcast was born out of real-life questions, real patient stories, and a deep sense that the healthcare conversation needs more honesty, nuance, and humanity. Not perfection. Not dogma. Just reality.

In this kickoff episode, I share three confessions, a few pivotal stories from my clinical journey, and the deeper reason this podcast exists in the first place.

Three Confessions (Right Out of the Gate)