Delivering Functional Medicine to Veterans and Active-Duty Military
How clinicians can support warfighter brain health through sleep, gut, hormone, and toxin optimization.
This week’s TruNeura Mastermind welcomed a powerful new voice to the community: Dr. Bryan Stepanenko, a former Army physician and certified Functional Medicine practitioner who now works on the clinical team at Sandhills Functional Medicine in North Carolina.
Dr. Stepanenko has spent the past decade bridging the gap between military medicine and functional medicine, helping the armed forces better understand and address one of their most pressing health challenges: warfighter brain health. From leading national-level virtual learning collaboratives, teaching through Walter Reed National Medical Center programs, and innovating as a clinical champion throughout the military, he’s been a key voice in advancing initiatives focused on traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and suicide prevention — bringing the functional medicine perspective into the broader conversation on military and veteran health.
As he shared with the group, “Brain health is mental health — and mental health is brain health. They’re interchangeable terms.”
From Battlefield to Functional Medicine Practice
Through years of advocacy, education, and collaboration — Dr. Stepanenko has helped shape national initiatives around warfighter health & resilience. Now, he’s working to launch a new project: the Institute for Military Functional Medicine, supported by the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM).
His practice at Sandhills focuses on veterans, active-duty service members, and military families. The goal: use functional medicine to repair the biological systems that chronic exposure, trauma, and stress disrupt.
“The same tools that reverse cognitive decline in civilian populations can transform brain health for veterans — we just need to apply them with precision and context.”
The Four Pillars of Warfighter Brain Health
Dr. Stepanenko outlined four clinical priorities for anyone treating service members or veterans — all of which align with TruNeura’s integrative model:
Do sleep apnea right.
Sleep disruption is common and often mismanaged. Many veterans experience sleep apnea from career-related blast overpressure and concussive brain injuries. CPAP alone isn’t always enough — re-titration studies are often needed — to re-evaluate for central sleep apnea component and determine the need for ASV or BiPAP devices instead.
“Half of our patients thrive with standard CPAP. The other half need customized support. Wearable data and patient coaching make all the difference.”Get the gut right.
Chronic stress, traumatic brain injury, and vagal nerve dysfunction often lead to maldigestion and dysmotility which set the stage for overgrowth issues like SIBO and Candida. We’ve been seeing this at surprising rates and overlooked or mistreated for decades. Functional stool testing (GI-MAP, GI Effects) and SIBO breath testing reveals root imbalances.
“Fix the gut first before detox. Leaky gut and leaky brain go hand in hand.”Get the hormones right.
Blast overpressure can cause pituitary dysfunction and downstream hormonal imbalances. Look beyond TSH — evaluate the full HPA and thyroid–gonadal axis. Also consider the gut-hormone connections — address levels of raw materials and rate-limiting micronutrients first and foremost — then consider ways of augmenting production, conversion, binding, or tissue level sensitivity.
“Sometimes Clomid is more appropriate than jumping straight to TRT. Precision matters.”Create an optimal healing environment.
Modalities like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, red light, craniosacral therapy, and acupuncture can reduce pain, restore circulation, and calm the nervous system.
“We heal faster when the body is given the chance to reset.”
Addressing Hidden Exposures
Military personnel and their families face unique, underrecognized toxic burdens:
Blast overpressure exposure from heavy weapons, mortars, and artillery training — cumulative trauma comparable to NFL concussion patterns.
Environmental toxins in military housing, including mold exposure, now recognized as a national-level concern.
Parasitic infections shared between deployed service members and their families — H. pylori and intestinal parasites are common and underdiagnosed.
While insurance coverage for toxin testing remains limited, many veterans find value in affordable mycotoxin or total tox panels through labs like Mosaic or Vibrant, especially when paired with clear follow-up plans.
The Power of Community and Group Care
When asked how the VA’s Whole Health Initiative is integrating functional medicine, Dr. Stepanenko shared encouraging news:
A majority of the VA Whole Health leadership we’ve interacted with are either functionally trained or aligned. The VA Whole Health model of care is perfectly aligned with the Functional Medicine matrix.
The VA has standardized group medical visits across the system — starting with diabetes and metabolic syndrome and expanding into pain, sleep, and brain health. The Whole Health system of care has actually standardized peer group visits facilitated by health coaches as part of their offerings.
The Office of Patient Centered Care & Cultural Transformation oversees the VA Whole Health program. There’s also exciting and robust expertise the VA has in implementation science — an academic discipline laser focused on facilitating rapid cycle innovation — through the QUERI (Quality Enhancement Research Initiative) Network and their regionally aligned Centers of Innovation (COIN)
“We heal faster together,” Stepanenko said. “Group care is how we make functional medicine scalable and sustainable — even in complex systems like the VA.”
The TruNeura Connection
TruNeura’s platform is designed to support exactly this kind of integrative work — helping clinicians measure, visualize, and coordinate the biological and behavioral factors that influence cognitive function.
As functional medicine reaches the military and veteran communities, TruNeura offers the data, collaboration, and system-level visibility needed to make it practical at scale.
👉 Book a TruNeura Demo to see how our platform helps clinicians integrate brain, gut, and immune data — and bring precision brain health to every population, from veterans to civilians.
Yes, important and add Lyme which is a high risk for military as they do ground maneuvers. It can cause every brain disprder, is 3x rate of syphilis, the only other spiral bacteria to invade the brain, heart, joints, endothelium and gyne tissues. It is much worse than syphilis as no sores to tipoff uneducated doctors, standard 2--step test is <50% sensitive so misses half the patients, has coinfections like Bartonella that can cause every mental illness and has no good late treatment. Nicole Malachowski, 1st female Thunderbird pilot could not read, write or walk yet 26 military doctors misdiagnosed it. See my LinkedIn and her YouTube videos.