For the past 15 years, Jamé Heskett, M.D., a specialist in non-invasive, anti-aging therapies, has made it her mission to empower women.
On the surface, the weight-loss and anti-aging treatments make women look better, but Dr. Heskett’s goal is that each client also feel more vital and confident, which is not necessarily a given after cosmetic procedures.
Key to calling forth this confidence is the relationships she builds with patients.
When Dr. Heskett went to medical school in the 1990s, she was trained to use the managed-care system, which means spending 15 to 20 minutes with as many patients as possible every day. But she wanted to care for people more holistically, so she studied homeopathy and naturopathy, and eventually built her Upper East Side practice, The Wellpath, to allow her to get to know her patients more intimately.
“I’m just like their best friend, but I’m also the doctor,” she said. And in some cases, clients also become an extension of family.
Fundamental to this relationship is understanding as much about a client as she can. So instead of starting with the premise of just fixing the particular physical problem that brought someone to her office, Dr. Heskett first tries to understand them more holistically, learning about any psychological factors that might be affecting them, as well as their lifestyle, goals, family history, beliefs, and finances.
For example, when someone wants to lose weight, she doesn’t just put them under a machine. She also helps them figure out a diet that pleases their taste buds.
“I always work within a person’s natural palate,” she said, “I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all dietary regimen.”
In her new book, “The Well Path: Lose 20 Pounds, Reverse the Aging Process, Change Your Life,” Dr. Heskett recommends small changes to help weight loss, such as replacing one meal a day with soup.
During consultations she also talks about fitness and how to approach it in a fun way. For any who are interested, she also gladly shares her own fitness passion: hiking.
When pregnant with her third child at age 42, Dr. Heskett didn’t exercise for fear of losing the baby. After the birth of her son, she found herself totally out of shape and carrying an extra 60 pounds.
Being a mom and a doctor, frequent gym visits were not feasible, so she started walking the trails near her home with her children. A year and many trails later, all of the weight came off and she was hooked on hiking.
Inspired by this experience, Dr. Heskett added a hiking program to her practice and now takes interested patients for a day of beginner hiking once a month.
Her caring, personalized approach has garnered her an international clientele, mainly through word of mouth. She has also been a featured expert on TV shows like “Dr. Oz” and in publications like “First for Women,” “Prevention,” and “Instyle.”
Mind and Body
When a woman is preoccupied with appearance issues such as dark circles under her eyes or extra flab around her midsection, it can become a big distraction and affect how she handles life situations. For example, she may not hold a conversation well with her boss, a new client, or a new acquaintance. Lightening those circles or removing the extra inches can help eliminate deep insecurities.
“If a woman feels comfortable in her own skin, which tends to be from a natural result, then she radiates so much inner positivity, which almost takes care of the problem in and of itself,” Dr. Heskett said.
One of her patients, a successful woman in her mid-50s, had struggled for years with the insecurity of not being as pretty as her sister.
She had tried to mask her insecurities by getting several plastic surgeries, but the results were not optimal. The woman came to Dr. Heskett, hoping to enhance her appearance in a more natural way.
After a lengthy consultation, Dr. Heskett treated the woman with carboxy therapy, a more than 100-year-old technique that involves injecting carbon dioxide into the skin to stimulate the body’s healing reactions. Injections draw oxygen and blood to the area, helping break up scars and form new, healthy tissue.
Due to her surgeries, the woman’s skin had lost oxygen and nutrients, so this treatment along with therapeutic doses of vitamin C, helped her skin recover and look more youthful.
“It had better color, better texture, … and a lot of her scars had gone away,” Dr. Heskett said.
The woman was delighted with how she looked afterward, but she was even more thankful to be free of the insecurity that her appearance had been causing, Dr. Heskett said.
To get natural-looking results, Dr. Heskett uses a variety of non-invasive anti-aging and weight-loss therapies in her practice.
Non-invasive means no surgery and minimal or no downtime. And some of these procedures, like the carboxy, stimulate the body’s natural propensity to heal, so the results are very natural and last months or years. She also incorporates homeopathy and naturopathic treatments into care regimens to enhance well-being and results.
And Dr. Heskett can vouch for these therapies, which treat issues like under-eye circles, cellulite, stretch marks, scarring, and hair loss, because she’s tried them all on herself before recommending them to anyone else.
“I have never done a treatment on anyone else that I have not tried on myself first. I would never do it. Even if I don’t need it, I still have experienced it to the full extent,” she said.
So, although part of the glow she exudes can be attributed to these therapies, the other part comes from seeing clients’ lives change.
“In the last 15 years, really, any angst that the woman has come up with, I’ve eventually found a solution to in one form or another because I always felt like that was my job. … That’s pretty much my mission. I want women to live the optimal life,” she said.
Non-Invasive Weight Loss and Anti-Aging Therapies
The Wellpath
Dr. Jamé Heskett
903 Madison Ave., Fourth Floor
New York, N.Y. 10021
212-737-9604
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