Professional Training Program

Women and Autoimmunity: Understanding the Connection and Targeting Treatment

September 12, 2018

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine presents a free Food As Medicine for Women’s Health webinar presented by Susan Blum. Hosted by CMBM’s Food As Medicine Education Director, Kathie Madonna Swift, MS, RDN, LDN, this webinar will cover the latest connections between hormones, autoimmunity, and women’s health and wellness. This webinar was presented on September 12, 2018.

About the Webinar

In this webinar, Dr Blum will review the underlying triggers for autoimmunity, including hormonal issues specific to women. She will explain how to begin healing your immune system using food, mind-body medicine, healing the gut microbiome, supporting detoxification, and balancing hormones.

This webinar presented by noted dietitian nutritionist, Susan Blum, MD, MPH is the first in a series of Food As Medicine webinars presented by the Center for Mind-Body Medicine and hosted by leading nutrition author, speaker and integrative nutritionist Kathie Madonna Swift, MS, RDN, LDN.

Learning Objectives

During this webinar, you will learn:

  1. Why estrogen is a powerful immunomodulator.
  2. The role of hormones in driving autoimmunity and how to re-balance them to improve immune health.
  3. How food triggers inflammation and the best guidelines for choosing food.
  4. The importance of the gut microbiome in driving immune issues, and how to heal your gut.
  5. The role of toxins and infections in triggering autoimmunity and what you can do to lower your toxin load and treat infections.

About the Presenter, Susan Blum, MD, MPH

Susan Blum, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She has been treating, healing and preventing chronic diseases for nearly two decades. A Preventive Medicine and Chronic Disease Specialist, Dr. Blum is the Founder and Director of Blum Center for Health in Rye Brook, New York, where she leads a multi-specialty team of physicians, nurse practitioners, nutritionists and health coaches, all providing cutting edge Functional and Integrative Medicine services.

Susan BlumIn her first best-selling book, The Immune System Recovery Plan(Scribner; 2013), Dr. Blum offers her four-step program, which she has used to help thousands of patients recover from autoimmune and immune-related conditions without medication. Dr. Blum’s second book, Healing Arthritis (Scribner; 2017) offers a ground-breaking approach to helping arthritis sufferers reverse and heal this condition.

Dr. Blum is Board Certified in Preventive Medicine and Certified in both Functional Medicine and Integrative and Holistic Medicine. She is a member of the Medical Advisory Board for The Dr. Oz Show, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and is Senior Teaching Faculty with the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C. and teaches throughout the world in their training programs. She is also on the Board of Directors for the True Health Initiative, and on the Scientific Advisory Board for Genomind, a Medical Biotech Company.

Dr. Blum approaches medicine—and her life—from a whole-body perspective, incorporating all facets of wellness into every aspect. Following her passion for nutrition, she co-founded Organic Pharmer, a grab-and-go, functional food and juice eatery, with delivery available nationwide, and puts these principles into practice by beginning each day with a 20-minute meditation, a green smoothie made from the contents of her garden and a walk on her country road with her dog, Trixie.

About the Host, Kathie Madonna Swift, MS, RDN, LDN

Kathie Swift, MS, RDN, LDN, FAND, EBQ  is the co-founder of the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy, www.IFNAcademy.com, a comprehensive, online, educational program for dietitians interested in functional medicine.

CMBM Food As Medicine faculty and director Kathie Madonna SwiftShe received her Master of Science  in Nutrition from Arizona State University and has held diverse positions throughout her career. Kathie pioneered innovative nutrition programs at Canyon Ranch Health Resorts, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Dr. Mark Hyman’s UltraWellness Center and continues to consult at all three organizations today.

Notable in her dietetic career, Kathie has served as the Education Director for the Center for Mind Body Medicine’s highly acclaimed “Food As Medicine” professional training program for almost two decades. She is a contributing author for medical textbooks including  Integrative Gastroenterology  and  Integrative Women’s Health published by Oxford University Press and the clinical nutrition textbook  Krause’s Food & Nutrition Care Process.  She  serves on the Advisory Board for Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal and the Integrative Healthcare Symposium. Kathie is a scientific reviewer for  Military Medicine  and was a founding member of the Nutrition Advisory Board for the Institute for Functional Medicine.

For her many years of service and dedication to advancing the field of integrative and functional medicine, Kathie received the first Visionary Leadership Award and more recently, the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Dietitians in Integrative and Functional Medicine Dietetic Practice Group.

Kathie is the co-author of  The Inside Tract: Your Good Gut Guide to Health with Dr. Gerard Mullin. Her most recent book,  The Swift Diet: 4 Weeks to Mend the Belly, Lose the Weight, and Get Rid of the Bloat, with co-author Joseph Hooper features the latest science on the microbiome. Connect with Kathie at www.kathieswift.com.