We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christian Badillo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christian below.
Christian, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?
Many anecdotes from the ER including some humor, some tragedy, some with a happy ending, and all with important lessons. I am happy to share some with you, while maintaining patient privacy.
Christian, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I grew up New York in a small tight-knit family. My father is a physician and he was always an incredible role model for me. I saw the way he cared for his patients and how passionate he was about the art + science of medicine, and I wanted and it encouraged me to enter the field of medicine. I was always intrigued by the health sciences and helping people when they were most in need. Prior to medical school I taught English as a seance language for underserved populations and I was even more inspired to dedicate my life to others. II moved to Chicago in ’05 for medical school and have been here ever since. I decided to specialize in Emergency Medicine – I loved the acuity and the variety of cases. I then worked in many busy urban and rural emergency departments often working overnights with a skeleton crew . I met so many amazing people along the way (patients and colleagues). These experiences shaped me as a person and as a physician. Although I loved allopathic/western medicine I often felt something was missing – health maintenance and disease prevention was lacking as well as access to appropriate healthcare. I noticed that a lot of the diseases I saw (not all of course), could have been avoided with appropriate diet, lifestyle, and exercises modifications. I should also mention that sports + fitness + the martial art have always been extremely important to me. I have been training in the martial arts, namely Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission grappling. This further influenced me philosophy on what healthcare should be – disease prevention, maintenance of health, and about health span. Along my career path I met a nurse colleague, Jessica. She and I worked seamlessly together managing critically ill patients, counseling patients and family – it’s safe to say that she was with me in the trenches. We both felt like our careers were lacking something … We decided to start a concierge medspa around 2021 called Your Element Wellness with a focus on individualized health preservation. We offer treatments ranging from intravenous and intramuscular vitamin therapy, intramuscular injections, guided and individualized health plans for weight loss, overall health longevity, incorporating supplementation, lab analysis (genetic, immunologic, gut, neurologic, hormonal etc), peptide therapy, hormone replacement therapy, some regenerative aesthetics (microneedling, neuromodulators, facials). We also noticed that the medical system was often difficult to navigate and often left patients waiting to receive care; and when that patient finally saw a provider, they didn’t have adequate time to be listened to. When we created our practice, we had all of these pieces in mind. We pride ourselves on a safe, effective, guided, and curated approach that gives the patient time to be listened to and doesn’t leave the patient waiting to receive treatment. Everything we do is either televisit or concierge – that is, we go to directly to the patient’s place of choice (home, work etc). Our patient population ranges anywhere from the person that wants to lose weight, wants to live longer, more vibrant, and healthier life, to the person that wants a second opinion on their autoimmune or hormonal challenges, to the post marathoner or festival goger that wants IV hydration.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Although we are in our infancy, we brought a lot of our bedside experience from our days in the ER to the medspa industry. My business partner is an outstanding nurse and human. She was always well respected and delivered the highest quality carer for her patients. A lot of our exposure to our patients has been from word of mouth, and I think track record, consistency is extremely important to earn the trust of your patients. In building our team, we’ve tried to build a team of passionate people that are inspired by delivering the best care to our patients. So, in sum, a major ingredient to our growing success lies within the people who have built it.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
Without a doubt. I feel like the luckiest person in the world. I get to marry all the things that I love – the health sciences, as well as caring and being with people. I have the great fortune of patients’ trusting me with their lives, to hear their stories, and to be be able to help them. The medspa practice further affords me with the opportunity to be creative, to be an entrepreneur, and be exposed to people and experiences I normally wouldn’t be in a traditional healthcare setting.
Health truly is wealth – and I get to help people manage it, alongside them.
I think a lot of physicians and nurses don’t realize that they can also use their degrees in non traditional ways. This was also a motivating factor in developing the medspa; that is, providing healthcare workers with a more sustainable and self-directed career option.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yourelementwellness.com
- Instagram: yourelementwellnessmedspa
- Facebook: Your Element Wellness