MEET DR. SHAH,
A Clinician for Cannabis
Meet Dr. Sayed A. Shah, prac-
ticing physician and co-founder of
Mandala Integrative Medicine in
Davenport, IA. Here, he talks about
the role of cannabis in healthcare
and how he’s changing the way we
view wellness
Dr. Sayed A. Shah is an expe-
rienced physician board certified
in internal medicine. He recently
completed a fellowship in functional
medicine, a type of practice that focuses on
treating the underlying causes of disease, rather
than temporarily alleviating symptoms. In 2014,
he and his brother-in-law founded Mandala In-
tegrative Medicine to change the way we treat
chronic illness.
In his fifteen years of medical practice, Dr.
Shah has learned that Western medicine, while
24 NUGL Magazine
great for acute, life-threatening ill-
ness, sometimes neglects long-term
wellness for short-term symptom
relief in chronic diseases. In hospi-
tals and clinics, Dr. Shah saw most
of his patients being treated symp-
tomatically, without addressing the
cause of the disease. This led him
to take a more integrative approach
with his patients, shifting his focus
from the symptoms to their underly-
ing causes.
The most powerful illustration of the power
of integrative medicine, though, came from his
son, Roshaan. “My son is on the autism spec-
trum,” says Dr. Shah. When Roshaan began to
have difficulty in school, Dr. Shah and his wife,
Ambreen, gave him the Ritalin he was prescribed
-- and the results weren’t good. “He was getting