Dr Ruhi Agarwala

Role at the association

Dr Ruhi Agarwala is a Co Founder of the Indian Association of Functional Medicine. She holds an MBBS with training in Functional Medicine, and is a Co Founder of Functional Medicine Clinic and of Hormone Reset.

Her stated areas of expertise are autoimmune conditions and women’s health, two fields that overlap considerably given how much more frequently autoimmune disease affects women.

Clinical perspective

On autoimmune thyroid disease, her writing for the association makes a distinction patients rarely hear stated plainly. Levothyroxine corrects a hormone deficiency effectively, and it does not address the autoimmune process itself. A meaningful number of patients described as having persistent symptoms despite treatment turn out to have a correctable problem instead, whether in how replacement is being taken and monitored, or in coexisting conditions such as coeliac disease, iron deficiency, sleep apnoea or perimenopause.

She does not chase antibody titres, which can fall without clinical change and change without intervention, and she does not offer protocols claimed to reverse autoimmunity. Where a patient wishes to trial dietary change, it is run as a defined trial with a review date rather than as an indefinite restriction.

On polycystic ovary syndrome she argues that the condition is presented too narrowly. It is usually diagnosed and managed as a reproductive problem, while for most women who have it the long term consequences are metabolic, and the years between diagnosis and midlife are when that risk is most modifiable.