A chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body's own healthy tissue and organs, producing pain, inflammation, fatigue, and symptoms that migrate across systems.
Lupus rarely stays in one place. Joint pain, skin involvement, kidney effects, fatigue, and cognitive symptoms can surface in different combinations and intensities over time, which makes both diagnosis and management difficult.
Conventional treatment focuses on suppressing the immune response. That controls flares but does not answer why the immune system became dysregulated.
Dr. Kellman works from the position that autoimmunity begins with a loss of immune balance, and that the microbiome — where a large share of immune tissue resides — is central to restoring it.
Care is integrative rather than oppositional to conventional rheumatology. Testing looks for inflammatory drivers, gut permeability, infections, toxic exposures, and nutrient status, and treatment addresses what it finds alongside any medication a patient is already using.
No, and it should not be framed that way. Dr. Kellman practices integrative medicine — conventional and functional together. Medication decisions stay clinical and are made in coordination with a patient's rheumatologist. The functional work targets the drivers that medication does not reach.
A substantial portion of the immune system lives in the gut. When the gut barrier and microbial balance are disrupted, immune signaling is disrupted with it. Addressing that ecosystem is a way to influence immune regulation upstream of the flare.