Category: Business

Medi-Weightloss Of Lutz Promises Results & Long-Term Help!

Weight gain has been a common side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, as exercise and other healthy habits have taken a back seat for many people.

Medi-Weightloss of Lutz owner Gerri Willett says the pandemic initially caused a lot of uncertainty for her small business, but ultimately has driven many new patients to the practice, located on S.R. 54, two miles west of where it meets S.R. 56 (near the Tampa Premium Outlets).

In the 15 years since it opened in 2006, Gerri says Medi-Weightloss of Lutz has helped patients lose nearly 130,000 pounds. It’s easy to get started, as completely free assessments are always offered.

Today, while there are 91 Medi-Weightloss locations nationwide, Gerri owns the locations in both Lutz and Brandon, operating the two as a local, family-owned business, which has been her passion for the past 15 years.

The success patients see when they try the Medi-Weightloss program is what continues to drive people to the practice.

“Our patients refer their friends because they know we do a really a good job,” Gerri says.

The Medi-Weightloss program is supervised by Andrew Weitzman, M.D., who is Board-certified in Internal Medicine. The program combines diet and exercise with supplements, managed by a doctor, to help people lose weight and keep it off.

Like most businesses, Medi-Weightloss has had to make adaptations because of the Covid pandemic, creating virtually touch-free visits, while keeping its doors open to better circulate fresh air, providing clean pens, taking temperature checks, having hand sanitizer available and other precautionary measures.

“We also offer telemedicine,” says Gerri. “We do whatever you feel comfortable with, whether that’s telemedicine, or coming in to be weighed when we’re otherwise closed to patients, so you’re the only one in the office, or driving through the parking lot to pick up a prescription.”

The staff is compassionate and understanding, cheering their patients on to reach their goals.

“It can be very difficult for people to step foot into a weight-loss clinic because, a lot of times, they have already tried so many different things,” says Gerri. “People beat themselves up horribly about their weight.”

Whether it’s newfound weight gain as your body changes due to age, weight that was lost in the past but has crept back on, or pounds put on during the pandemic, Gerri says, “We want people to know we’ll figure it out and we’ll get them to be successful.”

How It Works

During the first phase of the program — also known as the acute or weight-loss phase — clients come in once a week.

After an initial consultation with weight measurements, blood work and an electrocardiogram (EKG), patients receive a binder to store educational handouts, recapping the information shared at each session. They also receive recipes for delicious, healthy meals, with ingredients that are easy to find. Patients also start a detailed journal to log their eating, drinking and sleeping data. They also receive vitamin supplements, a food scale to help with portion control and ketone sticks to detect their level of ketosis.

(Note: Physiologic Ketosis is a normal response to low glucose availability, such as low-carbohydrate diets or fasting.)

Medi-Weightloss has many ways to help during the weight-loss phase, including injections of Methionine Inositol Choline (MIC Combo) to put B12 vitamins and amino acids into the bloodstream, both of which help with fat metabolism, liver function and fat excretion. Patients also receive Vitamin B6 and B1 injections, which help reduce water retention and keep your energy up, while battling food cravings.

Dr. Weitzman says the goal is always to reduce medications that patients may be taking. “One of my favorite things is getting someone off of blood pressure medications,” he says. “You lose 20 pounds and, all of a sudden, your blood pressure goes down.”

After the acute phase of the program ends (once ca client reaches his/her target weight), they check in less often during the maintenance and wellness phases.

But, if a client should re-gain weight after completing the program, Gerri says there’s no reason to worry.

“Life happens and we are here to help,” she says. “It doesn’t mean you failed. It means you had stress in your life, or something happened. Just pop back into the program! There is no restart fee.”

Caring, Helpful Staff

Medi-Weightloss of Lutz has a staff of caring professionals who truly understand what it’s like to be in their patient’s shoes. In fact, some are former patients.

Erin Jones had lost her husband in 2010 and then, she says, “I ate for a year.”

In 2011, she started the Medi-Weightloss program and lost 50 pounds.

After that, she joined the team. Erin is now a full-time medical assistant and the office manager at Medi-Weightloss of Lutz and Brandon.

“Patients can take comfort in knowing that we’ve been down their road before and that we can truly say we know what they’re going through,” Erin says.

Medical assistant Patty Pinson has been with Medi-Weightloss for a decade and is a retired Registered Nurse (RN). Other Certified Medical Assistants (CMAs) include Karina Gonzalez and Alex Pierantoni, while Raquel Sanford manages the front office.

Dr. Weitzman is a Board-certified Medical Doctor who earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel, and completed his residency at Nassau University Medical Center in Long Island, NY. He operated a primary care practice in New York, then moved to Manatee County, before coming on board at Medi-Weightloss more than four years ago.

He says there actually are many similarities between primary care and weight loss.

“The main difference is that with primary care, you’re already treating a patient’s disease. Here, we’re working strictly with prevention.”

He stresses all three legs of the weight-loss process: diet, exercise and appetite suppression. “You must do all three in order to succeed,” Dr. Weitzman says.

Sally Morrison is a Medi-Weightloss patient who has found success. In the past nine months, she’s lost 90 pounds, just in time to celebrate her 70th birthday in early February.

Before Medi-Weightloss, Sally says she felt terrible. As a former nurse, she knew the consequences when she saw how bad her lab results were after a checkup, so she decided to make a change.

A friend had success with Medi-Weightloss, so Sally decided to try it, too.

“When I was in my 30s, I was an operating room nurse in the Army. I ran every day back then,” she says, “and I feel almost as good now as I did then.”

She says she had tried a different program about 10 years ago, but the weight crept back on. And, the clinic she went to had closed, which left her feeling abandoned.

This time around, Sally is confident she has the support and resources she needs to keep the weight off. “They’ve been my cheerleaders and my mentors,” she says. “I’ve had long talks with the doctor and he’s fabulous. They all are. I highly recommend people go there.”

To schedule a free assessment at Medi-Weighloss of Lutz (24420 S.R. 54, Lutz), call (813) 909-1700. The office is open five days a week: 6:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on Mon.; 9 a.m.-6 p.m. on Tues., 6:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on Wed; 1 p.m.-7 p.m. on Thur.; and 6:30 a.m.-1 p.m on Fri. More information is available at MediWeightloss.com/locations/lutz/.

Medi Weight Loss

F45 Training At The Grove Offers Super Workouts & Cleanliness

Kim Balfe can tell you all about how great the classes are at the F45 Training at The Grove studio that she owns with her husband Bob, or how wonderful their instructors are, how the members have raved about the workouts or even how successful the fitness facility has been since opening in the middle of the pandemic last summer. And she does.

But nowadays, she starts with this instead: F45 Training at The Grove is clean and safe.

Really, really clean and safe.

In today’s world, where Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on local businesses and hit gyms harder than most others — even delaying the opening of Wesley Chapel’s F45 Training a few months last spring — that’s pretty big news.

“Cleaning is always a priority, especially in a gym,” Kim says. “We feel we have a responsibility when it comes to the safety of our members. We want people to see that we take it seriously.”

*When you’re done at one station at F45 Training, it’s time to sanitize your equipment before moving on to the next one.*

How seriously? Kim completed a rigorous course, which she likened to getting a Ph.D, in order for F45 Training to receive facility accreditation from the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC), which helps organizations and businesses respond to biological threats and biohazard situations through education and training.

A sticker will be displayed on the gym front window affirming their accreditation, and Pasco County reimbursed the cost of earning the designation. Getting the accreditation involved studying pages and pages of documents and learning all of the policies and procedures required to have a clean gym. Kim also says she attended a 10-hour class.

While cleanliness is much more at the forefront of most people’s minds these days — 20 percent of potential new members ask about the safety of returning to the gym — F45 has combined that with socially-distant classes that add to the safety measures. While some classes are more crowded for those that prefer it, a number of offerings, like the one we attended on a recent Thursday morning, had a surprising amount of room between participants. No one rotated stations before first disinfecting the equipment they had just used.

“We have one of the bigger F45s in the area,’’ Kim says of the 3,300-sq.-ft. facility, which also has showers. “There’s plenty of room.”

The cleanliness helped convince Kim Shephard to get back in the gym. The gym she usually works out at where she lives in New Tampa has been closed, and after almost a year off, it was time to get back to work. Shepard admits she starting putting on some weight during the pandemic, but it’s currently coming off and she says she has dropped five percent body fat since joining F45.

“It’s been a life changer for me,” says the 36-year-old Shephard. “I love it. I like the small classes, the trainers get to know you on a personal level and it really is a community. And the gym is super-duper clean.”

The F in F45 stands for Functional Training, which focuses on strengthening muscles you use for everyday activities and emphasizes core strength and stability. The 45 is how many minutes (almost) every workout lasts.

There are 2,700 different exercises and 36 different workouts as members move from station to station, with Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays focusing on cardio, and Tuesday and Thursdays for resistance training.

“Every single day is a totally different workout,” says Bob who (as does Kim) also partakes in many of the classes.

The classes all have names, like 22, Bears, Moon Hopper and All-Star. And, the classes also are universal. If you are doing the Angry Bird at The Grove location, then so are fitness members at F45s in Sacramento, San Antonio and Sydney, Australia (where the company was founded in 2011 by equities trader Rob Deutsch).

The only class that is longer than 45 minutes is Saturday’s class, which is an hour-long hybrid, called Hollywood, which F45 calls its pinnacle showcase, and is sometimes accompanied by a live DJ.

“Saturday is the big fun day,” Kim says. “It’s my favorite day.”

F45 remains one of the hottest fitness franchises in the world, with more than 1,750 studios in 45 countries, including more than 650 in the U.S. It is part of a trend towards high-tech fitness boutiques which offer more personalized care than the traditional big-box gyms.

As an example, an experienced fitness participant can take part in the same class as a newcomer, and the trainers take special care to make sure the experience is enjoyable for both, by offering those who can’t physically perform certain exercises a less-challenging alternative option.

“Sometimes people come in and know nothing and have never been in a gym before,“ says head trainer Zach Johnston. “We’re here to guide and help them. F45 is very scalable. There are some advanced movements, but they can all be regressed down.”

*There’s plenty of room for social distancing at F45 Training at The Grove. To the far right, head trainer Zach Johnston helps a client work on the proper form during a recent class.*

Large television monitors show how to do every move, and Zach and his team will help if any of the exercises are too much for you.

Zach, who has a Bachelor of Science in Biological Health Science and a Master of Science degree in Exercise Science from the University of South Florida, is beyond qualified to train people, and says he chose F45 because he loves the concept of functional workouts, as well as the community that the fitness facility is building.

“I feel like people love coming in,” he says, “and I don’t think they even think about Covid. I think people see the certification and know it’s safe here.”

F45 Wesley Chapel also has recurring challenges, nutritional coaching and meal plans via F45’s app and other perks — to further differentiate itself from the fitness pack. It’s another community-building benefit that F45 Training at The Grove strives to achieve.

Bob and Kim say they love the social aspect of F45. The company has a slick website, highly-active Facebook and Instagram pages — which can be a good place to find specials — and stays in touch with its members via text. Doing so helps build camaraderie amongst those trying to get and stay in shape, and also offers the kind of accountability that is difficult for many to have working out on their own.

“For a lot of people, this is all about being healthy and staying in shape, to strengthen their immune systems and their mental health,” Kim says. “And, for many of them, this is their getaway. We’re glad we can be that for them.”

Best of all, you can give it a try for free. F45 Training offers one free week of classes for prospective members.

F45 Training at The Grove (6207 Wesley Grove Blvd., Suite 102) offers classes at 5, 6, 7 and 9 a.m. weekday mornings, and at 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. weekday evenings. Saturday classes are at 7, 8:15 and 9:30 a.m., and Sunday classes are at 8 and 9 a.m. For more info, call (813) 683-5222, or visit F45Ttraining.com/TheGroveAtWesleyChapel/home.

Covid-19 F45

Your CBD Store On S.R. 54 Keeps Adding New, Healthy Options

Debbie Brooks says she started taking CBD years ago to relieve the pain in her feet from neuropathy, following chemotherapy treatments for her cancer.

Long before CBD, or cannabidiol, became more mainstream, Brooks, who is 61 years old and lives in Webster, FL, had to search smoke shops for CBD relief, which seemed to vary from shop to shop.

“It was never the same every time,” she says. “Sometimes, I swear I thought it was just olive oil.”

Brooks eventually discovered Lisa Feigel, who owned a Your CBD Store franchise in Englewood, FL, located two hours away, but who offered online ordering. The CBD products she received from Feigel were better, never failed and provided consistent relief.

So, when Feigel opened her second location in Wesley Chapel, which has been open since August of 2019 in the Freedom Plaza on S.R. 54 — despite an hour drive — Brooks became one of her first, and most regular customers.

“Lisa is great,” Cook says. “She has so much knowledge, it’s almost like she’s a scientist. And they have so many great products that always help.”

Cook’s story is a familiar one to Feigel, who says that many of her customers come to her looking for reliable relief for a number of symptoms, ranging from pain and muscle aches to anxiety and insomnia.

“They don’t want to become reliant on opioids,” Lisa says.

Your CBD Store is a boutique, and doesn’t stock hundreds of items that promise to do a million different things. It focuses on what CBD does best by providing relief, relaxation and, sometimes, a much-needed respite from your daily grind.

As CBD has become more accepted and popular, Lisa says she doesn’t have to educate customers who correlate it with marijuana as much as she did in the past. CBD is derived from hemp, which is a variety of cannabis (as is marijuana), but with less than 0.3% of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the ingredient that gets you “high.” However, CBD still retains all of the health benefits of cannabis.

CBD products are offered as full spectrum, which are generally stronger and contain no more than the legal limit of 0.3% THC, and broad spectrum, which have no THC at all.

In the last year, Feigel has added a number of new, popular items to her inventory, such as CBG- and CBN-infused gummies (above), tinctures and water solubles.

CBG, or cannabigerol, and CBN, or cannabinol, are relatively new to the CBD product world and are currently undergoing intensive scientific study. CBN is THC-free and helps cause a drowsy effect that can aid with sleeping, while CBG is touted more for its potential therapeutic and anti-inflammatory effects. Feigel calls it the “super momma of cannabinoids.”

“Anxiety and insomnia are the biggest two concerns when people come into the store,” Feigel says, adding that those two things can lead to depression and other maladies. “It’s like a domino effect.”

CBD, Lisa says, helps bring your mental state and body back into balance.

“We all have about 150 different cannabinoids in our system already,” Lisa says, but sometimes, outside forces — injury, stress from work, illness, etc. — can disrupt the production of them. CBD will bind with the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors in our brains to help bring the body back into balance, or homeostasis.

“It’s just a natural supplement we’re putting back into our system,” she says. This can be done via tinctures (like an eyedropper, placed right under the tongue), water soluble (which dissolve in water) products, edible gummies and even vapes.

Your CBD store offers pet products in any form, including peanut butter- and bacon-flavored treats and biscuits, for dogs who get freaked out by the sound of thunder and fireworks or have separation or other anxiety.

CBD has many uses and benefits. Your CBD store offers pet products in any form, including peanut butter- and bacon-flavored treats and biscuits, for dogs who get freaked out by the sound of thunder and fireworks or have separation or other anxiety. Feigel says she gives CBD to her 103-pound yellow Labrador retriever for car trips to the groomer, as well as to help reduce her rescue shih-tzu’s seizures. And, for the first time, the store even now has CBD cat treats.

There also are award-winning skincare products and topical creams for aches and pains (Neighborhood News publisher Gary Nager is a fan), and even a new Maxine & Morgan line for women’s wellness, such as for menstrual cramps. There’s also a CBD coffee creamer available.

One of the newest products is a Raw Hemp CBG Flower, which contains high-levels of CBG. It offers flexibility in that can be smoked or even used in cooking and for making smoothies and tea, to name a few.

“It’s all due to the Your CBD Store franchise, which is always striving for more and better products,” Lisa says. “And, there’s still so many things coming out on the horizon.”

Lisa says she was drawn to the power of CBD due to her own fibromyalgia, and has used it for other things as well.

Her daughter Ashley, who manages the Wesley Chapel location, uses CBD for joint pain and anxiety. Even Lisa’s mom, who didn’t know anything about CBD when Lisa became a franchise owner and joked that her daughter was now a “drug dealer,” is now an avid user of the topical creams, which help with her arthritis.

SunMed CBD is the exclusive supplier to Your CBD Stores. The company has its own farms in Denver, CO, where they grow hemp, and the processing of those plants takes place in Florida.

Lisa and her staff hope that customers will choose CBD products over opioids and other addictive and sometimes dangerous drugs prescribed by doctors. They will help you find the right doses and forms of CBD for you, and best way to maximize its effects.

Those effects are wide-ranging, says Debbie Brooks. She had stopped taking any CBD for a few weeks because of the long drive and busy schedule taking care of her elderly parents. But once off it, she realized that it did more than just reduce her pain, it had been helping her handle all the stress in her life. So, she says, it was back to Wesley Chapel for more relief.

“It helped in more aspects of my life than I even realized,” Cook says. “It’s well worth the travel, just for the great staff and the expertise Lisa has. She is just amazing.”

Your CBD Store Wesley Chapel is located at 30044 S.R. 54. It is open Monday.-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday. It is closed on Sunday. For more information, call (813) 536-0119, visit CBDrx4u.com/find-us/Florida/Wesley-Chapel or search “YourCBDStoreWesleyChapel” on Facebook.

CBD gummies hemp Your CBD Store

Sweetbay Sold! Is Lotte Coming?

The long dormant Sweetbay Supermarket property, which has been empty since 2013, has a new owner.

And, it appears that New Tampa may soon be home to a new Lotte Plaza Mart, a small-chain Maryland-based ethnic grocery store focusing on Asian groceries and goods.

John Neukamm, the attorney for the sellers, KNK Tampa, Ltd., confirmed that the sale was completed on Feb. 1, but would not say what the plans were for the site.

He said a “different type of concept” was likely heading to the space, one that has not been seen locally.

Neukamm said that he had spoken with the North Palms Village Master Association and that they were “very excited” that the sale of the former Sweetbay had been completed.

According to city records, the property, located right across Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. from the AMC movie theater and next to Home Depot, was purchased by SW Tampa, LLC, for $7-million.

According to Sunbiz.org, the Florida Division of Corporations’ online directory of companies in Florida, the owner of SW Tampa, LLC is Sang Min Lee, who also owns Sungwon Orlando, LLC.

Lotte Plaza Market in Orlando. (lotteplaza.com)

The only other Lotte Plaza Mart in Florida is located in Orlando.

Both SW Tampa, LLC (the SW is likely short for Sungwon), and Sungwon Orlando, LLC are registered at the same address in Jessup, MD, as Sungwon Distributors, LLC, which serves as the headquarters of Lotte Plaza Mart.

Marc Bergoffen, the lawyer representing SW Tampa, did not respond to messages. Ross Waters of Atlantic Retail, one of the brokers involved in the sale, declined comment.

If a new Lotte Plaza Mart does materialize at the old Sweetbay site, it will be the second large ethnic grocery store to open in New Tampa since 2019, joining Taaza Mart, a roughly 17,000-sq.-ft., predominantly Indian grocer located in Tampa Palms.

The potential Lotte Plaza Mart location would be more than three times as large as Taaza Mart — at roughly 55,000 square feet.

Founded in 1976, Lotte Plaza Mart is considered to be one of the premier Asian groceries in Maryland and Virginia, where it has 12 locations. The mini-chain also has one location in New Jersey, and opened the Orlando location on W. Colonial Dr. in February 2019.

Like all Lotte Plaza Marts, the location in Orlando — which moved into a 60,000-sq.-ft. space formerly occupied by a Winn-Dixie — has a wide choice of Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese food items and ingredients, an impressive selection of meats and fresh fish and a huge variety of fruits and vegetables not found at your regular American grocery stores.

The store has received online praise for its variety and prices.

Although there are no exact plans available for what a New Tampa location might feature, the Orlando store also has a hair salon, bakery and food court, featuring a handful of Asian restaurants, including Taglish, a Filipino-American concept run by Chef Michael Collantes, who has worked with such notable chefs as Wolfgang Puck.

The nearest location for buying Asian groceries currently is the MD Oriental Market located on E. Fowler Ave., or the A-Green Oriental Market on E. Fletcher, both in the USF area.

If S.R. 56 is now the Restaurant Row of the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel areas, the BBD corridor from Cross Creek Blvd. to Tampa Palms Blvd. might be its supermarket counterpart.

Sprouts Farmers Market, which opened last year, and Aldi, which is under construction and will likely open sometime this year, are within walking distance from the potential Lotte Plaza Mart location, and just south of the I-75 interchange, Taaza is located in Market Square at Tampa Palms.

That stretch of stores is bookended by Publix Super Markets in the City Plaza at Tampa Palms and at the New Tampa Center, giving shoppers of all ethnicities five supermarkets within five miles.

Lotte Plaza Market New Tampa sweetbay

The ExerScience Center Approach Is Whole-Body Wellness

Dr. Lauren Leiva has used her own past physical adversities to forge a plan for clients dealing with a myriad of injury reghab and chronic pain issues at The ExerScience Center in Lutz. That plan often includes the Neubie machine from NeuFit, which uses electrical stimulation to help re-educate your neuromuscular systems.(Photo: Charmaine George)

Lauren Leiva is not just an experienced personal trainer, passionate yogi and certified nutrition expert, she also is a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT). That means she has the knowledge, expertise and advanced degree to help ensure her patients become healthier, stronger and pain-free.

At her ExerScience Center in Lutz, Dr. Leiva offers physical therapy, personal training, nutrition, group fitness and yoga, all with the goal of helping people to feel their best.

Dr. Leiva earned her DPT degree from Nova Southeastern University in Tampa. Prior to that, she earned Bachelor of Science degrees in both Biomedical Science and Biomedical Physics from the University of South Florida, also in Tampa. In addition to her degrees, she is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine as a Certified Personal Trainer and a Fitness Nutrition Specialist, among other certifications.

She also is a registered Yoga Teacher (or RYT), a designation given by the Yoga Alliance U.S to an individual who has completed the 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification. (Lauren’s was earned through YogaFit Training Systems, which is recognized by the Yoga Alliance U.S.)

While Dr. Leiva originally launched The ExerScience Center in 2015, she opened the doors of her first brick-and-mortar location on S.R. 54 in Lutz (less than two miles from the Tampa Premium Outlets) just this past November. Previously, Dr. Leiva traveled to her patients and to community centers, where she taught group fitness and yoga classes.

She says that the road to her doctorate degree was winding, with a detour when she had to leave school to care for her mom, who had lung cancer and suffered a stroke. Then, she suffered her own medical crisis.

A lifelong survivor of Crohn’s disease, Dr. Leiva’s second pregnancy put her in the hospital, where she stayed for nine months. She says at that time, yoga saved her life.

“Yoga is not a class, it’s a way of life,” she says. “Posture and pose movements are only one part of yoga. It’s a mind-over-matter philosophy.”

With both her own and her unborn baby’s lives in danger, and even when Dr. Leiva was intubated and then later had to use a colostomy bag, she says she had a strong belief she was going to be okay.

“It was yoga, and the ability to have that mind-over-matter spirit when surgeons and everyone else told me I can’t and I won’t,” she says. “I always believed that I could, and I did. I feel I can triumph over anything.”

She shares that spirit with her patients, who appreciate her energy and optimism.

But, Can She Help You?

Dr. Leiva says she treats and trains “everyone,” from people who are paralyzed or have a spinal cord injury, all the way to elite athletes, including Olympians. She currently is working with Raj Dhesi, known as Jinder Mahal or “The Maharaja,” a former WWE wrestling champion.

“I grew up as an athlete — a figure skater, and I played volleyball,” Dr. Leiva says. “But, having been completely disabled myself at times gives me the compassion to treat others. I have a connection with patients who are not able to walk, talk or find their breath.”

She says that helps her to successfully treat people who haven’t been able to find solutions elsewhere, from eliminating chronic or injury-caused pain to avoiding surgery.

In part, she says, that’s because of her well-rounded education and doctorate in physical therapy, but also her background in both personal training and yoga.

“Prior to (physical therapy) school, with everything I’d studied, I had a lot of knowledge,” she says. “I thought being a DPT would make me stand out as a personal trainer.”

She says her goal was to open a gym and have her business focus on personal training and yoga, and that she never considered being a DPT in a hospital or other traditional setting. She also had a drive to finish what she had started after facing so much personal adversity.

But, what Dr. Leiva also found was that she fell in love with physical therapy, too. Now, she says most of her business is physical therapy.

She says her specialty is neuromuscular re-education, such as treating a spinal cord injury or an athlete’s torn tendon, or helping people recover from surgery.

“We make the body its most functional form possible, whether you’re paralyzed, or an elite athlete, or anywhere in between,” she says. “Anybody can become their best self by training their nervous system. We can strengthen everyone’s muscles, whether they have pain or not.”

The ExerScience Center offers memberships, where patients spend an hour each week at the center, working on different modalities. This may include biohacking — which she describes as tapping into your own biology to manipulate certain variables for optimal results — or electrical stimulation, vibration therapy, infrared sauna, halotherapy (aka salt therapy), or other types of treatment.

The center offers the latest technology in PT, including a machine called the Neubie by NeuFit, a patented electrical stimulation device to help re-educate your neuromuscular system.

Perhaps most important of all, she says, is that she treats everyone with empathy, respect and honesty. “We respect the body and the mind,” she says. “‘No pain, no gain’ does not apply in my center.”

To help patients who can’t afford regular memberships, Dr. Leiva also hosts community clinics once a month with opportunities for low-cost physical therapy evaluations and second opinions.

In February, Dr. Leiva says she will become certified in dry needling (similar to acupuncture, but used by physical therapists). “I’m an innovative therapist,” she says, “and I think it’s important to always be learning all of the newest and best therapeutic methods. So, I am always studying, always learning.”

Melenda Watzke has been a patient of The ExerScience Center for several months.

“I’m a dancer, and I hurt my back,” Melenda says. “I live about 45 minutes away, but that first time I met with Dr. Leiva, I knew the drive was worth it.”

Melenda says she’s seen a lot of change in her body, and not only has she been healed from her pain, but Dr. Leiva has treated other problems that Melenda didn’t know she had.

“She’s very intuitive and she listens,” says Melenda. “She looks at you holistically and listens to everything you say.”

In fact, Melenda says she had no idea that she didn’t know how to breathe properly. “No one pulls you aside and says, “This is how you breathe,’” Melenda explains. “But, she doesn’t assume you know anything. She watches, and then she starts correcting.”

Melenda says the instruction has helped her to dramatically reduce stress.

“She is truly a healer in my eyes,” says Melenda. “After my back pain went away, I just kept going and everything is starting to change on me physically. I didn’t know how weak I was in certain places because I’m so strong in other places. I can’t wait to see what we’re going to work on next.”

Gazelle Stevens is another happy patient of Dr. Leiva’s. She has been going to The ExerScience Center for about two months.

“I’ve had a great experience,” she says, as Dr. Leiva has treated her for pain stemming from several herniated disks in her back and neck, and a labral tear in her hip.

“I’m a fitness instructor, so it’s very taxing on my body when I have these issues and I can’t teach,” Gazelle says. “I had tried a bunch of other methods and nothing was helping. But, I felt a huge difference (with Dr. Leiva) within the first two weeks.”

Gazelle says she’s done physical therapy at other offices, but it’s been totally different, and that she gets much more individual attention at The ExerScience Center.

“Dr. Lauren is very knowledgeable, and also very understanding, from that patient perspective,” explains Gazelle. “She understands what it means to be in pain and not get answers. I try to be more holistic, with a wellness approach, not, ‘give me a shot’ or ‘give me surgery.’ A lot of people are in that mindset, and she’s really good for that.”

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, The ExerScience Center has paused all in-person group fitness classes and switched the focus to online classes. The staff follows all cleaning and precautionary procedures set in place by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) & Prevention, as well as state and county guidelines. The center does not currently accept walk-ins, and anyone with an appointment is screened, including a temperature check, before they come in.

The ExerScience Center staff includes not only Dr. Leiva, but also office manager Elizabeth Sanchez, and receptionists Marilu Sanchez (not related to Elizabeth) and Jennifer Barrett.

Dr. Lauren Leiva is married to Jonathan, who owns Leiva’s Jewelry in New Tampa. Their two sons are Elijah, who is 13, and Alexander Joseph, who is four.

The ExerScience Center is located at 24706 S.R. 54, in Lutz, less than two miles west of the Tampa Premium Outlets. For more information, call (813) 803-7070, see the ad on pg. 23, or visit TheExerScienceCenter.com.

Exerscience Lauren Leiva yoga