Stark Health: The Pioneer of Integrated Health Optimization, Now in Its 15th Year

For Immediate Release — August 19, 2026

Stark Health: The Pioneer of Integrated Health Optimization, Now in Its 15th Year

The facility that invented the model — doctors, trainers, and nutritionists working as one team on one program — marks a milestone and issues a challenge to corporate America.

NEWPORT BEACH, CA — In 2011, Todd Vande Hei opened Stark Health with a simple but radical idea: that a business leader should be able to walk into one facility and have their blood tested, their body composition measured by DEXA scan, their nutrition designed by an expert, and their training programmed — all by a team working off the same data, on the same program, for the same person.

Nobody was doing it. He looked.

“In 2015, I reached out to Thomas Plummer — one of the most respected consultants in the fitness industry — and asked him to help me find other facilities doing what we were doing,” said Vande Hei. “After a nationwide search, he came back empty-handed. There were clinics. There were gyms. There were nutritionists. But nobody had put them in one room, working together, on one program. So we built it.”

That model — doctors, personal trainers, and nutritionists functioning as a single integrated team, with DEXA body composition scanning and diagnostic bloodwork driving every decision — is now recognized as the defining architecture of the health optimization industry. Competitors that have since entered the space, including Upgrade Labs (2017), Fountain Life (2021), and Function Health (2022), all post-date Stark’s founding by years.

The Compounding Effect

What makes Stark different isn’t any single service — it’s the conversation between them.

A student’s bloodwork reveals low testosterone. The doctor adjusts their protocol. The nutritionist reformulates their diet to support hormone production. The trainer rewrites the program — not just to build muscle, but to correct the movement patterns that DEXA revealed were causing asymmetry and increasing injury risk. The chiropractor addresses the structural issue underneath. Six weeks later, the student feels like a different person.

“That outcome is impossible if those four practitioners never talk to each other,” said Vande Hei. “At Stark, they do. Every week. About every student.”

This integration extends across every service Stark offers — TRT and nutrition, chiropractic and strength training, mobility work woven into traditional exercise programming. The level of sophistication in each category individually is profound. When the entire ecosystem works together, the outcomes are, in Vande Hei’s words, “life-changing and nearly magical.”

A Challenge to Corporate America

Stark Health operates locations in Newport Beach and Tustin, California, serving business leaders and high performers who have optimized every area of their professional lives — and are ready to do the same with their health.

“Your body is your most underinvested asset,” said Vande Hei. “Every CEO I know tracks revenue, headcount, and margins. Almost none of them track their VO2 max, their testosterone, or their visceral fat. That gap is what Stark was built to close.”

About Stark Health

Founded January 2, 2011, Stark Health is an integrated health optimization facility serving Newport Beach and Tustin, California. Stark combines doctors, personal trainers, nutritionists, DEXA body composition scanning, and diagnostic bloodwork under one roof — one team, one program, one student. Learn more at stark.health.

Media Contact: pr@stark.health