Dear Doctor: Beata Lewis
The integrative psychiatrist whose passion for mind-body medicine led her to open her own practice in Brooklyn.
Right across from Prospect Park in Brooklyn, you can find the practice Mind Body Seven. Founder Dr. Beata Lewis had a vision of creating a mental health practice where clinicians consider the whole body when treating patients, not just the mind. Today, Mind Body Seven has a range of clinicians including psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, and a Chinese medicine practitioner. Dr. Lewis chatted with us about how nutrition, hormones, and lifestyle all play a significant role in one’s mental health. Read on to learn about how her upbringing inspired her to go beyond the classroom to combine holistic and conventional medicine in order to give her patients the tools they need to be well.
“I knew I would go into medicine since I was a child. In Eastern Europe, where I was raised, medicine and healing are seen as a female profession, so as the only daughter in my family, the thought was planted in my head early on. I was born in Russia — my mom is Russian and my dad is Polish. We moved from Russia to Poland when I was very little, not even a year old. Then when I was 15, my family moved to Key Largo, Florida. My dad sent a postcard to the U.S. visa lottery and won it. You have to immigrate within one year of winning the lottery. So I went to high school in Florida. For my undergraduate degree, I went to Harvard and then went straight into medical school at Harvard as well. I did my residency at Columbia University in Adult Psychiatry. Then I took a year off to travel and study in other countries. When I came back to New York, I did a fellowship in Child Psychiatry at the NYU Child Study Center and Bellevue Hospital.”
Studying Mind-Body Medicine
From childhood, I was interested in herbal and plant medicine. Growing up in my culture, everyone was taught which plants would help with which symptoms. As a little kid, I loved running around the woods by my house picking different leaves for tea. In college, I studied Eastern philosophies, and during medical school, I started practicing yoga and mindfulness. So mind-body medicine has been part of my life in many ways.
A lot of early research in mind-body medicine happened at Harvard Medical School so I was exposed to some of the best. During my time there, I learned from Dr. Herbert Benson who launched the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine. Mind-body medicine is currently not part of mainstream education in psychiatry residency or fellowship. Thus, in addition to whatever I was studying in school and in the field, I was also using my time on the weekends and in the summers to study integrative and holistic medicine.
Whole Body Approach to Treating Mental Health
Conventional medicine in psychiatry can be very focused on biological treatments. Medication is a great tool that we have, but it’s only one of the tools we have.
At my practice, we think about everything else: lifestyle, physical health, eating and sleeping habits, nutritional deficiencies, time management, exercise, social life, and existential and spiritual factors. The goal is to think beyond the narrow biological treatments.
Another thing that I consider in my treatment is hormones and how they impact mental health, especially for women. I test my patients to check their estrogen, progesterone, and other sex hormones levels. I also do in-depth thyroid screens and look at detailed metabolic and inflammation markers. I think about the body beyond just focusing on psychiatry, as an integrative medicine doctor, I also consider the rest of the body and how the body systems interact. As medical professionals, we are very sub-specialized, but our bodies don’t work like that. If someone has an issue with their thyroid, their sex hormones, infections, inflammation, or their blood sugar, it will affect their mental health — we really have to look at the full picture.
Nutrition and Mental Health
When seeing a patient for the first time, I really want to understand how they’re eating. I also do blood work so I can see how their bodies are reacting to what they are currently eating. Often, I see lab markers of how a specific diet is interacting with their genetic and lifestyle picture. Then my team and I will work with each individual patient on a plan. We want to help people understand what drives inflammation in their bodies and how their gut is working and interacting with their overall health. We want to make gradual, sustainable changes, that our patients can embrace and understand.
Food and nutrition can have such a big impact on one’s mental health. It takes a lot of effort and time to change one’s habits, but when people are really motivated, it can change their lives and the course of their treatment (and in some cases help them get off of their medications). I want to give my patients the skills and practices that they need to stay well and that includes a nutrition plan.
Learnings from Around the World
After my residency, I took a year off and traveled the world. I spent time in Israel and Costa Rica working with patients with PTSD and learned somatic based treatments for trauma. I went to Indonesia and India where I studied mindfulness and yoga. In Russia, where I spent most of my time as a Fulbright scholar, I studied creative approaches to psychotherapy and the mind-body connection. There, unusual and creative psychotherapy is really integrated into both medical and mental health treatments. I also looked at their medication practices to see what they use and how they use it. Russian doctors tend to prescribe a lot of lifestyle treatments like, nootropics, vitamins, herbs and other milder agents for normalizing brain function.
Starting Mind Body Seven
I went into private practice straight out of fellowship. I was a solo practitioner in Park Slope for five years. In 2016, I started bringing on additional clinicians to form Mind Body Seven Psychiatry. First Kaylee Rutchik LCSW joined; she’s a social worker who specializes in yoga psychotherapy and mindfulness. She also has an interest in women’s health, specifically, pregnancy, and postpartum. Over time, we built up and moved to our current location. Now, we are a group of three psychiatric nurse practitioners, three social workers, one psychologist, and one Chinese medicine practitioner who does acupuncture, craniosacral therapy, and massage therapy. I direct the whole group and oversee all the clinicians. We meet every week for individual supervisions and once a month the whole team meets together for lectures.
We have built a beautiful community of 13 women. It’s such a positive, supportive, fun, low-key, and low-stress work environment. I love having a team; it’s interesting and engaging. I’ve taught lectures for our group on nutrition, supplements, and overall mind-body medicine. We also have a reading list that we share.
Additionally, we’re all going through DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Training) training together this year and launching our DBT program after that. We have a lot of new moms clinicians in the group, so our team has a strong interest in women’s health. We actually just launched a new website dedicated specifically to supporting women going through infertility, pregnancy, postpartum, PMS, any hormone related issues. Our goal is to continue to build a team with a shared approach to mental illness and physical health issues.
Favorites
Yoga Spot: Third Root, I also recently tried Antigravity Yoga.
Local Coffee Shop: Cafe Regular.
Favorite NYC winter activity: Horseback riding in Prospect Park.
Lightning Round
Quote/ mantra you live by… feel the fear and do it anyway.
One thing I wish more people knew…the power of the mind-body connection in healing.
Everybody needs some puttering around time sometimes.
You can learn more about Dr. Beata Lewis and Mind Body Seven here.
Know a great female doctor in NYC? We’d love to meet her, introduce us here!
