Integrative Brain and Body

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Integrative Brain and Body Integrative Brain and Body specializes in providing patients with answers to chronic health conditions The key to individualized care is proper testing!

Our goal at Integrative Brain and Body is to empowering people with knowledge to overcome chronic health concerns so they may live healthy, fulfilling lives. We respect that no two people are alike, even if they have the same condition. Because of this, we take time to get to know patients as individuals so we may deliver custom tailored care. If you do not feel “normal” your body is telling you that there is something physiologically not right! If you’ve been told your lab results are normal the root cause that is driving your condition hasn’t been addressed. To see the list of laboratory tests we offer, visit ibrainandbody.com/labs. For all the conditions we help we offer laboratory analysis, nutritional counseling, neurological rehabilitation, supplementation, chiropractic care and lifestyle modifications. Some conditions we help:
Thyroid dysfunction
Autoimmune diseases
Gut/digestive disorders
ADD/ADHD
Vertigo
For a complete list, visit http://ibrainandbody.com/who-we-help/

149 schoolchildren in Cyprus ate fully organic meals for 40 days, then conventional meals for 40 days, while researchers...
10/16/2026

149 schoolchildren in Cyprus ate fully organic meals for 40 days, then conventional meals for 40 days, while researchers measured pesticides in their urine throughout (PMID: 31483785).

This was a cluster-randomized crossover trial. Schools were assigned by chance to which diet came first, and every child served as their own comparison across both periods. Being your own control strips out a lot of the noise that makes nutrition research hard to read.
During the organic period, pyrethroid insecticide levels fell to roughly 30% of where they sat on the conventional diet. Neonicotinoid pesticides were detectable less often.

The part that makes this more interesting than an exposure number: a marker of oxidative damage to DNA, called 8-OHdG, also came down during the organic period. Two other oxidative stress markers rose at first, then declined as the period went on.

Mechanistically that tracks. These pesticide classes generate oxidative stress (cellular wear caused by unstable molecules) in laboratory and animal work, so watching an exposure drop and a damage marker drop together in real children is the kind of convergence that makes a finding feel sturdier.

One thing to keep in frame. Children on the organic menus were also eating prepared, portion-controlled meals, and they took in fewer calories than during the conventional period. Some of the improvement may belong to the meals rather than to the organic certification, and the authors say exactly that themselves.

The moral of the story? More research is needed to separate the organic effect from the whole-food effect, but the direction is promising, and either explanation points the same way: what lands on your fork shows up in your urine within weeks.

One practical note. These pesticide classes clear in hours to a couple of days, so this is a lever that responds fast. Going fully organic is not the only version of this. Prioritizing the produce you eat most often is a reasonable place to start.

Save this for the next grocery run.

General education, not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before making a significant dietary change to see if it's right for you.

Your liver has a two-step process for getting a toxicant out of you, and the relationship between those two steps is the...
10/14/2026

Your liver has a two-step process for getting a toxicant out of you, and the relationship between those two steps is the whole story.

Phase 1 opens the molecule up using cytochrome P450 enzymes. Phase 2 attaches a water-soluble partner so the compound can actually leave.

Here is the catch that makes this clinically interesting. The intermediate produced by Phase 1 is often more reactive (meaning more capable of damaging tissue) than the original compound was. A fast Phase 1 with a constrained Phase 2 is harder on the body than a slower version of both.

Which reframes the whole conversation. The goal is making sure the second step has the raw materials to keep pace with the first.
Those raw materials are specific and reassuringly ordinary: amino acids, sulfur, B vitamins, magnesium, and enough dietary protein to supply them.

There is also a third step that deserves more attention than it gets. Conjugated compounds leave in bile, arrive in your intestine, and can be unzipped by a bacterial enzyme called beta-glucuronidase and then reabsorbed. Fiber is what carries them out before that happens.

Swipe through for the full pathway, and save this one if you want the mechanism handy the next time detox comes up.

General education, not medical advice.Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before adding in a new supplement or intervention to see if it's right for you.

Yes for some compounds, and the more useful framing is that different tests answer different questions.For a handful of ...
10/12/2026

Yes for some compounds, and the more useful framing is that different tests answer different questions.

For a handful of exposures, testing is well established. Blood lead, blood mercury, and urinary cadmium are validated, carry population reference data from national biomonitoring surveys, and have interpretation thresholds that toxicology broadly agrees on. When there is a specific exposure question, those are the tests I reach for first.

Timing matters more than people expect. A compound with a half-life of a few hours shows up in urine as a snapshot of yesterday, which tells you about recent contact rather than about anything stored in tissue.

Then there is the situation I see often in practice. Someone has had fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, or recurring sinus and neurologic symptoms for years. The standard workup comes back clean: bloodwork, thyroid, inflammatory markers, imaging, all unremarkable. And somewhere in the history there is a basement that flooded, a bathroom that stayed damp, or an office where other people got sick too.

That is where a urinary mycotoxin panel earns a look. Mycotoxins are compounds produced by certain molds, and the panel measures what your body is excreting.

Two things are true about these panels at the same time. They sit outside conventional specialty guidelines, and the work establishing what a given level means clinically is still developing, so they are fairly described as a fringe test. They can also generate a genuinely useful hypothesis when a standard workup has come up empty and the exposure history points somewhere specific.

So I use one as a single input inside a broader picture: history, exam, the conventional labs, and the building itself. A result becomes meaningful when it agrees with the rest of the story. On its own it is a question worth following rather than a diagnosis, and treating a number in isolation is where this kind of testing goes wrong.

Before any panel, the highest-yield step is usually a thorough exposure history. Where you live, what your water travels through, your occupation, your building, what goes on your skin every day. That conversation costs nothing and it often narrows things considerably.

If chronic symptoms have not been explained by standard testing and you want help deciding what is worth running, book a discovery call through the link in bio.

-Dr. Matt Beyer

General education, not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before adding in a new test to see if it's right for you.

Researchers in Qidong, China gave 170 adults a daily drink made from broccoli sprouts for ten days, then measured what s...
10/09/2026

Researchers in Qidong, China gave 170 adults a daily drink made from broccoli sprouts for ten days, then measured what showed up in their urine (PMID: 31268126).

The design was a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. People were assigned by chance to either the real drink or a dummy version, and nobody chose which one they got. For a question like this, that is the strongest design available.

The group on the full-strength drink excreted 63% more of a benzene breakdown product than the placebo group. Benzene is a common air pollutant from traffic and combustion, and it is classified as a known human carcinogen.

The mechanism in plain terms: broccoli sprouts are rich in a compound called sulforaphane, and sulforaphane increases production of the enzymes your liver uses to tag a toxicant and es**rt it out. More enzyme, more tagging, more leaving.

One detail worth holding onto. Dose mattered a great deal. The half-strength and one-fifth-strength versions did not produce a measurable change. Only the full dose moved anything, and that dose sits well above what a normal serving of cooked broccoli delivers.

An earlier trial in the same population found the same effect, so this result has now turned up twice (PMID: 24913818).

The moral of the story? What got measured here is how much left the body, not whether anyone got healthier, so this does not tell us about cancer risk or any other disease outcome yet. More research is needed there. What it does show is that food can change a detoxification pathway in a measurable, repeatable way, and that is a genuinely encouraging thing to know.

General education, not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before adding in a new supplement to see if it's right for you.

Glutathione is a three amino acid molecule your cells build from glycine, cysteine and glutamate, and it holds down two ...
10/08/2026

Glutathione is a three amino acid molecule your cells build from glycine, cysteine and glutamate, and it holds down two jobs at once.

It neutralizes reactive oxygen species directly, and it serves as a Phase 2 conjugation partner, meaning it physically binds certain toxicants so they can be excreted. That second job is why it shows up in every serious conversation about environmental exposure.

While glutathione is available as a supplement, our body actually makes this amazing molecule on its own. We just need to make sure our body is getting the building blocks to do this job. These building blocks include sulfur-containing foods, cruciferous vegetables, alliums (from garlic), and enough protein supply the amino acids that allow glutathione to be built.

Whether glutathione is taken exogenously or made endogenously (inside our body), it can act as a potent antioxidant, which can be of tremendous health when we are under heavy inflammation .

General education, not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before adding in a new supplement to see if it's right for you.

There is a lot of information out there about environmental toxins, and it can be genuinely hard to know what to priorit...
10/07/2026

There is a lot of information out there about environmental toxins, and it can be genuinely hard to know what to prioritize.

So a practical order looks something like this: Indoor air first, because route and duration compound each other there. Then water, guided by what your municipality's consumer confidence report actually shows. Then the daily-contact items: food heated in plastic, personal care products you apply every morning.

So before becoming overwhelmed about all that is out there in the world that my be harmful to our body's - focus on what is at-home first. Your attention is finite, and spending it on frequency gives you more return. The highest-yield changes are also the most ordinary and the most within reach.

Swipe through for the full breakdown. If you want help mapping your own exposure sources, book a discovery call through the link in bio.

Short answer: your body detoxifies continuously, and the useful question is whether that system has what it needs to kee...
10/05/2026

Short answer: your body detoxifies continuously, and the useful question is whether that system has what it needs to keep up.

Your liver, kidneys, gut, lungs and skin run clearance around the clock. This process is always running, so the goal is supporting it rather than starting it. There is more toxins than ever in our environment nowadays so this process tends to benefit from the added support.

It is worth being clear about what "help" means here. Many detox products work by producing an effect you can feel: a laxative herb, a diuretic, a very low calorie window. Feeling something happen and clearing a compound are two different things, and they are easy to conflate.

What genuinely supports clearance is quieter and more structural.
Enough protein, because Phase 2 conjugation runs on amino acids. Cruciferous and allium vegetables, for sulfur and for the compounds that upregulate Phase 2 enzymes. Adequate fiber, because a real fraction of conjugated compounds leave in bile, and certain gut bacteria produce beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme that snips the tag back off and frees the compound for reabsorption. Fiber binds it and carries it out before that happens. Enough water for renal clearance. Sleep, which is when glymphatic clearance (the system that washes waste out of brain tissue) runs hardest.

There is one more variable that deserves more attention than it usually gets: the input side. Reducing what comes in changes measurable body burden faster than anything you can take to speed the exit.

The encouraging part is that every item on that list is already within reach. Sometimes it just can take a bit of work figuring out what applies the most to you as an individual.

If you want to work through your own exposure sources and where your clearance capacity sits, book a discovery call through the link in our bio.

-Dr. Matt Beyer

General education, not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before adding in a new supplement or intervention to see if it's right for you.

Biotransformation is the real name for what is often referred to as detox. This "detox" word is tossed around a lot, but...
10/01/2026

Biotransformation is the real name for what is often referred to as detox.

This "detox" word is tossed around a lot, but here's what it actually means: Your liver takes a fat-soluble compound your body cannot excrete, chemically rearranges it, and attaches something to it that makes it water-soluble. Now your kidneys and your bile can carry it out. You can safely get this compound out of your body.

Hepatic biotransformation or detox happens in two broad phases. Phase 1 uses cytochrome P450 enzymes to crack the molecule open. The intermediate that comes out the other side is often more reactive (meaning potentially more harmful to the body) than the original compound was.

So then phase 2 is the cleanup crew. Glucuronidation, sulfation, glutathione conjugation, methylation, acetylation, and amino acid conjugation each grab that reactive intermediate and neutralize it for exit.

So the clinical question worth asking is whether Phase 2 can keep pace with Phase 1.

Both phases run on raw materials: amino acids like glycine, cysteine and taurine, sulfur from cruciferous and allium vegetables, B vitamins, magnesium, and enough dietary protein to supply all of it. Under-eat protein long enough and you have quietly taken capacity off the table.

Your liver has been doing this every second of your life. With increased toxic exposure in modern ssoceity, the work is making sure it has what it needs and can keep up.

General education, not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare practitioner before adding in a new supplement or intervention to see if it's right for you.

Most people think of handwriting as an old-school skill keyboards made optional.New brain research says otherwise.Resear...
09/30/2026

Most people think of handwriting as an old-school skill keyboards made optional.

New brain research says otherwise.

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology wired up college students with high-density EEG and had them handwrite and type the same words. The difference in brain activity wasn't subtle. Handwriting activated widespread connectivity across the brain, in the exact frequency ranges tied to memory formation and learning. Typing didn't come close.

It's not that keyboards are bad. It's that the brain does more work, more integration between vision, movement, and memory, when the hand is doing the writing.

Small daily choices shape how the brain builds itself. This is one of them.

Is your kid's handwriting practice actually doing something for their brain — or is it just old-school busywork now that...
09/29/2026

Is your kid's handwriting practice actually doing something for their brain — or is it just old-school busywork now that keyboards are everywhere?

New EEG research says it's not busywork. Researchers wired up college students and compared what happens in the brain during handwriting vs. typing. The difference wasn't subtle — handwriting lit up connectivity patterns across the brain tied to memory and learning. Typing barely moved the needle.

It's not about ditching keyboards. It's about knowing when pen-and-paper actually matters — especially while young brains are still building the wiring for how they'll learn for life.

If your child struggles with focus, memory, or learning, it might not be about effort. It could be how their brain is (or isn't) building the right connections.

Address

2777 Finley Road Suite 5
Downers Grove, IL
60515

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10am - 1pm
2pm - 6:30pm
Wednesday 2pm - 6:30pm
Thursday 10am - 1pm
2pm - 6:30pm
Friday 10am - 1pm

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+16309687891

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