Hello, health enthusiasts, and welcome to Rev Up Health, your go-to podcast for all things wellness. I'm Dr. Mark Hechler, and I'm Tandi Hechler. Together we're here to fuel your health journey with the best of functional medicine and holistic well-being. Each episode, we'll dive deep into topics that matter to your health, bringing you the latest insights, research, and inspiring stories. Whether you're on a quest for vibrant health or just looking for daily health tips, we've got you covered. So let's embark on this journey together and transform the way you live. So, Tandi, what's on our wellness radar for today?
Hello, hello, and welcome to today's episode of the Rev Up Health Podcast. I'm Tandi, and today we're going to talk a little bit about our new integrative medical practice called Revelation Health and Wellbeing. And I'm Dr. Mark. We basically want to tell you what we do.
Why We Started Revelation Health and Wellbeing
Over the years we've had a lot of questions and comments from patients. We see a lot of situations where folks come in with all kinds of different symptoms and complaints. Have you ever gone to your healthcare provider with symptoms like fatigue, hair loss, weight gain, low libido, hot flashes, feeling depressed or anxious, or even decreased exercise performance — and all you wind up with is labs drawn, and then the doctor tells you, in quotes, "everything looks normal"? So you leave, and now you're even more frustrated because you can't get answers. Or maybe your healthcare provider just throws another pill at you and says, in quotes, "it's part of getting older." How many times have you heard that?
Revelation Health and Wellbeing is a revolutionary way to look at your healthcare. It's more focused on optimizing your health and avoiding disease. Our emphasis is on identifying symptoms and lab trends before they become a problem. We can work at modifying your lifestyle, improving your nutrition, adding supplements and maybe some other medications, and optimizing your hormones in order to avoid disease and optimize your health. We're looking for the root cause of symptoms, to catch the early stages of disease before they become a problem.
The Buzz About Metabolic Health
Right now there's a lot of buzz about metabolic health and metabolic conditions, and sometimes that gets a little confusing for people. What we're talking about there is maybe an elevated blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat — specifically around the waist — and abnormal cholesterol and triglyceride levels. All of these things are part of your metabolic health, and they're absolutely indicators that disease is in your future if you don't fix things.
Looking at the Whole Person
So we look at the whole person. In a nutshell, there are several different areas of health that come together to complete the picture. One is physical health — nutrition, exercise, and sleep, things that can be watched and monitored. There's mental health, which is stress, and who doesn't have that? We also look at the emotional side and the spiritual side. There's connection and community, as well as financial well-being — there's stress in all kinds of daily activities in life. All of these different areas of health overlap with one another, and that's why it's so important to really look at the whole person and take into consideration the things that might be going on in different areas of life.
True — from what Western medicine is, it's really just focused on disease and treating it: diagnosis and treatment. You have to have a problem before you'll get treated. They often miss the signs that disease is imminent because they're just not looking for them, or they don't run the key labs. Or they run the labs, but you get the word "normal," and, well, you're normal, so that sounds good — sorry, I can't help you.
How "Normal" Labs Can Fail You
I feel like we could do a whole podcast just on how labs come up with their reference ranges for what's considered normal. That would be a good one for later. This "normal" is all based on the current state of health for people your age, essentially, which does an injustice to people. You may still have disease and yet be in the normal range. But do you want to be normal? You know, 80% of people are metabolically unstable. No — you want to be healthier.
It's our goal to help you optimize your health span to meet your lifespan. We want to help you add life to your years, not necessarily years to your life — although that might just be a side effect of optimizing your health. We also want to optimize your athletic performance and your endurance.
The Discovery Call
As far as the services we offer, the first step in the process is a discovery call. This is a complimentary 20-minute phone conversation where you get to let us know what symptoms you're experiencing and what you need in a provider. We'll answer your questions, look at where you're at currently and where you want to go, and figure out if we're a good fit for working together.
The New Patient Assessment
After that, we'll initiate a new patient assessment. This is a two-hour comprehensive intake. How many of you have actually sat down with your healthcare provider for two hours and gone over your labs and what can be done to help you out? This is just not common practice — most of you are pretty rare in that situation. It includes taking a physical exam, going over the functional assessments, and of course we're going to draw baseline labs, review and interpret all of that, and go over it step by step, point by point. That's the part where, you know, you may have normal labs, but okay — this is where we'd like to see them, and this is the reason why.
That assessment of your current lifestyle habits also includes your sleep, your activity, your nutrition, your stress management, and even your social connections. Social interaction is very important for longevity, health, and well-being. We're going to use this information to determine your starting point, and through further assessments we'll determine where you want to be. That's the goal — where you want to go is something we're going to help you get to. Together we're going to formulate a plan and navigate this health journey.
You're going to come away from this two-hour visit with a lot of information and a clear understanding of your current state. You'll know where you're at and where you're going, and you'll have an outlined course for your next steps, including the lifestyle changes you can implement on your own to improve your health. If you choose to continue working with us, we would set up an optimization program for you.
One thing to note is that the new patient initial assessment could be a standalone service, and that might be all you need. You may take away the lifestyle changes and recommendations we provide and just go from there, doing your own thing — and that's awesome.
The Optimization Program
If you do choose to go with the optimization program, where we may do some more medications and monitoring of other things, it's really important to know that this is a collaborative effort. We're here to educate, empower, and give you the tools you need to be the CEO of your health. This is designed as a health journey to make transformative, sustainable change. So it's not going to happen fast — these things take time, and they take work. If you're not ready to do that, it's okay; it's just not the right timing for you to go down that path.
What does the optimization program include? There are routine visits built in, either in person or via telehealth. We'll have prescriptions, supplements, and titrated prescriptions for you, so we can decide together what symptoms we need to address, where we need to go, and how to get you feeling better faster. We may also use continuous glucose monitors and provide evaluation and recommendations based on the data we gather — that's another topic that would probably make a really good podcast, because that data can be so beneficial.
You'll have access to our team to answer questions — and by team, I mean Dr. Mark and myself. For supplements, we actually have discounted rates available to people who are on the optimization program. There's education and training via the newsletter, podcasts, and our patient education portal, plus lifestyle recommendations and coaching around implementation. We're really hoping to have some regular workshops, both live and recorded. This is definitely a process — we'll implement interventions and give you recommendations, and you can work with them at a pace that feels comfortable to you.
Performance Add-Ons
We'll also have some performance add-ons for you. If there's any specific training or testing we can offer to improve your performance and maximize your strength and mobility, as well as improve your metabolic efficiency, function, and recovery time, those are all available. These details are maybe more for the elite athlete or the individuals who want to get more serious — you want to start running extra marathons, or get more into CrossFit training and things of that nature. We want you to excel at your physical activities, reduce your injuries, and stay healthy so that you can continue to be active and productive well into your 80s and 90s. You really have to prepare yourself for what's going to happen when you get older.
I really love this concept, because the idea is that we're training now, at middle age, for the endgame. What do I need to do today to be sure that when I'm older I can still put my suitcase in the overhead bin of the airplane, carry my groceries into my house, and get on the floor and play with my grandkids? All those things we kind of take for granted — we're really training for them right now. Dr. Mark didn't talk about it, but he's currently doing some extra education to get his physical training certificate, so that's exciting and to come as well.
Ongoing Maintenance and Support
Maintenance support is going to help keep you on track. We're going to continue to watch for changes that need to be addressed. This is an ongoing thing — you can't just go into this with one set of labs, get told "here's what you need to do, see you later, good luck, happy life." It doesn't work like that. People are going to get on and fall off the bus, and there are going to be ways of doing this that are better than others based on your situation and your current health status. And be honest — you may get tired of certain activities, and it's going to be an ongoing treatment.
This type of medicine is fresh, it's exciting, it's new, and it's gaining a lot of momentum in the healthcare world right now. I think you're going to hear a lot more about this in the future, and not too many years from now it's going to be something that's gaining a lot of momentum. New interventions are always being made available and determined. Just this past weekend we went to a conference — and we go to a lot of conferences — and it seems like every time we go, we learn so much and get so many new things to bring back to the practice.
Nurse Coaching
Another offer we have is nurse coaching. I have a board certification in nurse coaching — I did some extensive training and a practicum. Nurse coaching is kind of an odd thing to be called; a lot of people are like, "What, you coach nurses?" And really, no — it's basically that I am a nurse, and I am here to coach and help you. The big part of my program was about transformative coaching. We can work together one time, or we can do a 12-week program where we're basically checking in every week. Those sessions include a meditation to kind of get grounded and get started, and really dig into what you need. I can also serve as an accountability partner for you. That's all part of the service we have to offer, but in a nurse coaching program, a 12-week program is a little more in-depth.
My certified personal training certificate course, which I'm taking too, is purely for me to gain more knowledge on what it takes to be productive and efficient and really perform your best in a safe manner, and yet still get results. It's important as we get older to maintain muscle and mobility — that's going to keep you safe. As you get older, you're going to stumble, the ground's going to be uneven, and you're going to fall, so it's important to be able to either catch yourself or prevent yourself from being hurt. It's important to pass that knowledge along.
Our Core Values
Our practice is built around certain core values. One, it's patient-centered. Two, it's adventurous — we are adventurous folks ourselves. Tandi and I do a lot of traveling, and we like to do a lot of hiking, running, and biking, so it's something we enjoy. Then there's a growth mindset, and everyone's included — it's not just for certain people, it's for everybody. And kindness is something that's there too. We're here to help you and to be with you. Once we get to work together, I think it's going to be something that you'll enjoy and want to continue — because once you start feeling good, you're going to want to stay with it. You don't want to feel the way you used to.
How "Revelation" Got Its Name
I have just a little bit more time to tell you how we came up with Revelation Health and Wellbeing. Many years ago — it almost feels like another lifetime — I used to live in a community called New Longview. It's in Lee's Summit, and it's based around the old Longview Farm. There are old barns there at the farm, and if you're from the area, you know them well. I had a dream that I would renovate those barns and turn them into a fitness and wellness institute. Loula Long Combs had many horses, but one of her horses was named Revelation, so I always had this dream that I would take those barns and create Revelation Health and Wellness.
When we started talking about this new practice and what it would be, that really came back to me. And what's really fun is that our new clinic is going to be in an old barn that we restored — well, not really restored, but renovated to make it more of a fitness clinic space. So it's kind of fun that that little dream came full circle.
Get in Touch
If you're interested in hearing more, or if you want to work with us, you can find more information at revelationhealthandwellbeing.com. There's a contact-us page where you can put your information in and we'll reach out and contact you, or you can sign up for our newsletter. We really appreciate you joining us, and we hope you have a fantastic day.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Rev Up Health. We hope you're leaving with some valuable insights to supercharge your health journey. Don't forget to follow or subscribe to Rev Up Health wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a rating and review. Have a topic you want us to explore? Reach out to us on our social media channels — we love hearing from our wellness community. Until next time, keep thriving, and remember: your journey to health is a journey to a better you. Stay well, and we'll connect with you again soon. This is Tandi, and this is Dr. Mark, signing off from Rev Up Health. Take care.
The information provided in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. The content is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient and their healthcare provider. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your healthcare regimen, including diet, exercise, or treatment plans. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Revelation Health and Wellbeing.