Koi Wellbeing opened in La Jolla’s Bird Rock area in 2016 “to create a bridge between Western and naturopathic medicine” to address the root causes of illnesses and provide other therapies and services.
The La Jolla Light asked the following questions of Jeffrey Sternberg, Koi’s founder and chief executive, to find out more about the business.
Q. How did Koi Wellbeing start?
A. Koi is the result of my experience working in the health care field — most recently as the CEO of Discovery Health Services — and also as a sufferer of Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis since age 21 and the multiple hospitalizations and side effects of the myriad prescription drugs that so limited my quality of life.
As a health care executive, I see how good doctors and health care providers are restricted to prescription-pad approaches that never address the root cause of illness. As a patient, the care I received never focused on quality of life, was never inclusive of the impact of diet and stress, but instead [was] founded on an endless and unwinnable fight with my symptoms.
In 2015, I went to an integrative medical doctor that used functional lab testing to uncover the fact that my body was nutritionally starved, the antibiotics I’d taken for years had stripped me of healthy gut flora and much of my suffering could be traced to the effects of the foods I was eating. Since making changes to my diet and through the use of IV therapy to increase my nutrient levels, I’ve become healthier by every measure than at any point in my life — and I’ve not taken a single prescription pill for Crohn’s or colitis since.
From that experience, and my frustration with poor access to integrative care, the concept of Koi was born: a place where doctors, wishing to provide personalized health care without limits, can spend time with patients seeking care that is grounded in the most advanced diagnostics available and prescribe more naturalized care plans based on the root cause of their symptoms.
Q. What is its mission?
A. What Koi Wellbeing represents is the future of health care delivery, and our plans are to open several more locations with the goal of having a Koi Wellbeing — a place for highly personalized, evidence-based care and wellness — in every community.
Q. What services do you offer?
A. Integrative and functional medicine testing, consultation and treatment, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy [BHRT] — including pellet hormone therapy — nutrient injections, glutathione breathing treatments and Morpheus8 skin resurfacing
Q. What makes Koi Wellbeing unique compared with similar businesses?
A. Longevity and experience in the functional medicine space. Whereas most of the field is just waking up to the concept of integrative medicine, Koi has refined our services to those that are effective and measurable. Pellet hormone replacement therapy, our specialty, is the highest iteration of BHRT. …
Also, we still craft our own IVs in-house and made to order from vitamins and nutrients we have compounded, when the newer IV providers are buying premix bags with low-quality and low-volume nutrients. It’s akin to the difference between fresh-squeezed juice and a juice box.
Q. What’s new with the business that you want everyone to know about?
A. We launched a new annual BHRT program and have started to provide the Morpheus8 skin tightening treatment for face and body. We added this particular treatment because we know our patients — especially those losing weight and now experiencing more sagging skin (both face and body) — want to look better as they are feeling better in the most effective manner possible but without causing harm.
Q. What are the advantages of living and/or working in La Jolla?
A. Being a third-generation Californian, working close to home and in a health-oriented community affords me more time with my children, fiancée and friends and time to do the things I enjoy.
Koi Wellbeing is at 5639 La Jolla Blvd. in Bird Rock. It is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, visit koiwellbeing.com, email [email protected] or call (858) 500-1633, (858) 879-6203 or (858) 257-2808.
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