Reporters’ Notebook: 2026 Integrative Healthcare Symposium

By Integrative Practitioner Staff

The 21st Annual Integrative Healthcare Symposium launches next month with three full days of integrative health content taking place in New York.

It’s a rich program intending to unite practitioners, researchers, and industry leaders from across the integrative and conventional medicine communities to explore the latest research, trends, and practical applications of integrative medicine.

Our editorial team is busy combing the agenda for the sessions we most want to see and our agendas are already heavily highlighted. Here are just a few of the subject areas we have flagged so far with more content in mind-body & nervous system resilience, environmental medicine & detoxification, and beyond! We are looking forward to seeing you in New York! –the Editors

Longevity, Aging & Resilience

• Plenary & Award Presentation: The AI-Driven Integration of Data-Driven Individual Health and Information-Based Peptide Drugs Data-driven health included the individual analyses of one’s complete genome and a longitudinal analyses of one’s changing phenotype through phenomic measurements such as the quantification of blood analytes, the gut microbiome and a digital health device for physiological assessments. Data-driven health is about delivering “actionable possibilities” for patients (which if individually executed lead to improved wellness or the avoidance of disease), possible disease- or wellness-relevant biomarkers and drug targets.
• Plenary: The Future of Longevity Medicine and Its Relationship to Nutritional Epigenetics and Immune Resilience A big-picture session by a leading expert on how epigenetics and personalized interventions can shape healthy aging.
• Precision Cognitive Longevity: Integrative Strategies to Prevent and Slow Alzheimer’s Disease Alzheimer’s disease is one of the greatest challenges to healthspan, with cognitive decline often beginning decades before clinical symptoms appear. As prevalence continues to rise, clinicians need clear, evidence-based strategies to help patients protect cognitive function and slow progression before significant damage occurs. This session will present a precision, integrative framework for Alzheimer’s prevention and early intervention, offering practical tools that clinicians can apply in real-world practice.
• Change Your Genes—Change Your Life: Epigenetics and Longevity According to the new science of epigenetics, the vast majority of our genes are fluid and dynamic. Our genetic profile may signal an inherited vulnerability to a disease, but our choices and behaviors determine whether these genes will be switched on or off. Each of us can influence our genes to create optimal health and longevity.

Nutrition & Metabolic Health

• What’s Better (and Not) in Nutrition? A practical panel tackling real-world questions about diets, trends, supplements and personalization for patient care — with expert dietitians and nutrition leaders.
• The Missing Metric in Longevity Medicine: The Omega-3 Index As the global population ages, the clinical focus is shifting from extending lifespan to enhancing healthspan—prolonging the years patients can live independently, free of chronic disease and functional decline. The Omega-3 Index, a validated biomarker reflecting the percentage of EPA and DHA in red blood cell membranes, is emerging as a powerful tool in the clinician’s toolkit to support healthy aging and longevity.
• Medication and Mindset: The Art of Microdosing GLP-1s A session exploring a whole-person approach to using GLP-1 medications as short-term bridges rather than long-term crutches. We will walk through the art and science of microdosing GLP-1s to support metabolic flexibility while keeping mindset and behavior change at the center of care.

Immune Health & Inflammation

• Enhancing Immunity While Calming the Cytokine Storm: Mushroom Mycelium to the Rescue A plenary talk exploring RCT evidence for mycelium’s role in modulating immune responses and supporting vaccine response without excessive inflammation.
• Brain Defenders: Reprogramming Microglia for Brain Resilience Connects immunometabolism with brain health — critical for clinicians addressing neurologic and systemic immune interactions.

Hormones, Endocrine & Women’s Health

• Reframing Perimenopause: This session challenges the outdated “estrogen deficiency” paradigm and the reflexive use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as a first-line intervention. Instead, we will reframe perimenopause through the lens of systems biology and functional medicine, recognizing it as a critical window into broader endocrine dysregulation.
• Sleep, Inflammation & Anxiety in Menopausal Women: A key emphasis will be the relationship between inflammation and mental health. All human mood disorders—including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, OCD, and schizophrenia—are now understood to have inflammatory underpinnings. In menopausal women, the loss of estrogen disrupts serotonin pathways, often heightening depressive tendencies.
• Androgen Therapy in Menopause—The Secret Sauce? While there has been a great deal of attention paid to the biological and psychobiological effects of estrogen deprivation and replacement, there is been far less recognition of the key role of androgen supplementation in menopause. Our goal in this presentation is to review the literature on the physiologic roles of androgens, including bone health, muscle maintenance, mental clarity, preservation of libido, and prevention of dementia.

Practice Management & Business Decisions

• Smart Strategies Behind a Powerful Practice: A practical session on building sustainable, transformative clinics — essential for practitioners looking to grow or refine their integrative practice. How to break free from the constraints of insurance-based care and build a business model that rewards transformation, not transactions. You’ll learn how to create cash-pay programs that deliver better patient outcomes, leverage health coaches as scalable profit centers, and use systems, tech, and team to multiply your impact—without burning out.
• The AI-Enhanced Practitioner: Clinical Skills for the Next Generation of Longevity Medicine Artificial intelligence is redefining core competencies in functional and longevity medicine. Rather than introducing foreign constructs, AI augments clinical skills already central to practice: data synthesis, pattern recognition, clinical reasoning, and patient communication. Through discussion and demonstration, this panel will illustrate how these augmented capabilities reduce cognitive burden, surface previously obscured clinical insights, and support more precise, individualized care strategies.
• Investigating the AI Healthcare Conundrum for Practitioners: A panel designed to help clinicians strategically adopt AI tools in practice — not to replace human care, but to enhance efficiency, deepen patient engagement, and streamline workflows. The session will help practitioners develop a framework for vetting AI solutions for business operations, explore the pros and consideration of AI in patient care, and evaluate the opportunity for using AI to help scale to a targeted patient population.