Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM

Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM I help people with chronic conditions get their life back.

My goal is to help you get back what you’ve lost - the ability to play with your grandkids without pain, get back to exercising (golf, tennis, CrossFit etc), or just simply being able to walk to the mailbox without excruciating pain.

Pain doesn’t happen on an MRI.Pain happens in a person.The best clinicians I’ve learned from never started with just loo...
07/27/2026

Pain doesn’t happen on an MRI.

Pain happens in a person.

The best clinicians I’ve learned from never started with just looking a a picture of a static moment in time. they started by listening, examining, and asking questions.

Because the goal isn’t to treat a picture.

It’s to help people get back to living the life they want.

Sometimes the answer is exactly where the MRI says it is.

Sometimes it isn’t.

That’s why every patient deserves more than a diagnosis, you deserve an examination.

The biggest lesson I learned working with professional athletes had nothing to do with sports.It was that performance ma...
07/25/2026

The biggest lesson I learned working with professional athletes had nothing to do with sports.

It was that performance matters.

For some people, performance means pitching in the big leagues.

For others, it means lifting a child, finishing a workout, working a full day, or getting through a road trip without their back flaring up.

Your body doesn’t know the difference.

It only knows the demands you’re placing on it.

That’s why I don’t treat “athletes” differently than everyone else.

I treat people who want to get back to doing what matters most to them.

Because at the end of the day…

Your sport is life. And you deserve to perform like it.

07/15/2026

Your body is constantly adapting… until it can’t.

These adaptions keep you functioning… until they don’t.

Here’s my biggest lesson after 35000 treatments. Don’t just treat where it hurts.

You don’t just extinguish pain. You have to restore adaptive potential. Or pain just keeps coming back.

06/03/2026

The most common things I see in clinic are not rare, exotic conditions.

They are the everyday symptoms that slowly take over someone’s life: bloating, reflux, fatigue, anxiety, stress, irregular cycles, missing periods, cycles that are too long, cycles that are too short, PMS, painful periods, random aches, poor sleep, and the sense that your body is just not working the way it should.

And this is exactly where regular medicine often struggles.

Not because doctors do not care. Most of them do. But the system is not built for patterns. It is built for categories.

So if you have reflux, you get sent to GI. If your cycle is off, you get sent to OB-GYN. If you are dizzy, maybe neurology. If you are anxious, maybe psychiatry. If you are fatigued, maybe your labs are run, and if nothing dramatic shows up, you are told everything looks normal.

Then each specialist looks at their little section of the body.

The stomach doctor looks at the stomach. The hormone doctor looks at the hormones. The neurologist looks at the nervous system. The psychiatrist looks at mood. The primary care doctor tries to coordinate it all in a 10-minute visit.

But nobody is really looking at the whole pattern.

Nobody is asking why the reflux, anxiety, fatigue, and irregular cycle might be connected. Nobody is asking what the body is trying to communicate as a system. Nobody is asking what needs to happen first.

So people end up with referral after referral and medication after medication. Acid blockers. Birth control. Anti-anxiety medication. Sleep medication. Pain medication. Maybe something for nausea. Maybe something for inflammation.

And sometimes those things are necessary. Sometimes they help. But very often, they do not answer the deeper question.

Why is the body expressing this pattern?

Then some people make it to functional medicine. And at first, it feels like a breath of fresh air because finally someone is talking about the gut, inflammation, hormones, stress, nutrients, detox, mitochondria, and root causes.

But then another version of the same problem often shows up.

Now the labs are more expensive. The supplements are more natural. The language sounds more holistic. But many people still end up with a generalized protocol. A gut protocol. A hormone protocol. A detox protocol. An adrenal protocol. A methylation protocol.

They spend $3,000 on testing, another $1,000 on supplements, and six months later they are still taking a pile of pills without really understanding what changed or why.

That is not true personalization.

That is just a more complicated version of “test it, name it, blame it, treat it.”

I take a different approach.

In Eastern Medicine, we are not only looking for a diagnosis. We are looking for a pattern of dysfunction. We are looking at how the whole ecosystem is behaving.

Is the body hot or cold? Damp or dry? Stuck or depleted? Overactive or underpowered? Is digestion weak? Is the nervous system locked in threat? Is circulation poor? Is the body trying to clear something? Is it too exhausted to rebuild? Is the terrain inflamed, congested, stagnant, or unable to transform what it is taking in?

This is why symptoms that seem unrelated often make sense when you look at the pattern.

Bloating and fatigue may be connected. Reflux and anxiety may be connected. PMS and poor digestion may be connected. Painful periods and poor circulation may be connected. Stress and cycle changes may be connected.

The body is not separated into departments.

It is one living system.

And when you understand the pattern, the plan becomes more specific. Not because we are chasing every symptom, and not because we are throwing a giant protocol at the body, but because we are asking better questions.

What is the body showing us? What needs to change first? What input is most appropriate right now? How do we know if it is working? What do we adjust if the body reacts poorly? When is it time to move on?

That is what personalized medicine should mean.

Not just different supplements for different labs.

A clear understanding of the pattern, the terrain, and the next right step.

A diagnosis can feel like relief.Especially after years of being dismissed.Mast cell activation.Fibromyalgia.Autoimmune ...
05/24/2026

A diagnosis can feel like relief.

Especially after years of being dismissed.

Mast cell activation.
Fibromyalgia.
Autoimmune disease.
Chronic fatigue.
Chronic inflammation.

Finally, there is a name for the suffering.

But the label can become a cage when it starts explaining everything.

Every flare becomes “just my condition.”

Every bad day becomes “just how my body is.”

Every symptom becomes proof that nothing can change.

But a diagnosis is not the whole map.

It names the pattern.

It does not always tell you what is triggering it, feeding it, calming it, or keeping the system stuck.

Your body may be overwhelmed.

But overwhelmed is not the same as hopeless.

Comment CALM and I’ll send you where to start.

05/24/2026

When a Diagnosis Becomes a Cage

A diagnosis can be helpful.

It can give a name to something that has felt confusing, scary, invisible, or dismissed for years. It can help someone feel validated. It can point them toward care. It can explain patterns that finally start to make sense.

But a diagnosis can also become a cage.

I see this all the time.

Someone is told, “You have arthritis,” and suddenly every pain is filtered through the belief that their joints are permanently broken.

Someone is told, “You have anxiety,” and suddenly every sensation in their body becomes proof that their nervous system cannot be trusted.

Someone is told, “You have PCOS,” and suddenly irregular cycles, fertility struggles, weight changes, and hormone symptoms become part of a fixed identity instead of a changing pattern.

Someone is told, “You have degeneration,” and they start believing their only option is to slowly decline.

This is the danger.

A diagnosis can explain what is happening, but it does not always explain why it is happening. It can describe a pattern, but it does not always describe the full ecology of the person. It can name the current state, but it does not necessarily define the future.

The problem is that many people unconsciously turn a diagnosis into a life sentence.

They stop asking better questions.

They stop looking for leverage.

They stop observing change.

They stop believing the system can reorganize.

But the body is not a static object. It is alive. It adapts. It compensates. It responds to input. It changes with sleep, stress, movement, food, sunlight, inflammation, circulation, nervous system state, digestion, relationships, trauma, environment, and time.

This does not mean every condition disappears. It does not mean mindset fixes everything. And it definitely does not mean people should ignore real medical findings.

It means we need to hold diagnosis properly.

A diagnosis should be a starting point, not a ceiling.

It should help us ask better questions, not shut the conversation down.

What is driving this pattern? What makes it better or worse? What systems are involved? What is excess? What is depleted? What is stuck? What is the body protecting? What kind of environment is this condition living in?

Because once a diagnosis becomes your identity, it limits your imagination.

And healing often begins when you realize:

“This is what I have been told I have.”

Not:

“This is all I can become.”

05/22/2026

Your body is constantly giving you feedback. The problem is that most of us were never taught how to read it. Or how to self experiement in a thoughtful way.

We live in a world obsessed with lab tests, wearables, scans, protocols, supplements, and expert opinions. And those things can be useful. But we also have an enormous amount of information built into us already. Energy levels, sleep quality, appetite, cravings, bowel movements, urination, mood, pain, temperature, menstrual cycles, stress response, resting heart rate, and even the tongue are all forms of feedback.

These are built-in biomarkers. They are not random little details. They are signals from the internal ecosystem.

One of the richest examples is the tongue. In Chinese medicine, the tongue is like a small window into the terrain of the body. Its color, coating, moisture, cracks, shape, swelling, scalloping, redness, paleness, and texture can all give clues about digestion, fluids, heat, cold, dampness, stagnation, depletion, inflammation, circulation, and the deeper state of the gut biome. A thick coating tells a different story than a peeled tongue. A pale swollen tongue tells a different story than a red dry tongue. These details matter because the body is always expressing its internal environment on the surface.

Resting heart rate is another example. Resting heart rate can also give us insight into the nervous system. When someone is living in chronic fight, flight, or freeze, the heart often reflects that. From a polyvagal perspective, we can think about whether the body is spending more time in protection or connection. Is the system stuck in sympathetic drive? Is it dropping into dorsal vagal shutdown? Does it have enough ventral vagal tone to feel safe, social, connected, and regulated? The heart is not just a pump. It is part of a larger rhythm between the brain, breath, vagus nerve, and body.

For women, the monthly cycle is another incredible feedback loop. A regular ovulation, healthy flow, stable mood, minimal pain, good cervical mucus, and a strong luteal phase all tell us something about the body’s energy, blood, hormones, stress response, nourishment, inflammation, and overall terrain. The cycle is not an inconvenience. It is a monthly report card from the ecosystem.

The same is true for bowel movements, urination, thirst, cravings, sleep, temperature, skin, pain, and energy. If we ignore these signals, they become background noise. But if we learn to observe them, they become a language.

Once we observe a baseline internal biomarker, we can do something and see how it changes - ideally we are looking at clusters of these built in biomarkers and seeing how they shift. Sometimes it’s in the right direction and sometimes it’s not. It’s never “wrong” or “bad” - these moments are pieces of information. It directs us in what to do next.

The skill is learning how to observe your own body, give it a meaningful input, and then watch how it responds. Your body is not silent. It is speaking all day long.

The question is whether you know how to listen and have an idea of how to give it inputs that can move you towards the path of your goal.

Often times it takes a guide or someone who has navigated the river before to help you do that. I’ve been getting a lot of messages lately - don’t worry! I’m working hard behind the scenes here to create a container to help guide you and help you learn how to navigate complex health issues and really take ownership over your health! So keep posted, in the next couple of weeks I’ll have a lot more information :).

05/20/2026

I had a conversation with a patient today that reminded me of something I see all the time.

She had a little bit of everything going on: pain that moved around her body, foods she suddenly couldn’t tolerate, a stomach that never felt right, getting sick all the time, trouble swallowing food and pills, dizziness when she stood up, and random symptoms that didn’t seem to fit neatly into one box.

And like most people who end up in this situation, she had already tried everything. She listened to the podcasts. She bought the supplements. She changed her diet. She spent thousands of dollars on functional medicine. She had been given theories, protocols, lab results, supplement stacks, and plenty of explanations.

But she still had no real sense of what was happening in her body.

The one detail that stood out to me was that all of this started after three rounds of antibiotics about five years ago. And I’m not saying antibiotics are “bad.” Sometimes they are absolutely necessary.

But when someone tells me their health changed after multiple rounds of antibiotics, and now they have food sensitivities, stomach issues, chronic inflammation, random pains, frequent illness, dizziness, and a body that seems to react to everything, I start thinking less about one single diagnosis and more about the environment of the body.

Because this is where people get lost.

They think the answer is going to be one missing supplement, one hidden infection, one lab marker, one probiotic, one detox protocol, one perfect diet, one root cause.

But the body doesn’t fall apart like that.

It loses order.

The immune system stops being specific. It starts reacting to things it should tolerate and missing things it should handle. Food starts to feel like a threat. The gut becomes irritable and leaky. The nervous system gets jumpy. Inflammation stays turned on in the background. Pain starts moving around. The whole system becomes more sensitive, more reactive, and less resilient.

This is not just a “gut problem.”

It is an ecosystem problem.

And ecosystems have rules.

It’s all temperature and moisture.

You cannot grow a rainforest plant in a hot, dry desert. And desert plants don’t do well or survive in humid, moist, damp environments.

The temperature is wrong. The moisture is wrong. The soil is wrong. The signals are wrong. The environment cannot support the life you are trying to grow.

The same thing happens in the body.

So if you try to give it the wrong food, the wrong lifestyle, the wrong supplements, the wrong herbs for it’s current ecosystem then things go wonky.

You can’t force the system to behave. You have to nudge the ecosystem.

If the internal environment is inflamed, reactive, poorly regulated, and hostile, the body will not hold the change.

You can take the probiotic. You can take the gut powder. You can take the binder. You can take the immune supplement. You can take the histamine supplement. You can take the adrenal support.

And some of it may help for a little while.

But if the ecosystem is still wrong, you are trying to plant seeds in soil that cannot receive them.

This is why order matters.

Before you rebuild, you have to understand what the body is still fighting. Before you nourish, you have to understand what the body cannot tolerate. Before you add more, you have to understand why the system is reacting to everything.

Before you chase the next supplement, you have to ask why the environment became so unstable in the first place.

That is the part modern health advice often misses.

It gives people more inputs. More supplements. More protocols. More labs. More podcasts. More explanations.

But not always a better way to know what matters first.

The question is not: “What else should I take?”

The better question is: “What kind of environment is my body living in right now?”

Is it inflamed? Is it reactive? Is it depleted? Is it stuck? Is it trying to clear something? Is it unable to digest and transform what I am giving it?

Because the body is not a machine where you swap out a part and everything works again.

It is an ecosystem.

And when an ecosystem gets disrupted, you don’t fix it by dumping random ingredients into it.

You restore the conditions that allow it to regulate again.

That is the difference between chasing symptoms and understanding the terrain.

Sometimes healing is not about forcing the body to do more.

Sometimes it is about changing the environment so the body finally feels safe enough to stop fighting everything.

Address

1202 W. Linebaugh Avenue
Tampa, FL
33612

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 9am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 4:30pm
Thursday 9am - 4:30pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Dr. Josh Hanson, DACM:

Shortcuts

Share

Category