If you miss Gayle Guyardo on Tampa’s WFLA-Ch. 8, you’ll love her encore chapter as head of network development for the new channel Health News Network (HNN). The effervescent journalist helped create “sHEALed,” a docuseries about women’s health and the environment. It debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
In her new role, Guyardo curates programming for the international streaming channel, collaborating with HNN producers TereZa Hakobyan-Lolli and Anthony Lolli of Lolli Brands Entertainment and Biohack Yourself Media. In future interviews, Guyardo plans to explore biological dentistry, studying links between oral health and overall well-being; hormone therapy; menopause; and foods grown in regenerated soil.
“I admire (my producers) because they are trying to change the health of the entire country,” Guyardo said. “HNN is going to give people the opportunity to say what they want to say, and they will own their platform.”
Gayle Guyardo interviews Damian Alpizar, co-director of the “sHEALed” docuseries.
Resiliency and reinvention are Guyardo’s superpowers. On air, she was the face of the morning news on Tampa’s Ch. 8 for 26 years and the popular host of “Bloom,” the channel’s daily health and wellness program, for another six years. Off set, she was a self-described mess.
“I was 25 pounds heavier, I was shaking, my hair was falling out and I was wearing a wig on air,” Guyardo said. She also suffered from calluses on her vocal cords. While filming “Bloom,” she interviewed a variety of medical practitioners who eventually helped her navigate her own health, diagnosing her with hypothyroidism and providing a road map to wellness.
“The guests on my show would be the pathway to my own health. They approached medicine very differently,” Guyardo said. One of those guests was Dr. Tami Oberbroeckling, founder of Tampa Bay Total Wellness in South Tampa, who eventually helped Guyardo lose weight and manage her medications and hormones, which, she said, improved her overall health and hair growth.
Based on her personal experiences, Guyardo, 59, has fully embraced holistic medicine and regularly works out. She also hosts live virtual education workshops and wellness resets. She’s hoping to bring that wellness approach to an international audience in her new role, and hints that she may have her own show in the future. Available on Amazon Prime Video, the “sHEALed” docuseries is a prototype for programming planned for HNN.
Best of all, her departure from “Bloom” opens a fun new chapter for Guyardo, who promised her husband, Mark Pichowski, more family adventures traveling with their four daughters, ages 18 to 28. Guyardo just celebrated a new milestone with her youngest daughter, who will attend Guyardo’s alma mater, Auburn University, this fall. Her encore career shines bright, as does her personal life, helping women of all ages live life better with trusted health news and reporting.