Built by someone who needed it.

From a Texas golf course to 15 years of Stark

In his early 30s, Todd Vande Hei was running a carpet manufacturing company, working 70-hour weeks, and winning by every external measure. Then he collapsed on a golf course in Texas — a cluster of grand mal seizures that nobody could fully explain.

What followed was a decade of fragmented care: specialists who didn't talk to each other, diagnoses that treated symptoms without addressing the whole person, and a health system that repeatedly told him his labs were "normal" while his body said otherwise. He was eventually diagnosed with atrial fibrillation — a condition he'd had since age 31. He later had a stroke, also caused by the AFib.

Managing the conditions wasn't the same as solving them. "My cardiologist didn't know my training load. My trainer didn't know my labs. My nutritionist was working off my goals, not my inflammation markers. Nobody was looking at the whole picture."

So in 2011, he built the place he wished had existed. What started in Irvine, California became Stark Health — a company built on one idea: that high-performing people deserve a health system that actually works like a team.

Todd Vande Hei — Founder & CEO, Stark Health
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A few things we believe that most places don't.

• 01

  They're students. Not clients.

  The word matters. Clients consume a service. Students are actively learning — about their bodies, their data, their patterns. That's what Stark produces: people who understand their own health.

• 02

  Optimization theater is not optimization.

  Cold plunges, red light panels, CGMs — they have a place. But the person with every biohack and device is often the same person who hasn't slept a full night in years. We start with the fundamentals and build from data.

• 03

  The team has to actually talk.

  In traditional care, your trainer doesn't know your labs. Your doctor doesn't know your training load. At Stark, every practitioner on your team shares context, challenges each other, and coordinates decisions.

• 04

  You can't manage what you don't measure.

  Every student starts with a Stark Baseline — DEXA body composition, comprehensive bloodwork, movement screen, and a Doctor consultation. You leave with your data and a real starting point, not a sales pitch.