Evolution of Medicine Podcast · Functional Forum

Can Functional Medicine Help With ALS, MND?

December 9, 2025·45 min·2 clips

Lawton says ALS is often a diagnosis of ruling things out, not an explanation.

1. Evolution of Medicine Podcast episode eight focuses on ALS, also called motor neurone disease in the UK and Lou Gehrig's disease in the US. 2. Host James Maskell interviews Dr. Kirsty Lawton, a nutritionist with a PhD who runs a UK virtual clinic and builds a team around ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, pediatric neurology, and brain injury. 3. The episode asks whether functional medicine can help ALS by finding the causes behind the diagnosis rather than stopping at the label. 4. Lawton says she started as a conventional nutritionist 25 years ago and retrained through the Institute for Optimum Nutrition after questioning how much she could help people. 5. She explains that her ALS focus became a specialism because the field is active and because she now sees 50 to 60 patients with ALS. 6. The clinic is virtual and global, with patients in Canada, the West Coast of the US, and Australia. 7. James Maskell raises Lewis Moody's ALS diagnosis and uses rugby's shift to professionalism in 1995 as a way to discuss head injury exposure. 8. Lawton says she sees possible contributors such as pesticides, bacteria on grass, head injury, core body temperature, cortisol, genetics, and even military exposure. 9. She compares ALS work with Dale Bredesen's Alzheimer's approach, saying that RECODE-style multicomponent interventions may translate across neurodegenerative conditions. 10. Lawton names mitochondrial dysfunction, protein aggregation, oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, microbiome problems, and liver-pathway dysfunction as overlapping features. 11. She says no two ALS patients present the same and that the search should focus on commonalities across cases. 12. Lawton explains that Dr. Bredesen's phrase 'network insufficiency' matches her view that cells break down through a web of disrupted connections. 13. She describes motor neurons as long cells with up to about 2 million mitochondria and says a failing energy charge can stop the signal from reaching the foot or other targets. 14. In her workup, she starts by 'ignoring' the ALS diagnosis and instead builds a full timeline, because only 10% of ALS cases are genetic and 90% are sporadic. 15. She says people with ALS can spend one to two years in and out of neurology before diagnosis, which makes speed and structure especially important. 16. Lawton uses genetic testing, including C9-ORF72, nutrigenomics, and choline-related pathways such as CHDH, PEMT, and FUT2 to guide her work. 17. She says the body behaves like a factory, with production lines that affect cell membranes, detoxification, methylation, and B12 handling. 18. The tone is interview-based and explanatory, with James asking policy and clinical questions while Lawton answers in a detailed, technical style. 19. People interested in ALS, neurodegeneration, functional medicine, and practitioner-level treatment frameworks would likely benefit from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a short, non-technical health conversation or a quick diagnosis-focused summary may skip it.

As heard by us

A measured ALS discussion about sequencing, sensitivity, and the risk of moving too fast.

The piece takes a careful, methodical look at ALS, or motor neurone disease, through a functional medicine lens. Its real strength is the discipline around sequence: what comes first, how quickly to move, and why a protocol that helps one patient can push another into trouble.

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Need a careful ALS conversation that treats timing and sequencing as part of care?

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