It only takes a couple minutes of conversation with Dr. Brandon Washatka to find yourself intrigued by the services offered at Longevity Effect. A chiropractor by training and practice, Dr. Washatka opened Longevity Effect with the goal of providing the people of Tulsa with spa-like therapies + treatments like floatation therapy, neurofeedback, and the magnesphere.

What’s the philosophy behind Longevity Effect?

“I really wanted to give people the ability to heal themselves without seeing a white coat, but also have a facility that provided that expertise if people wanted to reach out to them. We’re at a critical peak right now in conventional medicine where people just aren’t getting what they want, and they’re looking for other options.

We have two physicians—not only a medical physician but also a structural care physician–as well as people who specialize in clinical nutrition, hormones, and different things. I think when people see that as physicians we also truly believe these other modalities can help you heal yourself, they end up coming to see us.”

So you’re trying to bridge the gap between conventional medicine and alternative treatments?

“Exactly. Plus, I think when people talk about mental health it becomes very taboo. People almost get offended, or they don’t want to admit that even just seeing a car accident can really cause an issue on your psyche. That all has to do with your mental health. Instead of addressing mental health or attention issues with amphetamines and antidepressants, our thought is, let’s try addressing this with some other methods first.

So, we’re bridging that gap between mental and conventional health and what some people would consider alternative health. And although I really consider alternative health to be normal, that’s where we’re at as a society and how we’ve been trained to think of medicine. However, we want to bridge that gap and really start educating people on the other aspects of health care, not sick care.”

Can you tell me about one of the services you offer?

“Yeah absolutely. I’ll talk about one of the therapies that’s actually here in Oklahoma, and we’re one of the only facilities to have. So one of the modalities is called the magnesphere. It’s an amazing device that is working with low level electromagnetic field therapy. It almost looks like something out of X-men when you see it. You’re sitting in the zero gravity recliner between these two giant rings, and the rings are producing these low level magnetic fields.

The concept around it is that your body is an electrical being: Your brain is creating electrical impulses that can be measured, and frequencies that send signals down your nervous system, down your spinal cord, and through your nerves. And right now, we live in a time where we’re heavily exposed to other EMFs, electromagnetic fields, from cell phones, computers, high wire electrical signals, and we really don’t know how that is affecting people.

However, when we go to measure their frequency, like people that are really sick we’re seeing that they’re not really producing these electrical fields like a healthy person would. And so this device has been really cool at helping almost reset the body.

You may have heard of sympathetic versus parasympathetic. Your sympathetic is your stress response–your fight or flight–and your parasympathetic is your rest and relax. Most people, if they’re pleasantly caffeinated throughout the day, if they’re on medication, or if they’re exposed to a very stressful environment, they’re stuck in fight or flight. Your body cannot heal in fight or flight.

And so this device is great at throwing you into that parasympathetic mode and dampening that stress response to allow the body to help re-calibrate.

To give you some examples, we’ve helped countless people with tachycardia—a very high heart rate—that are also on beta blockers; people with diabetic neuropathy (people that can’t feel their feet really well so they have trouble walking); Parkinson’s patients. We’ve had a lot of those types of patients seeing great results and calming their nervous system.

Most specifically an overweight lady with really bad diabetic neuropathy recently came in. She had been to a bunch of different specialists and everybody was like, “We don’t know what’s going on but here is more diabetes medicine.” But she needed help just pushing her walker.

We did four therapies in the first week, and four therapies into it, she’s walking with her walker by herself. She didn’t need any help getting out of the chair. Two therapies the next week, and she was using a cane. I was astounded. And I think this helped her realize, OK I can get out of this slump, and now she’s asking about nutritional health. So that was really cool to see.

So that’s something that typically nobody has heard of, and we have it and it’s been seeing some really cool I guess you could call them ‘miracles’ so to speak.”

How do you respond to skepticism and pushback about these treatments and therapies?

“One thing we like to tell people is that there is a spectrum of health. Medicine is needed just like massage and physical touch is needed. We are a place that wants to provide that spectrum.

You’re going to need antibiotics for an infection. We want you to treat that. But when you’re coming in with anxiety or attention issues, the first thing shouldn’t be Adderall or antidepressants if a doctor’s job is to first do no harm. We want to stick to that oath. These modalities and therapies are non-invasive and are not going to hurt you.

We don’t say that people don’t need these other things. We just say: why don’t we start with something that isn’t going to give you more chemicals, isn’t going to hurt the body, or have any side effects? The only effects that we know are happening from it are very positive. So let’s start there, knowing that we can always go to these conventional treatments later or in conjunction. And, if our therapies don’t work for you that’s OK. But we know they weren’t hurting you, and at least you tried.”

Although Longevity Effect is cash-pay only, they DO accept flex or health savings accounts. You can also redeem some sweet perks at Longevity Effect with Towny. Towny is the free mobile app + online guide that lets you earn rewards for exploring Tulsa and shopping local!