Dr. Marianne Pinkston is a board-certified family and functional medicine physician with nearly 30 years in solo practice, based in San Antonio, Texas. After personally overcoming rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, she transformed her practice and launched New Bloom, a personalized functional medicine platform focused on helping women reclaim their health, identity, and vitality. She is also the host of the Dr. P Better Life podcast, now in its fourth year.

- New Bloom: mynubloom.com
- Podcast: drpbetterlife.com
- Instagram: @drmariannepinkston

Key Takeaways:

• Chronic stress and adverse childhood events (ACEs) create a biological environment of inflammation that drives autoimmune disease, cancer, obesity, and metabolic disorders.
  
  
• Survival mode — the state of constantly being in fight-or-flight — is the root cause, not just a symptom, of most chronic disease.
  
  
• Identity is medicine. Changing your body requires changing the story you tell yourself about who you are and what you deserve.
  
  
• Emotional eating, people-pleasing, and overworking are survival mechanisms rooted in childhood experiences — not character flaws.
  
  
• Boundaries are not walls. They are a form of self-love that creates the biological conditions for healing.
  
  
• Dr. Pinkston lost 120 pounds over two years, reversed her diabetes and cancer, and is now an athlete at 57.
  
  
• Functional medicine addresses root causes — stress, identity, lifestyle, nutrition — rather than managing individual symptoms in isolation.
  
  
• Dr. Pinkston's Best Medicine: gratitude, paying it forward, and using lived experience to guide others.

Resources Mentioned:
- New Bloom: mynubloom.com
- Dr. P Better Life Podcast: drpbetterlife.com
- Film: *The Martian* (Matt Damon) — on solving one problem at a time
- Book: *Gone With the Wind* — on resilience and perseverance