Brandon Washatka with Longevity Effect and Sarah Washatka, PLLC
Brandon and Sarah Washatka, healthcare professionals in Tulsa, Oklahoma, discuss their practice, which combines functional and holistic medicine with conventional approaches to address patients’ root causes of illness. They emphasize personalized care, patient education, and innovative therapies such as hyperbaric oxygen and IV nutritional treatments. The couple highlights Tulsa’s supportive community and their passion for improving health outcomes through evidence-based methods.
Show Notes:
Guest: Brandon and Sarah Washatka
About Longevity Effect
Longevity Effect is an escape from everyday stress and pursues total wellness through healing services for the mind and body. Our Philosophy is that a focus on general health and wellness today will help reduce long-term health issues and associated costs.
About Dr. Washatka, D.O.
Dr. Washatka pursues total wellness through healing services for the mind and body. She focuses on general health and wellness today that will help reduce long-term health issues and associated costs.
Contact Information:
Longevity Effect:
Address: 4415 S Harvard Ave Ste 104, Tulsa, OK 74135
Email: contact@longevityeffect.com
Phone: (918) 895-7850
Dr. Sarah Washatka:
Address: 4415 S Harvard Ave Ste 120, Tulsa, OK 74135
Email: contact@drwashatka.com
Phone: (918) 895-7850
Transcript:
To me, a practitioner whether it’s a nurse practitioner, PA or a physician, like you’ve got to be open minded enough to say, okay, Hey, I don’t know about that, but I’m going to learn. Let me look this up. But the misconception is that like what we do and what we’re doing in our office is not. You know, research based and evidence based, and it absolutely is.
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Welcome to another episode of the Tulsa is home podcast. Today we get to sit down with doctors, Brandon and Sarah Washatka. You guys have been married and in Tulsa for how long?
How long have we been married?
Since 2015. Alright. So almost nine years now. Good deal. Yeah.
So y’all own longevity effect chiropractor, and you have functional medicine, but
Medical physician.
Medical physician. And and so how long, well before we get into the business part of it how long have you been in Tulsa? Tell us about your family and kind of your background.
So we’ve been in Tulsa since 2015. We moved here for my residency at OSU where I did family medicine. residency And then we had picked it because it was in between both of our families.
My family’s from Texas and his was from Kansas. And then he’s a chiropractor, so it was a really good scope of practice for chiropractors. So that’s how we decided to move here.
Kind of decided. She matched here. We got lucky. Well, yeah. The Lord’s design, really. With the whole, yeah, with that whole process, so.
And then you have kids. Mm hmm. We have Duke, who’s six and a half, and then Mac, who’s three and a half. Mm hmm. And I feel like we missed an important question. How did you guys meet? So I was I did my graduate studies at Parker university in Dallas, which is the chiropractic school there. And we were doing some extracurricular seminars in Dallas at the time.
You know, it was like one weekend every month. It was applied kinesiology seminar and she was flying down from Detroit for those. Every month. So her father recommended her to do that seminar and so it was a bunch of chiropractors that were in this and she was the only doctor. So we met that and then dated long distance for at least a year and a half before I graduated and moved to Michigan from Dallas.
Big transition. It was cold. It was very cold. Yeah. Coldest four years of my life. Yeah. It was very cold. Yeah. But I, my history, like my family history, my dad’s a chiropractor. So I knew I always wanted to go to medical school, but I picked osteopathic medicine, which is a form. It’s a medical physician, but we, it’s more holistic in nature and we learn like manipulation.
So before I went to school, I knew I was going to do a seminar in applied kinesiology. So every month for two, the first two years of med school, I flew down to Dallas, which is where we met at that seminar.
So you mentioned functional medicine a lot of people aren’t really familiar with that and how that looks. What does functional medicine mean for you? So functional medicine is really just looking at the entire person. So like getting to the root of the issue. Conventional medicine is very good in the fact that Learn how to treat people like kind of in that emergency style medicine, which is definitely needed.
But from a functional medicine side in a clinical practice, it’s like, how do I make something work and figure out what’s wrong with that person? And then you tailor that treatment for that person. So that’s really what functional medicine means to me. And I have had the privilege of coming to see you and you know, my journey with doctors, I’ve seen.
several different doctors for individual things. And I think seeing you was the first time where we kind of looked at my body as a whole and treated the root causes and really honestly found some root causes. And so it was neat to be able to combine the different worlds and kind of, just treat my symptoms.
more holistic approach. Yeah. How do you bridge the gap between holistic and traditional and do those overlap and in your practice? Yeah. So I in my mind, the way that I visualize it is if you’re kind of looking on like a spectrum, there’s always a space and time where you’re going to be traveling on that spectrum, whether it’s.
If you have to use conventional medicine, like if somebody has to have surgery, then how do we, or myself as a practitioner, how do I then support that patient on, from like a preventative measure of how do we really make sure that a surgery doesn’t have to happen or how do we help them, like, recover?
So we’re always kind of moving in that . That spectrum of like, okay, well, this is where you are in your health journey. Now, what’s our plan and how do we kind of move towards that more preventative strategy, but mixing both, like I tell people and my patients, like I’m not anti conventional. I obviously have that training myself which is a huge part of like what made me a really.
What I feel like a very detailed provider and who I learned from, I mean, I learned from some of the best physicians. So, but it’s how do you take that for that patient and really individualize it for them. And you just always have to be able to move on that. spectrum. So that really is functional medicine.
I think sometimes that people get in their head like, well, it’s this supplement or you only treat it holistically. Well, yes, you try to, but you do have to really be able to move synergistically, you know, for that person. So, I don’t know if you have anything to add, but that’s kind of our approach to everything, you know?
Yeah. The only thing I would add cause I think you did a great job is just, you know, with what I’ve seen in your , transition in medicine of being a hospitalist after residency, really seeing what a patient is going to be getting in the quote unquote system and then what we can provide outside of that system when they’re ready to look at something different and in a lot of what that is, is just the different testing that is available for patients to, to go through that they’re not maybe being.
Given as an option because of the third party system and when you have that functional approach you give that patient a little bit more authority in How they can approach their journey and and start that way. So it’s kind of It’s not really the functional medicine part But was something we really strive on doing is giving people that Authority back to their in their own care of like how we approach it how they want to do it Knowing that there’s no wrong or right way.
It’s just where they’re at So with the chiropractic side, how do you approach The chiropractic care and how does that fit in together? Yeah so where we met, we talked about applied kinesiology and that is a it’s a fun term for diagnosing, treating, and evaluating the body using muscle testing, using the musculoskeletal system to really look at what’s going on versus you just coming in, Rod, and saying, hey, It hurts when I breathe.
You know, I got a rib out of place. And so we want to, it is a more holistic approach, somewhat like functional medicine of looking at chiropractic care as well to where we say, okay, I hear you. I understand you have pain, but let’s, take a broader scope and look and say, okay, is this just your structure or is there some other chemical issues or emotional issues that are going on with that?
And so I try to approach chiropractic care very much like how Dr. S here does. Approaches, you know, medicine is we want to look at the whole body like and I’m going to hear you and I want to address your goals, but also knowing in my mind that it may have nothing to do with what their pain is. And so my route, I went a little bit different approach than traditional chiropractic where I adjust everyone.
But we also in Oklahoma, you know, she mentioned that this is the best scope of practice for Oklahoma or for chiropractors is we have a what’s called a injectable certification here. So with further schooling, we can do injections and IVs with natural medicines and vitamins and things like that.
And so I also really focus on regenerative care for joints. Using some injectable therapy that is really natural and really supportive for disease tissue like arthritis and bone on bone knees or things like that. So kind of bridging that gap of traditional chiropractic, but then bringing in some, I’d say cutting edge, not really cutting edge anymore, but some of the things that people aren’t aware of that they have access to.
For sure. That makes sense. Mm hmm. So who, who is like an ideal client for you and at like what point in people’s health journey do they typically come to you? Is it after they have a problem or is it more preventative or kind of speak on that? I think for my practice we, because we are, like, I’m board certified in family medicine.
Like, we really see, like, families. We start with the mom, then we see newborns, we see well child checks. Like, we really see the entire family. So, each person is a little bit different, whether they’ve had this medical problem, and they’ve kind of been through the system, and they’re like, I don’t know, like, is there another option?
And then we have other patients who they study a lot and they know, like, preventatively, and they want to know, like, what can I be doing? So, my practice is kind of just treating that family, each family member, like, where they’re at in their journey. Whether they have a chronic disease, or they’re wanting to prevent it or if they have something that, like, acutely kind of happens to them out of nowhere.
So we kind of see everyone but they do, ideally the patient that we want to see is like, they’re willing to do what they need to do outside of, you know, that let me just slap a medication on here. Like let’s actually get to the root of the issue. And we kind of work through all those things. And then for you?
I think to double down on that, , it’s a lot of what she said, but then also that, that patient that’s motivated now. Like, realizing it is their health, it is their body, there’s not somebody else that can help. Like, they gotta have to, they have to be willing now to make those changes. Whether they’re changes at home You know, from a food sample and things like that.
A lot, and a lot of where my practice has gone, , I, an ideal patient for me are those ones that have maybe been to some other providers, they’re just not really getting care. They’re not, if they’re an athlete, they’re not getting to the performance they need or middle aged man, and they got bum knees, and they want to go back to playing basketball, and they’re not, they don’t want to do kind of a conventional approach.
Those are great, great patients. We can get them better faster. And again, kind of going back to the functional approach, giving them authority back to their care, and helping them understand what they can do outside of our office. I think it’s like giving the patient the tools, like how do you eat at home?
How do you de stress at home? How do you kind of rejuvenate at home? We give them the tools, like this is what you need to do. And we’re kind of like their accountability partner. And then we dig a little bit deeper in the medical side too, but kind of like reteaching our society. Cause I think American society is like, You go 24 7, you’re supposed to be the best at your job, the best parent, and then everybody’s running around from 6 a.
m. to midnight, and then they’re like, I don’t know why something’s wrong with me, you know? So it’s kind of like retraining people, too, of like, here’s what you can do at home, and then we’ll be the best medical provider and you know, chiropractor can help you with those things, but like really giving people back that authority of like, I can take control of this and we can do these preventative things at home, you know, and then kind of step it up.
Those therapies like at our practice, it’s kind of how you like bring that family together as a unit and stuff. So do you, what services do you have in the office? I’ve heard So, you know, the red light therapy or what are some of the other. So I’ll start. So on the, kind of the wellness side, wellness and chiropractic side, the longevity effects side, we have a couple of different sauna detoxing options, like your conventional full spectrum infrared sauna.
We have also what is called a hocket, which is an ozone sauna. So it’s another type of steam sauna that helps with detoxification and things like that. We also really where we hit hard on there is the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. That’s one of our main would say therapy is that we really specialize in on that wellness side as well as a neurofeedback and some what’s called magnetic resonance therapy with something that’s called the magnetosphere.
All of those are designed helping people. Help them get back into a parasympathetic state that rest and relax, getting them out of that fight or flight or stress response so that their body can have more of a natural response to healing. And so those are kind of those things that where you don’t need a doctor for.
You can come in and use those things, but we try to create a program for people based on what they’re dealing with to be able to use those things. And then, of course, chiropractic care, and then on her side, there’s a lot more. Yeah, so on my side, it’s myself, and then I have a really awesome nurse practitioner named JC.
And then the goal is to expand that. We’ve got, I’ve got two students that are with us now, but basically I feel like we’ve kind of, I’ve gone back and forth, like, what do I want to name it? Because it is different, but it’s that holistic primary care of like taking care of kiddos and then the entire family.
But then my side and JC does as well too, but really helping people with like chronic diseases that you know, we do anything from heavy metal detox, detoxification And then we do mold protocols, we treat patients with Lyme, we treat patients with autoimmune. I mean we really kind of take anything and everything, but really use IV therapy.
IV ozone the biggest things that we use as well as IV nutritional therapy. So like vitamin therapy. So we really build all that protocol. And then I do use our side from the longevity standpoint as well with hyperbaric and the ozone sauna and really incorporating for that patient like wherever they’re at you know, financially, like what can they do to actually do stuff at home?
What can they do from an IV standpoint and then what can they do on the longevity side to really fit their needs and like what their financial needs are as well too. So. We kind of just build a protocol for each person, honestly, like what they’re able to do, which is why, I mean, I, he speared everything.
When I was in residency, he had , every idea built our whole space out. And so I was able to just kind of walk in and it was all him, but it was like, where can we design a place where people can come and heal and like learn the tools that they need to have so that it’s They can definitely, , it’s affordable, but then they can start to learn like the tools that they need to do at home.
But then also just, we’ve learned over time, like building community for people as well, too, where they feel like they can step in and actually be cared for and like healed. So, yeah. Yeah, I just feel like there’s such a big need in the health industry for that. Yeah. I feel like the last few years, you know, even with COVID, Because COVID really spurred on a lot of people are now more in tune with what’s going on health wise and what they put in their body, how they treat their body and preparing for sicknesses and stuff like that.
So, yeah, we just really feel like there’s a huge need not only in Tulsa, but everywhere. Yeah, definitely. Is there anything that we’re missing or that you guys stress. I think my biggest thing is that when people Either the conventional side or people who like haven’t heard of holistic medicine or functional medicine is I do want to point out that it is all evidence based.
So just like what we learn in conventional medicine, these things have been studied for 30 40 plus years. It has been studied. Everything that we do in our office. all has research behind it. And that’s one of the biggest like misconceptions is like, Oh, they’re using witchcraft or, you know, like, Oh, you know, whatever.
But snake oil, the snake oil, I mean, it can get a bit intense between both sides, but if I could be, if you could really just kind of say, listen to me, a practitioner whether it’s a nurse practitioner, PA or a physician, like you’ve got to be open minded enough to say, okay, Hey, I don’t know about that, but I’m going to learn.
Let me look this up. But the misconception is that like what we do and what we’re doing in our office is not, you know, research based and evidence based and it absolutely is. So I think I do want to like really reiterate that because it’s just a huge misconception and that’s just not true, you know?
So that’s my biggest thing on that. Well, and to touch base on what you said as far as like, you know, you think that there’s a big need for this is Over the past 10 years when I, when we moved here from Michigan and I knew kind of what I wanted to build for us, whether or not she was involved with that, we were still kind of like, we didn’t know how all that was going to morph.
But I would see patients over and over and over again that like they’ve been kind of around the block, so to speak, and people don’t believe them. They don’t believe that they feel bad or that they’re sick or that they’re having these issues and that this approach didn’t work. And then it was like, well, that’s just how it’s going to be.
And like, to me, that just. I never, I don’t like that. That doesn’t sit well. So the whole idea was how do we build this place that you feel like you could come in and be treating yourself because you’ve now read like people are, they’re smart. They, and they can find information, they can read things, they can understand where it’s coming from, who’s paying for it, you know, what, what’s behind it.
And so they can start to find , these therapies especially now with podcasting , and people who are biohackers or trying to live forever, people are looking at that. And so my whole thing over the past 10 years was trying to provide that information so people could see, Hey, we do believe you, like we know you’re not feeling well.
We know these things are happening, whether or not the, this other route is. Giving you the time of day, let’s try to figure it out. And that’s kind of where everything that we have in the office was by design to approach something that somebody was going to need as far as detox, building up the, the the health of the tissue and all of those things so that they felt like they’re being heard.
And realizing, like she was saying, there is evidence behind everything we’re doing. It’s not new. Like nothing we’re doing is proprietary. Nothing we’re doing is new. And when you look at all of it, you’re like, why haven’t we been doing this? You know, because in medicine, you know, your Hippocratic Oath is to first do no harm.
And so I had that thought with most everything that we brought into our office is that virtually everybody could and should do a lot of these therapies. There are some contraindications for certain things as always, but we’re not gonna do any harm, you know. And if the harm is is that you’re detoxing and you feel a little run down for a while, process.
So, that is a big, you know, I think the miscommunication from the outside world about how medicine should be without having that spectrum and that conversation of like, well, everybody’s different. You can’t. Can’t blanket it for everybody. So that’s really the well and people have their own like specialties to like I know and I feel like what I’m doing is like my niche But like if I have to talk to a neurosurgeon or a general surgeon like you better believe I’m gonna get on the phone and be Like hey, what do you think about this?
Like is this emergent like just yesterday? I had a patient and Texted my buddy who’s a cardiologist and like, just double check this for me. Like we, I think that misconception of like, Oh, well, she’s only going to give you an herb for this or that it’s like, no, we’re going to make sure the functionality and like everything’s actually checked off the boxes so that it’s clear, but like those of us who do practice functional medicine and who are really into it, like you’re, you still have, you Your specialties that like I completely respect, right?
So it’s like really kind of just X ing out those kind of myths of like, well, you know, they do function medicine. They don’t really practice real medicine. It’s like, no, we really do. And we do speak to the specialists, like an endocrinologist or, Those types of things like you’re not completely out of that box.
It’s but for us it’s like literally how do you bring that together for that patient? So I think for me that that’s like a big thing of just kind of squashing that like it’s evidence based I still communicate with everyone who is their specialty and I respect that too because you know you That’s what they’re good at.
So, I just think that’s important to make sure that people understand. Sure. I love that you guys offer all those things and I love that Tulsa has you. I’m just thankful that we are able to have access to such great care. Thank you. What’s the best way for people to reach you? It’s a website. Phone up social.
Yeah. Longevity effect dot com. DrWashatka. com we have a, a 918 785 4222. No, excuse me, not nine, nine, eight, nine, five, seven, eight, five, zero. And that, that can direct you to kind of where you need to go. That’s the best, that’s the best way. Cool. And then something we like to stay on track with the Tulsa is home theme.
And so what does Tulsa mean to you? And how does how is Tulsa home to you? Well, I would say Just kind of building our life here starting out when we first got married and then having both of our kids I feel like we’ve hustled for quite some time and we can kind of look up and breathe a little bit And just like building community and like meeting you guys.
It’s just been to me It’s just been super precious and I love Tulsa because it’s just To us, it’s small. We’re from Texas, so you can whip around, you have all the big city stuff that you like, but then anywhere you go, you like, can see people that you actually have friendships with and it’s not too big to where it feels like a huge city.
That’s what it feels like to me. Yeah I’ll second that. I mean we, We came here in about a year and a half into her residency. It was like, are we going to stay here? You know, it was a three year program and I was hustling to try to create a business. I was working full time retail as well as, as well as getting patients.
And we went, we kind of thought about it and it just felt like this is where we’re supposed to be. It kind of sucks you in, I think here. And we love it. I mean, I, we’ve been here. 9 years So going on into the 10th year and I was telling a patient of mine the other day, I was like, I finally feel like, it feels like I’ve been here forever.
And then it also, like, it’s very easy to be like, well, I’m Oklahoman. Yes. I’m from here. Like it just, it feels like that. We’ve been so blessed to help people and to create a community and find a church. And. And I will give a shout out to like our patients because they really have made us feel like we, we’re starting to build this community and they’re, they’re wonderful.
So, without them, we wouldn’t exist. I just want to make sure they know that we appreciate them for sure. And they’ve made our life better too. So, well, thank you so much for joining us today and letting us learn more about you and your businesses. And we look forward to just kind of following y’all’s journey.
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.
