Microbiome Keynotes Symposium
2026 Speakers
Dr. Mark J. Tager, MD
Signals of Resilience: How the Gut-Vagal Axis Shapes Mood, Cognition, and Skin Health
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This keynote offers a practical roadmap for restoring balance across these interconnected systems. By exploring how nutrition, probiotics/postbiotics, targeted supplementation, vagus nerve activation, and stress-modulation strategies interact with shared upstream mechanisms, clinicians will learn how to positively influence mood, cognition, and skin health. The session provides actionable tools for bringing inside-out healing into everyday patient care.
Cynthia Thurlow, NP
The Menopause Gut: Balance Your Life to Reclaim Your Health in Midlife and Beyond
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This keynote offers a detailed elaboration of the role of the gut microbiome as a central regulator of biological aging in women. By illuminating the impact of perimenopause and menopause on gut microbial composition and function, this discussion will demonstrate the system-wide changes in female physiology during mid-life and beyond. The session provides evidence-informed strategies to modulate the gut–hormone–immune axis to support healthy aging in women.
Dr. John Kim, Pharm.D, FAARFM
Beyond the Microbiome: Rewiring the Cell Danger Response in MCAS and Chronic Disease
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This keynote offers participants the ability to understand how disrupted mitochondrial signaling drives the Cell Danger Response (CDR), how a persistent CDR contributes to mast cell activation, dysautonomia, and post‐viral syndromes, and how metabolic and environmental factors block recovery.
Dr. Kim Bruno, DC, CCN
The Maternal Microbiome Network: How Whole-Body Microbial Signaling Shapes Pregnancy and Lifelong Health
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This keynote offers participants the ability to understand how microbial signals can act locally and systemically, potentially crossing maternal–placental interfaces to influence fetal immune education and energy metabolism. Importantly, the review underscores that dysregulation across any maternal microbial niche may contribute to adverse outcomes such as preeclampsia, preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, and long-term cardiometabolic and immune risk in offspring.
Dr. Jaquel Patterson,
ND, MBA, IFMCP
Rethinking Psychiatric Illness: The Gut-Immune–Brain Axis
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This keynote offers a mechanistic understanding of the roles of inflammation, infection, immune tolerance, and microbiome signaling in the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. The session explores the gut–immune–brain axis, identifying key pathways through which immune dysregulation and microbiome alterations influence neuroinflammation, neurotransmitter metabolism, and psychiatric symptom development. Participants will learn how to apply functional medicine principles to identify and address root contributors within the gut–immune–brain axis when developing integrative approaches to mental health.
Dr. Robert G. Silverman, DC, DACBN, CNS, CCN, CSCS, CIISN, HHP, DAASP, DCBCN
Longevity by Design: Modulating the Gut-Brain-Metabolic Axis for Healthy Aging
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This keynote is designed for practitioners seeking to translate emerging research into meaningful patient outcomes, this presentation bridges molecular insights with integrative, root-cause clinical strategies. By focusing on the interconnectedness of vagal tone, gut-brain signaling, and metabolic adaptability, Dr. Silverman offers a systems-based roadmap to optimize the trajectory of aging, enabling practitioners to help patients not only live longer but thrive longer.
Angelina Geon, RDH, BSDH, HIAOMT & Jazmin Platero, BS
Where It All Begins: The Mouth as the Gateway to Systemic Health
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This keynote explores how separating the mouth from whole-body thinking has shaped long-standing assumptions about oral inflammation and oral health more broadly. By viewing oral health as part of a continuous biological system, rather than a stand-alone specialty, the session invites a more integrated perspective that reframes the mouth not as an exception, but as an active participant in overall health.