Synergy Health and Wellness of Bend is aptly named for numerous reasons. The most obvious is the services it offers: a comprehensive center for diabetes, nutrition counseling and massage therapy. There’s quite a bit of synergy right there.

But the location of its offices suits it well, too, nestled between a busy NE Third Street and NE Franklin Avenue, where it’s a short walk to a Safeway grocery store or Juniper Park or small restaurants.

“Rather than sitting in an office with a client one on one,” says RanDee Anshutz, owner of the clinic, “we can go for a walk and talk, or shop at Safeway for healthy foods and come back here to prepare a meal, or sit in a restaurant over lunch and get to know each other better.”

Understanding that each patient is an individual with individual needs and issues, Anshutz says the staff emphasizes small and steady changes in a client’s lifestyle. It is sort of like having a personal life coach toward wellness.

“The goal is for the client to make small changes, not large shifts,” said Anshutz, “where a client is comfortable with change and not expecting some immediate outcome.”

Synergy Health and Wellness is an ADCES-accredited diabetes program with a team of registered dietitian nutritionists and certified diabetes care and education specialists. It offers both individual and group sessions.

The clinic has been located in this tight, little business park for 10 years, and even in its first few months, it started to outgrow its 1,100-square-foot office facilities. Today, it has access to two other offices at the site and a large meeting room for cooking lessons.

Synergy is the largest private clinic in Central Oregon to serve those with diabetes. This specialty is one of several that Synergy is known for. The clinic also treats gastrointestinal and kidney disorders, hypertension, eating disorders, body image and weight concerns.

Anshutz has worked in health care for 24 years, starting out as a massage therapist and later earning certifications in nutrition.

“Ten years ago in 2012, I needed to hire extra personnel as the business was growing rapidly. We rebranded and that’s when Synergy was born.”

In 2018, the clinic became an accredited diabetes program. That includes one-on-one visits with a diabetes educator.

“We talk about all things diabetes; food preparation, medication, understanding the condition, the complications,” Anshutz said. The staff are registered dietitians, which requires five to seven years of training.

Today Synergy Health & Wellness has on staff six nutritionists, six massage therapists and two front desk personnel. It has added a satellite site at High Lakes Health Care off Colorado with Friday office hours and in Redmond on Tuesdays.

In the last 10 years, dietitians have done a great job by networking with physicians, so that today physician referrals to a dietitian are quite common.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the need for nutritionists increased as people were stuck at home, and cooking on their own and needed some advice on eating well.

“I would say that our business doubled as a result of the pandemic,” Anshutz said. That is in part due to telehealth (which is covered by insurance) so people didn’t have to make special appointments or leave work for a consultation. They could call in over the internet, via Zoom or Skype.

“We wound up having patients from all over Oregon, thanks to telehealth,” she said.

Further, there was a marked spike in eating disorders associated with pandemic stress.

“We do one-on-one cooking lessons with the patient. It’s easy to hop over to Safeway and buy some groceries and learn to cook some things. Or we have larger classes with 10 people in a class (with some remote monitoring, too) and show people how to build a healthy plate, keep track of the amounts they eat and always check their blood sugars.

“From a diabetes standpoint: We are really focused on hands-on learning. During our four-week class series, clients are wearing a continuous glucose monitor. If we walk around the block we check to see what it does to our glucose levels; if we have a meal, what will that do? We emphasize learning by doing.

“And we are super-focused on behavioral change. We discuss something a client is doing and making small shifts that is unique to them; it’s an individual approach. We don’t focus on weight, weight loss. We just focus on the behaviors, what we eat, and why, and how we move, our stresses and our behaviors.”

In 2019, the business was awarded the Small Business of the Year for Innovation by the Bend Chamber of Commerce for employing monitors that check blood sugars while eating or exercising. The monitors are more efficient, giving readings constantly, replacing the old method of pricking one’s finger for a blood test.

One may not think that massage therapy would be a natural extension of patient care, but it is, especially those suffering from Type II diabetes where they are experiencing numbness in the leg and feet.

“For a long time, we didn’t see any crossover from the services here. But we see more start to happen, from nutrition to massage. And for diabetes, a massage therapist can massage damaged tissues, especially if there is neuropathy. A therapist can check out a patient’s feet for damage they may not notice is there.”

The offices are located at 361 NE Franklin Ave., Building C. Phone is 541-323-3488. Check out their website at synergyhealthbend.com