Featuring Sarah Zielsdorf, MD, MS, ABIM, IFMCP

Some patients don’t fit neatly into diagnostic categories. They’ve collected labels over time: fibromyalgia, endometriosis, mast cell activation, dysautonomia. Their labs fluctuate. Their symptoms overlap. They react to medications that are supposed to help. And too often, they leave appointments feeling unheard.

At CONNEXT 2026, Dr. Sarah Zielsdorf will address these complex intersections head-on — not as isolated conditions but as interconnected patterns across the endocrine, immune and inflammatory systems.

She’ll open the week alongside Sebastian Denison, RPh, in a live “Morning Warm-Up” session designed to answer unfiltered questions and fill education gaps for newer practitioners. It’s a practical starting point for a deeper conversation, grounded in real-world clinical uncertainty rather than textbook simplicity.

From there, Dr. Zielsdorf will move into one of the most challenging areas in modern medicine: chronic pain in women’s health. Conditions like adenomyosis, endometriosis and fibromyalgia are often treated as separate diagnoses. But she invites clinicians to look at what links them, including the spectrum of mast cell activation disorders, from MCAS to systemic mastocytosis, and their associations with dysautonomia and hypermobility spectrum disorders such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

For many patients, these are not isolated problems but overlapping systems under stress. Supporting them requires compassion — and often compounded, individualized therapeutics due to sensitivities, allergies and trigger reactivity. Dr. Zielsdorf will discuss practical strategies, including low-dose naltrexone (LDN), bioidentical hormone therapy (bHRT), ketotifen and oral peptides — not as trends, but as tools that require thoughtful dosing, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and careful patient selection.

This theme will continue in her session on autoimmune and rheumatologic conditions, where inflammation is not simply a symptom but a driving force. She'll explore the expanding spectrum of autoinflammatory and autoimmune disorders and the mediators that fuel them: diet, trauma, microbial influences and environmental triggers. LDN’s mechanisms of action and clinical applications will be examined in detail, alongside safety profiles and practical implementation considerations.

Inflammation is also central to hormonal transitions. During perimenopause, menopause and andropause, Dr. Zielsdorf frames the conversation around inflammaging — the chronic, low-grade inflammation that accelerates age-related disease — and metaflammation, the metabolic inflammation tied to metabolic dysfunction. She'll explore the role of the gut microbiome, intestinal hyperpermeability, circadian rhythm disruption, HPA axis dysregulation, thyroid imbalance, mitochondrial dysfunction and weight gain — all through a systems-based lens.

The message is clear: Endocrine systems do not function in silos. As the science of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy continues to evolve, compounding pharmacies play a critical role in delivering precision therapeutics, especially for patients who cannot tolerate standard formulations or require individualized dosing strategies. Sebastian Denison’s complementary lectures will reinforce how these therapies translate into practical compounding solutions, bridging clinical insight with pharmacy application.

At its core, Dr. Zielsdorf’s presence at CONNEXT 2026 represents something bigger than a series of lectures: a shift toward integrative, systems-informed care that recognizes complexity rather than flattening it. If you treat patients navigating chronic pain, autoimmune disorders, inflammatory conditions or hormonal transitions, these sessions will provide both clarity and direction.

Join us at CONNEXT 2026 and be part of the conversations redefining individualized care.