FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE: A Balanced Approach to Optimal Health and Wellness

By Shilpa Sayana, MD

I am a Functional Medicine doctor and a board-certified internist. I am forever grateful that I discovered Functional Medicine early in my medical career, which has fundamentally impacted how I practice Medicine and my lifestyle choices. Let me explain how I got here. I was born in Southern Africa to parents who are of Indian origin and were working as global health physicians. Toward the end of my high school years in Africa, the county we were living in, Botswana, was at the beginning of t he HIV/

AIDS pandemic, and it shaped my choice to assist in wanting to help patients who suffered from

HIV. I came to the United States for college, then proceeded to do my Masters in Public Health at Yale University, focusing on International Health, and then completed medical school at the University of Vermont School of Medicine. Finally, I moved to sunny California to return to my roots of living in warm temperatures to finish my residency in Internal Medicine at the UCLA-SFVP

in Southern California. Staying true to my initial reasons for entering Medicine, I completed a fellowship in HIV medicine, which allowed me to travel globally and teach other physicians how to treat people who were HIV+ with antiretroviral medications.

During this intense part of my career, where I frequently traveled internationally, caring for a panel of HIV-positive patients in Los Angeles, being a mother to an infant, a wife, and a daughter of aging parents, I lost balance between work and my health. This was when I was found to have a mass in my neck. I had to pause my work to go through the medical investigations to assess if it was cancer or something else. This was my first experience with being on the other side of healthcare, it was an eye-opening journey, and I realized even more the importance of kindness, compassion, and connection between a healthcare provider and a patient. It was a time of uncertainty and a confrontation with the fragility of life. Thankfully after a biopsy, I was diagnosed with a benign nerve tumor in my neck.

This was a time of reassessment career. It pushed me to ponder the following questions: Was I truly living my most authentic life? Was I truly helping my patients with their health? Did I understand the WHY of my patient’s symptoms? Was I the best mom, partner, and daughter I could be? Was I taking care of myself? I dug deeper into why I had developed this neck tumor. There were no answers in the Medicine I was trained in, and it was chalked up to a random occurrence. I had no family history or obvious medical risk factors, and these tumors are seen as sporadic medical occurrences. This was when I began to dig deeper into the WHY in Medicine and what could have been the root cause of my own health experience. It is where I discovered the connection between nutrition, inflammation, toxins, and stress. I kept searching deeper. I collected a few more Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine & Obesity medicine). Finally, I was lucky enough to have found a mentor who directed me to Functional Medicine, which is where I learned a systems-based approach to assess and evaluate a patient’s root cause of why they may be experiencing their current medical condition symptoms.

Functional Medicine is the greatest compliment to my Internal Medicine training. It provides the framework to attempt to understand the connection between stress, inflammation and exposures that trigger an epigenetic occurrence of symptoms or disease. Functional Medicine provides a more extensive battery of lab testing that measures markers of inflammation years before what we in Internal Medicine recognize as fully defined autoimmune disease. This way, we can treat patients using lifestyle principles and supplements that reduce these inflammatory markers long before a traditional medicine lab test turns positive. Functional Medicine provides us with a canvas to understand the complex interaction between a patient’s life experience, genetic predispositions, stress perception, diet choices, gut health, traumatic experiences, and toxins exposure that have created the perfect storm to switch on the epigenetic presentation of their current symptoms.

In Functional Medicine, we test adrenal hormones, which is the gland that produces your stress, hormones cortisol/DHEA and a complete thyroid panel which are 6 tests for the thyroid function as opposed to 2, which is our conventional approach, sex hormones, various inflammatory markers, nutrient/mineral/ antioxidant levels, an extensive panel of autoimmune antibodies, Toxins are often overlooked as a root cause in conventional Medicine. However, they can act as endocrine disruptors that impact one’s hormones, gut health, and neurotransmitters or may be an additional cause for weight gain.

These panels of tests give us a deeper understanding of how taxed one’s stress hormones (adrenal hormones) are, which could be due to chronic life stress, anxiety, toxic relationships, nutritional majority of my patients have the start of an autoimmune disease discover due to extensive testing. If we do not address the root causes as to why this has developed for them, there is a high likelihood of them developing a second autoimmune disease. For example, a common autoimmune condition we diagnose is Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. This inflammatory disease affects the thyroid and can be improved by lifestyle choices, such as diet changes consisting of a reduction in processed and inflammatory foods. Other patients will initially present with multiple low levels of autoimmune autoimmune disease. If we address their root causes with a Functional Medicine approach, we can often get these autoimmune markers to resolve with marked improvement in their symptoms and health.

I founded Sayana Medical & Wellness Center over a decade ago, where we practice primary care through a functional medicine lens. The name “Sayana” (शयन) is a Sanskrit word referring to “a resting place”, a place of sanctuary. I had the vision to create a safe place for all who come to feel heard and discover the power of healing. The same passion that drove me to champion equitable antiretroviral access and education during the HIV pandemic drives me today to increase awareness and access to Functional Medicine for more individuals suffering from a myriad of symptoms that do not fit into a conventional disease pattern yet. A Functional medicine framework has provided my patients and me with the tools and hope to address their root causes successfully, resulting in true healing. It all starts with truly listening to their life journey and being able to extract patterns, possible exposures, and choices to test the right markers and connect the dots.

A big barrier for people accessing Functional Medicine is being overwhelmed with making lifestyle changes and investing in their health. Working with a team of healthcare providers, including health coaches that understand functional medicine principles and are kind/compassionate in their approach, is critical to seeing improvements in one's health. At Sayana, we believe in choices and aim to provide patients with the tools to achieve that. We provide State-of-the-art tests that can help one understand what your body is saying. We hope to inspire patients to make small but important lifestyle changes. And we would like to be their guide in helping them decide what healing tools are best for them-medicinal and natural options.

As part of my passion for making Functional Medicine more accessible, we are launching the Sayana Medical Programs in April 2023. Most new patients already have a primary care doctor they like but want to complement this with a deeper dive into their health using the best conventional medicine and functional medicine tools to address their symptoms. These medical programs will focus on patients who want to understand their symptoms with our guidance better. The cost of the programs will include all visits, labs, supplements/ medication, and education so that patients can be empowered with information and treatments to reclaim their health finally. In addition, we hope to offer a scholarship program for patients who cannot afford Functional Medicine.

If you are someone who has symptoms that Conventional Medicine has not been able to address or you are simply trying to get clarity on your health, find a Functional Medicine practice to partner with, where you test for your current health status and have shared decision making on your diet, lifestyle choices, optimizing gut symptoms, reducing toxic exposures toward optimal health and well-being.

ENDORSEMENTS

“I am so happy to have found Dr. Sayana. She is incredibly thorough and knowledgeable. She really tries to treat the root cause of the issues and not just the symptoms, which I really appreciate. She is also very kind, and I believe she truly cares about her patients. She always ensures that all my questions are answered and that I understand everything she suggests. I could not ask for a better Doctor.“ ~ M R.Los Angeles, CA

“Dr. Sayana is the most brilliant and caring doctor I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen over 50). She’s been my doctor for almost five years and has helped me resolve several health issues when other doctors only wanted to give my prescription medications to mask my symptoms vs. figuring out the root cause.

She takes her time to listen to me and my long list of symptoms and figures out how they all connect to a potential root cause and is open to various testing that a lot of Western MD's wouldn’t think about doing. If it weren’t for her persistence to find a cure for me which included a lot of dedication to following her protocol on my side (Functional Medicine isn’t a magic bullet and takes time to heal), my quality of life would have been horrendous and taking care of my kids would be impossible.

“Yes, she suggests several supplements, which I love because I prefer natural supplements to heal me than pharmaceutical drugs with side effects.

“She also has greatly improved my dad’s quality of life when all his other doctors couldn't find an answer to his debilitating symptoms.

“My family is very grateful for her help and genuine concern for us and our well-being.” ~ Patty D. - Los Angeles, CA

“Shilpa Sayana is a wonderful, gentle, thorough doctor. She takes the time to listen to your concerns and addresses them individually. She asks excellent questions and ensures that she has answered all of yours. Upon follow-up appointments, she uses her notes to ensure that all your past issues are still resolved. I simply love her!”

“Dr. Shilpa is lovely. She is very knowledgeable. She is thorough. She asks many questions about your health and actually listens to your answers. She doesn’t try to pump you full of meds to 'fix' your problems. She very obviously cares about her patients. I highly recommend her.”

Cheryl’s Note:

In full disclosure, Dr. Sayana is my Functional MD; I believe she saved my life. One of the reasons I wanted to highlight both the holistic naturopathic and the functional medicine approach to healing is that I encourage everyone reading this magazine to own their health and continue to seek solutions. My Naturopath, who is also writing for this magazine, is also phenomenal and takes a completely holistic approach. My Naturopath and my Functional MD are on parallel paths. They have different approaches. Still, they are headed in the same direction and I benefit from both of their expertise.

If you are not getting the desired results for your wellness, keep pursuing additional options.