In this first episode of Rev Up Health, we introduce ourselves — our backgrounds in medicine and nursing, how we met on a medical mission trip in Uganda, and what led us from conventional practice toward a shared passion for longevity, prevention, and helping you optimize your health.
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.
For this first episode, we're going to take some time to introduce ourselves so you know a little bit about us before we get started on this journey.
Meet Dr. Mark Hechler
I'm basically a hometown kind of guy. I grew up in a small town in northern Missouri called Brookfield, where everybody knows everybody. I went to medical school and residency in Missouri as well, and after graduating from residency in the St. Louis area, I started private practice in a small town outside of Kansas City called Warrensburg, Missouri. My residency gave me a lot of exposure to all kinds of things, from emergency room work all the way through ear, nose, and throat — which is the practice I have now. It's an otolaryngology practice, and I've been in practice for almost 30 years. I've enjoyed it and had a good time, and now we're moving on into other adventures.
As for hobbies, I love to run. I do marathon running — I've run marathons on all seven continents, and I'm closing in on all my states. I'm having a good time and feeling good, and I'm going to keep doing it while I still can. I also like hiking and biking, and I'm pretty physically active. I do a lot of weight training and work on mobility and strength, which is always good for longevity.
I also enjoy home and office remodeling and design. Over the years I've designed our homes, our office, and our surgery centers — if I couldn't do healthcare, I'd probably go into architecture. I enjoy a lot of work around the home, too, like electrical and plumbing. I'm a pilot and have my private pilot license, which is something I picked up later in life. I didn't know I had an interest in it, but a patient got me interested, and it was like, sure, let's do it. I got it done and love it. Growing up in a small town, I didn't have much access to farming, but I did buy a cattle farm and raised cattle on it for years during my practice. And a few years ago we bought an ambulance and converted it into an RV — you can see that over at Romont Adventures, a little plug there. We take the dogs and go on trips, head to races, do bike races, and what have you throughout the country. It's a lot of fun.
Meet Tandi Hechler
That's a tough act to follow. I was born and raised in Kansas City, growing up in the suburbs, and I went to nursing school. I did things a little differently — I started nursing school after I already had two baby girls at home, going nights and weekends to get my associate degree in nursing. Then I started working as an RN on a med-surg floor for about a year before transitioning to the operating room, where I worked on the neuro team for several years and then moved into operating room leadership.
As far as interests go, I'm a personal-growth junkie. I've done lots of training — yoga teacher training, energy work training — and I love the mountains: hiking, biking, and I've learned to love running, a.k.a. walking, half marathons alongside Mark. I'm a 5/1 projector with splenic authority in human design — if you know, you know. And I'm really passionate about mental health. I think it's so important that people take note of their mental health and work through those things. I've done a lot of therapy in my day, and I'm a huge advocate for it.
A Blended Family and an Unexpected Meeting
We've both been married before and had children — I had three wonderful kids and she had two beautiful girls — and we've been blessed with a nice blended family that's truly a joy. They all get along, which is wonderful, and we're so fortunate to have that.
We met in a bit of a strange situation. We're both very active in medical mission work and do a lot of medical mission volunteering. By that point she'd been to India and I'd been to Romania, and we both ended up in Gulu, Uganda. We got to work together in the same operating room there and got to know each other a little bit. The following year we went back, and things started clicking. After we got back to Kansas City, we decided I'd ask her out on a date — we went to a Kansas City Chiefs football game, and that's how it all started.
The Proposal on the Nile
The next year we went back to Uganda for another mission trip, and I decided that would be a good time to ask her to marry me. I told nobody — I didn't tell her parents, I didn't tell our kids — and just sprang a little surprise on her.
After a mission trip there's usually a couple of days of decompression, and in Uganda we do that at Chobe Safari Lodge, a beautiful spot on the Nile River. Mark said he was going to take me on a walk to a spot he'd scoped out earlier. The thing about Chobe is that there's wildlife everywhere, so you're not supposed to go too far from the main hotel area without a chaperone. They have these little tent cabins, and to get to one you have to be taken from the lodge by golf cart with a chaperone who carries a weapon in case you encounter any wildlife at night. So Mark decides he's going to take me at sunset, on a walk to this spot, without a chaperone. If you know me, you know I'm somewhat of a rule follower, so I was already a little anxious about going outside the rules with it getting dark.
We got out to this beautiful spot where there's a bench, the sun is setting over the Nile, and the hippos are starting to make noises. It's just beautiful — but as the sun goes down and it gets darker, I'm getting more and more nervous.
When it gets dark, these hippos come out of the water, up onto land, and they feed all night. And hippos aren't real nice — they're not real friendly. So it's getting dark, she's getting nervous, and it's about time for us to go. At that point I figured I'd better get on this, so I got the ring out of my pocket, got down on one knee, and asked her to marry me. Luckily, she said yes. Then it was time to run back quick, because the hippos were literally coming out of the water as we headed back to the main lodge. We had to walk gingerly to get back — a little anxiety-provoking, but that's the engagement story.
Noticing a Pattern: Getting Sicker, Younger
After we got engaged, we got married about a year later. Before then, Tandi had started working in the ear, nose, and throat office, and we began to notice something across our patients: people were just getting sick — and getting younger and sicker. We were seeing young folks with high blood pressure and other problems, and we noticed that for a lot of people, the so-called golden years weren't so golden.
That started bringing on some thought and discussion between us about what could be done to promote longevity. Here we were, newlyweds — older adults, we'll say — wanting to spend as much quality time together as we could. So we kept asking: what can we do to promote our own health and longevity? That's where this all started to progress.
A Functional Approach and a Book That Changed Everything
I was really the one who got us headed down this path, because I wanted to feel the best that I could. I started working with a functional nutritionist who did a bunch of lab work and some genetic testing. As we were adjusting supplements and changing my diet, she looked at my labs and said, "Your thyroid labs are normal, but they're on the low end of normal. Do you think your husband would prescribe you thyroid?" I said I'd ask — and Mark said no.
I said no because her thyroid labs were normal, and there was no reason to treat that. That's what traditional medicine and traditional medical thinking teaches us: you treat the labs, not the person. But I can't tell you how many patients I've seen over the years with suboptimal thyroid function and treatment who still feel weak and tired, lose hair, have dry skin, and so on.
So I took matters into my own hands and started working with a friend of mine, Dr. Ann Morgan with Thrive Once More clinic, who had recently gotten into bioidentical hormone replacement and preventative medicine. She got me started on a protocol, and as we were talking that first day she said, "There's also this book I've read, by David Sinclair — Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To." That really got us started. We actually listened to that book on audio at a time when we were traveling to Colorado quite frequently, listening on our many-hour drives across Kansas. We got really interested in this line of thinking, and I talked Mark into doing some continuing education with WorldLink Medical. Not too long after that, we jumped in with both feet.
A Better Way: Prevention Over Disease
At that point we started to dive deeper into true healthcare and ask: is there a better way? Is there another way to actually promote health, improve your health, live longer, live better, and stay functional? There just has to be a better path to health, and it's not through treating disease.
The entire emphasis of Western medicine is to come up with a diagnosis and treat the disease. Nobody really has an answer for, or interest in, the question of why we don't just keep people healthy in the first place. Why don't we try to make ourselves healthy and prevent heart disease, prevent cancers, prevent neurodegenerative problems, prevent osteoporosis? There's so much you can do to help prevent these things, and that's how this all progressed.
It's important to know that the reason we're doing this is because we've been in the other shoes. We've seen the way it worked, and now we see a different way — a new way, and what we think is a better way.
Join Us on the Journey
So we're super excited to be here and get this started. We have a list so long of all the topics we'd like to talk about, and we're definitely interested in what you want to hear. If there's something you want to learn more about, please ask — send us messages on social media, comment on the podcast, and let us know. We'll do our best to teach you.
We're so committed to our own health, and we really want to be committed to your health too. With the combination of our knowledge and our desire to keep learning about promoting health, we think we can help a lot more people. We want to live to be older but still be productive — not stuck in a nursing home, but in a place where, even at 100 years old, we can get on a plane and put our luggage in the overhead compartment and carry our groceries up the stairs.
That's where we're at, and we hope you'll join us on this venture and this journey. If you have any questions or comments, or want to join us, just let us know at Revelation Health and Wellbeing.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Rev Up Health. We hope you're leaving with some actionable 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. Take care.