While it's 100% wonderful to heal physically, the medical team at Thrive Wellness in Brentwood also want to help their patients heal mentally.
Dr. Glen Blaschke, founder and chief medical officer of Thrive Wellness, says he anchors all customized treatments with evidence-based medicine. He also applies his 23 years of emergency medicine experience during consultations with Thrive clients. "We have a strong corporate and clinical team at Thrive that has patient care at the forefront of all decisions," he adds.
Early in his college education, Dr. Blaschke discovered he loved chemistry. He then became a research assistant to a professor who studied heart attacks. Eventually, he received a grant from the Alzheimer's Foundation to study how humans create and store memories. Along the way, he met and collaborated with doctors who worked with stroke patients. It was all his various medical experiences combined that made him a well-rounded emergency room physician.
"Oftentimes, a person's sympathetic nerve system, which connects the internal organs to the brain by spinal nerves, gets crossed with the pain nervous system. That can lead to a severe and chronic pain syndrome in a certain area," he explains.
The center opened just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the staff typically use innovative combinations of medicines, NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) and IV vitamin treatments to assist patients. NAD is a coenzyme found in all living cells and has even been called an anti-aging molecule because of the many important roles it plays in promoting health and prolonging lifespan.
Thrive Wellness patients come to the clinic to treat a range of conditions, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, migraines, obsessive-compulsive disorder, cancer pain, fatigue, vitamin optimization, brain health, weight management, hormonal rebalancing and immunity recovery.
Dr. Blaschke says he's treated thousands of patients throughout his career with ketamine, which is a drug for treatment-resistant depression. The FDA approved ketamine as an anesthetic for people in 1970. Doctors then developed a protocol for medically supervised use that has helped people who don’t get relief from other medications related to debilitating depression and suicidal tendencies.
Ketamine allows the brain and peripheral nerves to reorganize and return to their original functions, he states.
"Ketamine treatment allows us to eliminate the symptoms of many conditions that lead to being labeled addicted, which in turn allows people to change their views toward addiction. It essentially allows a person to disassociate and move bad things [experiences, memories] out of the brain. The brain heals through this process," says Dr. Blaschke. "The brain draws a box around this thing, creates boundaries, and you can choose through therapy how you're going to react to it. It takes away its ability to invade your life."
He says everyone employed at the clinic has had ketamine therapy. "So we know what it does, how it feels and how it affects people so we can describe it to clients. We're 90% successful through patient treatments."
Since the pandemic, he says they've been focused more on mental health, especially with the success of patient care treatments that consolidate physicians, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and psychotherapists as a team.
"During the pandemic, we also treated the military for free, particularly ones that had had traumatic events overseas. We helped them through their PTSD," he adds. "Your heart just goes, wow, we're doing something with such purpose."
He says they also apply a monitoring and surveying system with clients, texting them every day.
Additionally, they recently added aesthetics services for skin rejuvenation and natural beauty, as potential post-therapy steps for clients. "This to help people feel good on the outside, too," says the doctor.
They also offer lifestyle optimization, such as genetic and lab testing or testosterone therapy.
In other cases, for example, the Thrive Wellnes team say they've been able to increase mobility for people dealing with Parkinson's disease, to assist people with cravings for opioids or to alleviate symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Dr. Blaschke graduated from Texas State University and completed his doctorate and surgery internship at Baylor College of Medicine. He finished his training in emergency medicine, serving as chief resident at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center. He's a diplomat of the American Board of Emergency Medicine and has his American Board of Emergency Certification in Emergency Medicine.
5400 Maryland Way, Suite 100, Brentwood
Office Hours: Mondays through Fridays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
615.880.9566
ThriveWellnessGroups.com