The Trusted Pharmacist

When it comes to heart disease, conventional medicine has told us the same thing: watch your cholesterol, take the medication if you need it, eat less saturated fat, and follow the guidelines. And most women do. They get the labs done, they fill the prescriptions, they cut the butter, and they trust that the system has thought this through. What they're rarely told is that the approach they're following has been shown, in study after study, to have almost no impact on whether heart disease actually progresses. The marker their doctor is treating, LDL cholesterol, turns out to be the wrong target. And the dietary advice they've been given may be making things worse. The thing that actually moves the needle looks nothing like a prescription. For thousands of patients, it started with removing one food most of them considered healthy. Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist and the New York Times number one bestselling author of Wheat Belly. He spent nearly two decades performing cardiac interventions before concluding that the system he was trained in was treating the wrong problem, too late. In this episode, he breaks down why the standard prevention advice doesn't work, what wheat is actually doing to the body, and what women can do right now that most cardiologists will never tell them. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Standard heart disease protocol doesn't always work Studies show it has almost no impact on whether coronary disease actually progresses. Why does the conventional approach keep getting recommended when the evidence doesn't support it? Wheat does far more damage than most people realize When patients cut wheat, they lost weight, reversed diabetes, and resolved conditions unrelated to their reasons for coming in. Why does one food affect so many different systems in the body? GLP-1 drugs may be trading one problem for a much bigger one. When weight is lost through calorie reduction, muscle loss follows, and the research suggests it may be permanent. What does that mean for women's long-term health? A bacterial strain that does things no supplement is supposed to do. Patients reported better sleep, muscle retention, improved skin, and mood shifts from something that looks like yogurt and costs almost nothing to make. What is this microbe actually doing, and why does it matter especially for women? PS. If you enjoy the show, remember to leave a review on your favorite podcast app! Reviews help the podcast reach a wider audience and help more people. About the Guest Dr. William Davis is a well-known preventive cardiologist and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wheat Belly. He's also a major advocate in the health and wellness world. He is also the author of many other bestselling books, including Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Be Smarter Than Your Doctor. Dr. Davis works to provide powerful, personally empowering health information that frees you from the doctor and the healthcare system. His newest book, Super Body, is available to order now. https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/2026/01/what-is-a-super-body/. To learn more, you can also go to williamdavismd.com and innercircle.drdavisinfinitehealth.com. For Dr. Davis Infinite Health lifestyle tools, supplies, supplements, and "yogurt" making go to: https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/shop/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Food sensitivities and intolerances have become a much bigger conversation in health and wellness. More people are starting to wonder whether the foods they eat every day could be contributing to symptoms such as bloating, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, skin issues, mood changes, weight-loss resistance, or inflammation. And because testing has become more accessible, many people are now ordering food sensitivity tests themselves, cutting out the foods that show up, and trying to figure it out from there. But for most people, that creates more confusion. Food sensitivity testing is still widely misunderstood. Some people dismiss it completely. Some people treat every result like a permanent diagnosis. And many people end up with a long list of foods to avoid but no clear understanding of what the test is actually showing them, why their bodies are reacting in the first place, or what they're supposed to do next. That's the problem. Elimination diets are not forever food ban lists. They were never meant to make someone's diet smaller and smaller until eating becomes stressful. They are meant to be used as a therapeutic tool: to reduce inflammation, calm the immune system, repair the gut, and eventually understand how and when foods can be reintroduced. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Cheryl Burdette, a naturopathic doctor, co-founder of Precision Point Diagnostics, and medical director for KHS. We talk about the difference between food allergies and food sensitivities, and why a food sensitivity test is only useful if it helps change the plan. We also get into the bigger issue with advanced testing in general. A lab result should not just give you a number, a list, or another thing to worry about. It should help you understand the process happening underneath the symptoms. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Elimination diets are not forever food ban lists Many people take a food sensitivity test, remove the foods, and then get stuck there. How are you actually supposed to use these diets? Food allergies and food sensitivities are not the same thing An IgE allergy can be immediate and obvious, while an IgG sensitivity may show up hours or days later. How do we understand the difference without oversimplifying either one? Leaky gut changes how the immune system sees food When the gut lining becomes more permeable, food particles and bacterial toxins can cross into places they do not belong, triggering immune reactions. What do markers like zonulin, LPS, diamine oxidase, and food antibodies actually help us see? Advanced testing should help you know what to do next Testing itself isn't the problem; testing without a plan is. How do we use labs to guide diet, gut repair, probiotics, immunoglobulins, antioxidant support, and prevention instead of just collecting more numbers? PS. If you enjoy the show, remember to leave a review on your favorite podcast app! Reviews help the podcast reach a wider audience and help more people. Guest Bio Dr. Cheryl Burdette is a naturopathic doctor, co-founder of Precision Point Diagnostics, medical director of KHS, and Director of Education at Progressive Medical Center, which hosts a Naturopathic residency, at one of the largest integrative clinics in the Southeast. She is the co-founder of Precision Point Diagnostics, a laboratory that focuses on gut-based health and wellness. There, she designs clinical profiles and trains clinicians on their utilization. She has a rich history in the integrative medicine laboratory space. She designed and teaches the clinical curriculum for Origins Incubator, a practice management group that has helped to launch many successful practitioners. She is on the board of advisors for TheraDura Diagnostik, a German-based lab company. She serves on IRB boards, is involved in study design and translational research, and has lectured extensively worldwide. Dr. Burdette's passion is teaching about the practice of Integrative and Naturopathic Medicine, to increase awareness of evidence-based natural therapies, to both rule in and rule out tools that are effective in-patient care. To learn more, visit https://www.progressivemedicalcenter.com/ or send an email to cburdette@precisionpointdiagnostics.com. Resources Here are the five biomarkers Dr. Burdette recommends paying attention to: 8-OH-DG / 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine - oxidative stress/DNA damage marker Oxidized LDL - damaged LDL; discussed as more predictive for cardiovascular risk than standard cholesterol Vitamin D - broad immune, hormone, bone, brain, and inflammation relevance CRP / C-reactive protein — general inflammation marker Hemoglobin A1C — blood sugar/glycation marker, long before diabetes becomes the only concern About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Vitamin D is a hot topic right now. Everyone's talking about it and supplementing with it, and I get countless questions on social media and in the pharmacy. "Am I taking enough?" "Is the specific dose I was told to take on social media better?" "Should I take D2 or D3?" Even though everyone's talking about Vitamin D, it's still so heavily misunderstood, and it starts with what people think it is. It's not just the bone vitamin; it's not really a vitamin at all. It works more like a pro-hormone, influencing immune function, hormones, metabolic health, brain health, inflammation, and thousands of processes across the body. And that's why it's so critical, and easy to get wrong. The first mistake people make: Thinking there's one dose of vitamin D for everyone. The truth is, vitamin D is very individualized; the dose you need is affected by everything from where you live, your skin tone, and how old you are. So you have to know your number and test your levels to see what your body actually needs. The second mistake is thinking you can take Vitamin D in isolation for it to work. To work effectively, Vitamin D actually relies on key co-factors like magnesium and vitamin K2, so if you're not also supporting those nutrients, you could be missing out on the full benefit. So how do you supplement your Vitamin D the right way? How do you know what to buy? In this episode, I walk through the truth about Vitamin D: why deficiency is so common, why "normal" levels are not always optimal, and why the safest approach is to test, dose, and retest instead of guessing. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Vitamin D is not just about bones Vitamin D acts more like a pro-hormone than a simple vitamin. What are all the crucial functions in our bodies that it supports? What are we missing when we only think of it as a bone-health supplement? Your Vitamin D dose should be based on testing, not guessing The same dose can produce very different blood levels in different people. How do you know whether your supplement is actually working? "Normal" Vitamin D is not always optimal What range of vitamin D should you be aiming for if your goal is optimization? Vitamin D can't work alone Magnesium helps activate vitamin D, while K2 helps direct calcium into the right places instead of soft tissues or arteries. So if you're taking vitamin D but not seeing results, what else might your body be missing? P.S. Are you looking for a high-quality Vitamin D supplement you can trust? Get our Vitamin D3 5000IU: https://magnoliapharmacy.com/products/vitamin-d3-5000iu About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

When a woman is dealing with brain fog, gut issues, irritability, and just not feeling like herself… There are usually two paths she ends up taking. The first is the conventional healthcare one. A ten-minute doctor's visit, a quick look at basic labs, and then a prescription (often including an antidepressant) before being sent on her way. But here's the problem: that path never gets to the root cause. Because when a woman presents with a cluster of symptoms like fatigue, mood changes, gut issues, and low energy, the default diagnosis becomes anxiety or depression. And for many people we see, that's not what's actually going on, there's a deeper issue that needs to be addressed. There's an underlying inflammatory or autoimmune issue, immune dysfunction, or there's a breakdown happening in the body that hasn't been identified yet. And what she's experiencing aren't random symptoms; they're signals. Traditional healthcare and 10-minute visits aren't built to uncover complex, multi-system. And you definitely can't solve them by layering prescriptions on top of symptoms without understanding what's driving them in the first place. You need time, context, and someone willing to look at the full picture. And that's where a root-cause approach changes everything. Because instead of asking, "How do we manage this symptom?" It starts with a different question: "What's actually causing this in the first place?" In this episode, Dr. Sakina Davis, a functional medicine practitioner who specializes in root-cause care, returns to the show. We unpack what's really happening beneath symptoms like fatigue, gut issues, and brain fog, and why so many women are being misdiagnosed or dismissed in the process. We get into how autoimmune and inflammatory conditions actually show up, the patterns most doctors miss, and what it looks like to take a more comprehensive approach to testing, diagnosis, and treatment. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Labs can look "normal" while your body clearly isn't Most standard testing barely scratches the surface. So if everything comes back "fine," what are doctors not testing for, and what actually reveals inflammation and immune dysfunction? What a deeper diagnostic actually looks like From expanded thyroid panels to inflammatory markers and immune testing, what does comprehensive testing really involve, and how do you know when it's necessary? Your gut might be the problem, even if digestion seems "fine" You can be eating well and still not absorbing nutrients properly. What does it mean if your body isn't breaking down food the way it should—and how would you even know? The test no one wants to do… but can explain everything Stool testing sounds unpleasant, but it reveals things that nothing else can, bacteria balance, inflammation, and digestion issues. So what can it actually uncover about your health that other tests miss? Guest Bio Dr. Sakina Davis is a Bioidentical Hormone Specialist and fellowship-trained physician with 20+ years of experience. She is recognized as a pioneer in functional and regenerative medicine. As the founder of Woodlands Wellness and Cosmetic Center in The Woodlands, Texas, Dr. Davis offers a comprehensive range of medical and aesthetic services, with a focus on hormone optimization and weight management. Dr. Davis is a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging, the Institute for Functional Medicine, and is part of the Longevity Docs group. Her approach combines cutting-edge treatments with a personalized, holistic focus. She is known for her dedication to patient care and for her active involvement in the community, supporting organizations like the Montgomery County Food Bank and CASA Advocates for Children. One patient shared, "Dr. Sakina Davis is very professional and spends enough time with you to treat the 'whole you'; everything is connected, and balancing hormones helps to treat and prevent many conditions." To learn more, visit https://woodlandswellness.com/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Most people think the reason their prescriptions are expensive is simple: drug companies set the price, insurance helps cover it, and what you pay at the counter is just "how it is." But that story falls apart the second you look a little closer. Because the price you pay for the same medication can swing from $6 to $200+, depending on where and how you get it. And most of that difference has nothing to do with the drug itself. What's actually happening is that there's an entire layer of the system most patients never see. A layer that doesn't just influence pricing, but actively controls which medications you can access, where you're allowed to fill them, and even whether your local pharmacy survives. And here's where the real cost shows up, because this doesn't stop at price. When patients are pushed into systems they don't understand, adherence drops. Medications get delayed, skipped, or abandoned altogether. Care becomes fragmented. And the one place that consistently acts as a frontline healthcare touchpoint, the local pharmacy, gets replaced with centralized, mail-order systems that were never designed to deliver personalized care. Because when a $6 medication turns into $211… when pharmacies close despite being essential healthcare access points… when patients are steered, restricted, or overcharged without realizing it… That's not just inefficiency; that's a system that quietly trades outcomes for margins. So the real question becomes: if the system patients trust is actually working against them, what's really driving drug prices, and what is it costing us beyond the prescription itself? In this episode, I'm joined by Monique Whitney, Executive Director of Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency, who has spent over a decade exposing what's actually happening behind the scenes. She shares what's really behind expensive prescriptions, pharmacy closures, and the rise of mail-order pharmacies. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Drug prices aren't driven by the drug itself The same medication can cost a few dollars or hundreds. If pricing isn't tied to the product, what is it tied to, and who controls that difference? Access to medication is being controlled, not just priced The system can dictate where you fill prescriptions, what drugs you're allowed to take, and even push you away from your local pharmacy. Why is pharmacy access being engineered? "Convenience" platforms often come at a hidden cost From discount cards to mail-order pharmacies, many tools marketed as savings solutions are actually extracting value through fees, data, or steering. If it looks like you're saving money, where is that money being made back? A patient problem, not a business problem When pharmacies shut down, patients lose access, delay care, or end up in emergency systems that cost far more. If the most accessible healthcare provider disappears, what does that do to the entire system upstream? Guest Bio Monique Whitney is the Executive Director at Pharmacists United for Truth & Transparency. As the Executive Director of PUTT, she works to advance the role of pharmacists as trusted healthcare providers and advocates for patient safety. PUTT is a 501(c)3 organization committed to promoting transparency, integrity, and accountability in pharmacy care. In Monique's role, she leads a team of dedicated professionals (who are also volunteers) in developing and implementing strategic initiatives to ensure patient access and end pharmacy deserts. She collaborates with key stakeholders, including healthcare professionals, policymakers, and industry leaders, to drive positive change and ensure patients can access safe, effective, and affordable medications at their local pharmacy. With a deep understanding of the complex healthcare landscape and regulatory environment, Monique brings a wealth of experience in advocacy, public policy, and organizational leadership. She is committed to fostering a culture of transparency and accountability in the U.S. healthcare system that works to the benefit of everyone. To learn more, go to https://www.truthrx.org/, and to look up drug cost disparities in your state, go to https://www.audittricare.org/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Most commercially available hormones are designed for population-level dosing - one-size-fits-all, and no room for personalization. But hormones don't behave at the population level. Human bodies are uniquely shaped by metabolism, liver function, toxin exposure, and how each person absorbs and processes hormones. And yet, the commercial market still tries to solve for all of that complexity with a limited set of fixed doses. Take something as common as an estradiol patch. It only comes in a handful of options. So what happens if your body needs something in between? That gap is where a lot of people get stuck. They're technically "on hormones," but they don't feel right, they don't respond the way they should, or they're dealing with side effects that don't make sense. At the same time, we're seeing a new wave of messaging that says hormones are now "safe," and therefore easy to prescribe. But that creates a second problem. Because hormones aren't inherently safe or unsafe; they're precise. And when you remove the precision, the testing, and the individualization, you don't get better outcomes. You just get more people on a one-size-fits-all approach that was never designed to fit them in the first place. So the real question becomes: if standardized options fall short, what does it actually take to get hormones that actually match what your body needs? In this episode, speaker, author, educator, and Anti-Aging and Precision Medicine expert, Dr. Pamela Smith, returns. Today, we're breaking down why compounding isn't an alternative approach; it's often the only way to truly match treatment to the patient. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Hormones don't follow averages Most medications are designed for population-level outcomes, but hormones are influenced by metabolism, weight, liver function, toxins, and more. What happens when we treat something highly individualized with standardized protocols? Convenience is replacing clinical rigor From telehealth checklists to "no-testing" approaches, hormone therapy is becoming easier to access, but less precise. Are we improving care, or just scaling shortcuts? Why "normal dosing" often fails patients Small changes like weight fluctuations or absorption differences can shift hormone needs significantly. If dosing isn't adjusted at a micro level, how many patients are being under- or over-treated without realizing it? Hormones aren't the starting point; they're the amplifier When upstream issues like toxins, gut health, or metabolic dysfunction aren't addressed, hormone therapy often fails. Are we blaming hormones when the real issue is everything around them? PS. If you enjoy the show, remember to leave a review on your favorite podcast app! Reviews help the podcast reach a wider audience and help more people. Guest Bio Pamela Smith, M.D., MPH, MS, is an internationally known speaker and author on the subject of Anti-Aging and Precision Medicine. She spent her first twenty years of practice as an emergency room physician with the Detroit Medical Center in a level 1 trauma center and then 28 years as an Anti-Aging/Functional Medicine specialist. She is a diplomat of the Board of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Physicians and is. Dr. Smith also holds a master's degree in public health and a master's degree in metabolic and nutritional medicine. She is in private practice and is the senior partner for The Center for Precision Medicine, with offices in Michigan and Florida. She has been featured on CNN, PBS, and many other television networks, has been interviewed in numerous consumer magazines, and has hosted two of her own radio shows. Dr. Smith was one of the featured physicians on the PBS series "The Embrace of Aging" as well as the online medical series "Awakening from Alzheimer's" and "Regain Your Brain". She is the author of fourteen best-selling books, including How to Prevent Breast Cancer- Before & After: A Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Life. To learn more about Dr. Smith and to get her books, visit https://mdpamelasmith.com/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Most people think thyroid disease appears suddenly. But what if thyroid disease actually begins years earlier, quietly signaling that something in the body has already been off for a long time? According to today's guest, pharmacist, thyroid researcher, and bestselling author, Dr. Izabella Wentz, the thyroid isn't just a malfunctioning organ. It's more of an early warning system, the body's canary in the coal mine. That's why some of the earliest signs of thyroid dysfunction show up in places we don't immediately associate with the thyroid. For many women, hair loss is the moment something finally feels wrong enough to investigate. And in many of those cases, the underlying issue isn't simply "low thyroid." It's Hashimoto's disease, an autoimmune condition where the immune system slowly attacks the thyroid gland, sometimes for five to fifteen years before diagnosis. In this episode, Dr. Wentz unpacks why thyroid disease, especially Hashimoto's, rarely has a single cause or a single solution. We talk about the early warning signs most people miss, why autoimmune thyroid disease often goes undiagnosed for years, and why restoring thyroid health often requires adjusting many different "dials". Things You'll Learn In This Episode Canary in the coal mine Symptoms can appear years before thyroid tests become abnormal. How does the thyroid warn us long before conventional testing catches the problem? Hashimoto's: hiding in plain sights Autoimmune thyroid disease may be active for years before hypothyroidism appears on lab work. What early clues could reveal the immune attack sooner? "Normal" thyroid labs don't always mean a healthy thyroid Many patients continue to struggle with fatigue, weight gain, and hair loss despite having normal TSH levels. What other markers can reveal what's really happening? Beyond single medication "treatment." Conventional medicine often treats thyroid disease with hormone replacement alone. Why does a functional medicine approach focus on adjusting multiple "dials"? PS. If you enjoy the show, remember to leave a review on your favorite podcast app! Reviews help the podcast reach a wider audience and help more people. Guest Bio Dr. Izabella Wentz is a pharmacist, thyroid specialist, and bestselling author known for her work on Hashimoto's thyroiditis and autoimmune conditions, and now gut health. After being diagnosed with IBS during pharmacy school and later with Hashimoto's, she began researching the root causes of thyroid dysfunction and has since helped millions of patients better understand their thyroid health. To learn more, visit thyroidpharmacist.com or find Dr. Wenz on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or listen to her podcast. Buy her new book, "A Comprehensive Guide to Healing Your Gut, IBS and Autoimmunity" on Amazon, Barnes or Noble. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Most people are told that autoimmune disease is bad luck. A genetic glitch, a random malfunction, or an immune system that simply "turned on itself." But what if that explanation is incomplete? What if autoimmunity isn't random at all… but the predictable result of cumulative stress on the body, building quietly for years until one final trigger tips the scale? That's the framing we rarely hear. In conventional medicine, autoimmune conditions are often managed as isolated diagnoses. Graves', Hashimoto's, Crohn's, and rheumatoid arthritis are each treated with their own specialist and their own immunosuppressant protocol. But what if they're not separate diseases? What if they're different expressions of the same underlying immune dysfunction? In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Amy Myers to explore what's changed in the autoimmune landscape over the last decade, and what hasn't. As the author of The Autoimmune Solution and The Thyroid Connection, she helped bring the gut–immune connection into mainstream discussion long before "leaky gut" was widely accepted. Now, more than 10 years later, she's revisiting her work because the environment we're living in has intensified. Because here's the truth: when it comes to autoimmune disease, the ante has been upped. We have more environmental toxins, more immune triggers, the long-tail effects of viral infections, the overlooked role of trauma, and the subtle ways chronic stress reshapes immune signaling. Today, we talk about what conventional medicine continues to miss about autoimmune conditions, how to actually calm the immune system instead of just suppress it, and what it really takes to rebuild resilience from the inside out. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Autoimmunity isn't random; it's cumulative Genetics may load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. Which stressors quietly build toward immune dysfunction long before diagnosis? Leaky gut is a prerequisite for immune activation Intestinal permeability allows immune confusion to begin. How do gluten, chronic infection, and toxin exposure disrupt immune tolerance at the barrier level? Latent infections can hijack the immune balance Viruses like Epstein-Barr don't always leave; they hide. How does viral persistence contribute to chronic fatigue, thyroid disease, and post-viral syndromes like long COVID? Trauma programs the immune system Two people can experience the same event and have radically different biological outcomes. How does chronic hypervigilance keep the immune system in fight-or-flight mode? Guest Bio Dr. Amy Myers is an accomplished, formally trained physician, author of The Autoimmune Solution, founder of Austin UltraHealth, and host of Take Back Your Health. She received her Doctor of Medicine from Louisiana State University Health Science Center in 2005. From there, she served as an Emergency Medicine resident at the University of Maryland Medical Center from 2005-2008, and an Emergency Physician at both Dell Children's Hospital and the University Medical Center Brackenridge from 2008-2010. She was the founder and Medical Director at Austin UltraHealth from 2010-2018, where she helped thousands of patients get to the root cause of their autoimmune, thyroid, and digestive issues. She was able to help them reverse their conditions and reclaim their health. While running Austin UltraHealth, she also completed her certification in Functional Medicine at The Institute of Functional Medicine in 2012. To learn more, visit https://www.amymyersmd.com/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Healthcare has a reputation for moving slowly. Most people assume the guidelines we follow today are built on current thinking. But the reality is, many of the beliefs, rules, and strategies shaping patient care were formed decades ago, and in some cases, they've remained largely untouched. But in just the 12 months I've been hosting this podcast, I've watched several of those long-standing assumptions begin to shift. Not in small, cosmetic ways, but in meaningful ways that will change lives. Conversations around hormone therapy are changing. Pediatric care is becoming more nuanced. Nutrition guidance is being rebalanced. Weight loss medications are forcing deeper discussions about body composition and sustainability. And chronic disease is increasingly being reframed as something we can influence earlier, not just manage later. Healthcare is moving away from fear-based generalizations and toward personalization, better data, and earlier intervention, and that's amazing. If the system is evolving, the real question becomes: are we evolving with it? In this one-year reflection, I walk through five major shifts I've seen and what they practically mean for how we think about our health going forward. Things You'll Learn In This Episode The hormone narrative is being rewritten For years, the dominant message around estrogen was fear. How has updated guidance and deeper clinical understanding reshaped our thinking about HRT? One timeline doesn't fit every child Immune development isn't identical across children. How might pediatric care look different if readiness guided the discussion? Rethinking the food pyramid We're finally shifting away from grain-heavy messaging toward protein, metabolic stability, and reduced ultra-processed foods. What does this mean for our daily nutrition? The scale is a blunt instrument GLP-1 medications have changed the weight-loss landscape, but they've also exposed how little the scale tells us about metabolic resilience. If weight drops but strength declines, what are we really optimizing for? About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

When someone is diagnosed with a disease, traditional medicine takes the pill-for-every-pain approach, trying to rifle shot medication to treat the loudest symptoms, not the system that created it. And while medication has its place, it doesn't tell the whole story. Sometimes getting well requires solutions outside of any medication I can dispense as a pharmacist, outside of a protocol a doctor provides. This is where the science stops, and the spiritual side of healing and treatment comes into play. Going back to nature, community, diet, regulation, and meaning. Dr. Patrick Hanaway knows this from lived experience. When he was diagnosed with stage four laryngeal cancer, what put it into remission wasn't a more aggressive protocol. It was rebuilding the internal and external conditions that allowed his body to heal. He understands that a systems biology approach, not a drug-disease model, is what often determines whether someone recovers or simply manages decline. How do we shift from attacking illness to cultivating health? How can the more spiritual side of disease treatment change outcomes? In this episode, we talk about how to bring spirituality into your own healing process and how to get your body to repair itself. Things You'll Learn In This Episode The problem with "a pill for every pain." When we treat symptoms in isolation, what deeper processes are we missing that actually drive long-term health? Healing is a biological process, not a technical fix What changes when we stop targeting parts and start working with the whole body, nervous system, and environment? The overlooked role of community and nature in recovery Why do connection, belonging, and time in nature often shift health more than the most advanced interventions? Listening as a clinical skill If patients' bodies already carry the answers, what happens when we finally slow down enough to hear them? About the Guest Dr. Patrick Hanaway is a board-certified family physician trained at Washington University. Dr. Hanaway served on the Executive Committee for the American Board of Integrative Medicine and is the Past President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine. For more than 25 years, he has worked with his wife, Dr. Lisa Lichtig, in clinical practice @ Family to Family: Your Home for Whole Health Care in Asheville, NC. After 10 years as Chief Medical Officer at Genova Diagnostics, Dr. Hanaway became the Chief Medical Education Officer for the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) where he oversaw the development and implementation of IFM's programs worldwide, while leading the GI Advanced Practice Module. In 2014, Dr. Hanaway worked with Dr. Mark Hyman to develop the collaboration between IFM and the Cleveland Clinic, where he was the founding Medical Director, then Research Director. The primary focus of Dr. Hanaway's work is to leverage his skills and perspective to add value in healthcare organizations through education, research, and clinical care, particularly in the areas of nutrition and the microbiome. In 2018, Dr. Hanaway was diagnosed with Stage IV Laryngeal Cancer. His life has been transformed through a functional and integrative approach in concert with chemotherapy, radiation therapy, community support, 'forest-bathing', and prayer. 'No Evidence of Disease' is considered a cure, though life continues to be filled with uncertainty. Importantly, Dr. Hanaway was initiated in 2009 as a Mara'akame [indigenous healer] by the Wixarika [Huichol] people of the Sierra Madre in Mexico. He is chairperson of the Blue Deer Center in upstate NY. Patrick holds community fires, leads ceremonies and pilgrimages to sacred sites, and offers traditional healing sessions around the fire at the Sacred Fire Council House in Weaverville, NC. To learn more, visit https://www.familytofamily.org/our-services/traditional-healing and https://www.yourhealingroots.org/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Most women grow up believing estrogen has one job: periods and pregnancy. Nothing you're taught about this hormone would explain why it becomes the invisible force shaping how you think, feel, and function later in life. I have women show up all the time telling me the same story: They don't feel like themselves anymore, their mood feels unstable, their mind feels slower, their sleep is off, and their body feels unfamiliar and unpredictable. A life that once felt simple and predictable now feels exhausting and hard to manage. We're often told this is just stress, or aging, or something we need to "push through." But these experiences aren't random, emotional, or simply what getting older looks like. They are what happens when a hormone we were taught was minor is actually one of the body's master regulators. Estrogen doesn't operate in one system. It has receptors everywhere. It doesn't influence one function at a time; it helps coordinate all of them. So when estrogen signaling begins to change (whether slowly through perimenopause, suddenly through surgery, or dramatically through menopause), it doesn't disrupt one area of your life. It destabilizes the whole network. How does estrogen control just about every body system, and what happens when levels become erratic and then depleted? If your estrogen is no longer sending a clear, steady signal, how do we start to restore balance, clarity, and stability inside the body again? In this episode, I talk about how estrogen actually works in the brain, heart, bones, and metabolism, why fluctuating hormones create full-body symptoms, and where most women are being misled about menopause and aging. I also share how to identify the real root cause of your symptoms and take back control of your health and your future. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Estrogen is a master signal, not a sex hormone It influences nearly every major system in the body, so why are women still told it only matters for reproduction? Fluctuation causes chaos, not deficiency alone Why does hormone "instability" trigger symptoms more aggressively than low levels by themselves? Most estrogen fear is based on outdated data How did the wrong hormones, wrong timing, and wrong delivery methods distort the entire narrative on estrogen? Topical estrogen changes the risk equation Why does bypassing the liver make transdermal estrogen safer for the heart, brain, and metabolism? Bone loss, heart disease, and dementia are not inevitable What does the research say about starting estrogen within the "golden window" after menopause? About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

If you've been diagnosed with MS or you've been living with it for years, you've probably been told some version of the same story. This is progressive, unpredictable, and something you'll have to manage for the rest of your life. Maybe you were warned about what you might lose. Maybe you were told to be grateful if things don't get worse. Maybe you learned to brace yourself for fatigue, pain, brain fog, or the slow shrinking of what your body can do. And once that story settles in, it's hard to imagine a different future. The truth about MS is that it doesn't have to be a straight downhill line. You can reduce severity and regain function, and you don't have to rely on medication alone to get relief. Lifestyle modifications can meaningfully improve fatigue, mobility, and quality of life. Lifestyle changes are "nice extras" or only worth trying once everything else has failed. Instead, it reframes them as core tools for reducing severity, slowing progression, and in some cases, reclaiming function that people were told was gone for good. This is something Dr. Terry Wahls knows not just from treating patients with MS but from living through severe disability herself. She understands that you can restore muscle, rewire neural pathways, or give the nervous system the capacity to heal. What lifestyle measures can create the conditions for recovery instead of continued decline? In this episode, Dr. Wahls shares how to support neurological repair, reduce fatigue, and rebuild physical capacity as an MS patient. Things You'll Learn In This Episode MS doesn't always mean steady decline Many people are told MS only moves in one direction, but that isn't always true. Why do some symptoms improve, even after years, when the body is given the right support? Fatigue isn't a personal failure The crushing exhaustion of MS isn't about willpower or motivation. What's actually draining your energy beneath the surface, and why do certain changes finally make a difference? Medication helps, but it's not the whole picture Drugs can calm inflammation, but they don't rebuild strength, restore clarity, or give you your life back. What else needs to change for your nervous system to recover? You don't have to fix everything to feel better Trying to change everything at once usually leads to burnout. Which small, realistic shifts can reduce symptoms and make daily life feel more manageable again? Guest Bio Dr. Terry Wahls is more than a doctor. She's an educator, a speaker, an author, and she's also a patient. In 2000, she was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. Dr. Wahls was determined not to let the disease control her life, so she began doing her own research. In December 2007, she began the Wahls Protocol®, a therapeutic diet and lifestyle program that focuses on functional medicine and nutrient-rich foods. Learn more about Dr. Terry Wahls' story and her work below. Dr. Terry Wahls was dependent on a tilt-recline wheelchair for four years until she reclaimed her health using a diet and lifestyle program she designed specifically to restore her cellular health. Now, she pedals her bike to work each day. The Wahls Protocol® comes out of Dr. Wahls' own quest to treat the debilitating symptoms she experiences as a sufferer of progressive MS. Informed by science, she began using Paleo principles as guidelines for her unique, nutrient-rich plan. This book shares Dr. Wahls' astonishing personal story of recovery and details the program, with up-to-date research she's now conducting at the University of Iowa. To learn more, visit https://terrywahls.com/. If you have an autoimmune disorder and want to take part in a clinical trial, go to https://terrywahls.com/trials/. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 250,000 on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

When you visit your doctor with a racing heart when you stand up, dizziness, flushing, gut reactions, fatigue, and brain fog, the appointments almost always end the same way. Your symptoms get filed under the usual suspects. Allergies, IBS, stress, or the catch-all that shuts the conversation down: anxiety. But what if the root cause is a condition you've never even heard of? What gets called anxiety, IBS, allergies, or stress is often something else entirely: conditions like POTS, dysautonomia, or mast cell activation syndrome, which most people (and many clinicians) were never taught to recognize. Amy Bryant is the person people go to when their symptoms don't fit neatly into any one diagnosis, and they've been passed from specialist to specialist without real answers. She approaches these cases like investigative medicine. Not chasing symptoms one by one, but tracing patterns across the nervous system, immune response, sleep, hormones, and gut function. The challenge with these conditions is that they don't announce themselves clearly. They show up in ways that feel familiar and easy to explain. People start questioning their own bodies. They learn to manage reactions, avoid triggers, and brace themselves for the next flare instead of expecting recovery. How do you identify the underlying condition when no single diagnosis explains everything? How do you move from managing symptoms to actually dealing with what's causing them? In this episode, Amy shares how syndromes like POTS and mast cell activation can sit underneath what gets mislabeled as common, everyday diagnoses. We also talk about how to finally deal with what's driving dysfunction in your body. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Complex symptoms are network failures When multiple systems break down at once, medicine often fragments the problem. How does identifying the shared driver change diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes? POTS and MCAS are rarely standalone conditions These syndromes often emerge from shared roots. How do we stop asking "which one is it?" and start asking "what's driving all of it?" Hormonal transitions can expose hidden instability Perimenopause doesn't always create dysfunction; it reveals it. Why do estrogen shifts unmask mast cell activation and autonomic symptoms in women who were previously "fine"? Recovery capacity determines quality of life Stress, trauma, poor sleep, and gut dysfunction all erode the body's ability to rebound. What if the real goal isn't eliminating stressors, but rebuilding the systems that allow recovery to happen? About the Guest Amy Bryant is a nurse practitioner at the Center of Lifestyle Medicine in Houston. She specializes in caring for patients with complex overlapping conditions like POTS, mast cell activation, dysautonomia, and chronic inflammatory syndromes using a lifestyle medicine approach and a trauma-informed approach. Amy is an investigator who helps patients get to the root of complex conditions that many practitioners shy away from. Her ability to understand the underlying causes of these conditions and her approach to providing supportive therapeutic elements and individualized protocols for her patients set her apart. Her expertise in Lifestyle Medicine makes her a valuable resource for patients seeking integrative care. Amy also leads the Cancer Support Group Visits at TCLM. During these visits, she provides a safe, non-judgmental, and compassionate space where patients can rely on each other for support, share their experiences, and discuss helpful tools to help navigate their journey in fighting cancer. Amy also provides education about the background of the development and physiology of chronic illnesses, options to manage symptoms holistically, and emotional support for those who need community support. To learn more, visit www.texascenterforlifestylemedicine.org/ or connect with her on LinkedIn. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 250,000 on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Follow the Podcast Follow the Trusted Pharmacist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app so you get the latest episodes! If the show has been helpful, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts —or simply tell a friend about the show. Each time you share the show, you are potentially changing someone's life!