Mel Hopper Koppelman

If You Care About Health, You Need to Care Deeply About Development

In my practice, I specialize in supporting people to recover from complex chronic health conditions. Things like autoimmunity, Lyme, mold illness, Chronic Fatigue, fibromyalgia, and so on. I was just reading a paper about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which stated that the recovery rate from this condition is 5%. That was

Death by over-simplification

Last week, I posted the following idea on Facebook: "There is no molecule that naturally exists in the body where it is universally helpful to raise or lower it when you have a health problem." Let me give you an example of this. I was just watching an

The Biggest Mistake You're Making With Menopausal Hormone Replacement (MHT) and What to do Instead

The treatment of symptoms arising from the menopausal transition and the prevention of future health problems with menopausal hormone replacement (MHT) are exploding areas of interest these days, which is no bad thing. Women's health has long been neglected by Industrial medicine. For example, it's only

You might not actually be autistic

I've noticed a growing trend of women in their 30's or older being diagnosed in adulthood with autism. (This may very well be a trend with men as well, but I'd like to focus on women here because that's what's

Normal Heart Rate According to Little Ticky Tacky Boxes

I know I go on a lot about the problem with reference ranges in Industrial Medicine, but this isn't a small problem. Let's take a look at the "normal resting heart rate," one of the strongest predictors of heart disease, cancer, all-cause mortality and

The Solar Pendulum

For the past months, I've been enjoying doing a deep dive into the optics of human health and the central role light plays in our health and vitality. It's probably still the most overlooked area of physiology, even in Functional, natural & Chinese medicine. I'

Brain Development Affects Everyone

It strikes me that I should be writing more about the process I'm undergoing, what I've discovered, the changes I'm experiencing. But I don't even know where to start. There are so many distinctions I've made, many with profound importance

When "follow your intuition" is terrible advice

A wise mentor of mine once told me: all advice can be good depending on where you are, your personal context. The key is to understand when the advice is good and when it's not. This can be a real problem if you're looking for wisdom

The Tidal Nature of Blood Flow

There are a few core, basic principles of physiology that are currently outside of the understanding and models of both Industrial Medicine (modern medicine as it's been coopted by industry for profit at the expense of health) and even alternatives to this system, like Functional or Integrative Medicine.

Why the invitation for stillness is refused

We know that without skillfully placed filters in place, modern life is a constant bombardment of demands for attention and energy. Things can be hectic. Responsibilities. Commitments. Juggling what we have to do and what we want to do. And we also have an increasing awareness of the importance of

"Most people would be surprised if they understood how much I struggle" - A Message For the Walking Wounded

A good friend of mine is a bridge engineer and he happened to be assigned to a project close to my home to replace a bridge that I frequently drove over to get to work. "Mel, whatever you do, do not drive over that bridge." My friend wasn&

The Wisdom of Denial

There's a ubiquitous tendency to cast the person in denial in the role of the fool. She has a blindspot that's apparent to everyone except her. She has a problem that she projects onto the world. Like trying to find a "kick me" sign

Garbage in, Garbage out: A Look at Misinterpretations from Oura

This morning, my Oura ring yet again expressed concerned for my well-being. For the past week, my temperature has been higher than baseline, which for Oura means that I'm likely fighting off something nasty and should take it easy. And yet, I feel better in many ways than

The Current Crisis in HRV Wearables, Apps and Research

TLDR: Heart rate variability (HRV) apps and wearable are exploding in popularity and telling people how stressed or recovered they are. But currently, none of them distinguish between being relaxed and recovering from being in a stress or trauma induced shut-down. This is not a subtle distinction and this is

Synthesis Health Lab: If Chinese Medicine and Functional Medicine had a Love Child

Many people are realizing that while Industrial Medicine excels at emergency care, it's not up to the task of managing, let alone reversing complex chronic illness. These are things like autoimmunity, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, chronic infections and many functional mood and digestive orders. And of course in

Holding an Ideal While Respecting Where You Are On Your Healing Path

I'll answer this in a couple of ways. When working with a patient in person, my current teacher (Dr Ed Neal) has us imagine the most beautiful, healthy, vibrant river ecosystem that we can in as much detail as we can. Then we place our hands and awareness

Waves

The Critical Importance of Leveraging Carrier Waves

One of the biggest understandings I gained recently is about the importance of leveraging carrier waves. If you don't, then they can crash on you. Intuitively, we know what a carrier wave is. When we eat, move and live in rhythm with the seasons, we're moving

How Not to Follow Bad Health Advice and The Depressing Issue with the Collagen Supplementation Fad

There's always a whole lot of noise out there when it comes to health trends in the blogosphere. But it's often easy to detect a new signal because I'll get asked about the same thing by three different people within a short period of

Just because cold *can* stimulate the vagus doesn't mean that it *does*

A Look at Thermoregulatory Inversion Key Points * An increasing number of people are turning to cold exposure to improve self-regulation, led by a growing number of health influencers * Typically, cold to the skin triggers a set of reflexes that cause increased heat production and a rise in skin temperature, resulting

Three easy and cheap biomarkers to focus on for optimal health

The other day, I attended a meeting led by a health technologist and researcher. He shared, that in the coming decade, those who are pro-active in taking care of their health will use three key measurements as tools, as it becomes easier and more affordable to measure and interpret the

The most common mistakes I see people make while trying to recover their health

I've been at this a while. Reversing complex chronic illness - both for my own health and that of 100s of patients. I've seen trends come and go and I see a lot of mistakes that very intelligent, well-meaning, driven, determined people make when trying to

Methylation and Autoimmune Disease: What Functional Medicine Gets Wrong

Just because someone has low methylation does not mean that this is the cause of their health problems or that it's helpful to boost methylation with supplements. Let me explain. The other day, I received a newsletter from a well-respected immunology course highlighting a paper on the association

Key References for the Cell Danger Response

I speak a lot about the Cell Danger Response, which is the three step process that all cells go through once triggered by stress, injury or infection in order to heal. This evolutionarily conserved sequence has been developed by Dr Bob Naviaux, MD, PhD and his team and is actually

Leucine: An Interesting Example of the 'Vegetarian Agenda' at Work

I'm far more tolerant of different eating patterns than I was when I first trained in nutrition. Really, if you can mainly eat real food that's not been processed beyond recognition, you're well-ahead of the curve and the specific composition often becomes academic. Especially

How the World Came to Ice

As someone fascinated by the epistemology of medicine, I frequently come across an intriguing, pervasive value judgment that Industrial Medicine inflicts on traditional methods of caring for the sick, which is that direct observation and anecdote is to be scorned and rejected, even if it constitutes billions of observation points