Eating Disorder Treatment: A Functional Medicine Approach: Episode Rerun

The Root Cause Medicine Podcast

Kate Kresge

Health & Fitness, Alternative Health, 810564, Medicine

4.8 • 581 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of The Root Cause Medicine Podcast, Dr. James Greenblatt—psychiatrist, educator, and author—shares his personalized, functional medicine approach to supporting individuals with eating disorders. Drawing from over 30 years of clinical experience, Dr. Greenblatt explains how nutrient deficiencies, malnutrition, and genetic individuality play a major role in mental health conditions like anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. He also discusses the importance of lab testing and how personalized supplementation and nutrition strategies can be used alongside therapy and medication. You’ll learn: Why micronutrient testing is important in eating disorder care How deficiencies in zinc, omega-3s, and B vitamins may impact brain function What role genetics, celiac disease, and gut health might play How to use testing to guide individualized support plans Why the “nutrition by addition” approach can be a game-changer for recovery This episode offers a compassionate, science-backed perspective for clinicians, families, and anyone interested in integrative mental health care. Order tests through Rupa Health, the BEST place to order functional medicine lab tests from 30+ labs - https://www.rupahealth.com/reference-guide

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the root cause medicine podcast.
0:03.3	The most important thing I can say is I am confident that someone with binge eating disorder
0:09.3	can completely recover and understand a better relationship with food.
0:16.7	Because different than anorexia nervosa, which is complicated to treat, for those of us in the
0:22.6	field or families, it takes time and energy. Benge eating disorder is just clearly identified as a
0:29.7	brain-based illness, and we have both nutritional interventions and medications to help. And ideally, if we can both use nutrition and medications, we can provide sustained,
0:43.3	lifelong recovery.
0:45.3	That is my message of hope.
0:47.3	Often there are nutritional deficiencies.
0:49.3	We see an D and B12, amino acid deficiencies.
0:57.9	That's step number one, but it's one of the disorders.
1:01.8	I'm not afraid to talk about medications for temporary,
1:03.8	because it might just be three or four months,
1:08.7	to really help someone control this, the appetite disturbance and this inability to have hunger and satiety cues, which most of us can
1:14.4	appreciate. Well, hello there. I'm your host for today, Dr. Kate Kreske, and I am so excited to
1:19.9	bring you today's episode with Dr. James Greenblatt on eating disorders and body image issues.
1:24.8	Now, if you were a loved one has ever struggled with these issues,
1:32.2	you know that the treatment options available right now are mostly pharmaceuticals or therapy.
1:37.6	But there's so much more. And in fact, there's a hidden science about what causes these eating disorders that really hasn't been discussed in the mainstream media. Did you know, for example,
1:42.0	that an omega-3 deficiency can be linked with some of the
1:44.8	body image issues that we see in these disorders? Or that nutrition experts actually refer to
1:50.2	anorexia as malorexia because malnutrition can actually cause anorexia symptoms rather than
	...

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