Assessment decisions that hold up in complex cases
Monthly Master Class
Monthly Master Class
October 1, 2026
Find the Digestive Problem That 8 Negative Tests Missed
Liz Lipski, PhD, CNS, FACN, IFMCP, BCHN, LDN
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Why does your patient's stool test keep coming back unremarkable?
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Reflux, bloating, and fatigue often trace to too little gastric acid, not too much.
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High LPS predicted diabetes and cardiovascular events ten years out, independent of other risk factors.
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Six-food elimination resolves 92 percent of eosinophilic esophagitis cases; allergy panels predicted none of them.
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Learn how to choose the test, read the result, and sequence the intervention.
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CLASS OVERVIEW
Decide Which Digestive Intervention Comes First, and Why It Works
Liz Lipski distills three decades of clinical nutrition practice into a working sequence of thought for digestive assessment.
You will learn to:
- Organize a patient's digestive priorities before ordering a single test
- Interpret gastric acid status when symptoms point in two directions at once
- Select the stool testing methodology that answers the question you are actually asking
- Match a therapeutic elimination diet to a diagnosis rather than to a hunch
Every recommendation is anchored in published research, comparative laboratory data, and cases in which conventional testing returned normal results while the patient continued to decline.
Normal Test Results, Patient Still Not Well
Clinical training covers digestive pathology in the following categories: reflux, IBS, inflammatory bowel disease, and celiac disease, each with its own diagnostic criteria and drug.
Yet what training rarely covers is the assessment sequence that tells you where to begin when a patient presents with six overlapping complaints and a chart full of unremarkable results.
As a result, pancreatic exocrine insufficiency gets managed as IBS for years.
Hypochlorhydria gets treated with acid suppression.
A parasite survives eight negative ova-and-parasite panels because the ordering clinician did not know that detection rates vary by laboratory, not by patient.
Digestive assessment works when it follows a structured order:
- How the patient digests and absorbs
- Whether the barrier is intact
- What the microbiome is doing
- Where inflammation is located
- How the nervous system drives it all
Skip that order, and you are selecting interventions by guesswork.
The patient absorbs that cost in years of chronic symptoms, escalating dietary restriction, and appointments that end without an answer.
Did You Know...
Did You Know...
Fecal elastase below 100 indicates severe pancreatic insufficiency, frequently misdiagnosed as IBS for years.
Five grams of psyllium daily dropped heartburn incidence from 93 percent to 40 percent.
Ultra-processed foods supply 57% of American calories and 67% among teenagers.
Four ultra-processed servings daily raise all-cause mortality risk by 62 percent versus two servings.
Enterocytes replace themselves every three to five days, a narrow window for mucosal repair.
Curcumin raises lipase activity 80%; coriander improves disaccharide breakdown by 300%.
Insights into Digestive Wellness taught by Liz Lipski, PhD, FACN, CNS, IFMCP
Why does one patient recover on a protocol that fails the next patient entirely? Liz Lipski has spent her career answering that question by assessing digestion in sequence rather than by symptom label.
This course distills that sequence into something you can apply in your next appointment.
You will work through digestive and absorptive capacity; intestinal permeability and bacterial LPS; microbiome composition and its dietary modulation; inflammation and immune activation; and the enteric nervous system, which determines whether any of it holds.
You will also learn the intake tool she developed to stratify digestive priorities and track changes over time, since patients often forget symptoms once they resolve.
The stool testing comparison alone comes from running seven laboratory methodologies on a single sample and documenting where results agreed, where they contradicted each other, and what that means the next time you order a test.
COURSE FEATURES
What You Will Do Differently Monday
1
Digestive Priority Stratification
Score and rank 10 digestive domains at intake so you know which system to address first, rather than treating every complaint simultaneously.
2
Gastric Acid Differentiation
Distinguish reflux driven by insufficient acid from reflux driven by excess, and stop defaulting to suppression in patients who will worsen on it.
3
Enzyme Insufficiency Detection
Recognize pancreatic exocrine insufficiency hiding inside an IBS diagnosis, and dose enzyme support to the marker rather than to the tablet count.
4
Stool Test Selection
Choose the laboratory methodology that answers your actual clinical question, and know when a negative parasite result reflects the lab rather than the patient.
5
Elimination Diet Matching
Match the therapeutic diet to the diagnosis, set the reintroduction timeline correctly, and screen for the disordered eating risk that restriction can provoke.
6
Barrier and LPS Assessment
Identify increased intestinal permeability as a driver in autoimmune, metabolic, dermatologic, and neuropsychiatric presentations, then decide which testing actually changes your plan.
MEET YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Dr. Liz Lipski is a pioneer in integrative and functional nutrition — a clinician, educator, author, advocate, and researcher with decades of leadership in personalized nutrition and digestive health.
She developed and implemented the first two doctoral programs in Integrative & Functional Nutrition in the United States, and has spent her career working to put nutrition and lifestyle at the core of health care.
Liz holds a PhD in Clinical Nutrition from the Union Institute and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN). She holds dual board certifications in clinical nutrition (CNS and BCHN), is certified in functional medicine (IFMCP), and is a Cochrane member.
She retired in 2022 as Professor and Director of Educational Development for the Nutrition programs at Maryland University of Integrative Health. She continues to teach in the Gastrointestinal Modules at the Institute for Functional Medicine and the A4M Fellowship in Longevity Medicine.
Dr. Lipski serves as a special advisor to the Accreditation Council for Nutrition Professional Education and sits on advisory boards for Purdue Global University's Nutrition and Health and Wellness team and the Autism Hope Alliance. She is also a content consultant for AlgaeCal.
She is the author of Digestive Wellness (now in its 5th edition), Digestive Wellness for Children, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Digestion Connection, and has contributed to peer-reviewed papers, textbook chapters, and a Cochrane Review.
Through her company Innovative Healing, she offers nutrition mentoring groups and courses for clinicians. Learn more at www.innovativehealing.com.
Dr. Liz Lipski is a pioneer in integrative and functional nutrition — a clinician, educator, author, advocate, and researcher with decades of leadership in personalized nutrition and digestive health.
She developed and implemented the first two doctoral programs in Integrative & Functional Nutrition in the United States, and has spent her career working to put nutrition and lifestyle at the core of health care.
Liz holds a PhD in Clinical Nutrition from the Union Institute and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN). She holds dual board certifications in clinical nutrition (CNS and BCHN), is certified in functional medicine (IFMCP), and is a Cochrane member.
She retired in 2022 as Professor and Director of Educational Development for the Nutrition programs at Maryland University of Integrative Health. She continues to teach in the Gastrointestinal Modules at the Institute for Functional Medicine and the A4M Fellowship in Longevity Medicine.
Dr. Lipski serves as a special advisor to the Accreditation Council for Nutrition Professional Education and sits on advisory boards for Purdue Global University's Nutrition and Health and Wellness team and the Autism Hope Alliance. She is also a content consultant for AlgaeCal.
She is the author of Digestive Wellness (now in its 5th edition), Digestive Wellness for Children, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Digestion Connection, and has contributed to peer-reviewed papers, textbook chapters, and a Cochrane Review.
Through her company Innovative Healing, she offers nutrition mentoring groups and courses for clinicians. Learn more at www.innovativehealing.com.
She developed and implemented the first two doctoral programs in Integrative & Functional Nutrition in the United States, and has spent her career working to put nutrition and lifestyle at the core of health care.
Liz holds a PhD in Clinical Nutrition from the Union Institute and is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition (FACN). She holds dual board certifications in clinical nutrition (CNS and BCHN), is certified in functional medicine (IFMCP), and is a Cochrane member.
She retired in 2022 as Professor and Director of Educational Development for the Nutrition programs at Maryland University of Integrative Health. She continues to teach in the Gastrointestinal Modules at the Institute for Functional Medicine and the A4M Fellowship in Longevity Medicine.
Dr. Lipski serves as a special advisor to the Accreditation Council for Nutrition Professional Education and sits on advisory boards for Purdue Global University's Nutrition and Health and Wellness team and the Autism Hope Alliance. She is also a content consultant for AlgaeCal.
She is the author of Digestive Wellness (now in its 5th edition), Digestive Wellness for Children, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Digestion Connection, and has contributed to peer-reviewed papers, textbook chapters, and a Cochrane Review.
Through her company Innovative Healing, she offers nutrition mentoring groups and courses for clinicians. Learn more at www.innovativehealing.com.
COURSE CONTENT
Course Session Information
Course Session Information
SESSION 1
Digestive Assessment and Intake Prioritization
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Stratify into 10 digestive categories at intake to identify where the intervention will produce the fastest change.
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Assess lifestyle factors that function as clinical barriers to recovery before recommending supplements or diets.
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Document baseline symptoms patients will forget once resolved, preserving evidence of progress over time.
SESSION 2
Digestive Capacity and Gastric Acid
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Differentiate hypochlorhydria from acid excess in patients presenting with identical reflux and bloating complaints.
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Interpret pancreatic elastase values to determine whether enzyme support is temporary or likely lifelong.
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Apply empiric assessment methods safely, including the contraindications that make acid support inappropriate.
SESSION 3
Intestinal Permeability and Bacterial LPS
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Explain how endotoxin translocation drives inflammation across metabolic, autoimmune, dermatologic, and neurologic presentations.
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Select permeability testing that reflects active immune recognition rather than the presence of a protein.
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Time repair interventions to the enterocyte turnover cycle so healing efforts are not repeatedly interrupted.
SESSION 4
The Microbiome and Dietary Modulation
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Connect specific dietary patterns to measurable shifts in microbial diversity and short-chain fatty acid output.
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Quantify the metabolic and mortality risk your patients carry from ultra-processed food intake.
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Counsel patients toward fiber, polyphenol, and fermented food targets that most adults never reach.
SESSION 5
Stool Testing and Elimination Diets
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Compare sequencing, culture, and microscopy methods to choose the test that best addresses your clinical question.
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Match therapeutic elimination protocols to the diagnosis rather than applying a single restrictive diet to every patient.
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Structure reintroduction to expose delayed reactions and return patients to the widest tolerable diet.
SESSION 6
Integrating the Digestive Assessment Sequence
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Sequence interventions across digestion, permeability, microbiome, inflammation, and nervous system in a defensible clinical order.
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Recognize when external stressors, not protocol design, are preventing a patient from recovering.
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Determine which findings warrant referral and which belong within your own scope of practice.
What's Included in the Course
What's Included in the Course
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Nine recorded modules with lifetime access, viewable on any device
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Downloadable Digestive Health Appraisal Questionnaire ready for use with patients
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Comparative reference on stool testing laboratories, methodologies, and the markers each one measures
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Complete slide decks and clinical reference charts from every module
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Enzyme and elimination diet reference tables organized by clinical presentation. Certificate of completion for your continuing education records.
One payment of:
One payment of:
$399*
$399*
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Includes access to the full KI curriculum and participation in our members-only Zoom meetings and online forum.
Includes access to the full KI curriculum and participation in our members-only Zoom meetings and online forum.
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One-Time Investment: $399 ($495 value)
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Full 30-Day Master Class Access: Stream all video modules at your own pace from day one.
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