Salugenesis: A Systems Medicine Program for Clinicians | Medgeeks

A Clinical Operating System for Complex Chronic Disease

Healing from chronic disease isn't about finding one root cause. It's about rebuilding health.

Most clinicians who leave conventional medicine spend years hunting for the root cause driving their patients' phenotype. As your patients have taught you, there are actually many drivers sustaining chronic disease biology. Even so, real change only happens when we learn to systematically move the patient toward health, and that's something we were never taught to do until now.

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10,000+ Clinicians trained

MD/DO · PA/NP · RDN · DC · ND Practitioners Working with complex chronic disease

Founded 2013 Over a decade educating clinicians

The Patient You Think About On The Drive Home

She walked in with a folder full of labs from her primary care physician, a year of work with a functional medicine practitioner, and a list of every supplement, food restriction, and lifestyle modification she'd been put on along the way. Conventional medicine couldn't help her, so she sought someone who would test more, look deeper, and treat the cause.

That practitioner found things, treated them, and now here she is, telling you the same story in a tone that's running out of hope. Somewhere along the way, she's spent eight thousand dollars, and she still wakes up exhausted, still cycling through the same flares she came in for.

She doesn't want a miracle. She just wants to feel how she felt ten years ago. She just wants to have the energy to play with her kids, the motivation to advance her career, and the ability to find joy in the things she once loved.

She's looking at you now, hoping you can help. Your first instinct is to do more testing. Then you ask yourself if that's the right move, considering she already has thousands of dollars' worth of tests.

The last thing you want is for her to repeat the cycle she's already experienced year after year. But without a clear framework on where to go, that's exactly what most practitioners end up doing.

If you're honest with yourself, you suspect she'll be sitting in someone else's office a year from now, telling a longer version of the same story. But you don't want that for her. You want her to be healthy.

After all, that's why we chose this career path.

So what are you to do? This is the situation most practitioners don't see. You get positive reinforcement when things work out.

But what about the patients where this isn't the case? Sometimes they tell you things aren't better. Most of the time, they just quietly quit your practice.

There's no follow-up, and you assume that they must have felt better. The reality is that they moved on to someone else, and they're going to keep repeating the cycle until they finally find someone using an entirely different operating system.

This isn't about your effort or your testing. Uncovering what's wrong has become a sophisticated craft and the center for most programs on the market.

Unfortunately, almost no one trains practitioners in what comes after: the deliberate, sequenced work of moving a patient from dysfunction to health. Not health by our standards, but by the patient's standards. So they can finally live the life they've been working so hard to live.

I work with a lot of PANS and PANDAS kids. The families that find me are usually the ones who've tried everything. IVIG. Steroids. Antibiotics. Supplements. Protocol after protocol. And nothing sticks. I needed a stronger framework around capacity, environment, mitochondrial resilience, immune signaling. I needed to understand why some kids crash from interventions that "should" help. This felt like the missing piece for the exact population that trusts me with their most fragile cases.

Nika · Advanced Health Coach

Why I Built This

My daughter is the reason this program exists.

When my daughter was born in 2021, a primary mitochondrial mutation unfolded into a stack of complex chronic conditions that nine specialties couldn't resolve.

After seeing her health deteriorate month after month, I decided to build an entirely different approach to help bring her back. This program teaches that exact approach so you can help the patients most clinicians can't.

Credentials

Bachelor of Science in Biology, California State University Dominguez Hills, 2010
Physician Assistant Program, University of California Davis, 2012
Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies, AT Still University, 2013
Master of Science in Personalized Nutrition, University of Connecticut, 2025
Graduate Certificate in Precision Nutrition, University of Connecticut, 2025
Didactics in Dietetics, California State University, Los Angeles, 2026

There is a thoughtful organization of the Salugenesis course starting with a biological, scientific philosophical backdrop (which is shifting for me) with the introduction of systems and network based medicine. Translating this framework to clinical interpretation with the metabolic map, and the further granularity with the metabolic intensive, gives the real life translation of how systems medicine lives out in practice.

Being introduced to the concept of systems and network medicine and learning to think in this way is my biggest takeaway and the skill I didn't know I needed before I took this course. I knew there were providers out there who approached chronic disease differently, and Andrew is teaching it in a way that is challenging to the status quo yet scientifically and clinically responsible.

Kandice Brogan, Physician Assistant

The Framework

A clinical operating system for patients whose problems span systems.

The framework underneath this program is salugenesis, a term Dr. Robert Naviaux uses to describe the body's evolutionarily conserved healing program. Where pathogenesis describes how disease arises, salugenesis describes how the body actually returns to health. It's a separate biological process with its own substrate requirements, its own signaling, and its own clinical implications.

This is why we named the program Salugenesis. The name pays tribute to the work coming out of the Naviaux Lab at UC San Diego, where Dr. Naviaux and his team study the metabolomics and mitochondrial biology underlying chronic disease. He's the founder and co-director of UCSD's Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center and a Professor of Genetics in the departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pathology at UCSD School of Medicine. Salugenesis the program teaches you how to do that work systematically with the patients you actually see.^*

The clinical work is twofold. First, identify what's blocking the healing program. Second, rebuild the cellular and metabolic conditions the program needs to run. That second half is what most clinicians never received training in, and it's where this program lives.

Doing that work requires a model of how biology actually behaves. Not as a stack of independent organ systems, but as a network of five interacting processes that all run through the central hub of cellular and mitochondrial metabolism.

* Salugenesis the program is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dr. Naviaux, the Naviaux Lab, or UC San Diego.

Where Health & Disease Arise

This diagram is meant to show where health and disease actually arise at the cellular level.

In the center is Cellular & Mitochondrial Metabolism, how cells generate, allocate, and use energy and substrates. This metabolic state isn't just one variable among many. It's the system's core integrator and constraint. Around it are four major biological processes.

The solid double-headed arrows show that each of these systems both shapes and is shaped by the cellular and mitochondrial metabolic state. If you change immune activity, signaling, gene expression, or the local environment in any sustained way, you necessarily induce metabolic adaptations; you have to reprogram how energy and substrates are generated and used. Conversely, when metabolism is constrained or dysregulated, all four domains shift with it.

The outer ring represents direct cross-talk among the outer systems themselves. Immune signals change communication networks; the cellular environment influences gene expression regulation; genome and epigenome changes alter immune tone, and so on.

These systems form a network. But the durability and impact of their effects are ultimately implemented and constrained through metabolism, which is why we anchor our assessment there.

Cellular & Mitochondrial Metabolism

e.g. energy production, substrate allocation, redox balance, mitochondrial function.

Immune Function

e.g. innate and adaptive immunity, inflammatory tone, tissue repair, tolerance.

Cell-to-Cell Communication

e.g. neural, hormonal, cytokine, paracrine signaling.

Genome & Epigenome Regulation

e.g. transcriptional programs, chromatin remodeling, DNA methylation, histone modifications.

Cellular Environment

e.g. oxygen availability, nutrient supply, toxins, redox balance, osmolarity, pH.

What's Inside

Five modules, 45 hours of instruction, and over 800 pages of fully-cited clinical reference, with lifetime access.

The curriculum is sequential. Each module builds on the one before it, from the biological framework to the assessment workflow to the therapeutic-grade lifestyle work where the framework actually meets the patient.

Module 01

10.5 hours

Personalized Medicine Foundations

The biological framework the rest of the program is built on. Where conventional disease taxonomy ends, where systems medicine begins, and how that shift changes the way you take a history, form an assessment, and decide what to do next.

Lessons

A New Paradigm for Health and Disease
The Approach to the Patient
Rethinking Disease Classifications: Systems Medicine & Network Medicine
Molecular Medicine in Clinical Practice
Knowledge Check: Recap and Clinical Pearls
Clinical Case Scenarios — Concepts in Action (Part 1)
Clinical Case Scenarios — Concepts in Action (Part 2)
Genetics
Metabolism
Immune Function
Health Optimization and Energy Balance

Module 02

3.5 hours

Psychoneuroendocrinology

The bidirectional networks driving symptoms across psychiatry, neurology, and endocrinology. The integrated systems view that most specialty training never reaches, and how to apply it to patients who don't fit cleanly into any one specialty.

Lessons

The Cell Danger Response
The Stress Response
Trauma
Cortisol, Mitochondria, and Gut Health
Personal Case Study: From Trauma to Physiology
Healing & The Science of Change
Biology Meets Behavior
Pediatrics

Module 03

4 hours

The Metabolic Map

The working clinical tool at the center of the program. A seven-domain map of the patient's biology, spanning metabolism, mitochondrial function, immune signaling, neuroendocrine regulation, and the gut-liver-microbiome axis, grounded in biochemistry and structured for any complex patient encounter.

Lessons

The Framework
From Biochemistry to Practice
The Seven Domains
Maria's Case: Working the Seven Domains

Module 04

11.5 hours

The Metabolic Intensive

The deep clinical workup. Where most practitioners lose time and confidence on complex patients. Assessment, advanced labs, wearables data, and the synthesis lesson on building a clinical map for any patient who walks through your door.

Lessons

Nutrition Assessment
Clinical History & Patterns of Symptoms
Anthropometrics & Body Composition
Nutrition-Focused Physical Exam
Core Metabolic Labs
Advanced Lab Testing
Continuous Glucose Monitor
Wearables: Sleep, HR, and HRV
Estimating Energy Requirements
Building the Clinical Map

Module 05

15.5 hours

The Lifestyle Intensive

Where the framework moves from interpretation to intervention. Lifestyle work taught not as wellness topics, but as therapeutic tools you prescribe and titrate.

Lessons

Restoring Metabolic Capacity Through Nutrition
The Exercise Prescription
Chronobiology
Recovery Capacity
Environmental Medicine
Psychosocial Medicine
Mind-Body Medicine

Everything you get:

Video lessons with clinical demonstrations
Audio-only versions for on-the-go listening
Written clinical notes per lesson
Slide decks to download and reference
End-of-module exams for self-assessment
Private practitioner community for case discussion with Andrew and colleagues

Lifetime access including all current modules and future updates

What Changes

What this looks like in your practice.

A complex chronic patient walks in with three years of records, a stack of unrevealing labs, and ten unresolved symptoms. Instead of starting from the labs and working backwards, you start from a working model of where their biology has compensated, where it's failed to recover, and where intervention has the most leverage.

That model determines what you do next. The tests you order aren't exploratory anymore; they're confirming or ruling out a specific hypothesis. You know in advance how each result will change the plan, which means you order less and learn more from what you do order.

Interventions get sequenced rather than layered. Instead of handing the patient seven things to do at once and hoping enough of them help, you build a stack in the order their system can absorb. What goes first depends on what their physiology is asking for.

The patient walks out with concrete next steps, and both of you understand why those steps are the right ones for them. That's the work this program teaches you to do.

Functional Nutrition Alliance was a great program, but it didn't go into the depth of why things work. They had done-for-you protocols I was never comfortable using because I didn't understand what was driving the case. What I'm getting from Salugenesis is the why. Why something is happening, what's going on upstream at the cellular level, and what to actually do about it. I told my husband five times in the first week, this is what I've been looking for.

Stephanie Baker · Advanced Health Coach

In Their Words

Why practitioners say Salugenesis is different.

This is the stuff we should have learned in school! This is smart medicine. The depth of information, such as the biochemistry explanations, has been really awesome and easy to understand. What I like the most is Andrew's explanations regarding different cofactors, enzymes, and cycles, the reasons why individual nutrients are so important and how that connects to what we might see in our patients. The information has really solidified my conviction that this is the way to best help my patients.

Brooke Larson

Family and Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner

Before Salugenesis, I felt like I was mostly thinking about health in terms of diagnoses and labels, without really understanding what was happening deeper in the body. As I've been learning through Salugenesis, it's been changing how I see everything. I'm starting to understand how health really begins at the cellular level, and it's made me think less about just "what condition is this?" and more about the whole person. What really interests me about Salugenesis is the focus on actually achieving health, not just treating disease. It feels like a shift from reacting to problems to really understanding how to support the body and help it function at its best.

Maria Spotton

Nurse Practitioner

Our current medical model is failing our chronically ill patients. My biggest challenge has been trying to help patients with complex chronic conditions utilizing traditional western medicine. This course will help you understand systems biology and help the patient to find health and balance. Now I'm trying to shift more to looking at the root cause instead of just treating the symptoms.

Renee Morano

Nurse Practitioner

I'm starting to put all the pieces in place to start a functional nutrition practice and Salugenesis is helping to develop a framework right out of the gate that goes well beyond functional medicine in and of itself and provides a deeply complementary approach to traditional and various lifestyle clinical settings. Specifically, the body's various mechanisms that influence healthy cell functioning.

Don't hesitate to join the program. Salugenesis provides incredible value in its in-depth, cutting edge, personalized approach. I continue to learn and grow so much through Salugenesis. It's so refreshing to work with someone who is actually interested in solving the myriad of health care challenges we face as a collective. I've been surprised by Andrew and his depth of knowledge and commitment to individualized healing, and his willingness to take the time to not only answer questions but to dive deeply into them.

Daniel Haas

Functional Nutritionist

What I most appreciate about Salugenesis are the frameworks for synthesizing complex patient data into actionable steps for implementation. I often find this to be a bottleneck in providing patient care due to the overwhelm. Information and learning are great, but ultimately implementation is the most helpful.

Kelly Glynn

Physician Assistant, Registered Dietitian

I'm a new metabolism coach, and that's how I came across Medgeeks: looking for resources to help me understand metabolism better. Since there are many PAs in the group and my training hasn't been in that area, I was concerned maybe too much would be over my head. Andrew does a good job breaking things down into understandable language, and then I can go do additional study as needed. I appreciate the way Andrew breaks everything down into systems and the underlying "why." It's helped me understand more about what's happening with the meds my clients are taking. Thankful for the community piece as well.

Tori Tilton

Metabolism Coach (formerly OT)

Who This Is For

Salugenesis is for a specific kind of practitioner.

This is for you if

You're an MD, DO, PA, NP, RDN, DC, ND, health coach, or other healthcare provider.
You're regularly seeing patients with chronic disease that spans multiple body systems.
You can feel where conventional and functional medicine end, and you're looking for what comes after.
You want one clinical model you can use across every complex patient, instead of switching frameworks for each clinical question.
Your patients have shown you that single root causes and siloed organ systems don't account for the full picture, and you want a framework that does.

This isn't for you if

You don't see complex chronic patients in your practice and aren't looking to take them on.
You want a supplement list or done-for-you protocol you can apply without thinking through each patient.
You're hoping for a fast certification or credential rather than a working clinical model.
You're not willing to spend three to six months working through curriculum and integrating it into your practice.
You're a layperson looking for personal health advice rather than clinical training.

Before Salugenesis, my biggest problem was getting to the root of the problem in order to solve it, and piecing together lab results. The biggest shift for me clinically was being able to instruct my patients on what is wrong (not vague stuff), what will assist in getting better, how to do it and when to do it. If you're not sure about joining, just FALL off the fence. What you will learn will rocket you exponentially into a different realm of thinking and helping your patients.

Heather McGhee, DNP, APRN, FNP-C

Enrollment

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Salugenesis

"It is the best investment you can make."

Pamela Klein, Clinical Nutrition Specialist

$2,497

Or 3 monthly payments of $897

One-time enrollment · Lifetime access

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30-day completion-based guarantee Work through Module 1 and complete the module exam in your first 30 days. If you don't see how the framework will change your clinical thinking, email us and we'll refund every dollar, no questions asked. The risk is on us.

Common Questions

Questions practitioners ask.

How is this different from functional medicine?

The promise of functional medicine is real, and many practitioners I respect work within it. Both functional medicine and Salugenesis come out of systems biology rather than single-organ thinking, and both look upstream of the diagnostic label. The difference isn't in what good practitioners are trying to do. It's in the framework they're working from.

Functional medicine is built around the matrix model. The clinical question is what the antecedents, triggers, and mediators are for a given patient. For Salugenesis, the starting question isn't what caused the disease. It's what's blocking the healing program, and what needs to happen for the body to recover. Pathogenesis describes how disease arises. Salugenesis describes how the body returns to health.

That different starting point produces different clinical work. The first question isn't what panel to order. It's where the healing program has stalled, and what kind of intervention the patient's biology can absorb right now. Lab work comes second, confirming or ruling out what the clinical model is already telling you.

As functional medicine has grown, a commercial ecosystem of lab and supplement companies has expanded alongside it, and that ecosystem now influences clinical care more than it should. Patients can end up paying thousands for broad lab panels and large supplement stacks that aren't actually individualized to them. Salugenesis teaches the underlying biology that lets you decide which tests and which interventions are worth running for the specific patient in front of you. Not every patient needs the same therapeutic diet, exercise plan, supplement protocol, or lab work to recover.

The decision isn't which camp is right. It's which framework you want to invest in for the next decade of your clinical work. If you've worked in functional medicine and felt the model reach its limit on patients who didn't respond the way it predicted, Salugenesis is the framework underneath that question.

How is the science sourced?

The 800+ pages of clinical reference materials are fully cited in AMA format, with primary peer-reviewed literature backing the claims throughout the curriculum. You can audit any piece of it, read the underlying source, and decide whether the interpretation holds up clinically. The program works because it's grounded in the literature.

Will this work for my patient population?

Yes. The framework lives underneath specific diagnoses and specific specialties. The biology you're working with for a complex chronic patient in primary care is the same biology you're working with for a long-COVID patient, a treatment-resistant depression case, or a patient with unexplained fatigue and "normal" labs. Two patients with the same diagnosis can be in completely different biological states, which is why labels alone don't tell you what to do next. The Salugenesis framework is what helps you see the biology underneath the label, regardless of what specialty or population you're in.

Is this CME-accredited?

Not at this time. Some practitioners may be able to apply non-accredited educational hours toward their requirements depending on their profession, state, and certifying board, so it's worth confirming with your own licensing body. We're also actively pursuing formal accreditation, and if retroactive credit becomes available through that process, we'll make it available to currently enrolled practitioners.

That said, I want to be honest about how I think about CME more generally. Most CME hours end up getting checked off at conferences where you walked away with one or two ideas, or in online modules you clicked through in twenty minutes to satisfy the requirement without much of what you saw actually changing how you practice.

What I built instead is a complete clinical framework you can apply with the patients you'll see this week, and the kind of work that genuinely changes patient outcomes is also the kind that takes time to integrate, which is the opposite of how most CME is structured to be delivered. An accredited hour can't replace what this program builds in you, and the absence of one isn't a reason to wait.

How much time does it take?

Most practitioners work through the core curriculum over three to six months at two to four hours a week. There's no expiration on access, so you can move at the pace your schedule allows.

How do I get started after I enroll?

You'll get immediate access to all five modules and the practitioner community. You'll also be set up with a 1:1 onboarding call with our client success team to walk through the platform and answer any questions about getting started.

What is the practitioner community?

A private space where you can post a case, a curriculum question, or a question about the underlying science, and get clinical discussion from Andrew and other enrolled practitioners. It's where the framework gets applied across many patient presentations, and where systems thinking develops over time through repeated exposure to real cases.

What's your refund policy?

30 days, completion-based. Work through Module 1 and complete the module exam in your first 30 days. If you don't see how the framework will change your clinical thinking, email us and we'll refund every dollar, no questions asked.

Before You Go

There's another way to practice.

One where complex chronic patients are the patients you feel most prepared for. Where the framework you bring to a confusing case is the same framework you bring to every case, and you work from a clear model of what's actually happening in the patient's biology.

This course is finally filling in the gaps that allopathic medicine cannot, or will not, fill.

Lisa Israel, Nurse Practitioner

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