Insights

The Two Systems That Decide How Fast You Age

Most people treat aging as one big, unstoppable process. It's actually two separate systems — autophagy, which recycles damaged material inside a working cell, and senolysis, which clears out "zombie cells" that have stopped functioning but won't die. One you can switch on tonight through fasting, exercise, and sleep. The other usually needs more than lifestyle alone. Dr. Dearing breaks down both, honestly, including exactly where the evidence is strong and where it's still forming.

Should You Be Afraid of Tick Bites? The Truth About Lyme Disease, Alpha-Gal, and Immune Health

Ticks are out this summer — but fear shouldn't keep you from nature. This article breaks down the real science behind Lyme disease and alpha-gal syndrome, explains why your immune terrain matters more than the tick itself, and gives you practical, evidence-based steps to build a resilient body. We also clear up the bioweapon conspiracy theories making the rounds online.

Redox-First: Rebuilding the Injured Brain

Many patients struggling with mold illness, Lyme disease, long COVID, chronic fatigue, and gut-related inflammation continue to experience brain fog, memory issues, and neurological symptoms even after addressing the original trigger. At The Dearing Clinic, we take a brain-first rehabilitation approach that focuses on restoring the nervous system, immune system, and gut simultaneously. By combining functional neurology, low-dose Redox ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), neurofeedback, and targeted nutritional support, we work to reduce neuroinflammation, improve brain oxygenation, and help patients regain cognitive function and resilience.

The Vitamin C Your Body Can Actually Use

Not all vitamin C is created equal — and the form you receive changes everything. Learn why sodium ascorbate outperforms standard ascorbic acid for IV therapy, how high-dose vitamin C supports adrenal health, cellular aging, and immune function, and why it's a critical preparation step before regenerative treatments like IV stem cells.

Same Equipment, Different Lens

If your brain scans came back normal but you still struggle with brain fog, chronic fatigue, dizziness, or post-concussion symptoms — functional neurology may be the missing piece. In this article, Dr. Justin Dearing, DC, DACNB, breaks down exactly what functional neurology is, how it differs from standard neurology, and why the same medical-grade tools — qEEG, vestibular testing, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and photobiomodulation — produce entirely different results when the question shifts from disease detection to brain performance. Whether you're navigating long COVID, post-viral brain dysfunction, POTS, autonomic dysregulation, or unexplained neurological symptoms, this is the framework that lives in the gap between "your scans are clean" and actually feeling well again. Serving patients in Brentwood and Franklin, Tennessee, and beyond.

The Virus That Stays for Life

A dormant virus carried by nearly all adults — Epstein-Barr — may be the hidden driver behind years of unexplained fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and autoimmune conditions. Unlike the initial mono infection most people remember, reactivation in adulthood produces no obvious illness, yet quietly disrupts gut immunity, triggers the immune system to attack the body's own tissue, and derails the brain chemistry behind mood and clear thinking. Modern research has linked active EBV reactivation to multiple sclerosis, lupus, Hashimoto's, ME-CFS, and Long COVID — yet standard lab panels miss it entirely because they only confirm past exposure, not current activity. The key insight: until this upstream viral pressure is identified and addressed, most downstream treatments will continue to fall short.

The Most Important Part of Your Brain You’ve Never Heard About

Chronic fatigue and brain fog aren't just mitochondrial problems — they're a delivery problem. Learn how the brain's insula and autonomic nervous system control whether your cells actually receive the oxygen and nutrients they need, and why most treatments fail because they're applied in the wrong order.

What Happens to Your Brain When You Eat Sugar?

Your brain fog, afternoon crash, and post-meal irritability aren't random — they're your nervous system responding to blood sugar instability. This article breaks down exactly how your brain controls glucose regulation through the autonomic nervous system, what's really happening during a sugar crash, and two simple, science-backed habits (meal sequencing and post-meal walking) that can reduce blood sugar spikes by up to 40% — no restrictive dieting required. Whether you're dealing with reactive hypoglycemia, chronic fatigue, or trying to protect your long-term cognitive health, understanding the glucose-brain connection is the first step to lasting metabolic wellness.

Your Pain Isn’t in the Tissue. It’s in the Map.

Chronic pain is often not a reflection of ongoing tissue damage, but a dysfunction in how the brain maps and processes the body. As the nervous system becomes sensitized, pain signals amplify and persist even without injury, driven by a degraded cortical map and dysregulated brain–body communication. Neuro-orthopedic rehabilitation restores this map through precise, intentional movement and neurological retraining, while regenerative medicine addresses lingering tissue dysfunction. Together, these approaches break the chronic pain cycle by targeting both the central nervous system and peripheral inputs.

What Separates a Good Athlete from a Great One

Youth athletic performance is driven by nervous system development, not just physical training. Proper nutrition, recovery, sleep, and autonomic balance (HRV) determine how well the brain and body adapt, learn, and perform. Supporting these systems is what separates good athletes from great ones.

Spring Has Always Known What your body is waiting to release and how to let it go safely

Spring is a natural time for detox, but modern detox methods often miss the mark. This article explains how fat loss releases stored toxins and why symptoms like fatigue and brain fog can appear during dieting or fasting. Learn how to properly support your body’s detox pathways—including liver function, gut health, bile flow, and fiber intake—for safe and effective detoxification. Discover why sequencing matters, how to avoid common detox mistakes, and how to optimize weight loss without overwhelming your system.

How Our Most Difficult Patients Changed the Way We Practice

Patients with chronic fatigue, brain fog, and post-viral symptoms are often told their lab results are “normal”—yet they still don’t feel well. This blog explains how underlying issues like mitochondrial dysfunction, poor cellular energy production, and autonomic nervous system imbalance can go undetected in standard care. By combining advanced therapies such as qEEG brain mapping, neurofeedback, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), ozone therapy, and photobiomodulation (laser therapy), this approach targets the root cause of chronic illness. The focus is on restoring energy at the cellular level, improving brain function, regulating the immune system, and helping the body return to a true state of recovery.

Everyone's Telling You to Max Out Your Protein.

Protein has become one of the most aggressively promoted nutrients in modern nutrition, but more is not always better. In this article, we break down what the science actually shows about protein intake, how the body uses amino acids, and why muscle growth depends on more than simply increasing protein. Learn how metabolic health, training stimulus, and individualized nutrition determine how effectively your body uses protein.

Five Years After COVID Changed Everything: What We Now Understand About the Brain, the Immune System, and Why So Many People Never Fully Recovered

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped global health, the medical community is still uncovering how the virus altered the relationship between the brain and immune system. While many recovered quickly, a significant number of people developed lingering symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, autonomic dysfunction, and chronic inflammation. Emerging research suggests that COVID was not simply a respiratory infection—it disrupted immune signaling, brain inflammation pathways, and the protective barriers that regulate communication between the body and the nervous system. These disruptions help explain why some individuals never fully returned to baseline health and why symptoms can persist for months or even years. This article explores what clinicians and researchers now understand about post-COVID immune dysfunction, neurological symptoms, and why a growing number of patients require a more integrated brain-immune recovery approach.

The Injury Nobody’s Measuring

Most people are told to rest after a brain injury and wait for the fog to lift. But for the patients still struggling months or years later, rest isn't enough — and Dr. Justin Dearing explains why. In this article, Dr. Dearing reframes brain injury as a systems-level autonomic injury that cascades across blood flow, heart rate, digestion, stress physiology, and cognitive function all at once. Drawing on The Dearing Clinic's multi-omics diagnostic approach — including qEEG brain mapping, eye movement assessment, autonomic stress testing, gut diagnostics, and more — he outlines why passive recovery fails so many patients and what active, measured, sequential intervention actually looks like. At the center of it all is a compelling case study: a former professional football player initially labeled with early-onset dementia whose cognitive decline turned out to be multi-system dysregulation — measurable, correctable, and ultimately reversible. If you or someone you love is still symptomatic after a brain injury and has been told their imaging looks fine, this is the article that reframes everything.