Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease by Martha Carlin. Over two decades of microbiome research after her husband John’s Parkinson’s diagnosis at age 44 to find the hidden connections.
In ‘Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease’ Carlin explores how Parkinson’s and the microbiome reshaped her view of chronic illness
DENVER, CA, UNITED STATES, July 7, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — John Carlin was 44 years old and had just run a marathon when he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Medicine offered drugs, symptom management, and no prognosis for recovery. His wife, Martha Carlin, began asking questions medicine wasn’t asking.
She did not simply research her husband’s disease. She stepped away from a successful corporate career, built companies, published science, and bet everything on a different answer.
Released globally by Silversmith Press, ‘Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease‘ is the account of what happened next. Part love story, part scientific reckoning, and part spiritual exploration, the book follows Carlin’s two-decade quest to understand the root causes of chronic illness.
“John was 44, healthy, and had just run a marathon. When Parkinson’s walked in the door, the medicine available had barely changed in fifty years. I had to go find a different door.” — Martha Carlin
Dr. Rita R. Colwell, PhD, former Director of the National Science Foundation and a pioneer in global health research, writes:
“This book is mesmerizing! I could not put it down. Very few books narrate a personal love story and an intense exploration of science in such a compelling way as ‘Connected.’ Martha Carlin shares her deep love for her husband, John, and her intense search for an understanding of the Parkinson’s disease that afflicts John. Not trained as a scientist, she plunges into learning all the scientific and medical findings about the disease and in the process, becomes knowledgeable of the discoveries…and flaws of contemporary science, its singularity of focus and narrowness of scientific methods… The book is indeed a love story…the deep love for one’s chosen life partner…and in the process of the search for understanding, to learn the science of being human.”
Over the next two decades, Carlin went deep into the scientific literature and found collaborators willing to ask bigger questions. She founded microbiome-focused companies, including BiotiQuest probiotics and The BioCollective, and poured her family’s life savings into the search for a different answer.
Her investigation led her into territory medicine rarely maps: the gut microbiome, environmental toxins including glyphosate, food systems, the gut-brain axis, and the role of grief and emotional stress in chronic disease.
Parkinson’s disease, and diseases like it, are systemic diseases. There is no silver bullet because there is no single target. The body is not a collection of broken parts. It is an ecology.
Connected challenges readers to rethink chronic illness. Rather than asking which symptom to suppress, Carlin asks what relationships have been disrupted — among microbes, toxins, the immune system, the nervous system, food, grief, and the environments we live in every day.
The book is for anyone who has ever felt that the official answer was not the whole answer: patients and caregivers facing a diagnosis with no roadmap; scientists, physicians, and health innovators open to a more expansive way of seeing; and readers drawn to a rare book that asks hard questions across the full range of human experience.
‘Connected: Love, Loss, and the Unseen Forces Behind Chronic Disease’ is available now in paperback and eBook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and major online booksellers.
About Martha Carlin
Martha Carlin is a scientist, speaker, microbiome innovator, systems thinker, and author. Driven by a personal mission to understand her husband John’s Parkinson’s disease and the root causes of chronic illness, she has spent more than two decades at the forefront of microbiome research, gut-brain axis investigation, and gut health innovation.
As the founder of BiotiQuest, a targeted probiotics company, The BioCollective, and Ancient Organics Bioscience, Carlin bridges complex science, patient advocacy, and practical health solutions, making her a sought-after voice on gut-brain health, the microbiome, environmental health, chronic disease prevention, and the future of systems-based medicine.
Her work has led to global research collaborations, a Research Fellow appointment at Australian National University, contributions to the White House Microbiome Initiative, TEDx speaking, and peer-reviewed scientific publications, including the 2026 paper “Gut, Brain and the Glycocalyx: A Portrait of Parkinson’s Disease.” She writes regularly at Martha’s Quest on Substack.
Angela Hartman
Angela Hartman Media
interviews@angelahartmanmedia.com
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