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Stabilizing the Nervous System.
Personalizing the Taper.
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MD – Albany Medical College
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Residency – UNC Chapel Hill
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MPH – Johns Hopkins University
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MS – Albert Einstein College of Medicine
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IFM Certified Practitioner (IFMCP)
Training & Credentials:
Affiliations & Memberships:
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Mount Sinai Health System – Associate Staff
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Alliance for Addiction Solutions – Board Member
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Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices – Board Member
Valsa S. Madhava, MD, MPH, MS, IFMCP
Board-Certified Internist | Board-Certified Addiction Medicine Physician | IFM-Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner
Dr. Valsa Madhava, MD, MPH, MS, IFMCP, is a board-certified Internist, Addiction Medicine physician, and Functional Medicine practitioner with formal training in clinical research.
She earned her medical degree from Albany Medical College, completed her Internal Medicine residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and holds advanced degrees from Johns Hopkins University (MPH) and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (MS in Clinical Research Methods). She is certified in functional medicine through the Institute for Functional Medicine.
Dr. Madhava directs two specialized private practices—Brain Body Medical and The Benzo Taper Doctor—focused on complex nervous-system destabilization and psychotropic medication withdrawal. Her work applies a systems-based understanding of stress biology, integrating neuroendocrine and autonomic physiology with individualized tapering strategies for patients with refractory or high-risk withdrawal syndromes.
She is an Associate Staff member in General Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.
Her work emphasizes restoring physiologic regulation during withdrawal by addressing dysregulation across stress, autonomic, excitatory, immune, and motor systems, rather than relying solely on symptom suppression.
Research Paragraph (Five-Axis Framework)
In 2025, Dr. Madhava authored an original study published on medRxiv that introduced the Five-Axis Stress Biology Framework, a biologically grounded model for categorizing benzodiazepine withdrawal into distinct physiologic phenotypes. Her research links clinical symptoms to specific neuroimmune mechanisms, redefining how recovery is understood and optimized.
Citation: Madhava V. Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Symptom Clusters: Distinct Phenotypes with Treatment Implications. medRxiv 2025; doi:10.1101/2025.10.07.25336923
“Recovery is not a matter of willpower or dose alone, but of restoring balance across the body’s interconnected neuroimmune systems.”
Earlier Talks and Interviews
These materials reflect earlier perspectives prior to the formal development of the Five-Axis Stress Biology Framework.
