Dr. Lena Suhaila, ND, FABNO
Dr. Lena Suhaila, ND, FABNO
My interest in natural medicine started long before medical school. I was 13 when I found a book that changed how I thought about the body, and not long after I was planting an herb garden in my family’s backyard in the Bay Area. That curiosity never left.
It took on a different weight when someone I loved deeply was diagnosed with cancer while I was still in medical school. I felt helpless. I knew nothing yet of how to help. So when residency came, I chose oncology. Partly to learn everything I could for that person. But also because I discovered something unexpected. I loved how real people become when they are facing a life-threatening illness. The pretense falls away. What matters becomes clear. I wanted to be present for that, and useful in it. That experience shapes everything about how I practice.
After my naturopathic oncology residency, I joined the medical staff of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, now part of City of Hope. I worked in both inpatient and outpatient settings, rounding with the hospital teams and sitting on tumor boards alongside conventional medical, surgical, and radiation oncologists. Those years inside conventional cancer care gave me a clear, working understanding of how chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, and surgery actually move through the body. What they require, and where they leave room for natural medicine to do real work.
Earlier, I spent time at Amgen, doing pre-clinical pharmacokinetics research on drugs developed for low immune counts, and worked on molecular biology research for prostate cancer drugs. That work taught me pharmacokinetics from the inside. To this day, when I make a recommendation, I am asking not only whether the intervention has evidence behind it, but how it will interact with the medications you are taking, when it should be timed, and where it might unintentionally interfere. Few naturopathic physicians come to oncology from that angle, and it is one of the reasons my recommendations integrate so cleanly with what your oncology team is already doing.
I work with a metabolic terrain-oriented approach. I work with your body to understand how and why illness occurs, not just what to do about it. Think of your body’s terrain as the soil in which cancer may, unfortunately, grow. You are the gardener. Everything you put into, onto, or surround yourself with, foods, medicines, relationships, beliefs, shapes that terrain.
Cancer is not a single event. It is a process resulting from an imbalance in the body. Removing the tumor through surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation alone does not remove the process that produced it. To truly heal, we have to restore the conditions that allow the body to return to balance.
When we look at illness as a process within our lives rather than an external force to fight, something shifts. We discover that we have real agency. Care of the whole person, not merely the cancer, becomes the priority.
We also explore the emotional roots of illness. To balance the science, I use somatic psychotherapeutic techniques including Compassionate Inquiry, developed by Dr. Gabor Maté, and Internal Family Systems therapy, in which I am Level 3 trained. These approaches reveal what lies beneath the surface, the patterns and coping mechanisms that shape our health as much as anything physical.
I have also completed certifications in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy through MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the leading nonprofit research and training organization in the field, and through the Institute of Integrative Psychiatry. This training informs how I understand the relationship between trauma, consciousness, and the body, and shapes the way I sit with patients in the deeper conversations cancer often surfaces.
I am here for people who are willing to look inward as well as outward. Who want to understand their illness, not just treat it.