Care for complex, stubborn conditions.
Many of Dr. Buddha's patients arrive after a long road — years of searching, treatments that helped only partly, and the exhaustion that comes with both. His role is to bring fresh eyes, time, and the full breadth of his training to the problem. This page describes the work he does and how he thinks about it. It is not a menu. Every plan he builds is singular, because every patient is.
Pain is where all suffering converges — and where his work is deepest.
More than half of palliative training is, in truth, the study of pain — and across twenty years it has become Dr. Buddha's central clinical pursuit. Conventional medicine offers remarkably little for severe chronic pain beyond narcotics, and so he assembled a different approach: carefully supervised ketamine therapy for neuropathic pain; medical cannabis where it is appropriate; integrative treatments; and a structured, patient method for tapering people safely off long-term opioids while other supports rise in their place.
When a patient needs hands other than his own — an interventional procedure, PRP, acupuncture — he refers honestly, most often to Dr. Peter Zheng, the board-certified pain and rehabilitation specialist with whom he shares his office. For problems beyond them both, he keeps relationships with specialists he trusts, a circle of like-minded, integrative colleagues. The point is never a particular tool. The point is relief.
Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS)
Among the most severe pain conditions known — and the one where Dr. Buddha has seen supervised ketamine therapy do what nothing else could. Persistent burning pain, swelling, and skin changes after an injury or surgery deserve a physician who has made this condition a study.
Neuropathic pain
Burning, electric, stabbing pain from damaged nerves — including postherpetic neuralgia after shingles and phantom limb pain after amputation. Nerve pain rarely answers to ordinary painkillers; it requires a different pharmacology and a patient, systematic approach.
Fibromyalgia and widespread pain
Whole-body pain with fatigue and unrefreshing sleep, too often dismissed because tests come back normal. The pain is real. He treats it with a combination of medical, integrative, and lifestyle approaches built around each patient's pattern.
Long-term opioid dependence
For patients who have been on opioids for years and feel trapped — his particular focus. He tapers slowly, never abruptly, while layering in alternatives so that relief is never sacrificed for safety.
Understanding aging — and caring for the whole person who is aging.
Geriatric medicine is more than the treatment of medical conditions in older adults. It is an understanding of the aging process itself — recognizing what is part of healthy aging, what represents disease, and how illness may present and affect a person differently as they grow older.
Dr. Buddha approaches geriatric care by looking at the whole picture: medical complexity and chronic illness, medications and polypharmacy, cognition and emotional health, mobility and function, nutrition, social circumstances, independence, and quality of life.
Treatment decisions are made using geriatric principles, recognizing that what is appropriate at one stage of life may not always be appropriate at another. The goal is not simply to treat each diagnosis individually, but to bring these different pieces together into a thoughtful plan that reflects the person's health, function, priorities, and life as a whole.
Guiding patients and families through serious illness
Over years of practicing palliative medicine, Dr. Buddha has come to see his role as helping patients and families navigate the course of serious illness with greater understanding, comfort, and clarity.
His approach considers the whole person — their medical needs, symptoms, emotional well-being, values, beliefs, and spiritual concerns — while remaining grounded in thoughtful medical care.
- Guide patients and families through the changing course of illness and difficult medical decisions.
- Advocate for care that respects the patient's values, beliefs, dignity, and wishes.
- Clarify goals of care and thoughtfully address advance directives and future healthcare preferences.
- Manage symptoms such as pain, breathlessness, nausea, fatigue, anxiety, poor appetite, and sleep difficulties.
- Integrate holistic care by recognizing the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of illness.
- Support and communicate with patients, families, and the medical team throughout the course of care.
Palliative care keeps the person — what matters to them and what gives their life meaning — at the center of medical care.
Trained at the Andrew Weil Center — practiced with a physician's judgment.
Dr. Buddha's integrative medicine fellowship at the University of Arizona's Andrew Weil Center taught him to take healing traditions seriously — and to hold them to a physician's standard of evidence and safety. He offers IV therapies not as a wellness menu, but as clinical tools: individually assessed, medically supervised, and woven into a larger plan. He also draws on Ayurvedic principles where they serve, and he is a certified medical cannabis practitioner in New York.
Ketamine infusion therapy
For neuropathic pain — particularly CRPS — and carefully selected cases where conventional treatment has failed. Every course begins with thorough evaluation, individualized dosing, and structured follow-up. This is medicine, not a drip bar.
NAD+, vitamin C, glutathione, Myers' Cocktail
Nutrient and antioxidant infusions for fatigue, recovery, immune support, and migraine — offered when a patient's history and his assessment suggest genuine benefit, and declined when they don't.
Medical cannabis
As a New York State certified practitioner, Dr. Buddha guides appropriate patients through certification, product selection, and dosing — particularly as part of opioid reduction.
Lifestyle medicine
Nutrition, sleep, movement, and stress — unglamorous, and more powerful than most prescriptions. Every plan he writes includes them.
A note of honesty: not every therapy on this page is right for every patient, and Dr. Buddha will tell you when one isn't. Saying no to an unnecessary treatment is as much his job as offering the right one.
If you're still searching, Dr. Buddha would be glad to talk.
Call or write, tell him a little about what you're facing, and you'll see together whether his practice is the right fit. If it isn't, he'll do his best to point you toward someone who is.