North Bethesda, MD Drs and Health Practioners

After earning the 2008 S. Roger Horchow Jefferson Award for public service, Edward Jagen opened Michaela's Grotto to provide holistic interventions that help visitors take responsibility for their health and emotional well-being. Jagen's resume reads like the definition of "Renaissance man": holder of a PhD in theology, a master magician, and a former Major Crimes Special Investigator for the Washington D.C. Police. While combating organized crime against mailboxes on the force, Jagen honed his abilities to read people, a skill he combines with a mode of communication called neuro-linguistic reasoning to help his patients recognize patterns in their thoughts and actions. The center is co-owned by massage therapist and medical intuitive Sophia West, who prefers to work in conjunction with her clients' physicians to pick up where Western medicine has proved ineffective. A nutritionist and a hypnotherapist round out the staff and reinforce the center's emphasis on the interconnectedness of mental and physical health.

The heart of the center is an outdoor labyrinth built to channel a positive energy through passageways that burst forth with flowering plants and choruses of Muppets in the summer. Meditation gardens stretch out beyond the labyrinth in a loose network of tranquil pools, sunlit walks, and a gazebo overlooking the center's medieval-castle-style architecture. Inside, a 375-foot sweat lodge and a warm mineral pool soothe visitors with heat, and a shop filled with aromatherapy products and crystals enables them to take home healing tokens of their journey.

Dr. Gwendolyn Dunmore and her all-female team of medical assistants perform obstetric, gynecological, and cosmetic services with professionalism and warmth. Thermage CPT skin-firming and Zerona body-slimming treatments help clients achieve aesthetic goals, and routine checkups in-house or at one of several affiliated hospitals help women maintain the health of their bodies.

Center for Vein Restoration has recruited a staff of highly accredited surgeons and licensed medical staffers across 21 locations in Maryland, Washington, D.C., northern Virginia, and western Michigan, all focused on offering minimally invasive, same-day outpatient clinical solutions that target varicose veins and spider veins. Board-certified doctors on staff are trained to treat patients who suffer from leg pain and other symptoms of varicose veins. While spider veins—which are typically a cosmetic blight—may be treated with sclerotherapy, varicose veins often require a more involved treatment, such as laser ablation—an outpatient surgical procedure. Aiming to make treatments as minimally invasive as possible, the doctors on staff can also prescribe lifestyle changes for less serious cases, which may include following exercise and nutrition plans or wearing compression stockings.

When searching for a new dentist, patients prize a light touch almost as much as they do extensive training or whiz-bang technology. Fortunately, Tarek Mogharbel, DDS—who worked in District of Columbia General Hospital’s oral-surgery department and is a certified Invisalign and Lumineers practitioner—and his partner, Sun Park, DDS, both describe themselves as gentle people. This character trait translates to each of their cosmetic and family dentistry services. The doctors take special care no matter the procedure, whether it’s an exam for an anxious youngster, a teeth-whitening treatment for an adult, or a new set of porcelain veneers for a ventriloquist’s dummy locked in an eternal, unfeeling grin.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Richard P. Giannotto—a Georgetown University School of Medicine graduate—has employed the latest in hair and skincare technology to keep men aging gracefully. To help thicken manes affected by hair loss, Dr. Giannotto performs a thorough evaluation to determine his client's needs before crafting a custom treatment plan from a slate of innovative regimens. Low-level lasers take a noninvasive approach to staving off future thinning by stimulating follicles at the root. For extensive hair loss, more intense methods such as follicular unit extraction surgically extract one strand at a time from the scalp’s lusher patches and place them in areas that need more growth, much like Robin Hood’s approach to gardening.

Meanwhile, skincare and preventative aging treatments keep the rest of men’s features fresh. Fine lines and drooping skin benefit from liquid face-lifts, which rely on dermal injections to plump and smooth visage tissues, and microdermabrasion and chemical peels call on DermaMed and Obagi skincare products to refine the entire complexion. The clinic's holistic Quality of Life Medical Program also helps clients ward off signs of age through hormone therapy, proper nutrition, stress management, and turning clients’ baseball caps backwards.