In Conversation With Dr. Zulianna Ibrahim, MD
A physician with advanced training in functional and integrative medicine and hormone therapy, on why so many women still feel unwell when their blood work comes back normal.
What this conversation covers.
Everything below is Dr. Ibrahim describing her own work, in her own words. Wellsprings Health does not provide any of it.
Dr. Ibrahim describes women who are gaining weight despite doing all the lifestyle work, losing track of why they walked into a room, sleeping badly, feeling anxious, losing intimacy, leaking on a run, or whose cycles have changed, and whose standard blood panel came back normal. Her reaction was not to keep monitoring. She took it as a sign that the testing had not answered the question, so a better question was needed.
She describes functional medicine as treating the body’s systems as connected, with testing that goes past the blood to the tissues and the level of the cell. One example she gives is looking at how the gut is affecting hormones, and why weight is not coming off.
Dr. Ibrahim works as a consultant specialist, the way you would see a cardiologist or an acupuncturist, and wants women to keep their primary care doctor for acute concerns. She sends her notes to the primary care doctor and calls other specialists so testing is not doubled and patients are not pulled in two directions. She calls medicine a team sport.
It depends on what you come in for. Women in perimenopause and menopause starting hormone replacement therapy can notice effects in days, and she describes a patient who slept deeply for the first time in years after three days. Regulating cycles or trying to conceive can take three to six months, and weight loss work can take three, six or nine months depending on how many factors are involved.
Asked for one thing most women should add, she did not name a supplement. Dr. Ibrahim recommends taking inventory of your beliefs: rules like having to earn your rest, or that a body not responding is your fault, may have served an earlier chapter of life and not this one.
Who Dr. Ibrahim is, and where to find her.
Dr. Zulianna Ibrahim, MD has advanced training in functional and integrative medicine and hormone therapy. She chose conventional medicine on purpose, completed an integrative medicine curriculum during residency, and later added functional medicine and hormone therapy certification as her patients’ questions outgrew the standard toolbox. Her medical training took her to California before she settled in Miami.
Her practice is at 19501 Biscayne Boulevard, Aventura, FL 33180, and she suggests starting with a discovery call booked through her website. Dr. Leslie includes a direct link in the video description. This is a referral, not a promise about any result, and functional medicine and hormone therapy are hers, not ours. Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
Three things worth taking from it.
Normal labs are not the end of the question
If your blood work came back normal and you still do not feel like yourself, Dr. Ibrahim’s view is that the testing has not answered the question yet. You do not need the right vocabulary. Telling a clinician that something feels off is a valid place to start.
Keep your care team in the loop
She works alongside primary care and other specialists rather than replacing them. Whoever you add to your care, ask them to share notes with the doctors you already see, so nothing is tested twice and nobody is working against anyone else.
Then come back to the pelvic floor
None of the above is what we do. If leaking, pelvic pain, painful sex or a postpartum symptom is what brought you here, that is our lane. Florida is a direct access state, so you can book an evaluation without a physician referral.
This testing didn’t answer the question. So we need to ask a better question and we need to look somewhere else.
What we actually treat here.
Menopause
Tissue changes, dryness, urgency and pain through the transition are treatable.
Urinary Leaking
Leaking with a cough, a jump or a sudden urge. Stress and urge incontinence both respond to treatment.
Sexual Dysfunction
Pain, difficulty or loss of function, examined as a physical problem.