The Ultimate Vitamin D Guide: Best Dose, Sun Exposure, and Common Mistakes

Your Pharmacist's Role Is Bigger Than Prescriptions w/ Lauren Castle

Most people still picture pharmacists as the people behind the counter, filling prescriptions, checking interactions, and putting pills in bottles. But the truth is, a growing number of pharmacists are asking a much bigger question: what if the answer isn't always another drug? For a long time, modern medicine has trained us to treat symptoms in isolation, but sometimes, the symptom is not the problem. It's the body's way of telling us something deeper is out of balance. What's interesting is that pharmacy didn't begin with synthesized drugs pulled off a shelf. Historically, pharmacists worked with plants, herbs, compounds, powders, tinctures, and preparations. They understood medicine as something closer to the intersection of nature, chemistry, and the body. In many ways, the rise of the functional pharmacist isn't a rejection of pharmacy. It's a return to the deeper roots of it. We're now in an era where functional pharmacists can help bridge traditional herbal approaches, modern science, nutrition, medications, supplements, lifestyle, and root-cause care. Not in a way that dismisses medicine, but in a way that asks: where is medicine needed, and where can we use lifestyle, nutrition, stress reduction, gut support, and targeted natural therapies to help the body heal? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Lauren Castle, PharmD, functional medicine practitioner, founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, and board member of the Psychedelic Pharmacists Association. She shares how her husband's health struggles first opened her eyes to functional medicine, how her own hormone and grief journey changed the way she understands healing, and why functional pharmacists may become one of the most important members of a patient's care team in the future. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Symptoms aren't the problem… they're the signal We're often trained to lower the number, quiet the symptom, or add the next medication. But what changes when we ask what the body is trying to tell us? Pharmacists belong in functional medicine Pharmacists understand medications, supplements, interactions, biochemistry, and therapeutic decisions. So why aren't they more often treated as part of the root-cause care team? Your body may not be broken; it may be protecting you Hormone issues, burnout, amenorrhea, anxiety, and fatigue can look like dysfunction. But what if the body is responding intelligently to stress, under-fueling, grief, or unsafe conditions? Plant medicine is not "just herbs" From oregano and berberine to psychedelics and pharmaceutical compounds derived from nature, plant medicine sits at the origin of pharmacy. How do we use these tools responsibly without dismissing their power? Psychedelics are not magic pills Psychedelic therapies may hold promise for trauma, PTSD, addiction, and mental health, but they require preparation, supervision, and integration. What does safe, ethical use actually look like? PS. If you enjoy the show, remember to leave a review on your favorite podcast app! Reviews help the podcast reach a wider audience and help more people. Guest Bio Dr. Lauren Castle is a PharmD, functional medicine practitioner, and founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, the first professional organization representing pharmacists in functional medicine, now nearly 5,000 strong. She holds a Master of Science in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, is certified through the School of Applied Functional Medicine, and sits on the board of directors of the Psychedelic Pharmacists Association. To learn more, visit fmpha.org [http://fmpha.org] and drlaurencastle.com [http://drlaurencastle.com]. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com [https://thetrustedpharmacist.com] and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

The Ultimate Vitamin D Guide: Best Dose, Sun Exposure, and Common Mistakes

Vitamin D is a hot topic right now. Everyone's talking about it and supplementing with it, and I get countless questions on social media and in the pharmacy. "Am I taking enough?" "Is the specific dose I was told to take on social media better?" "Should I take D2 or D3?" Even though everyone's talking about Vitamin D, it's still so heavily misunderstood, and it starts with what people think it is. It's not just the bone vitamin; it's not really a vitamin at all. It works more like a pro-hormone, influencing immune function, hormones, metabolic health, brain health, inflammation, and thousands of processes across the body. And that's why it's so critical, and easy to get wrong. The first mistake people make: Thinking there's one dose of vitamin D for everyone. The truth is, vitamin D is very individualized; the dose you need is affected by everything from where you live, your skin tone, and how old you are. So you have to know your number and test your levels to see what your body actually needs. The second mistake is thinking you can take Vitamin D in isolation for it to work. To work effectively, Vitamin D actually relies on key co-factors like magnesium and vitamin K2, so if you're not also supporting those nutrients, you could be missing out on the full benefit. So how do you supplement your Vitamin D the right way? How do you know what to buy? In this episode, I walk through the truth about Vitamin D: why deficiency is so common, why "normal" levels are not always optimal, and why the safest approach is to test, dose, and retest instead of guessing. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Vitamin D is not just about bones Vitamin D acts more like a pro-hormone than a simple vitamin. What are all the crucial functions in our bodies that it supports? What are we missing when we only think of it as a bone-health supplement? Your Vitamin D dose should be based on testing, not guessing The same dose can produce very different blood levels in different people. How do you know whether your supplement is actually working? "Normal" Vitamin D is not always optimal What range of vitamin D should you be aiming for if your goal is optimization? Vitamin D can't work alone Magnesium helps activate vitamin D, while K2 helps direct calcium into the right places instead of soft tissues or arteries. So if you're taking vitamin D but not seeing results, what else might your body be missing? P.S. Are you looking for a high-quality Vitamin D supplement you can trust? Get our Vitamin D3 5000IU: https://magnoliapharmacy.com/products/vitamin-d3-5000iu [https://magnoliapharmacy.com/products/vitamin-d3-5000iu] About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com [https://thetrustedpharmacist.com] and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

GI Doc Reveals Why Your Gut Test May Be Misleading w/ Dr. Vivian Asamoah

Gut health is one of the most talked-about areas of wellness…but it's also still one of the most misunderstood. Right now, it's very easy for someone to order a stool test, get a long report back, see a list of bacteria, parasites, yeast, or "imbalances." But here's the problem: more data doesn't always mean more clarity. And when we treat gut health the same way conventional medicine often treats symptoms, we end up recreating the exact problem we were trying to solve. Because the gut is not static. It changes with food, stress, sleep, circadian rhythm, trauma, hormones, environment, and even the season of life someone is in. A single test may give us useful information, but it cannot tell the whole story. And if we're not careful, we can become so focused on fixing the numbers that we miss the person sitting in front of us. So instead of asking, "What does this test say?" we have to ask, "What question are we trying to answer?" In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Vivian Asamoah, a triple board-certified gastroenterologist trained at Johns Hopkins who went beyond conventional GI care to pursue integrative medicine. She now leads Houston Gastro Institute and an integrative functional GI practice, where she helps patients look beyond "normal" test results and get to the deeper patterns driving their symptoms. We get into why microbiome testing has limitations, what comprehensive stool testing can actually reveal, how trauma and stress affect the gut, and why PPIs are more complicated than people think. Things You'll Learn In This Episode A gut test is only a snapshot, not the whole story Your gut can shift based on what you eat and sleep, your stress levels, and even your circadian rhythm. How does current gut testing miss this? The real question is not "What test should I take?" Testing only matters when it answers a clear clinical question and changes the next step in care. So before ordering another lab, what should patients and practitioners be asking first? Gut symptoms can start outside the gut Trauma, grief, perimenopause, and nervous system dysregulation can all shape digestive health. What happens when we stop treating gut symptoms in isolation and start looking at the full timeline of a patient's life? The truth about PPIs Acid-suppressing medications like Nexium, omeprazole, and pantoprazole have become really popular. How do we know when acid suppression is necessary and when lifestyle, nutrition, and root-cause work should come first? Guest Bio Dr. Vivian Asamoah is a triple board-certified gastroenterologist who trained at Johns Hopkins and did something that most GI doctors would never do. She went further. She pursued an integrative medicine certification because she realized conventional training alone just wasn't actually enough to fix her patients. She now runs Houston Gastro Institute and has built one of the most unique root-cause GI practices in the country. To learn more, visit https://www.houstongastroinstitute.com/ [https://www.houstongastroinstitute.com/] or follow Dr. Asamoah on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/drvivianasamoah/] and TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.vivianasamoah/]. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com [https://thetrustedpharmacist.com] and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

The Real Reason Antidepressants Aren't Fixing Your Brain Fog, Fatigue, and Gut Issues w/ Dr. Sakina Davis

When a woman is dealing with brain fog, gut issues, irritability, and just not feeling like herself… There are usually two paths she ends up taking. The first is the conventional healthcare one. A ten-minute doctor's visit, a quick look at basic labs, and then a prescription (often including an antidepressant) before being sent on her way. But here's the problem: that path never gets to the root cause. Because when a woman presents with a cluster of symptoms like fatigue, mood changes, gut issues, and low energy, the default diagnosis becomes anxiety or depression. And for many people we see, that's not what's actually going on, there's a deeper issue that needs to be addressed. There's an underlying inflammatory or autoimmune issue, immune dysfunction, or there's a breakdown happening in the body that hasn't been identified yet. And what she's experiencing aren't random symptoms; they're signals. Traditional healthcare and 10-minute visits aren't built to uncover complex, multi-system. And you definitely can't solve them by layering prescriptions on top of symptoms without understanding what's driving them in the first place. You need time, context, and someone willing to look at the full picture. And that's where a root-cause approach changes everything. Because instead of asking, "How do we manage this symptom?" It starts with a different question: "What's actually causing this in the first place?" In this episode, Dr. Sakina Davis, a functional medicine practitioner who specializes in root-cause care, returns to the show. We unpack what's really happening beneath symptoms like fatigue, gut issues, and brain fog, and why so many women are being misdiagnosed or dismissed in the process. We get into how autoimmune and inflammatory conditions actually show up, the patterns most doctors miss, and what it looks like to take a more comprehensive approach to testing, diagnosis, and treatment. Things You'll Learn In This Episode Labs can look "normal" while your body clearly isn't Most standard testing barely scratches the surface. So if everything comes back "fine," what are doctors not testing for, and what actually reveals inflammation and immune dysfunction? What a deeper diagnostic actually looks like From expanded thyroid panels to inflammatory markers and immune testing, what does comprehensive testing really involve, and how do you know when it's necessary? Your gut might be the problem, even if digestion seems "fine" You can be eating well and still not absorbing nutrients properly. What does it mean if your body isn't breaking down food the way it should—and how would you even know? The test no one wants to do… but can explain everything Stool testing sounds unpleasant, but it reveals things that nothing else can, bacteria balance, inflammation, and digestion issues. So what can it actually uncover about your health that other tests miss? Guest Bio Dr. Sakina Davis is a Bioidentical Hormone Specialist and fellowship-trained physician with 20+ years of experience. She is recognized as a pioneer in functional and regenerative medicine. As the founder of Woodlands Wellness and Cosmetic Center in The Woodlands, Texas, Dr. Davis offers a comprehensive range of medical and aesthetic services, with a focus on hormone optimization and weight management. Dr. Davis is a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging, the Institute for Functional Medicine, and is part of the Longevity Docs group. Her approach combines cutting-edge treatments with a personalized, holistic focus. She is known for her dedication to patient care and for her active involvement in the community, supporting organizations like the Montgomery County Food Bank and CASA Advocates for Children. One patient shared, "Dr. Sakina Davis is very professional and spends enough time with you to treat the 'whole you'; everything is connected, and balancing hormones helps to treat and prevent many conditions." To learn more, visit https://woodlandswellness.com/ [https://woodlandswellness.com/]. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com [https://thetrustedpharmacist.com] and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!

Is Going Gluten-Free Enough? The Hidden Problem in "Healthy" Foods w/ Dr Steven Gundry

The default rules of "healthy eating" are something we've all heard: eat whole grains, load up on vegetables, and if you really want to make an impact, go gluten-free. But what if the foods you're doubling down on… the ones you believe are fixing your health… are quietly driving inflammation, weight gain, and even chronic disease? When it comes to nutrition, the story isn't just that some foods are good and others are bad. It's that many of the foods we've been taught to trust contain naturally occurring compounds, like lectins, that can actually work against our health. For some people, that doesn't just show up as digestive issues. It can show up as autoimmune conditions, brain fog, metabolic dysfunction, and even more serious conditions like neurodegeneration and addiction patterns. And here's where it gets even more interesting. Ancient cultures didn't blindly eat these foods. They prepared them in very specific ways, fermenting, peeling, pressure cooking, and processing them to reduce these compounds before consumption. In other words, they understood that these foods needed to be handled carefully. Modern diets, on the other hand, often skip those steps entirely, exposing us to levels our bodies may not be equipped to deal with. So, could your "healthy plate" be causing inflammation and illness? What foods actually damage our health, and what do we eat instead? In this episode, former cardiac surgeon, regenerative medicine expert, and bestselling author of "The Plant Paradox," Dr. Steven Gundry, He shares how compounds like lectins interact with the gut, why so many conditions may trace back to gut dysfunction, and what most people are missing when it comes to food and long-term health. Things You'll Learn In This Episode The problem isn't just junk food… It's the stuff you trust It's easy to blame sugar and processed food. It's harder to question the "clean" staples sitting at the center of your diet. What if the issue isn't what you avoid, but what you keep doubling down on? It doesn't start where it shows up Inflammation, autoimmune issues, and even cognitive decline look like separate problems. But what if they're all downstream signals of the same breakdown happening in the gut? Your biology decides what's "healthy," not the label The same food can heal one person and quietly wreck another. If your gut and microbiome aren't functioning properly, are you eating foods… or feeding the problem? Traditional diets were protective Peeling, fermenting, and pressure cooking weren't random habits. Do these safeguards combat the compounds the body struggles to handle? Guest Bio Dr. Steven Gundry is a former cardiac surgeon, regenerative medicine expert, Director and Founder of the International Heart & Lung Institute, as well as the Center for Restorative Medicine. He is also the author of the bestselling books "The Gut-Brain Paradox" and "The Plant Paradox." He is also the host of the chart-topping Dr. Gundry Podcast [https://www.youtube.com/c/DrGundry]. He has worked in medicine for over 40 years, and today his focus is on teaching people how to avoid surgery by using my unique vision of human nutrition. Dr. Gundry's mission is to improve people's health, happiness, and longevity by making simple changes to their diets. To learn more, visit https://drgundry.com/ [https://drgundry.com/] and follow @drstevengundry [https://www.instagram.com/drstevengundry/] on Instagram. About Your Host Steve Hoffart is an award-winning pharmacist, entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster. As the visionary founder of Magnolia Pharmacy, Steve saw a need for a more personal pharmacy that could make a bigger impact. Today, Steve and his team of experts deliver on that promise, working with patients and their physicians to solve medication problems and offer personalized solutions to achieve better health and wellness. As host of The Trusted Pharmacist podcast and through his combined reach of over 1M on social media, Steve shares actionable advice on nutrition, supplements, and wellness strategies while advocating for meaningful change in healthcare. Stay Ahead with Steve the Pharmacist! Loving the show? Want more insights into how your body works? Head over to TheTrustedPharmacist.com [https://thetrustedpharmacist.com] and sign up with your email! You'll get the latest episodes, plus exclusive health tips to help you take charge of your wellness. Don't miss out – join me today!