Integrated Wellness, The Wellness Lab Focused on Healing the Body Not Just Symptoms, Diseases
Dr. Randall Turner understands the skepticism that surrounds natural medicine.
He understands because he was a skeptic himself.
Fast forward to today, where he is the doctor and leader of Integrative Wellness, located in the plaza on Conference Center Way in Bridgeport, where a holistic approach to healthcare addresses the whole person and treats the cause and not just the symptoms or the disease.
“We’ve been up here three or four years,” Dr. Turner said. “We started out in Fairmont one day a week. We’re focused on natural healing, the way God intended us to heal.”
If he is the leader and the one with the experience at Integrative Wellness, his wife, Cheryl, supplies the passion for Integrative Wellness as well as The Wellness Lab, which is adjoined to Integrative Wellness in the building previously home to Clean Juice (which was also owned and operated by the Turners).
“We started doing this because we had family members that were ill that couldn’t get well,” Dr. Turner said. “We had an autistic grandson, and my wife one day asked if I could help him.
“I did some research, and I came back to her and said there really wasn’t anything to help him. She looked at me and said, ‘I’m not going to accept that.’
That’s when Cheryl began studying natural medicine. And according to her husband, she started doing things with their grandson naturally and he started getting better.
“He became functional,” Dr. Turner said. “He started interacting with us. Eventually, it got to the point he was no longer autistic.
“It worked. For me as a doctor, as a researcher, that spurned my interest. What can we do to help people? I needed some way to put some science behind what she was doing to make it make sense so I began to study integrated medicine, vitamins, minerals, natural treatments.
“We started thinking why can’t we do this for people in our community? It started out and we were just going to see autistic kids. We opened a little office in Fairmont with another doctor one day a week. We thought that’s all we needed but we got so busy so quickly we needed more days and eventually we needed a bigger place.
“This used to be a drive-thru pharmacy. We rented it, re-modeled it and started seeing patients. Since we opened, we’ve seen almost 2,500 people from all over the United States, 23 different states. People have come from Germany to see us, to get holistic type treatments.
They also offer a wide variety of vitamins and supplements that are available for walk-in purchases.
“We are really into putting things in the body that make you well. We are into cellular regenerative medicine. I don’t think there is anybody that does what we do. We do regenerative, we do stem cell therapy. That’s huge. People go to L.A. for that, and we have it right here in Bridgeport.
“It’s not that we turn off the check engine light. We remove the assault, the toxicity, we put back in the minerals. It’s balancing the body and once you have the body balanced it will start healing itself. I’m very passionate about this. I want to help people.”
At the top of the list of the cutting-edge technology you can find at The Wellness Lab is The Superhuman Protocol which is a holistic health and wellness system designed to optimize human performance through the combination of three key components – red light therapy, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) and oxygen therapy.
Each element is aimed at enhancing cellular regeneration, improving energy levels, accelerating recovery, boosting circulation and promoting overall vitality.
The Turners both quickly point out that they couldn’t do what they do without their devoted, talented staff but it has been a blessing to go on this journey together as husband and wife.
“I love it, she’s amazing,” Dr. Turner said of Cheryl. “I know all the medical stuff but she’s been studying natural medicine longer than me. We can bounce ideas off each other. It’s fulfilling to look back at how far we’ve come.
Cheryl calls her husband a Swiss army knife.
“He has so many things he can pull out of that knife,” she said. “It might be, I need my ER experience today. I need the knowledge of a doctor. We could have urgent care here. He has sent people from their appointment here to the ER because he knows that’s what they need.
“We are building a puzzle from pieces that are shattered. We lay it out, we get all the testing we need, we are building the pieces of the puzzle together. We start seeing the big picture of things then we start our approach.”
Dr. Turner makes it clear he is not anti-western medicine which he says is great for trauma, cardiac issues, strokes, things that are acute. But when it comes to chronic illness, he has seen the positive results of integrated medicine time and time again.
“I’m not against medicine,” he said. “It’s about getting you well without drugs. If we put back into the body what the body needs and take out the toxins you are going to heal. But, you must do that. If you don’t get the toxins out, a lot of the times the supplements you try might not work. You have to detox. You have to support the body’s natural healing process.”
He also knows healing requires the proper mental approach.
“I can’t care more about your health than you do,” Dr. Turner said. “If I tell you what you need to do and you don’t want to do it or can’t do it, you are probably not going to get the benefit. If you have the mindset that you can’t get well, you are probably not going to get well. Changing that mindset, that’s a huge step in getting well. It’s all about the mind, the body and the spirit.”
Editor’s Note: Top photo features Dr. Randall Turner (left) and Cheryl Turner. Second photo is of one of the rooms at The Wellness Lab. In the third photo, the Integrative Wellness and The Wellness Lab staff from left: Maddy Spurlock, organic chef and wellness tech; Lori Menas, office manager and wellness consultant; Erin Gallagher, certified helath coach and wellness concierge; Jo Plypon, registered murse and wellness enthusiast; Cheryl Turner; Randall Turner and Aden Fellows, wellness lab manager and wellness concierge.