White Coat Black Sheep

Intro Dr. Civelli sits down with Marcus John Garcia III, a hospice liaison based in Kern County, for a raw and unfiltered conversation. Marcus shares his story publicly for the first time — being molested as a child, years of active addiction including a meth habit during COVID, and the long process of rebuilding through faith, fatherhood, and fitness. The conversation shifts into clinical territo...

Intro Dr. Civelli sits down with private chef Cindy, founder of The Nourishing Cocina, for a conversation that goes way beyond the kitchen. Cindy spent a decade cooking professionally, including a stint as the private chef for pro basketball players living in China, before turning her own struggle with hormonal acne into a line of gut-healing wellness mocktails, sauces, and detox drinks. She and D...

SHOW NOTES Dr. Sabine Hazan is a gastroenterologist and microbiome researcher, founder of ProgenaBiome and the Microbiome Research Foundation, with practices in both Florida and California. Her background includes three decades of clinical trial work, including trials that brought vaccines and C. difficile treatments to market, before shifting her focus to microbiome research. In this conversation...

SHOW NOTES Andrea Gebhardt is a leadership and business coach, mother, and host of her own leadership podcast, reachable across social platforms as "Andrea Gebhardt" and at brewingsuccess.com. She joins Dr. Civelli for a conversation that moves from leadership and boundaries into hormone health, biological age, and a live read of her own blood work. In this conversation, they cover: The difference...

SHOW NOTES Rhonda Vaughn works in a large orthopedic surgery practice and, outside of that role, has become an advocate for Kangen Water, a Japanese water ionization technology that's been in use for roughly 50 years. She was first introduced to it through a personal conversation and has since built it into her daily life, for herself, her Yorkshire Terrier, and her plants. In this conversation, s...

SHOW NOTES "Dr. J," who goes by the Car Wash Doc online, is an internal medicine physician and former Kaiser hospitalist who spent eight years working in San Diego after training at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in the Inland Empire. At the peak of running both his medical career and a growing car wash business, he was working roughly 100-hour weeks, night shifts at the hospital combined with...

SHOW NOTES Dr. Sulagshan "Shaun" Mahendrarajah is a board-certified neurologist practicing in Bakersfield, California, currently opening his own neurology clinic at Doctor's Park (Ming Avenue and New Stine Road). Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Montreal after his family fled the civil war, he trained in the Netherlands Antilles, completed clinicals in Chicago, and did his residency at the Universi...

Intro In this episode of White Coat Black Sheep, Dr. Civelli sits down with Mary Rose Gutierrez, a healthcare business development professional, aspiring actress, and luxury wellness travel expert who has spent her career selling five star escapes to the Maldives while quietly working through a reset of her own. They cover everything from her surprise role in a new Filipino-American series to the...

Intro In this special episode of White Coat Black Sheep, Dr. Civelli isn't hosting, she's the guest speaker. She joined Empire Medical Training's live peptide webinar alongside Dr. Chris Crowley, Empire's Chief Medical Officer, with founder Dr. Steven Cosentino opening the session. Together they break down what peptides actually are, which ones are FDA approved versus banned versus somewhere in be...

Intro In this episode of White Coat Black Sheep, Dr. Civelli sits down with Jen, a mom, grandmother, and someone who calls herself a mom CEO, to talk about her long journey through Hashimoto's disease, hypothyroidism, and a healthcare system that kept telling her she was fine when she didn't feel fine at all. Jen shares how she went from burnout and 185 pounds to bioidentical hormone therapy, pept...

Intro: Twelve-year-old quarterback Marz Lopez, aka "50 West Cowboy," sits down with Dr. Civelli to talk about life as a young athlete with NFL dreams — his training, his diet, his family, and his honest curiosity about how to grow taller and build muscle. The conversation turns into a real, protective breakdown of why performance-enhancing drugs are dangerous for a still-developing body, plus a de...

Intro: Dr. Susan Nichols spent over a decade training to become a cardiothoracic surgeon — from the University of Iowa College of Medicine through a UCSF residency and a Stanford fellowship — only to have a profound spiritual awakening mid-fellowship that redirected her entire life. Today she holds an Executive MBA from Emory's Goizueta Business School and works as a financial advisor with MassMut...

Dr. Rasham Sandhu is an interventional cardiologist in private practice in Bakersfield, California, and the founder and host of the Next Phase Human podcast. His practice focuses on delivering high-quality cardiovascular care with a growing interest in wellness, metabolic health, and the intersection of traditional and functional medicine. He is the founder of California Cardiovascular Institute....

David has spent nine years building a following of more than half a million subscribers for his police accountability work in the San Joaquin Valley. Off camera, he's spent almost as long trying to figure out what's actually wrong with his gut. GERD as a kid. An acid reflux diagnosis in his twenties. A diverticulitis flare up that led to antibiotics one doctor now says he never needed. A proton pu...

What if your gym was more than a place to lift weights? What if it actually knew your name, saw your struggle, and refused to let you disappear into the crowd? Dr. Civelli sits down to explore the intersection of fitness, functional medicine, entrepreneurship, and holistic wellness with Laurie Ovanessian, co-owner of Body Exchange Health Clubs, a Bakersfield-born, family-run operation now spanning...

Angelina Rodriguez has been in rooms most people only read about. As a hospice nurse, HMO case manager, healthcare liaison, and now consultant, she has spent over two decades watching the healthcare system do what it does best — and what it fails to do completely. This episode opens with something unexpected: a story about grief. After losing her nephew to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and watching him d...

Francisco Padilla's path to becoming a Doctor of Physical Therapy started about as far from a classroom as possible. He grew up in a rural part of Mexico where he didn't know anyone in a medical or professional career, dropped out of high school, and ended up serving five years in prison, where he earned his GED. Less than a year after his release, while working in the oil fields, he was in a car...

SHOW NOTES About This Episode Brandon Benjamin Benavidez — known as B3 — is a Bakersfield native, hip-hop artist, and labor foreman in the film industry. He's worked on major productions including Twisters , Elevation , and Sponsor , managing large crews on location across the country. He's also a husband, a father to a four-year-old daughter with autism and a history of febrile seizures, and a mu...

SHOW NOTES Dr. Valerie Civelli welcomes Dr. Anna Marie — known as the Mindset Doctor — for a conversation that moves from entrepreneurship and ego vs. soul alignment all the way to tongue analysis, quantum fields, and the emotional roots of thyroid disease. It is one of those episodes where the clinical and the spiritual keep meeting in the middle. Topics covered: Ego vs. soul-led decision making...

SHOW NOTES Intro Vinni Morais grew up in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Brazil, using jujitsu as a survival tool before it became a career. He came to the US on a soccer scholarship, earned degrees in sport management and international business, won a BJJ world title in 2021, placed ninth at Mr. Olympia in 2024, and won both his division and the overall at the Arnold Classic, one month...

Intro Miguel Morales is a California-licensed private investigator, content creator, new father, and self-proclaimed aspiring Norteño accordion performer. He was born in Florida, found love in Bakersfield on St. Patrick's Day at McGarry's, became a father at 27 to a son named Makai who was almost running as of the recording date, and bought a $1,200 accordion as a birthday present to himself befor...

Intro   Terri Agcaoili is a healthcare marketing strategist born and raised in Kern County, working across cardiology, neurology, and OBGYN to build the practices and brands of some of the valley's most mission-driven physicians. She also just launched Fitology, a full-service wellness center in Pensacola, Florida, got engaged on a beach at sunset with a funky band playing, and somehow still had t...

Intro   Ten weeks into the podcast, Dr. Civelli and Justin take stock — what the show is doing, why it matters, and where it's headed. Then they get into it: a full listener mailbag with no softballs. Topics Covered Snoring and sleep as the foundation of every health problem Testosterone: why total T vs. free T matters, and what 310 actually means GLP-1s and Ozempic: the real concern isn't addicti...

About the Guest   Jinal Patel is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner at Adventist Health's Chester location, where she practices in an internal medicine clinic with a growing focus on functional and integrative medicine. Originally from India and raised in Canada, Jinal earned her Bachelor of Science in Health Studies before relocating to Florida, where she completed her BSN and Master of...

A bout This Episode Dr. Hugh Beatty has spent over four decades in medicine, including 25 years in anesthesiology and pain management before pivoting to functional medicine in 2013. Today he runs a thriving private practice in Bakersfield, CA, treating complex chronic conditions that traditional medicine often can't solve. In this conversation, Dr. Beatty and Dr. Civelli explore the philosophy, sc...