Courtney Contreras, MPAS, PA-C

My career started in the places where medicine moves fast. Emergency rooms. Operating rooms. Environments where decisions happen in seconds and there's no room for guesswork. I spent years in general and vascular surgery and emergency medicine. I learned how to read a situation quickly, connect symptoms that other providers might miss, and stay calm when things get complicated. That training is in everything I do at VitaLife Longevity Medicine. But working in those systems also showed me what was broken. Patients cycling through 10-minute visits. Providers who didn't have time to listen. Lab work that checked the boxes but missed the story. People getting told their numbers were "normal" when they knew something was off. I didn't want to keep watching that happen. And I didn't want to be the provider doing it. I grew up in the White Mountains. I left for a stretch — Marine Corps, emergency medicine, surgery — and came back to the community I'd always called home. Show Low, Pinetop-Lakeside, Snowflake, Springerville. People were driving hours for the kind of care that should exist in their own backyard. So I built it. I stopped billing insurance because I realized insurance companies were making my clinical decisions. I couldn't order the labs I knew my patients needed. I couldn't spend the time a real conversation takes. I was rushing through appointments and sending people out the door with answers that didn't actually fit their question. VitaLife Longevity Medicine started as an IV therapy practice. But I kept seeing the same thing: patients walking in for a drip and mentioning symptoms nobody had bothered to investigate. Fatigue that wouldn't quit. Weight gain that didn't make sense. Brain fog, mood changes, sleep problems. All connected, and nobody was connecting the dots. So I shifted the entire practice to a Direct Primary Care membership model. Longer visits. Thorough labs. Hormone therapy, medical weight loss, peptide therapy, functional wellness, and primary care, all under one roof. A practice where I answer to my patients, not an insurance company. I'm the provider you text when something feels off. I remember what we talked about last visit. I connect your hormones to your energy, your sleep to your weight, your stress to your labs, because those things are never separate. I have additional training in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, anti-aging protocols, and functional medicine. I'm not treating one symptom at a time. I'm looking at the full picture and asking why. My patient panel is small on purpose. I don't see 30 people a day. I see you. I'm a mom, an outdoor adventurist, and a hobby artist. If you can't reach me on a day off, I'm probably riding my horse or out with my camera somewhere in the White Mountains. I speak at healthcare conferences around the country and I'm building partnerships to bring longevity-focused medicine to more communities. I live the same active, outdoor lifestyle my patients do. That's not a marketing line. It's why I get it.