Kelsey Taylor brings wellness to Spa Sydell Buckhead.
Spa Sydell, an Atlanta institution for more than 40 years, is synonymous with massages and facials, but it recently expanded the Buckhead location’s wellness offerings. Kelsey Taylor arrived last year and brought with her a new skill set to complement the spa’s menu.
Originally from Maine, Taylor graduated in 2023 from Emory University’s nurse practitioner program. She has a goal of elevating wellness and beauty to go beyond just injectables. “We want to treat people from the inside out,” she says.
For her, that includes educating and helping underserved populations such as women, veterans and the LGBTQ+ community get the recognition, funding and research they deserve to get better care. That includes advocating for gender affirming facial feminization and masculinization through the use of fillers instead of plastic surgery. Here, she introduces her experience and thoughts on the wellness industry.
Tell us about your background before becoming a nurse practitioner.
I joined the military in 2008. I always wanted to get into medicine, but there was a four-year wait for [military] medics and no guaranteed slot. I didn’t want to wait that long. So I took an exam called the DLAB (the Defense Language Aptitude Battery) that gauges foreign language ability, and they offered me a job as a cryptologic technician interpretive, as a Russian interpreter. They sent me to California for a year to become fluent in Russian. Then I worked at the National Security Agency as an intelligence analyst. I was also a volunteer EMT in the military.
I needed a break after that, so I went to Thailand in 2013. I fell in love with it and with scuba diving. I got my diving certification and became an instructor. A few years later in 2020, I got accepted into Emory’s MN-MSN nurse practitioner program.
Tell us about your work at Spa Sydell.
I wanted to include regenerative medicine and functional wellness in my practice because I think they are really important and go hand in hand with aesthetics. We do full blood panels, individualized care plans and weight loss consultations with prescriptions. I’m also offering other peptides that many people, including some providers, don’t know about. We have peptides that help with muscle building and some that are good for skin and hair. We even offer peptides that are good for depression, anxiety and erectile dysfunction. According to research, some of these peptides can reverse neurodegeneration and other symptoms we see in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.
What about injectables?
We offer four different neurotoxins: Botox, Jeuveau, Dysport and Xeomin. For dermal fillers, we usually use Juvederm and Restylane. However, I like to focus on combination treatments with biostimulators like Sculptra and Radiesse. We also have Pure Bio Filler, which is similar to platelet-rich plasma (PRP) in that it uses your own blood to stimulate collagen production. We warm the plasma into a gel-like consistency and then mix it with the fibrin matrix that is full of growth factors. It’s used as an all-natural filler and biostimulator.
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PHOTO: Erik Meadows
