The landscape of neurocognitive disorders is shifting. With someone in the United States diagnosed with a neurodegenerative condition roughly every three seconds, and Alzheimer's now ranking among the leading causes of death, the assumption that these are purely genetic conditions no longer holds. A near geometric rise in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Lewy body dementia, and related disorders points toward environmental and metabolic drivers. For integrative and functional clinicians, this represents both an intellectual frontier and a clinical responsibility. This course brings together mitochondrial dysfunction, hormone decline, metabolic syndrome, and toxic exposure into a single coherent model of neurodegeneration.

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You already think in systems. This training sharpens that instinct by giving you a structured framework for the aging brain. You will examine how glucose driven metabolism destabilizes neural networks, why a ketogenic and beta hydroxybutyrate approach supports neuronal energetics, and how the critical middle age window overlaps with declining testosterone, rising insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome. You will explore the direct effect of steroid hormones on mitochondrial biogenesis through PGC1 alpha, the microglial activation cascade, and the iceberg model linking Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and multiple sclerosis as differential expressions of shared mitochondrial pathology. You will also learn why amyloid is a response rather than a root cause, and how that reframing changes clinical strategy.

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This course is designed for licensed clinicians who evaluate and support patients facing cognitive decline, movement disorders, and complex metabolic presentations. If you are already seeing these patients, or anticipating the wave as your population ages, you will gain diagnostic and interpretive tools you can apply immediately. You will learn to screen with cognitive domain testing, interpret testosterone and prolactin as markers of hypothalamic pituitary feedback, assess toxin panels including PFAs, glyphosate, bisphenol, and ochratoxin, and recognize the role of lipopolysaccharide and dysbiosis in leaky gut and leaky brain. From there you build individualized detoxification, hormone support, nutritional, and resistance training strategies grounded in the underlying energetics.

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Your instructor is Dr. Victor Carsrud, a functional internist with a PhD in nutritional endocrinology focused on endogenous steroidogenesis. He serves as head of functional medicine and health innovation with Breather May Technologies, holds leadership roles with the ACA College of Diagnosis and Internal Disorders and the Cooperative Board of Clinical Nutrition, and serves as associate editor for the International Global Medical Researchers Consortium. Having published roughly two hundred papers in recent years and drawn into this field through personal experience with a family member's neurodegenerative disease, he teaches with both scientific rigor and clinical realism. This course reflects that blend, offering a framework that elevates how you understand, investigate, and address the aging brain.