SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
You, Only Better In a warm and caring environment, a family practice doc helps patients look and feel like the best versions of themselves. by CARA MCDONALD
It was an ordinary follow-up email from a patient, but with an extraordinary attachment. When Dr. Rebecca Zipser Hoffman’s staff clicked on the image, up popped a photo of a woman posing with a pair of her big old sweatpants. She was standing in one leg of them, her smile glowing, the picture of pride and health. Even better? Her newly healthy and slimmed-down husband, inspired by his wife’s success, was standing in the other leg. This reinvigorated, half-of-themselves duo was the perfect testimony to the outcomes Hoffman and her team are seeing at Cherry Bend Health & Wellness. The new medical spa, focused on skin care and weight loss, is the sister business to her longestablished Traverse City practice, Cherry Bend Family Care. As a Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.), Hoffman has always embraced holistic wellness but was frustrated by traditional care models that only allow for a few minutes of patient interaction and often leave people with more questions than answers. Add to that the impact Covid-19 had on her staff and the people in her care—as the first clinic in the area to have rapid Covid testing, they found themselves taking care of the community at large, not just their own patients. Battling burnout, Hoffman took stock: “I was thinking, well, I’m a middle-aged woman, some of my staff are in the same situation, what do I want? What can we offer? I wanted to do something that I enjoy, that gives me new knowledge, something fun in medicine. I decided to address the things people have asked me about over the years; the ‘I can’t lose weight. What do I do with brown spots from all the sun?’ questions and the issues that keep us from feeling our best as we age.” She’d also noticed troubling health trends exacerbated by the pandemic—spiking anxiety, alcohol abuse, poor health habits. How could she wrap her arms around all of her patients’ needs? Then Hoffman’s landlord retired and offered to sell her the other half of the building where her practice was, and she knew she had the space to expand into something new and exciting.
The result is a practice where patients can receive weight loss, skin and body care services that help them lean into their health and wellbeing in a way that helps them feel inspired and at home in their bodies—and most important, done in a sound, medically informed way. The clinic now offers medically supported weight loss that starts with a habit and diet reboot. “What you put into your body makes such a difference—it will impact your skin, your joint pain,” Hoffman explains. “So we start people out on a super clean diet for a very short period of time, but people can’t believe how good they feel.” That super clean diet? It starts with three weeks of real, whole food. “It’s very spelled out,” says Hoffman. “We’ve found it helps people a lot to know exactly what to do for success.” The other secret to success is the accountability the weekly appointments and check-ins provide. “When you have accountability, when you’re investing in something, you’re less inclined to cheat,” she adds. In addition, the team offers skin care that’s tightly curated—instead of a laundry list of treatments, they’ve narrowed it down to the most impactful and least-invasive options that don’t change how you look (so no lifts and fillers), but improve and enhance. Similar to the weight loss model, her team helps patients come up with a highly individualized plan, which can range from simply switching to new products, to facials, chemical peels, Botox and microneedling and microdermabrasion. (Her personal fave? Virtue Microneedling. “I can tell it’s made a difference in a very short period of time without making me look like a different person.”) The result is a care model where people who have experienced frustration or hesitancy to tackle personal improvements can feel supported and guided in the best way possible. “We don’t go with the, ‘What don’t you like about yourself?’” Hoffman says. “We help you choose what’s going to make you feel good about yourself.”
I wanted to do something that I enjoy, that gives me new knowledge, something fun in medicine.
mynorth.com
2023_HEALTH & WELLNESS.indd 33
33
3/13/23 8:48 PM
