About Solma Care

When I began researching properly, I discovered something that changed everything.

The symptoms I had been living with for years were not random. They were connected. And they had names. PCOS. Insulin resistance. Hormonal imbalance. Subclinical hypothyroidism. Vitamin D deficiency so severe it was affecting my mood, my energy, and my immune function.

None of these were things my doctors had proactively looked for. When I raised them, I was often told my results were normal — that I was within range, that I should manage my stress, that these things happened to women my age.

What I eventually learned — after months of reading research papers, clinical guidelines, and studies I had to teach myself to interpret — was that “normal” is complicated. Many of the reference ranges used in standard blood tests were established on populations that did not include South Asian women. Our bodies respond differently to insulin. Our risk profiles for certain conditions are higher. Our presentation of PCOS, thyroid dysfunction, and metabolic disease often looks different from what the textbooks describe.

We were being measured against a ruler that was never built for us.

I am not a doctor. I want to be completely clear about that.

I am a South Asian woman who spent two years reading everything I could find — PubMed studies, clinical guidelines from ACOG and NIH, research specifically on South Asian women’s health — and slowly piecing together an understanding of my own body that no single doctor’s appointment had ever given me.

Every article on Solma Care is written by me, researched from primary medical sources, and reviewed by a licensed physician before it is published. The goal is not to replace your doctor. It is to give you the knowledge to have a better conversation with your doctor — to walk in knowing what questions to ask, what tests to request, and what “within normal range” actually means for a body like yours.

I also wanted to build something that understood the full context of being a South Asian woman navigating health.

Not just the clinical picture — but the reality of being told by your mother that irregular periods are normal because she had them too. The difficulty of explaining hormonal weight gain to a family that sees it as a discipline problem. The particular loneliness of sitting in a doctor’s office describing symptoms and being sent home with advice to reduce stress and lose weight. The shame that has been built around women’s bodies in our communities, and how that shame delays diagnosis by years.

Solma Care is built for all of that. The clinical and the cultural together, because you cannot separate them.

Every topic on this site starts with a real question — one I had, or one that came from a woman in a situation I recognised.

The research behind each article comes from peer-reviewed medical literature. The language is plain enough that you do not need a medical degree to understand it. And the cultural context is written by someone who grew up eating the same food, navigating the same family dynamics, and hearing the same things from the same aunties.

You will find articles on PCOS and what it actually looks like in South Asian women. On insulin resistance that does not show up on a standard fasting glucose test. On thyroid conditions that are dismissed because TSH sits within a reference range that may not apply to you. On the vitamin and mineral deficiencies that are so common in our community they have become almost invisible. And on the parts of women’s health that are harder to talk about — fertility pressure, the grief of hormonal loss, the conversations you have to have with people who do not understand what you are going through.