Sayana Medical & Wellness Center

Sayana Medical & Wellness Center Functional Medicine Doctor. Getting to the Root Cause of your health concerns is our specialty!

05/30/2026

Symptoms are not random.

They’re signals.

In medicine, it’s common to suppress symptoms to provide relief — and that can be appropriate in certain situations.

But long-term healing often requires understanding what those symptoms represent.

Fatigue, brain fog, weight changes, and migraines are often connected to underlying patterns involving metabolism, inflammation, hormones, or stress physiology.

When those patterns are identified, the approach becomes much more targeted.

Your body is communicating — the goal is to interpret it correctly.

05/29/2026

Cortisol plays an important role in stress and sleep patterns.

When levels remain elevated, it can affect rest, mood, and overall wellbeing.

There are simple, evidence-informed ways to support healthier cortisol regulation, including magnesium glycinate, ashwagandha, breathwork practices, and time spent in nature.

Small daily habits can help the body shift toward a more balanced stress response.



05/27/2026

I have to be honest about this. The things I used to tell women with autoimmune conditions about working out — I believed them. They came from my training, from clinical guidelines, from what I thought was right.

Here's what I no longer say:

"You just need to move more."
Movement matters — but "more" is not always the answer. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Immunology showed that high-intensity exercise generates oxidative stress in intestinal tissue, disrupting tight junction proteins and increasing gut permeability. For a patient with Hashimoto's, lupus, or RA — where intestinal permeability is often already elevated — that advice was compounding the problem I was trying to solve.

"It's supposed to be hard."
I used to frame post-workout fatigue as a sign of effort. But the fatigue my autoimmune patients described wasn't normal DOMS. It was lasting days. It was triggering joint pain, brain fog, and symptom flares. That's not adaptation — that's immune activation.

"Consistency matters more than anything."
It does — but not the way I used to mean it. Now I mean: consistent movement that respects your body's signals on any given day. Some days that's strength training. Some days that's a 20-minute walk.

The women who got better weren't the ones who pushed hardest. They were the ones whose protocols matched their biology.

Save this if you've ever felt worse after a workout and been told to just push harder.

05/26/2026

IBS is a description, not a diagnosis. It tells you what is happening — not why.

When a patient comes in with an IBS label, I don't start with a symptom management protocol. I start asking: what created this environment in the first place?

Low stomach acid. Low pancreatic enzyme production. Elevated cortisol. Increased intestinal permeability. Mineral deficiencies. Gut dysbiosis from years of chronic stress and burning the candle at both ends.

Most of the time, the gut is responding logically to years of accumulated stressors — physical, emotional, and nutritional. Healing isn't about suppressing the signal. It's about addressing what the gut is responding to.

If you've been handed an IBS diagnosis and left without real answers, there's more to investigate.

05/25/2026

After working with hundreds of patients through perimenopause and menopause, I can tell you — it's not luck, and it's not entirely genetics.

The women who move through this transition most smoothly tend to have a few things in common: stable blood sugar going in, a stress response that isn't already maxed out, and enough muscle mass to buffer the hormonal shifts.

The ones who struggle most? Often the women who spent their 30s and early 40s chronically under-eating, over-exercising, and running on cortisol. Not because they did anything wrong — because they were following advice that wasn't built for this phase of life.

Perimenopause doesn't create problems. It reveals them.

The good news is that the variables are largely addressable. It's never too early — or too late — to prepare your body for this transition.

If you're in your late 30s or 40s, this is worth your attention now.

05/24/2026

LDL and ApoB are measuring two completely different things — and most standard panels only run one of them.

LDL-cholesterol tells you how much cholesterol is being carried. ApoB tells you how many particles are doing the carrying. Two people can have the exact same LDL number but very different cardiovascular risk depending on their particle count and size.

If your doctor has mentioned cholesterol but never mentioned ApoB, this is worth bringing up at your next visit.

Comment LABS below and I will send you a guide on the markers I include with every new patient evaluation.

05/23/2026

This is not about telling you to avoid medication. It is about helping you have a more informed conversation with your doctor.

A total cholesterol of 220 does not automatically put you in statin territory — not without understanding the full cardiovascular picture. Before any prescription, ask about your ApoB levels, your fasting insulin, your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio, and what is actually driving the elevation.

Cholesterol is a marker, not a verdict. Context changes everything.

Save this and bring it to your next appointment.

05/22/2026

This one is worth saving.

Here are 10 lab results that fall within standard reference ranges — but that I flag every single time as worth investigating:

Ferritin, TSH, fasting insulin, Vitamin D, homocysteine, CRP, RBC magnesium, Free T3, DHEA-S, and fasting glucose all have "normal" ranges that were built to identify disease — not to optimize function.

If you have been told everything looks fine but you still feel off, this is where I would start looking.

Save this and bring it to your next appointment.

05/21/2026

Here's what I no longer recommend for my patients with autoimmune conditions — and what I tell them instead:

❌ Daily high-intensity cardio.
A 2024 systematic review in the Journal of Sport and Health Science looking at 20 years of exercise and autoimmune disease research found that acute moderate-to-high-intensity exercise transiently increases inflammatory biomarkers. For someone whose immune system is already dysregulated, that repeated spike isn't building resilience — it's fueling the fire.

❌ Long endurance sessions on an empty stomach.
Research published in Frontiers in Nutrition found that exercise at or above 70% of max working capacity for more than 60 minutes can increase intestinal permeability — what's commonly called "leaky gut." For autoimmune patients, that matters. Barrier breakdown means more immune activation, not less.

❌ "Push through the fatigue."
This is the advice that does the most damage. Fatigue in autoimmune conditions isn't deconditioning. It's immune-mediated. Overriding that signal doesn't build discipline — it triggers flares.

What I recommend instead:

✅ Resistance training 2–3x per week with real recovery between sessions.
✅ Zone 2 cardio — walking, light cycling, swimming — where you can hold a conversation.
✅ Tracking energy and HRV, and adjusting volume on high-inflammation days instead of forcing consistency.

Your protocol needs to match your biology. That's where I start.

05/20/2026

If you struggle every month during the two weeks before your period — this is for you.

The luteal phase is when progesterone should be at its highest. When it's not, you feel it everywhere:

→ Mood instability — fine one hour, overwhelmed the next
→ Sleep disruption — falling asleep is fine, staying asleep is the problem
→ Bloating that shows up like clockwork mid-cycle
→ Breast tenderness that has nothing to do with your bra
→ Carb and sugar cravings that feel out of your control
→ Anxiety that wasn't there two weeks ago

This isn't something you just have to live with. It's diagnosable, it's measurable, and it's addressable.

💬 Drop a P in the comments if this is you every single month.

Address

14006 Riverside Drive, Unit 18
Sherman Oaks, CA
91604

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 7pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 7pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 7pm
Thursday 8:30am - 7pm
Friday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

+18183314386

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