About me
Dr. Batool Dawood, Pharm.D, CFMP is the founder and CEO of Enaya, LLC. She's a board certified pharmacist in the state of Minnesota and a University of Minnesota graduate. She has her post doctorate education and training in Functional Medicine and Clinical Nutrition through the Institute for Functional Medicine and Functional Medicine University.
Batool's passion for health spawned from an unexpected series of events. Fifteen years ago, to be exact.
One particular day, Batool raced from campus and into the familiar halls of the Fairview Cancer Center. Visiting her mother at the hospital after a day's worth of classes was routine for Batool, but that day was different. Her mother was resting from a partial mastectomy, a common surgery for breast cancer victims, and Batool needed to ensure that her mother was recovering well.
During Batool's visit, her mother's doctor turned to her and said, "I hope I don't see you here in twenty years.-
Those words stung. They hung in the air like a harbinger of a cancerous future. They made her realize that disease was no longer an abstract statistic pulled from a medical chart-no longer "someone else's problem.- It was real, and she experienced it every moment when recalling losing several close relatives to various cancers. The doctor warned that she, too, carries the genetic predisposition for this disease. But if she played her cards right-if she adhered to a healthy lifestyle-perhaps she could bend destiny in her favor.
Fueled by curiosity and her passion to serve, Batool pursued a pharmacy degree to study and help eradicate common chronic diseases in whatever capacity. She began practicing as a licensed pharmacist soon after graduating. During this time, Batool believed that she was making a meaningful difference in the lives of her patients: optimizing their medication regiment, improving medication effectiveness, minimizing side effects, evaluating drug interactions, and so on. Batool's long-term work with patients, however, opened her eyes to an alarming trend that left her questioning the mainstream healthcare model for chronic illness.
As her patients' health spiraled downward, the number of medications prescribed to them-and the dosage-only climbed upward. The majority of her patients struggled to afford the expensive medications, and many were having side effects that slowly crippled their quality of life. Batool made the connection. Our current healthcare model addresses the what rather than the why. While these medications were exceptionally good treating acute illnesses, they had a failing effect on treating chronic illness. For these patients, medications could do no more than patch up symptoms while leaving the underlying cause of the illness unaddressed.
Batool's observation was reinforced when her own daughter, Enaya, was born. When red rashes sprawled on her skin, Enaya was diagnosed with a severe case of eczema. Pediatricians met Batool's worries with a laundry list of medications. Steroid creams and moisturizers all promised to relieve itching and reduce inflammation, but none of them curbed Enaya's eczema altogether. Batool realized once more that she needed a big-picture approach to prevent Enaya's eczema from resurfacing. The question "why is this happening- is oftentimes more valuable than the what.
With that in mind, Batool took a courageous leap into functional medicine-an alternative health approach focused on the individual as a whole; on root causes; on restoring health and improving wellbeing. She hopes to provide for others the long-term, dedicated health partnership she once needed herself.
