Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Fort Collins. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Nick George helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Fort Collins, Colorado.
Is your business serving the residents of Fort Collins? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpFortCollins.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
E28: The Patient Art of Getting Better
Have you ever wondered how ancient healing practices might complement modern beauty treatments? Dr. Meghan Peckinpaugh's journey from serious illness to becoming a holistic health practitioner offers powerful insights into the true nature of healing.
Dr. Meghan founded Balanced Thistle in Fort Collins back in 2019, pioneering holistic health and beauty services in Northern Colorado. Her clinic was the first in the region to offer gua sha facials, harnessing traditional Chinese medicine techniques that would later become beauty world sensations. But what makes her approach truly special is the deep understanding that beauty and wellness are inseparable - "we age from the inside out," as she aptly puts it.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dr. Meghan explains how acupuncture works by shifting our bodies from the constant fight-or-flight mode of modern life into a restorative parasympathetic state where healing can actually happen. This perspective challenges our quick-fix culture with her candid admission that true healing requires patience: "It took me three years to feel better and five to feel good." While specializing in women's health concerns like fertility and menopause, Balanced Thistle has also developed unique expertise in jaw pain treatment that not only relieves discomfort but creates natural facial sculpting effects - a perfect example of their health-meets-beauty philosophy.
Whether you're curious about holistic alternatives to conventional medicine or looking to enhance your wellness journey, discover how Balanced Thistle's supportive, non-pushy approach might be exactly what you need. Check out their website at https://www.balancedthistle.com/ or follow their educational content on Instagram to learn techniques you can use at home. What health or beauty concerns might benefit from this integrated approach to wellness?
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Nick George.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of a reputable and established holistic health and beauty company? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing your good, good neighbor, dr Megan Peckinpah, with Balanced Thistle. Dr Megan, how's it going?
Speaker 3:Good, how are you?
Speaker 2:Good. We're excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us about it.
Speaker 3:We opened Balanced Thistle in an independent clinic space in Fort Collins in 2019. We started doing just acupuncture and we brought in. We were the first people in Northern Colorado offering a gua sha facial, which is kind of like a classic facial and that you're cleansed and steamed. But that gua sha stone that you know hit the beauty world by storm a few years ago is traditional Chinese medicine. So we were the first people in Northern Colorado offering that facial, that service, and then from there we've added more facials that are holistically based, quite a bit more functional medicine services and we just keep plugging along with holistic health and beauty.
Speaker 2:How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:along with holistic health and beauty. How did you get into this business? I started out my undergrad, you know, I grew up in Colorado. I went to CSU and thought I was going to be a doctor. It went differently than I anticipated Initially. I got really, really sick in in college and ended up seeing an acupuncturist who completely changed my life. So ended up in grad school for acupuncture and then did another program in functional medicine and then just opened a business and went with it.
Speaker 2:What are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 3:I mean, acupuncture is a little bit strange. In general, I feel like people kind of wonder how it works and that in reality we don't even have a full explanation of how it works Scientifically. Anyway, what I see is, you know, we're a go go go society. We're living in this fight or flight sympathetic nervous system and the body has really incredible innate abilities to heal, but we're going all the time and it never gets the opportunity to do so. So when people receive acupuncture, their body actually takes a little bit of time in the parasympathetic nervous system which is our rest and digest, and when it's able to rest it can kind of like check in with itself. What's going on, what needs my attention? You know, what can we work on to just help us feel better? That's a huge part of why I think acupuncture is so beneficial for so, so many different things.
Speaker 2:Who are your target customers right now and how do you attract them?
Speaker 3:and how do you attract them? I mean, most of our people come to us via word of mouth. We work primarily in women's health, so we see a lot of fertility, menopause, pcos, endometriosis and then a lot of the classic stuff migraines. We all have a lot of advanced training in jaw pain, which is kind of a unique little offshoot from what we do, because jaw pain and I should say the way we treat jaw pain can have a lot of sculpting and lifting effect on the face. So we got into jaw work via all the aesthetic work we do and then it just turned into people being like, wow, my jaw feels so much better and I've been clenching for 20 years. So we work with primarily women, but we see a lot of husbands. That's usually how men find us, is their wife is already here. And we work in all age groups. I did my internship at Children's Hospital of Orange County so I've got a handful of pediatric patients even and you know we're a general family practice but I would say we really shine in women's health concerns.
Speaker 2:Outside of work. What do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:I have a one and a three year old, so I'm pretty busy. They are so much fun. We you know it's summertime, we're doing a lot of gardening right now and our family you know my husband and I both love to cook, so we're always cooking with our kids. It's just like an activity that fills time and we spend a lot of time, you know, out in Livermore we have a family cabin out there that we spend time there Just kind of, I think, probably in that time of life where we're just hanging out with little kids, yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger? What comes to mind?
Speaker 3:I mean the entire process of getting into acupuncture, how I went from being pre-med at CSU, graduating doing something totally different and then going back to grad school to do acupuncture school, to do acupuncture. I was really unwell and I always tell people, you know, we call patients a patient for a reason. It takes time to truly heal, which is really really hard when we're kind of used to like add to cart it's on our doorstep in a day or two. But patients need to embrace patients and I always tell people when I got so sick it took me three years to feel better and five to feel good. So that determination, I think, has really helped me explain what the process is in the patients I work with. What kind of work is required to truly heal yourself, depending on the concern, it's not typically a quick thing. We're not a pill. You move on, you treat the symptoms. But if you want to dig deep and correct some stuff going on in your physical health, it works.
Speaker 2:Please tell our listeners one thing that they should remember about balanced thistle thing that they should remember about.
Speaker 3:Balance Thistle. You know we're kind of like a one-stop shop. We run a lot of functional medicine labs and we offer both the health and beauty because in our perspective, you know, we age from the inside out, so addressing your health is an important component of any of your. You know aesthetic goals, but essentially just you know we're here to support people's goals. It's not we're here to guide, but we're not here to do it for people. We're here to help without being pushy. We're here to present options. You know, like you want to be on the birth control or you don't. Why? What are your options, what are the side effects, what are the pros, what are the cons? We try and be really, really honest, but also from the perspective of truly supporting the goals of the person we're sitting and having the conversation with.
Speaker 2:Megan, how can our listeners learn more about Balance Thistle?
Speaker 3:I mean, there's always our website, just balancethistlecom. We're pretty active on social media. Our Instagram handle is balance thistle. We're a little bit goofy and we don't love social media, but we do get it done and we try to educate from that platform, give people information that they can use at home if they're not in our office. So I'd say those are probably the two best bets is just the internet, social media.
Speaker 2:Well, Megan, I really appreciate you being on our show. We wish you and your business the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpfortcollinscom. That's gnpfortcollinscom, or call 970-438-0825.