Interpreting Heavy Metals: Selecting the Correct Test and Building a Clinical Plan
Presented by Dan Kalish, DC, IFMCP | October 20, 2026 at 12 PM Pacific
This webinar teaches clinicians how to select the appropriate heavy metal test: hair, urine, and blood. Using Doctor's Data's three flagship profiles, you'll learn how to differentiate chronic exposure from recent exposure, and provoked urine considerations. Once elevated metals are identified, this webinar walks through a patient's detoxification capacity through glutathione and methylation testing, and how these pathways interact. Clinicians will leave with a clear framework for building a complete clinical picture beyond the initial metals result.
Learning Objectives:
- Hair Elements vs. Urine Toxic Metals vs. Blood Metals Panel - what each matrix actually measures (chronic/cumulative exposure vs. ongoing excretion vs. acute/recent exposure), and how to select the appropriate matrix or combination of tests.
- Provoked vs. unprovoked urine testing - how chelation challenges differentiate mobilized body burden from current exposure
- Glutathione testing through Doctor's Data - why glutathione status is often the next test to run, and how glutathione drives phase II detoxification and heavy metal binding/elimination
- Methylation testing through Doctor's Data - how methylation acts as a rate-limiting step in arsenic biotransformation and other detox pathways, a major reason two patients detoxify at very different rates
- The glutathione-methylation connection - why these two pathways are biochemically linked, and why testing one without the other leaves a gap in understanding a patient's detox capacity
- The glutathione-magnesium dyad and oxidative stress - how oxidative stress suppresses methylation while simultaneously increasing glutathione demand, and why magnesium belongs in the treatment picture
The Aging Gut-Brain Axis: Dysbiosis, Intestinal Permeability, and Inflammaging in Clinical Practice
Presented by Julia Malkowski, ND, DC | November 4, 2026 at 12 PM Pacific
Gut microbial aging, intestinal barrier dysfunction, and chronic low-grade inflammation (inflammaging) are increasingly recognized as modifiable contributors to cognitive and functional decline. This session reviews how the gut microbiome changes with age, including loss of diversity and butyrate-producing taxa, and how these shifts weaken the mucosal barrier and increase zonulin and LPS translocation. It then follows the resulting inflammatory signal to the brain, where blood-brain barrier changes and neuroinflammation affect the hippocampus.
Attendees will learn which objective measures are available today (stool microbiome diversity and dysbiosis profiles, zonulin, hs-CRP) and how to incorporate these into practice. They will also learn how to apply evidence-based dietary, nutraceutical, and medication-review strategies in a rational sequence, with dosing limits and reassessment.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe age-associated changes in gut microbiome composition and diversity, including loss of butyrate producers, and how they relate to biological age.
- Explain how intestinal barrier dysfunction, zonulin, and LPS translocation contribute to inflammaging, neuroinflammation, and cognitive decline.
- Interpret stool microbiome diversity and dysbiosis profiles, zonulin, and hs-CRP in a patient with cognitive or functional decline and recognize the limits of these tests.
- Apply evidence-based dietary, nutraceutical, and medication-review strategies to restore microbial diversity and barrier integrity, including sequencing, dosing limits, and reassessment.