Ashai Health offers alternative & science-based services

By RACHEL STRICKLAND | Photos by SKEEBO

Salado is a vibrant hub where innovative people offer unique services, and Ashai Health is no different. Pronounced “ah-shy,” the wellness center is dedicated to empowering their clients on their journey to mental and physical wellbeing with alternative and science-based health services such as cryotherapy and IV hydration therapy.

Sheila Tauferner started Ashai because she wanted people to have options. Medicine has come a long way in the last century, and since the advent of antibiotics and modern medicine, people don’t die from diseases, like the flu or smallpox, as often as they once did.

“What we’re dying from (today) are lifestyle choices,” Tauferner said. “We’re dying from things that we inflict upon ourselves. And so, I wanted to offer other modalities so that the consumer is not just stuck taking a pill.”

As an ER nurse practitioner with 30 years of nursing experience, she has seen it all. She now wants people suffering with ailments such as diabetes or arthritis to have other science-based options to help manage their symptoms.

Tauferner and her long-time friend turned business partner, Karen Brillhart, offer various services at Ashai, including cryotherapy, IV nutritional therapy, NormaTec air compression, red-light therapy, and personalized fitness programs, just to name a few.
“(Everything here) has great research behind it with National Institutes of Health,” Tauferner said. “I don’t want to have things that don’t have a decent amount of research behind them.”

Within Ashai is Centex Regenerative and Aspire Aesthetics, which is where Brillhart, an aesthetic nurse specialist and former ICU nurse, provides regenerative medicine and aesthetics, including laser aesthetics, hormone replacement therapy, pain management, and platelet-rich plasma injections.

Using the Fonota SP Dynamis laser, she offers non-surgical facelifts, lip plumping, eye smoothing, and body contouring. The laser can even help with snoring and hair reduction. Brillhart is a big advocate of these non-surgical, non-invasive laser treatments because they drastically reduce risks for the clients, they look more natural than fillers or surgery, and they’re much cheaper. She explains that lip injections and fillers are not without risk — they can cause issues such as necrosis and can stretch and deflate if they’re overfilled. However, the laser that she uses works by stimulating the collagen growth, so her clients’ lips plump up naturally.

Ashai also offers hydration and nutritional therapies. Their intravenous nutritional therapies give immediate results for issues such as dehydration, fatigue, nutrient deficiencies, stress, and migraines, while their intramuscular injections administer medication straight into the muscles to help increase the metabolism and energy levels. Many people ask for the IV cocktail to help with hydration before a marathon or sporting event, and some even come in before going out drinking with friends.

“When you’re talking about pre-gaming, (hydrating) puts you way ahead of everybody else,” Brillhart said.

She said that even if you’re drinking a lot of water, it will go through your stomach, kidneys, and out of your body without much staying in your bloodstream, which is the key. That’s where the hydration IV comes in — it’s effective because it puts the fluid directly into the bloodstream.

One of the biggest draws at Ashai is their cryotherapy chamber, which is like a full-body ice bath — just kicked up a notch. You strip down to your underwear and step into the narrow, padded chamber and stand in the intense cold for a maximum of three minutes. Their nitrogen chamber can reach down to -220 degrees, depending on the setting. Ashai also offers a localized cryotherapy option to target specific areas.

Whether localized or full-body, cryotherapy acts as an anti-inflammatory, which can help to relieve pain and even relieve allergies. And, as an added bonus, it acts as a calorie burner because the body’s self-regulation — Brillhart said that a person might burn up to 800 calories after a cryotherapy session.

“We have people show up all the way from Gatesville (and) Georgetown because the cryochamber here is all encompassing,” she shared. “I’m a runner, so my knees always feel amazing whenever I come out. It’s a great form of self-care and one that is not just placebo — it’s legit.”

Another service is localized and full-body red-light therapy. Taking it back to high school biology, Tauferner explained that red light helps the mitochondria of the cell function more efficiently. Red-light therapy was originally used for plastic surgery, but research has shown that it’s beneficial for mental health and mood disorders. She said that red-light therapy is now even available in some long-term care facilities to treat dementia and Parkinson’s. Ashai uses the JOOV system, which is an FDA-approved and has a medical grade red light and near-infrared light to administer treatment. It can help with pain management, cell growth and repair, increased blood flow, skin rejuvenation, and muscle relaxation.

Ashai also offers NormaTec air compression, which is a mixture of massage patterns and air compression that can increase blood flow and decrease soreness in tired muscles. Brillhart can personally attest to the effective combination of cryotherapy followed by air compression after she ran a six-mile marathon that she wasn’t prepared for, and the next day, she wasn’t sore and her back didn’t hurt at all. Some of their clients include UMHB athletes who come in before games to prepare with the NormaTec air compression.

They also have a Fit RX program to help clients lose weight with lifestyle changes, rather than quick fixes. Using their high-end InBody scale, they can tell their clients what how much lean muscle mass, water weight, visceral fat they have, as well as how many calories they should be burning depending on their personal stats.

“The whole program encompasses weighing to make sure you’re not losing muscle, eating protein and exercising,” Tauferner said. “We’re trying to encourage lifestyle changes instead of just taking a magic shot. Folks that have done the program continue to maintain their weight because they’ve had a lifestyle change.”

“Nothing here is going to be the end-all be-all,” Brillhart added. “You have to make good choices on your own. We just really encourage good choices and just try to help people in making their lives better.”

Tauferner knows how to help people in the conventional way after working as an ER nurse for 30 years, but she opened Ashai Health because she wanted it to be a calmer and more fun place for people to get help. “I can sew lacerations and I can put a broken bone in a splint,” she said. “There are legitimate things that we have [at the ER] that people need, but nobody wants to be there. I wanted a different environment.”

Ashai Health
Address: 113 Salado Plaza Drive, Building 7A, Salado
Website: ashaihealth.com
Phone: 254-947-0518
Hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday