Richmond Integrative and Functional Medicine

Richmond Integrative and Functional Medicine Aaron Hartman, MD
Restoring health & hope with science-backed solutions and innovative healthcare.

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Your palpitations, your bloating, your insomnia, and your anxiety might all be the same injury.Here's something most peo...
07/29/2026

Your palpitations, your bloating, your insomnia, and your anxiety might all be the same injury.

Here's something most people never hear: your brain is wired to your heart, your gut, and your hormones by a single nerve, the vagus nerve. So when you take a hard hit to the head, the damage doesn't stay in your head. It travels.

It shows up as a heart that races at night, a stomach that suddenly reacts to food it never used to, a mood that isn't yours, sleep that won't come.

Four different doctors call it four different problems. On the vagus nerve, it's one.

And if you're a woman who got told it was just your hormones, just stress, just anxiety, this one's especially for you.

Read the full article: https://richmondfunctionalmedicine.com/concussion-symptoms

Back in 2002, researchers hooked people up to an EEG right after a concussion and found something wild: the brain’s elec...
07/22/2026

Back in 2002, researchers hooked people up to an EEG right after a concussion and found something wild: the brain’s electrical pattern looked almost exactly like the pattern you see after a seizure.

A concussion isn’t just “getting your bell rung.” At the moment of impact, thousands of neurons fire off at once, like a tiny electrical storm. That’s why the aftermath (the fog, the confusion, the memory gaps, the sensitivity) looks so much like what a person goes through coming out of a seizure.

It also explains something patients never get told: why an injury that looked minor can leave you off for months, and why the fixes that help are things like magnesium and calming the system down, not just “rest and wait.”

Dr. Aaron Hartman kicks off a new series on concussion and brain injury by explaining what’s actually happening inside your head, and why there’s real reason for hope once you understand it.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/what-a-concussion-actually-is

If you have long COVID, you’ve probably wondered: if something out there actually helps, why hasn’t anyone handed it to ...
07/15/2026

If you have long COVID, you’ve probably wondered: if something out there actually helps, why hasn’t anyone handed it to me yet?

Here’s the uncomfortable answer: The best tools we have usually aren’t the newest discoveries. They’re old, off-patent drugs that already work, sitting in a long waiting room between “we know this helps” and “you’re officially allowed to have it.” Not because anyone’s hiding a cure, but because the machine that approves treatments runs on patents, and nobody funds a big trial for a drug they can’t own.

Dr. Aaron Hartman walks through how that gap actually works, why repurposing is normal medicine, where peptides fit in, and how to be an informed advocate without going off the rails. It’s the last piece in our long COVID series.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/long-covid-off-label-treatments

Most people with long COVID have been told the same thing: manage your symptoms, wait it out, we’ll see how you feel in ...
07/09/2026

Most people with long COVID have been told the same thing: manage your symptoms, wait it out, we’ll see how you feel in a few months.

Here’s what doesn’t add up about that. There’s a long list of therapies that have worked, sometimes dramatically, in real exam rooms. Low-dose naltrexone. Microdosed GLP-1s. Mast cell stabilizers. Phospholipid infusions. Almost none of it was designed for long COVID, which is exactly why it flies under the radar.

Dr. Aaron Hartman and Dr. Christian Jenski walk through what they’ve actually reached for, and what happened when they did. It’s not a promise that long COVID is solved. It’s the end of “there’s nothing left to try.”

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/long-covid-treatment-options

🚨 What if "incurable" isn't the whole story?Have you ever been told..."There's nothing more we can do for you."For many ...
07/08/2026

🚨 What if "incurable" isn't the whole story?

Have you ever been told...
"There's nothing more we can do for you."

For many people living with chronic illness, autoimmune conditions, Lyme disease, long COVID, persistent fatigue, or unexplained symptoms, that sentence feels like a very frustrating dead end.

Maybe it’s really a beginning…of asking different questions?

🎙️On this week’s episode of Salad With a Side of Fries , Jenn sits down Salad With a Side of Friesnctional medicine physician and author of Uncurable, to explore why many diagnoses aren't as hopeless as they seem.

Inside this episode, we discuss:
✨ Why "incurable" doesn't always mean untreatable
🧠 The surprising connection between your gut, brain, immune system, and nervous system
😴 Why sleep, stress, and gut health are the foundation of healing
🥗 The small lifestyle changes that can have a powerful impact on long-term health
💚 How to become an active participant in your own healing

If you've ever felt dismissed, frustrated, or like you're running out of answers, this conversation is for you.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, or tap the link in the comment section.

👇 Have you ever been told, "Everything looks normal," while you still didn't feel well? Share your experience below.

You and a friend caught the same virus. Months later, you've ended up with two completely different illnesses. Why?One o...
07/01/2026

You and a friend caught the same virus. Months later, you've ended up with two completely different illnesses. Why?

One of you has brain fog and crashes after a short walk. The other has a racing heart, rashes, reactions to foods that used to be fine. Same trigger, two illnesses that look nothing alike.

Here's what changes everything once you see it: long COVID was never one disease. It's more like a recipe than a diagnosis. The same handful of biological mechanisms, in different amounts, in different people. Dr. Aaron Hartman and Dr. Christian Jenski explain why that reframe is where real answers finally start.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/long-covid-not-one-disease

Long COVID clinics are closing. NIH wound down its recovery initiative. Zero approved therapies after a billion dollars ...
06/24/2026

Long COVID clinics are closing. NIH wound down its recovery initiative. Zero approved therapies after a billion dollars spent.

But 17–23 million Americans are still sick.

My colleague Dr. Christian Jenski and I have been seeing these patients since May 2020… before the term “long hauler” even existed. And what I keep telling people is: this isn’t a new disease. The pattern goes back over a century. We saw it after the Russian flu. We saw it after the Spanish flu. Medicine has been cycling through this category of patient: same person, different label.

The clinics closed. We didn’t.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/why-are-long-covid-clinics-closing

I re-sourced my GLP-1s for the third time in three months last week.Not because the compounds changed. Not because anyon...
06/17/2026

I re-sourced my GLP-1s for the third time in three months last week.

Not because the compounds changed. Not because anyone demonstrated harm. Because a compounding pharmacy stopped shipping to Virginia, then the rules shifted again.

Meanwhile, my patient in California can walk into a v**e shop and buy the same compounds off the street.

That contrast is the whole story.

After 20 years of using peptides clinically — first in the military, then in functional medicine practice — I've watched the regulatory system create something it was designed to prevent: a landscape where the safest path is the hardest to access, and the most dangerous path is the easiest.

The new article explains how it happened, what the Category 1/2/3 system actually means, and what responsible clinical practice looks like inside this broken landscape.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/peptide-regulation-access

You've done the work. Clean diet. Sleep addressed. Gut protocol done. Stress managed.And you're still not recovering the...
06/10/2026

You've done the work. Clean diet. Sleep addressed. Gut protocol done. Stress managed.

And you're still not recovering the way you should.

Here's what I've learned treating this pattern for twenty years: the problem often isn't structural. It's about signaling. Your body still has most of the materials it needs for repair. What it's lost is the coordination — the molecular communication that tells those materials where to go, when to activate, and when to stand down.

This article explains the compounds I reach for when foundational work alone isn't enough.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/peptide-therapy-for-healing

You’ve heard about peptides. Maybe from a bodybuilder or anti-aging influencer. Maybe from someone who swears they’re mi...
06/03/2026

You’ve heard about peptides. Maybe from a bodybuilder or anti-aging influencer. Maybe from someone who swears they’re miraculous and someone else who says they’re dangerous.

Here’s the thing nobody in that conversation is telling you: your body has been making peptides continuously since before you were born. Your gut produces them after every meal. They’re in the food you eat. Your cells use them to coordinate repair.

So the real question isn’t whether peptides are safe. It’s whether you understand what they actually are.

https://RichmondFunctionalMedicine.com/what-are-peptides

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