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Root-Cause Medicine Functional Medicine Consultation & Wellness Clinic- providing personalized health care to optimize health and wellness.

10/23/2026

Her gut inflammation marker came back more than seven times the top of the range. The one thing I refused to add was a binder.

She had lived with constipation for years. Every attempt to lower her laxative ended with most of a week of nothing moving. Her stool panel showed a cluster of opportunistic bacteria running over range. One antimicrobial round had already moved four of her blood markers the right way: eosinophils, TGF-beta, hsCRP and Ig-A. Calprotectin was still above normal.

So a second round, yes. We changed the order of treatment. Filtering her case through the INSIGHT™ Method, I put a biofilm agent ahead of the antimicrobial and added histamine and mucosal support alongside it. I kept the laxative so she moves her bowels every single day. And no binder. 𝗔 𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗮 𝗴𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘄, at the exact moment die-off needs a way out.

The antimicrobial gets all the attention. The setup around it decides whether the round helps or flares, and I see that across my patients with stubborn microbiome overgrowth. If you are about to start a gut antimicrobial, ask one question before the first dose: what keeps my bowels moving every day of this course?

We recheck calprotectin in 3months and follow up a colonoscopy. That number decides what comes next, not the end date on the protocol.
Keep gut motility before you kill microbiome.

Link in bio to book your discovery call before your next gut protocol starts.

Dr. Angie Martinez
Root-Cause Medicine
Arvada, CO
Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

A ranked longevity list tells you what works for the average person. The average person isn’t the one sitting in my offi...
10/19/2026

A ranked longevity list tells you what works for the average person. The average person isn’t the one sitting in my office.

Take exercise, #2 on the list going around right now. “Exercise” isn’t a prescription. Zone 2, heavy strength training, and HIIT load different systems, and the right one depends on which outcome you’re protecting.

If it’s your heart, I watch VO2 max, one of the strongest predictors of survival we have, and intervals are what move it.

If it’s bone, load is what counts. In the LIFTMOR trial, postmenopausal women with low bone mass did supervised heavy lifts and impact work twice a week for eight months, and their spine and hip density improved. The low-intensity home program didn’t do that.

If it’s metabolic, muscle is where glucose goes, so we build it, with zone 2 underneath as the aerobic base.

S*x and life stage change the answer. They don’t hand it to you. A man in his 40s carrying visceral fat and a woman five years past menopause might both end up under a barbell, but for different reasons and on different timelines.

And if the system is depleted, none of the three goes first. Stabilize before you stimulate.

The list says exercise. I need to know what for.

Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to schedule a discovery call



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

Zone 2, HIIT, and heavy lifting protect different things. You can do one of them faithfully for years and still lose bon...
10/18/2026

Zone 2, HIIT, and heavy lifting protect different things. You can do one of them faithfully for years and still lose bone.

The longevity list going around right now ranks exercise #2 and stops there. “Exercise” isn’t a prescription. The right kind depends on which outcome you’re protecting.

If it’s bone, load is what counts. In the LIFTMOR trial, postmenopausal women with low bone mass did supervised heavy lifts and impact work twice a week for eight months, and their spine and hip density improved.
The low-intensity home program didn’t do that.

If it’s your heart, I watch VO2 max, one of the strongest predictors of survival we have, and intervals are what move it.

If it’s metabolic, muscle is where glucose goes, so we build it, with zone 2 underneath as the aerobic base.

Your s*x and your stage of life shape which exercise you need, but they don’t decide it on their own. A man in his 40s carrying visceral fat and a woman five years past menopause might both need heavy lifting. He needs it for his blood sugar. She needs it for her bones.

And if the system is depleted, none of the three goes first. Stabilize before you stimulate.

The list says exercise. I need to know what for.

Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to schedule a discovery call

© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

Your stool test says H. pylori. Your endoscopy says no. Both can be right.They answer different questions. A stool PCR l...
10/18/2026

Your stool test says H. pylori. Your endoscopy says no. Both can be right.

They answer different questions. A stool PCR like the GI-MAP detects an organism’s DNA, showing it is present. A biopsy shows whether the organism is causing damage where the sample was taken. Presence without damage is common.

Calprotectin rises when inflammatory cells are active in the gut. Ibuprofen or a passing infection can raise it. One high value means look closer. It isn’t a verdict.

Results can shift between samples and labs. That’s why I never treat a single flag.

One patient came after H. pylori treatment, still bloated and in pain. Her follow-up GI-MAP still flagged H. pylori, and the reflex would have been more antibiotics. But it had dropped from 3.26e3 to 1.08e3. Every virulence factor was negative. Calprotectin and sIgA were stable. Secondary bile acids sat at 99.3%, while Lactobacillus, Roseburia, and Akkermansia were depleted after treatment.

The flag remained. The problem had moved. I left the H. pylori alone and rebuilt her commensals and bile acid balance.

Before acting on a stool finding, I ask: Is it causing damage? Is it trending up or down? What else in the labs agrees with it?

People say these tests exist to sell supplements. If a report comes with a supplement list before anyone reads it against your symptoms, history, and other labs, you’re holding a sales sheet.

Then there’s advice to skip the doctor and try probiotics and elimination diets yourself. A reactive gut often gets worse with more microbes. Through the INSIGHT™ Method, I support immune tolerance first, gut structure with fiber and protein next, and microbes last. Order of operations.

Data doesn’t make you precise. Interpretation does. If you have a stool test with no clear next step, bring it for a second look.

Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to book a Second Look

Normal CRP. Normal labs. Still inflamed. That was me with long COVID and POTS.My standard panel looked fine. The markers...
10/16/2026

Normal CRP. Normal labs. Still inflamed. That was me with long COVID and POTS.

My standard panel looked fine. The markers not on it told another story.

Lp-PLA2, which tracks inflammation inside the artery wall, ran in the 150s against Quest’s cutoff of 120. It still does. MPV, a sign of activated platelets, was 13 against a target under 10. TGF-beta1, an immune signaling marker, was mildly elevated at 4,500. Small, dense LDL, the particles most prone to oxidation, climbed to 600 after a viral trigger, not a diet change.

Long COVID showed up in my blood vessels. That is the same kind of inflammation that drives heart disease.

Inflammation drives the diseases that kill most people. A 2019 Nature Medicine paper linked inflammation-related disease to more than half of deaths worldwide. The CANTOS trial blocked one inflammatory signal, IL-1β, without changing cholesterol, and cardiovascular events still fell. In 2023, among more than 31,000 people taking statins, hs-CRP predicted heart attacks and cardiovascular death better than LDL.

CRP proved inflammation matters. It was never built to tell you which inflammation you have.

Mine appeared in the vessel wall, platelets, immune signaling, and lipoproteins. Someone else’s may come from mast cells and histamine, autoimmunity, a viral burden that never cleared, mold and biotoxins, the gut barrier, the brain, or neutrophils stuck in overdrive. Each has a different source and needs a different first move.

That’s why INSIGHT™ at Root-Cause Medicine starts by defining the inflammation before treating it. The order of operations depends on what is driving it.

—Dr. Angie Martinez, MD, IFMCP | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, Colorado | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to schedule a discovery call



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

Hospital-branded longevity programs will sell you the best map money can buy. Someone still has to choose the route.On p...
10/16/2026

Hospital-branded longevity programs will sell you the best map money can buy. Someone still has to choose the route.

On paper, this patient looked like a success. ApoB 60. Kidney function 88 on the standard creatinine test. Prediabetes already being treated with tirzepatide, 2 pounds of fat off in the first month with muscle held. A standard longevity workup would have called that good news.

Then we ran cystatin C at Root-Cause Medicine. It put kidney function at 58.

Same kidneys. Same month. Creatinine depends on muscle mass. Cystatin C depends on it much less. When the two disagree, you don't get to pick the nicer number.

Now what? Stop the tirzepatide and lose ground on insulin resistance and sleep apnea. Keep going as is and gamble with the kidneys. This is where testing ends and clinical judgment starts.

Our route: lower the dose instead of stopping. Repeat the kidney labs to confirm the finding before acting on one result. Recheck the sleep apnea, because untreated OSA drives the same insulin resistance the drug is treating. The next move comes from the repeat labs, not from a single number.

The tests are the map. The order of operations is the route. Most people are paying for the map.

—Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to schedule a discovery call



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

AI can read your MTHFR result and point you to a B vitamin. For most people, the conversation ends there. In my practice...
10/15/2026

AI can read your MTHFR result and point you to a B vitamin. For most people, the conversation ends there. In my practice, that's where it starts.

A gene shows where you're vulnerable. It doesn't show what's loading that vulnerability. So I start with your labs, beginning with homocysteine and MMA. Then I ask which of the seven INSIGHT™ systems is driving methylation demand: inflammation, nutrients, stress, insulin, gut, hormones or toxins.

Methylfolate may belong in your plan. It's chapter one, not the whole story.
Book your discovery call and bring your MTHFR result.

—Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Bring your genetic results and labs you already have. Link in bio to book a Second Look.

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© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

A federal health official recently called AI a second opinion "much better informed than any doctor in the country." I u...
10/13/2026

A federal health official recently called AI a second opinion "much better informed than any doctor in the country."

I use AI in my practice every day. I still disagree.

A model can name every plausible cause of fatigue in seconds. It can't tell you which system has to stabilize first. Thyroid support on top of a flat cortisol rhythm pushes metabolism harder than the stress axis can keep up with. You feel worse, so you add more.

The AI gave you a list. Nobody gave you an order.

Before supplement twenty-six, ask of any answer, human or AI: what comes first, and which lab will show it worked? If it can't say, you're holding a list. Stabilize before you stimulate.

—Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Bring the labs you already have. Link in bio to book a Second Look.



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

40% of your life is menopause.That's from a review published this week in Science. The transition alone can last up to 1...
10/13/2026

40% of your life is menopause.

That's from a review published this week in Science. The transition alone can last up to 10 years. Women can have up to 72 symptoms, and most carry about seven at the same time. Hormone therapy comes in more than 200 versions. The authors argue that thin research has let dogma stand in where evidence should be. I agree.

Their conclusion is that menopause care has to be precision care. Your symptoms, your genetics, and your past hormone exposure should decide which of those 200-plus options fits you, because dose, formulation, and timing each carry a different risk profile.

There is one layer I'd add. Hormones are signals, and they act on metabolic terrain. Insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, and gut permeability all interfere with hormone receptor sensitivity. I've cared for a woman who went through 12 months of dose adjustments and was finally labeled a non-responder. On paper, her levels were optimized. Her insulin signaling and inflammatory markers were not. The hormone was there, and her tissue couldn't respond to it.

Another woman came in certain it was her hormones. Her CGM showed glucose falling to 62 at 3am, which was setting off an overnight cortisol response and breaking up her sleep. The right estrogen would not have fixed a fuel supply problem.

At your next hormone appointment, ask about more than the prescription. Ask what your fasting insulin, inflammatory markers, and overnight glucose are doing first. In the INSIGHT™ Method, that terrain read comes before the formulation decision.

Precision starts before the prescription.

Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to schedule a discovery call



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

Same hours in bed for three years. My sleep efficiency fell from 89% to 75%.Sleep efficiency is the share of your time i...
10/11/2026

Same hours in bed for three years. My sleep efficiency fell from 89% to 75%.

Sleep efficiency is the share of your time in bed that you actually spend asleep. Mine dropped in the fall of 2023 as menopause set in, and it hasn't gone above 81% since. My dream sleep, called REM, fell from 2 hours 20 minutes to under an hour and a half. I was on hormone therapy the whole time.

Hours are the easiest sleep number to hit and the least useful one to read.

A study of more than 60,000 adults who wore sleep trackers found that people with the most regular bedtimes and wake times had a 20 to 48% lower risk of dying during the study years than the least regular sleepers. A steady schedule predicted that risk better than total hours did.

Sleep has a partner, and it's your nervous system. This year my HRV sat between 17 and 19 ms for six months after a post-COVID flare. HRV measures how easily your body shifts between stress mode and rest mode. Mine was stuck on guard. Research on major stress shows that biological age climbs during it and comes back down with recovery. A body that never leaves defense mode never gets that recovery window.

At Root-Cause Medicine, the INSIGHT™ Method puts numbers on sleep and stress. We read wearable data, sleep timing, and HRV trends together, then guide recovery in a set order. BrainTap uses guided light and sound to help the brain shift out of stress mode. Pulsetto stimulates the vagus nerve, your body's main brake on stress. Brain health recovery work rebuilds from there. Then we retest to see what actually moved.

By August my HRV was close to 25. Slow progress, but measurable.

Your body can't rebuild while it's still on guard.

Dr. Angie Martinez | Root-Cause Medicine
📍 Arvada, CO | Direct-pay functional medicine for complex chronic cases
🔗 Link in bio to schedule a discovery call



© Copyright 2026 RootCause Medicine. All Rights Reserved

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