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clear search termsSAFM Top 30 Clinical Pearls for Practitioners
This is a list I don’t want you to miss! It’s the SAFM Top 30 Clinical Pearls for Practitioners, a potent list of foundational, functional medicine truths that is constantly evolving. I suggest you print it out and have it handy – on your office wall or your desktop – for ready reference when you are struggling with “what’s next” for a unique patient.
I see you. The geek in me and the geek in you both savor new discoveries in recent published medical research. The unfolding of more esoteric points of interconnectedness throughout human biochemistry will continue! But if we are to truly transform health care, we cannot let our zest for the new and funky overwhelm our reliance on the necessary and foundational.
Undoubtedly, we will look back at the 2020s as the decade when functional medicine became a household name. But this will happen because we show – we prove – that the astute practical application of functional medicine science. actually. gets. results. Disease gone. Not just numbed but Reversed.
These powerful, not-so-sexy truths should form the foundation of our practices. It includes some gotchas that are often overlooked even by savvy practitioners. If you deeply understand the dynamics and the devil-in-the-detail behind each of the 30 – and actually use them regularly, you will truly be on your way to professional excellence.
P.S. If you are passionate about transforming healthcare through the power of functional medicine, we encourage you to learn more about SAFM’s practitioner training programs. Enrollment for our next cohort is now open!
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4 Questions for “SAFM Top 30 Clinical Pearls for Practitioners”
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SAFM Team says:
Hmmm…please try again. I’ve just confirmed for you that the links are indeed working.
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Jamie Russell says:
I am a dental hygienist in private practice for 15+ years. My inquiry is this… I have many patients that consume a lot of diet soda. They present with little to no plaque and calculus due low oral pH (from soda) BUT generalized inflammation around all teeth (contraindication to no/little plaque) and very heavy bleeding around gingiva upon scaling of said teeth: varied medical histories with (sometimes) multiple meds, which I can sort out (in relation to the inflammation). the 3 most common bacteria in periodontal disease are: Actinobacillus Actinomycetemcomitans (A. Actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivits (P. Gingivalis) and Bacteroides forsythus . I have been unsuccessful in finding any research between the connection (if any) between aspartame and gingival inflammation and/or periodontal disease. I have not done any mapping, labs or deep dives into other potential triggers however, this is a very common correlation in patients that present as noted above. I continue to search for research BUT if anyone has any insight about interconnectedness that would be amazing. It is my hope to find a connection that will convince my patients that their consumption of aspartame is killing them AND their teeth. Thank you for your help.
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Thank you for your comment and for sharing your observations, Jamie. Indeed this is not an area where a lot of research has been performed. This does not mean there won’t be in the future, and certainly, this is a quite hotly debated topic with regards to its safety in long-term, repeated use. Interestingly, artificial sweeteners including aspartame were shown to have antimicrobial properties:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23403996/
However, the key question is what is a healthy oral microbiome, and are these sweeteners killing all of the bacterial species or only selective ones and if so is that health- or dis-ease-promoting. In general, there are research reviews that speak to aspartame potential negative effects on various systems of the body and their extent differs among individuals, as one would expect:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8216037/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28938797/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30187722/
Here are a couple of studies that may be of interest to you that looked at correlation between soda drinking in general and poor dental health:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26870851/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26896513/
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The link to the 30 clinical pearls for practitioners does not appear to be working. It takes me to a page discussing the training program. Is there another way to get to the 30 pearls?