Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 171 - Preventive Care, Personal Attention
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Tired of racing through a 15-minute appointment and leaving with more questions than answers? We sit down with Dr. Galit Steinberg, founder of Younique Health in Closter, NJ, to unpack how boutique, personalized care restores time, trust, and real prevention. From the first hour-long visit to a plan that spans sleep, nutrition, stress, movement, and relationships, Dr. Galit shows why treating the whole person produces better outcomes than chasing numbers or quick fixes.
We dig into lifestyle medicine as a practical toolkit for reversing prediabetes, lowering blood pressure, and improving cholesterol without jumping straight to lifelong medication. Dr. Galit explains how deeper lab work uncovers micronutrient issues and hidden drivers of fatigue, frequent illness, and weight gain, and why coaching plus accountability beats the “pill for every problem” mindset. She also clarifies scope: men and women benefit from functional and lifestyle medicine, while hormone therapy focuses on women in perimenopause and menopause with evidence-based options that improve quality of life.
Beyond prevention, we explore non-invasive aesthetics that support function and confidence, including facial toning, radiofrequency microneedling for collagen and skin tightening, and vaginal rejuvenation that addresses dryness and urinary symptoms. Dr. Galit shares her path from hospital-employed medicine to entrepreneurship, the challenges of marketing a mission-driven practice, and how speaking multiple languages builds cultural trust and better outcomes. If you’ve been craving a doctor who knows your sleep patterns as well as your lab results, this conversation offers a roadmap to care that actually fits your life.
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Younique Health
Dr. Galit Steinberg
277 Closter Dock Rd. Suite 3
Closter, NJ 07624
(201) 975-3844
contact@younique-health.com
younique-health.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Doug Drohan:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. I am your host, Doug Drohan. Today we have a very special guest. It's Dr. Galit Steinberg, founder of Younique Health. She is the owner of a relatively new practice in Closton, New Jersey Younique Health. Younique being YOU, the U and Unique. Galit, welcome to the show.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Hi, thanks so much for having me. It's all good.
Doug Drohan:Yeah. So you've been open for less than a year, or has it been a year yet?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Nope. It's been less than a year. We opened officially in uh May.
Doug Drohan:Okay.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Really fun grand opening. And uh it's been very exciting.
Doug Drohan:Yeah. So I mean, you this is the first time you've gone out on your own because you used to work at Englewood Hell uh Englewood Hospital.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:I was at Englewood, I was at Columbia before that. I was basically always hospital employed, and um medicine started changing and healthcare started changing, and I decided that I need to go along and do it the way that I wanted to do it.
Doug Drohan:Okay. So what is it like you talk about um, you know, when I looked into your uh your company, something called personalized care. Is that similar to like um what are we calling it now? A concierge care?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:I call it boutique.
Doug Drohan:Okay.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Um I call it boutique healthcare. So to me, it's a different type of visit. Patients come here, uh, you're not spending 15 minutes with your doctor, you're not waiting an hour um before your appointment sitting in a waiting room. Um, patients come, we run on time. I spend a minimum um of an hour with every new patient, sometimes depending on the appointment type. And I call it personalized because I really get to know them, meaning that we get to know all the different aspects. I don't think that one problem defines like your health. I think you really have to get down to the nitty-gritty and figure out what's going on in their life to actually be able to assess what's going on.
Doug Drohan:So you talk about their careers, their family dynamic, um, stress levels, things like that.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Sleep, stress levels, life, sex, you name it. Like we talk about everything.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, yeah. Now, um, like what's the typical age range that you treat when it comes to your patients?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Um, so this is what's super fun, and I think that's part of the reason I even went into my fields in the first place, is that I have um patients from as young as 13 to as old as in their 90s. Um I would say my average are probably 40s, 50s, 60s, um, but I definitely have, depending on whether they're seeing me for functional medicine or gynecology or lifestyle medicine. I have some adult, I have a bunch of adolescents, I have some, you know, in their 20s and 30s. They're just coming for different things.
Doug Drohan:Got it, got it.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Which is what keeps it interesting.
Doug Drohan:Yeah. Now you said lifestyle medicine. What is that?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:That is for patients that really want to take a hold of their health. I think that medicine should be more preventive and not so reactionary.
Speaker 2:Right.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:So people who are starting who number one, either want to prevent developing diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, or who were told by their doctors, hey, you know, you're starting to become pre-diabetic. Uh, your blood pressure is creeping up, your cholesterol is starting to get to the point where we're gonna have to talk about medication. And patients who've decided, you know what, I don't want to be on medication for the rest of my life. I want to see if there's something that I can do to prevent that. So we work in all different aspects to kind of keep them off of medication, but keep them healthy and get them out of pre-diabetes back into regular blood sugar levels or get them from pre-hypertensive to normo-tensive.
Doug Drohan:Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important because um it's funny when I go to uh a different doctor and they ask me to give them the name of my primary physician. I'm like, I don't have a primary, I have the name of the group practice, but when I go, I get who's ever available. I don't have like my doctor that knows me anymore. It's like the Englewood Health, you know, um, which I think was brought up by Summit Help, you know, so it's really somewhat impersonalized. And I know that the whole insurance kind of industry is you have to see like 40 patients a day, and it's like get them in and out, kind of like a uh assembly line. But yeah, I don't know, I don't have the name of a doctor that I see. And um, to your point, I had a physical, and I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. I had a physical uh a few weeks ago, and my cholesterol has creeped up. No phone call, no, and I'm and I'm to your point, I'm not gonna go on medication. I will figure out through exercise and and dieting to lower my cholesterol. It's not something you're not gonna give me a pill to fix it. But the important thing that I'm trying to get at is that this is like a month ago, and you know, you get your results online, and I'm like, oh, okay, that that creeped up. It's 220. Nobody's called me to talk to me about it. So, you know, there you go. And I think that's that's the issue that a lot of people have. But I also think that like what you do might be not really well known, or maybe it's catching on, but it's also like the idea of being proactive with your health. Um, I think a lot of people like we see with you know instant gratification with social media and everything else, people want to pill, they want to take Ozempic to lose weight, they don't want to actually want to go to the gym. Um, so do you find that as a um as kind of an obstacle or a barrier that you have to educate people in the value of what you're bringing, or is it something that's becoming more and more people are becoming more aware of this?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:I think it's a little bit of both. I think that people have to learn to value their health. Like, I mean, it's it feels like an old adage, but like we have nothing if you don't have your health. So we have to, though, take a preventive approach to it. So let's not wait till things happen. Let's address it beforehand. So people who are motivated, they have no problem and they'll come. I think it's definitely trickier for patients who are like, I don't have time, can't you just give me, you know, they want a pill? That those are not the people who are gonna benefit from my visit. Um, the people are gonna benefit are the ones who are ready to make a change. And I say that for a lot of my visit types before they even make an appointment. It's kind of part of the screening process that I don't have any magic pills, I don't have any sort of magic that I can give you, but I will give you all the tools and I will hold your hand and help you use those tools, but you're gonna have to use them and then it works.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:But it takes time and it takes energy.
Doug Drohan:Right, right. I mean, it's not a quick fix, and I think that's the challenge with um a lot of different things today. You know, I'm in the advertising business, people want ads to work immediately, and and they uh they kind of ignore human brain science and how they shop, you know. Um, but nevertheless, um, you know, I've I've met a lot of people that are, you know, doctors that are kind of going in your direction. I think for that very reason they got fed up with the system and you know, they feel like they can bring more value to their patients. Um, but one of the like, you know, I'll I'll admit when I saw your practice, I thought you were more focused on women's health. Uh, I didn't know that you actually treated men as much. And in talking to a lot of therapists and other doctors, I feel like men's health is something that is um overlooked. And I think maybe men are the reason or to blame in a lot of ways because they're not the ones to either speak about certainly mental health with their friends when they're sitting around the poker table or watching the football. Um, but I, you know, I think when it comes to hormone treatment and things like that, are you seeing more of a, well, just take this from a business perspective, more of a market need that men need um your treatments and services as well?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:So I'm just gonna clarify, I do treat men for functional medicine and lifestyle medicine, but I do not treat men for hormones.
Doug Drohan:Got it.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:I definitely see that there is a need, um, absolutely, but I'm not there yet. I absolutely treat women for hormones, which is a huge topic right now. Um menopause, perimenopause. Um, but men in the lifestyle circuit, um, I'm happy to treat. And again, if that comes up, there are, you know, I absolutely am a proponent of you know them getting hormone treatment as well, if needed.
Doug Drohan:Right, right. Okay. So what if somebody um is suffering from a cold or a cough and they maybe have bronchitis? Uh, would they come to see you?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:No, so they're they're generally not coming to me for sick visits. I do end up seeing them when they're like, hey, wait a minute, you know what? I don't know why suddenly I'm sick, like every three weeks, or I used to be healthy all the time, and now I just find that my immune system is not working the same. Those patients come to see me, right? So to try and figure out why is your immune system not working great? What has changed? What can we do to improve your immune system so that you're not getting sick?
Doug Drohan:Right, right. Okay. And what are the things you look at? Um, is it something you could improve upon with diet? Is it with uh supplements?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Is it with so all of that, but I also um do more extensive blood work because oftentimes it could be a micronutrient imbalance, it could be other things that we didn't that weren't tested regularly that are off that we need to optimize, um low levels of certain vitamins, um stress for sure, lack of exercise, weight gain, um, lack of sleep. We don't, you know, people downplay how much of that affects your immune system. So you look at everything, and each person again, it's it's different.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, so I mean, um, I think that's the challenge, right? In the traditional sense, it's like uh one size fits all for a lot of a lot of people.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Take a Z Pac or take this, and um also in again in an average visit, right? You have about 15 minutes because the doctor's such a burden of the amount of patients that they need to be able to see a day. So in 15 minutes, it's really hard to kind of deep dive and figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:This is part of why you know I opted to do what I do, is that I'm not bound by 15-minute visits.
Doug Drohan:Got it, got it. So I want to go back away, is I want to cue the music to uh when you were a young girl growing up in the Bronx or growing up in Rockland County. Um, when did you decide you wanted to be a doctor? Like when was it? Was there a moment that you can remember?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Yeah, there was so when I was young already, I grew up with a mom who was a nurse, and I always loved that when we were in any type of situation, she somehow always knew what to do, which was amazing. And then when I was young, I would tell her, you know, I wanted to be a nurse like her. And she would tell me, you know what, I always wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't have that opportunity. So if you want to keep, you know, doing this, you know, you should be a doctor. And it came and went, you know, we saw I grew up, and then there was a moment in high school where one of my classmates who I'd known my whole life had a seizure in the middle of class, and no one knew what was going on, everyone was kind of traumatized. Um, and it was very traumatic for me that like we just stood there and nobody know what knew what was going on or what to do.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:At that moment, I don't ever want to be in that situation where there's a medical situation, I have no idea what to do. It was feeling helpless.
Doug Drohan:Yeah.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:And uh that was that was kind of the driving force.
Doug Drohan:I mean, I think a lot of people might just say, I learned some uh CPR and first aid, but you took it to uh let's go to med school.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Yeah, no, and I never looked back.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, that's great. That's great. So going on into practice on your own, I mean, you studied medicine, right? You didn't study uh accounting, marketing, HR. Um, what has it been like for you know your first year, almost first year of being in business for yourself?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:It is interesting, it is challenging. Um, but one thing I always say in order to be a good doctor, you need to want to be a lifelong learner. Um even in medicine, if you want to be a good doctor, you have to stay on top of things, you have to keep learning. Science changes, everything changes. So now I am just constantly learning medicine and a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Um thank goodness I was always good at math. So the, you know, I can do the accounting, advertising and marketing has been a little, you know, more out of my comfort zone.
Speaker 2:Right.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Um, and I've just been, you know, doing my best, but it's it's definitely a challenge. But uh challenges have never scared me in the past, so we just gotta push it around.
Doug Drohan:I just had my I had a podcast earlier today, and it's a uh a wife and husband that run a carpentry like fine furniture store. They've been in business for 10 years. And we were talking about how like the word um problems is kind of defines being a business owner, like you're always tackling and solving problems. And if you don't like doing that, uh then maybe it's yeah, not for you. No, not for you. I I think one of the things that I enjoy is always trying to figure something out, but having the autonomy to fail um on my own if I didn't do it right, but you know, not worrying about there's a boss uh telling me how to do it, like I can go with my heart and and do my own research. And to your point, you know, in sales, there's the ABC, always be closing. I always I use the acronym ABL equals ABG, which is always B Learning equals always be growing.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, and I think you know, uh from a uh just a personal aspect, it it just I think it it really helps you grow as a person, as a father, as a mother. Um, you know, you have a family. I think it's a great uh example to set for your kids to show that you went off and did this and that anything is possible. Um but it's not easy, you know.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:No, it's not easy. And I I love your acronym. I think it's it's spot on. I think the one part that's a little bit harder for doctors is that I never wanted or had to sell myself. Um that kind of feels sometimes a little bit weird, but then it's also remembering my value and what I can help patients with. So I always hope that that's what comes across, is that I'm selling myself because I want to help people.
Doug Drohan:So I had a doctor on my show uh a couple months ago, and he actually does male male hormone uh therapy. And uh his wife does a lot of female hormone therapy, they share an office in Pyramis. And he said that his sons he would advise them not to go to medical school because of how everything's changed today, whether it's private equity buying uh hospitals and buying doctors out of their practices, or it's just how the insurance industry dictates how you can treat your patient. Do you feel that way, or would you, you know, not go so far as to tell your kids, you know, go into you know computer science, don't do uh, you know, medicine.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Doug, that is a hard one that I get asked on a regular basis. I think always hopes that one of my kids will go into medicine because I really think it's invaluable to have um somebody with medical knowledge in the family. And I do still think it is one of the most noble professions. Yeah, and that there's not a day that you know that I remember and that I'm grateful for what I got to do. But it definitely is not what it used to be. So I always say, like, if you if you're going into medicine, it's because you really this is what you love, this is what drives you.
Doug Drohan:Right.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Otherwise, don't do it.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, yeah. If you're going into it for like every business, if it's if it's just money driven, then oh no, don't don't don't bother.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:But it is a long haul, and you really have to you have to love it. It has to be your passion.
Doug Drohan:I I was watching The Pit. I don't know if you watched that at all.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:I don't know.
Doug Drohan:All right. So, you know, it's an ER type of show, and it it's every episode's like a day in the ER. And I'm always impressed how doctors, they can somebody can come in and within seconds they have to diagnose, you know, what kind of uh medication to prescribe, what's going on. I mean, within seconds, the the amount of knowledge you have to have of the human body uh is just so impressive to me. And you know, you don't work in an ER now, but I'm sure you know you have to have that knowledge. It's just I don't know how the human brain, like I'm so impressed with doctors, how you can uh, you know, be able to diagnose somebody's, you know, almost like in a triage situation um to save their lives or to treat them. It's it's pretty impressive. I um I guess that's why you go to school for so many years, but that's exactly why. Yeah, yeah. So um I noticed that you speak a lot of languages, right? So you you say you're you're a first-generation uh American, right? So you're where are your parents from?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Um parents are from Poland and Russia.
Doug Drohan:Okay. And did they come over during the Cold War, or I guess no, they came over after the Holocaust.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Um wow. Basically, the uh Jews were kicked out of Poland in 1968, so they were stripped of their citizenship and kicked out of the country. Yeah, and uh they made their way through um Israel and then eventually um they came here.
Doug Drohan:The Bronx made it to the Bronx.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:They came to the Bronx where my father's family had been a few years, you know, prior.
Doug Drohan:Nice, nice. So, how did you get to uh speak Spanish?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Oh, so okay, so Spanish, I learned um, so my first job post-residency, I was working at Colombia, and I had a very large Spanish-speaking population. Now I happen to have been fluent in French. Um I took it all through uh high school, college, um, and I love languages, so I kept it going. And they're very similar, just different accents, yeah, vocabulary, everything's very similar. And I used to was using the translator phone for all of my patients. Okay. And number two, as I started to understand more and more, I was like, they're not even translating properly.
Speaker 2:Uh what is going on here?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Yeah, my ear just kind of was able to convert the French to the Spanish, and uh there it went.
Doug Drohan:Wow. But Spanish and French is much different than Hebrew and Polish.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:I mean, it's very different. They're all, yeah, other than romance languages, which are similar, the Polish and the Hebrew are completely different.
Doug Drohan:But what I've found is that um, you know, I saw a lot of friends in Europe, and I think you have this acumen when you learn a second language, you just you kind of have that that capacity to learn other languages. I don't know what pathways in our brains that we that we kind of forge when you learn a second language, but I think it makes it easier to learn as long as you, you know, it's like you have to be immersed in it, obviously. Absolutely. I find that a lot of people who speak another language sometimes speak a third or a fourth, you know, kind of like you, I guess.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:So everyone in my family actually speaks a minimum of four languages.
Doug Drohan:Wow.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:And uh when my kids were little, all of them speak at least one other language because it would make fun for me for them to be um multilingual.
Doug Drohan:My uh my son's taking Spanish, he's 12, so it's not you know, my wife speaks some decent French. I learned Spanish in high school and some German, but uh no way am I fluent. But I think it's really important to, you know, especially as as you're saying with your kids to learn a second language.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:It's it's expensive, and it's and it's fun. It's fun to be able to connect with people and you can connect better when you can speak to them in their you know native language.
Doug Drohan:Right. And as a doctor, somebody comes in and they're complaining of something, I think they have a lot more um comfort level with you.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Oh, absolutely. I remember in medical school once on one of my rotations getting called into the ER to help with a Polish-speaking patient, and the gentleman, like you could see him suddenly like be able to like just breathe calmer that someone could understand him, and it felt like a gift.
Doug Drohan:But also when you learn that language, you also learn the culture, and I think that's the key to learning another language is that you kind of learn the culture as well, and you have an appreciation for the culture.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Doug Drohan:So I just want to go back to your business. So you aside from you know the personalized care, you do uh you have an aesthetics treatment, right? So you have three types of treatments. Could you explain what they are?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Yes, so I do um m-FACE, which is a I call it a facial toning procedure. Um it's like the non-invasive facelift. It helps lift and tone, it stimulates collagen and elastin, and then it's um strengthens the facial muscles that start to droop as people get older. Um, I have a device that does radio frequency micro-needling, which also helps to stimulate collagen and elastin, helps with fine lines, wrinkles, um, acne scars, tightens tissue in all different areas on your abdomen, on your arms, on your face, on your neck, because as we age, um, we start to lose collagen and elastin and the tissues kind of get saggy and lines and wrinkles start to develop. And then I have a device for vaginal rejuvenation because women, especially going through menopause, same thing. Loss of collagen elastin causes various issues from uh urinary incontinence to dryness to um discomfort, and it does the same thing in the vagina that it does on the face.
Doug Drohan:Right, right. Wow, that's that's interesting. So, how would people find you? Like, what's the best place? I mean, uh, your address is in Cloister. Do you want to give your address of where you're at?
Dr. Galit Steinberg:To 77 Cloister Dock Road in Cloister, which I love the location. Cloister is amazing, and there's so many fun things to do in the area. Yeah, um, people can find me on my website, um www.younique with a y-o-u-health.com. I have an Instagram under G Steinberg M D. Um, we have a Facebook page, and a lot of it I have to say has been word of mouth, which has been great. That always, you know, is the nicest.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, that's great. And your office, so people know if they're familiar with closer, that building, uh you you go and you go upstairs, right? Your suite three.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Yes, we are on the second floor.
Doug Drohan:You're near uh and stairs. Right. You're kind of across from Heidenberg Plaza over there where um Wallie's bagels.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Right, but and also just walking distance from the from the police department, if people know.
Doug Drohan:Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Well, Dr. Steinberg, this was great. It's a very informative. Uh, I really appreciate you sharing everything with us. Um, you know, this is uh, you know, we're gonna we're gonna put everything in in the uh bottom of the uh the summary of how to contact you, but I really appreciate you sharing your story with us.
Dr. Galit Steinberg:Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, and uh feel free to pop by if we need help with that cholesterol.
Doug Drohan:I appreciate it. Okay.
Intro/Close:So hang on one second. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen.com. That's gmpbergen.com or call 201 298 8325.