The Immuno-Metabolic Program by Dr. Jeffrey Bland

Melinda Howe CRNA, FNP-C

Melinda Howe, MNA, CRNA, FNP-C, APRN Founder & Owner | Ascend Wellness MBS Melinda Howe is a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, Family Nurse Practitioner, and founder of Ascend Wellness MBS in Minot, North Dakota. Her career has been shaped by a belief that healthcare should be personal, collaborative, evidence-informed, and willing to look beyond the obvious when patients are struggling to find answers. Melinda began her nursing career in critical care, working as an ICU and critical-care flight nurse before pursuing advanced practice education in anesthesia. She completed her nurse anesthesia training through Mayo Clinic and later returned to school to earn her post-master’s Family Nurse Practitioner certification through the University of Cincinnati and Functional Medicine Training via The Institute for Functional Medicine, the gold standard approach to Funcitonal Medicine. Her background in anesthesia, critical care, and pain management gives Melinda a strong foundation in complex physiology, pharmacology, and acute and chronic illness. As her practice evolved, however, she became increasingly interested in understanding the underlying factors that influence how people feel and function—not simply treating individual symptoms. That interest led her toward integrative and functional medicine. Her additional training includes ketamine therapy, IV nutritional therapies, medical peer review, hormone and metabolic health, and emerging approaches to mental health, pain, and wellness. At Ascend Wellness MBS, Melinda's clinical interests include integrative care, hormone and thyroid health, metabolic health and body composition, complex and chronic conditions, pain management, autonomic dysfunction, mental health, ketamine therapy, TMS, peptide therapy, and PANS/PANDAS. Her Approach to Care: Melinda believes that good medicine begins with listening. Many of the patients who find their way to Ascend have spent months or years feeling unwell, moving between appointments, or being told that their testing is "normal" despite knowing that something isn't right. Melinda's approach is to slow the process down, listen to the entire story, look for patterns, and ask the next question. She combines conventional medicine with integrative and functional approaches when appropriate, using laboratory evaluation, medical history, lifestyle, nutrition, medications, hormones, metabolic health, mental health, and other factors to develop an individualized plan. Her philosophy isn't about choosing between conventional and alternative medicine. It is about using the best tools available, understanding the evidence behind them, and determining what makes sense for the individual patient sitting in front of her. She also believes patients should be active participants in their healthcare. Education and shared decision-making are central to her practice. Patients deserve to understand what is happening in their bodies, why a treatment is being recommended, what alternatives exist, and what the next step will be. Most importantly, Melinda wants patients to feel heard. Healthcare can be complicated, but the relationship between a patient and provider shouldn't have to be. Her goal is to create an environment where people can ask questions, explore options, and work alongside their healthcare team without judgment. That philosophy ultimately became the foundation for Ascend Wellness MBS: a place where traditional medicine and innovative approaches can exist together, where providers have the freedom to think beyond a protocol, and where the question isn't simply "What diagnosis does this patient have?" It's also: "Why aren't they feeling well—and what can we do to help them feel and function better?"