Spotlight Series
Interview with Dr. Safa Maklad
Spotlight Series Topic: Fusion of Functional and Traditional Medicine
Guest Name: Dr. Safa Maklad
Guest Credentials: MD, Board Certified In Family Medicine & Obesity Medicine
Discussion Details: In this conversation, Dr. Leslie Wakefield, PT of Wellsprings Health sits down with Dr. Safa Maklad, a family medicine physician who integrates traditional primary care with functional and regenerative approaches. They discuss how therapies such as hyperbaric oxygen, nutritional IVs, hormone optimization, gut health mapping, and peptide therapy can be thoughtfully incorporated into comprehensive care. The discussion also offers a more personal look into Dr. Maklad’s philosophy, background, and approach to supporting patients through a whole-person lens.
Benefit of Watching: Viewers will gain a clearer understanding of how integrative and functional medicine can complement traditional care, along with insight into when these services may be appropriate. The conversation helps demystify advanced therapies while highlighting the importance of individualized, collaborative care. It also provides an opportunity to connect with a trusted care partner and expand one’s network of high-quality, aligned professionals.
Address of guest’s business:
2429 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, FL 33020
Dr. Safa Maklad: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be able to sit and talk with you and outside of the office sort of like we’re not we’re not directly talking about patient care right now.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: We’re actually going to talk about you personally. We want to get to know you a little bit better. Can you please highlight what you do for us? Like just I know I gave a little bio, but tell me more about what you do and how you do it.
Dr. Safa Maklad: So I um was obviously traditionally trained um in in family medicine, but then when I moved down here to Florida, I started doing more kind of functional medicine stuff. So integrating, you know, other types of treatments in addition to like the regular stuff family medicine would would usually do. So we have hyperbarics, IV therapies. We do a lot of testing like as you said like with the gut microbiome. And so it’s just an interesting way of kind of combining traditional medicine with the functional medicine
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: made you want to get into that because that is I mean you’re talking about combining but for most people those are two very separate things.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Yes. So I used to work in a hospital setting. Um I was the medical director of a wound care center. So we were we had to listen to the rules pretty much. So anytime we did hyperbarics it was only for FDA approved indications. But when I came down here, we were able to do off label indications for HBO and that included a lot of different things that I would have never done before. So that’s how I kind of started in that path of going down the functional medicine part.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: And what kind of patients do you see now as opposed to your wound care patients in New York?
Dr. Safa Maklad: So concussions, long COVID, um a lot of post-plastic surgery just to help them heal and all those types of patients we wouldn’t have been able to to give treatments for.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: And I mean just personally, how do you like working in this way? Because it is a big difference.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Definitely a huge difference is because you’re not so limited with time and and resources. So we I can sit down and talk to a patient for an hour and you know go through their history and everything compared to like this is the 10 minutes that you get and you have to move on.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: I think that’s part of the reason our patients love you is because you have the opportunity in the setting that you’re in to be able to actually connect and ask questions, but you also have the expertise of, you know, a very standard research driven protocols and you’re able to do both. That’s really nice.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Well, it’s a it’s a it’s nice to combine the two.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: So, what do you think about South Florida versus New York? It’s so much nicer. It’s warm. Apparently, I really like warm weather.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Tell me all the reasons. I agree with so yes just a change in pace and everything so just different.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: How did you get into wound care? So hyperbarics is is your your main area now and the patients that you see are coming for that and other things as well that you’re able to help them with and you mentioned that you started in New York doing much more standard care for wound care. But how did you get into that in the first place?
Dr. Safa Maklad: So that was just uh kind of a fluke. one of the the the medical director of the wound care center at the time. He was looking for another physician. I I used to be first assistant for general surgeries and he was the chief of surgery. So he you know he he knew me that way and he’s like I think I think you’d like really fit into the wound care center and I’m like at first I’m like I don’t know if I really like wounds but I’ll give it a try. And it progressed from doing it one day a week to a couple of days a week and to finally taking over as medical director. So he um he decided to just be chief of surgery and and no longer take care of the wound care center and I became medical director and so did that full-time. Yeah. It turned out that I really liked it more than I thought.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: Then you ended up taking that expertise down to here. It’s amazing how the professional path can go.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Yes. Yeah. It’s so different from family practice. You know, you get to integrate a lot more things. And so in addition to the hyperbarics, which is your original area of expertise, what other modalities do you use? Do you do hormone testing? Do you do I know you mentioned IV nutrition? What else?
Dr. Safa Maklad: Yeah. So there we from all all different types of testing. So like for DNA methylation testing, we do hormone testing, metabolomics, the GI testing for for your microbiome. So it’s it’s yeah, the whole world is wide open when you don’t have to deal with insurances.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: What do you do with that information? How do you use that?
Dr. Safa Maklad: So, we put it all together um and try to come up with a plan for the patient to to to really optimize everything. It’s very interesting what you can find on somebody’s microbiome on all the different, you know, bacteria that they’re either missing or they have too much of. So, it’s just trying to fix those things and optimize.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: And then how does that pair with whatever other medical care that the patient’s seeing you or getting?
Dr. Safa Maklad: Yeah. So, so it’s very like interesting. So, like like let’s let’s just pretend the patient’s diabetic. It’s so they they’re on their regular medications. So a lot of those medications kind of like metformin will actually deplete some of your vitamins. So if you’re not testing for that then you wouldn’t know that they are depleted and to actually replace it. So normally those aren’t things that you know like if you go to your traditional primary they wouldn’t be checking for all your different micronutrients and everything. So yeah.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: So it’s just kind of doing both. So you can do both is what I’m hearing. You don’t have to pick you over somebody’s
Dr. Safa Maklad: No. No, no,
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: you are a family medicine doctor. You can work generally in that way. But do most of your patients pair what you do with their other physicians or see you exclusively?
Dr. Safa Maklad: Well, a lot of them, especially with the endocrinologist, they will will see me in addition to their endocrinologist and and it’s kind of it’s just like working together so that they’re getting the best care they can.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: And what other specialties do you work with?
Dr. Safa Maklad: Plastic surgery obviously with the with the hyperbarics because they they don’t want their patients to heal well. And then with their primaries, a lot of patients will keep their primaries but then see me also and just to complement the care.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: Okay. Um so based on your your niche, you know, because everyone we talk to has a different area of specialty and a different toolkit. So if someone is interested in the regenerative medicine and the longevity in the longevity medicine, what is one thing that they could easily do at home or implement that you tell your patients that they might be interested in incorporating their routine that you recommend to your people?
Dr. Safa Maklad: I recommend everybody to take a multivitamin. It’s amazing how many nutrients we are deficient in just because of the, you know, our food supply and a lot of people don’t eat the, you know, the varied diet where they’d be getting all their micronutrients from from their diet. So, definitely a multivitamin and a probiotic.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: Do you have a favorite brand? Are you not allowed to say that?
Dr. Safa Maklad: I don’t know. I guess next question. Okay. Well, what did you which one?
Dr. Safa Maklad: I like I like pure encapsulations. I think, you know, their multivitamin is very well-rounded. It has, you know, all the different micronutrients. Also has a good level of vitamin D, which a lot of multivitamins have usually low levels of.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: So, we wouldn’t have to take an additional vitamin D with that.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Yes. Unless you’re super low, and then we might have to.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: And how does someone work with you? What is your usual protocol for seeing someone, making recommendations, follow-ups?
Dr. Safa Maklad: So, usually, um, I have the initial appointment with them. It’s usually an hour long so that we can go through the entire medical history and you know see everything from from pretty much the time you were born until until this point in time and yeah and figure out what needs to be done. So then we come up with the plan of like what labs do we need to order all that and then we all that stuff is ordered and then a follow-up visit to to to see what could be done.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: Okay, great. And if someone wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that?
Dr. Safa Maklad: Okay, so um I’m at O2 Pure. I will put it in the notes for everybody. Thank you.
Dr. Leslie Wakefield: Thank you very much for your time. I’ll be seeing you soon.
Dr. Safa Maklad: Okay. Seeing you soon. Bye.