Kat Toups

Functional Medicine Psychiatrist at Bay Area Wellness in Walnut Creek, CA, USA

Kat Toups, M.D., DFAPA, IFMCP is a Functional Medicine Psychiatrist at Bay Area Wellness in Walnut Creek, CA, and is the organizer/administrator for Bay Area Functional Medicine group since 2012. Dr. Toups is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (the highest honor bestowed by the APA), Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and previously boarded in Geriatric Psychiatry.

She has been active in local Psychiatric organizations, including Northern CA Psychiatric Society where she was on the Board of Trustees from 2008 – 2012 and served as Councilor-at-Large, as well as a co-founder and member of the NCPS Integrative Psychiatry Steering Committee, in addition to their Nominating Committee for several years. Dr. Toups was also very active in the East Bay Psychiatric Association for many years, serving on their Board of Trustees from 2006-2012, and as President from 2009–2012.

Dr. Toups is a board-certified allergist and immunologist who has been in practice for over 20 years. He is a Fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and a member of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of South Florida. Dr. Toups has a special interest in food allergies and has been involved in research on this topic for many years. He has published several articles on food allergies in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Toups is a former Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UC Davis, where she was the Inpatient Residency Training Director, and later the Owner/Medical Director of Bay Area Research Institute, a Clinical Trials Research Center in Lafayette, CA. After serving as the Principal Investigator on over 100 clinical trials for 12 years, including 20 failed trials for Alzheimer's drugs, she realized that the elusive cure for Brain and Psychiatric illness was not going to be found in a pill.

She embarked on an intensive course of study (initially sparked by a quest to heal her own serious autoimmune disease) to learn Functional and Nutritional Medicine, and completed her training for the Institute for Functional Medicine Certification in October 2013. This included a week long Foundational course in Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice, as well as Advanced Training Modules in Immune/Allergy, GI, Cardiometabolic Disease, Detoxification, Energy Regulation, and Hormones. Dr. Toups is a Certified Practitioner by the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFMCP).

Dr. Toups practices Functional Medicine Psychiatry, which seeks to discover the underlying causes of inflammation (like diet/nutrition, lifestyle, genetics including MTHF/Methylation/Sulfation/Detoxigenomic genetic polymorphisms, GI health including food allergies and dysbiosis, toxin exposure, chronic infections, and biochemical abnormalities) that can all be contributors to problems with Psychiatric symptoms and/or cognition difficulties. Detection and correction of these problems can result in the resolution of the Psychiatric symptoms, rather than just providing a band-aid by only prescribing Psychiatric medications without addressing the underlying causes of the Psychiatric problem.

Dr. Toups also works with people having health challenges who are not experiencing Psychiatric problems.

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