A FITNESS INDUSTRY TITAN TAKES A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO WELL-BEING WITH A NEW LINE OF INNOVATIVE HEALTH CENTERS

BY ERIK SCHONING PHOTOS BY AMANDA DOMENECH

Managing one’s health in 2024 can at times feel overwhelming. There’s an outpouring of information floating around the ether, suggesting tactics for improving everything from physical fitness and exercise to blood sugar, hormone levels, and mental/ emotional health. To guide people through these often muddy waters, Eric Casaburi launched Serotonin Centers in 2021 with a clear goal in mind: to tackle health and wellness from a holistic perspective.

Casaburi is a lifelong wellness industry veteran; he opened his first business at 23 and launched Retro Fitness, a booming gym franchise, in 2004. He started building the concept for Serotonin Centers in 2019, after his wife, Kim Casaburi, went through early menopause and learned how to navigate the ensuing hormonal complications. The Casaburis found that even in today’s information age, there was a lack of transparency and insight around what it means to manage declining hormones as people get older.

“There’s a decline in your hormones as you age, for both men and women,” Casaburi said. “The symptoms become significant, but sometimes you don’t realize they’re happening because they’re happening at such small percentages every year. So seeing that my wife wasn’t alone in this, we not only found a solution for ourselves, but we also asked, ‘Wow, how many people are suffering from this?’ That’s when I realized that we needed to scale this out, and that was the beginning of the Serotonin brand.”

In some ways, the timing was perfect: the Casaburis, self-described Gen-Xers, grew up in a generation that took fitness seriously. But after a certain age, exercise alone has its limits. From the gym side of his business, Casaburi knew firsthand how many long-time clients grew frustrated when their workout routines no longer yielded the same results. Serotonin Centers was launched to balance the scales, to help clients devote as much time and attention to the other aspects of well-being as they do to their gym routines.

T he Colts Neck location is a special one for Casaburi. While he and his family are Orlando residents, he lived in Colts Neck for many years and already owned the property where the center is now located. In fact, multiple other locations in Monmouth County are in the pipeline, with a second center likely to open within the year, and locations to follow in Shrewsbury, Marlboro, and Wall.

“We love Monmouth County, and Colts Neck is a great location,” Casaburi said. “It’s a beautiful facility with an incredible team. We know there’s a need in that market. Our client is educated, informed, and can afford the necessary services to take care of themselves.”

Serotonin Centers was built on the concept of meeting a client where their needs are. Services at each center range from hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and IV therapy to weight loss medication and aesthetic treatments like Botox, dermal fillers, and microneedling. But no matter what services a client comes in for, Casaburi’s philosophy is to work with them over time to become their best self. Just as gyms require frequent visits and careful training regimens to maximize gains, so too does health optimization and anti-aging.

T he Serotonin Centers medical weight loss program is a cornerstone of the brand. Leveraging his experience in the fitness industry, Casaburi has designed a program that pairs clients with health coaches trained in programming and macronutrients. Clients get access to the Serotonin Coach App, which allows them to access programmed workouts and track wellness data. For the medication component, titration of the medication is adjusted based on client results, and biweekly body scans are performed to test for body mass. There is even an in-house, medical-grade vitamin line, Serotonin Nutraceuticals, which are paired with vitamin shots to ensure the body is getting the support it needs.

“For a lot of people, after they start weight loss medication they do lose weight, but they also lose critical muscle,” Casaburi said. “We are aware of that, coming from the fitness industry. Our program for medical weight loss is incredible, because we go far beyond just throwing a prescription at you and saying, ‘Here, go take the Ozempic.’ We go infinitely further into the weeds. Fitness is only one leg of the table. There’s multiple legs underneath that table that hold up your great health.”

Since its launch in Florida in 2021, Serotonin Centers has grown rapidly. Today, the brand has locations up the East Coast, and Casaburi is planning to expand heavily in the Northeast in the coming years. He sees his program as the next iteration of complete, whole-body health and wellness. People are interested in incorporating cutting-edge science into their health and wellness routines, whether in service of aesthetics, weight loss, boosted energy, or simply looking and feeling good. Casaburi noted that he and his wife can’t go to a dinner party these days without people talking to them about Botox and HRT, topics that would have been taboo in polite dinner table conversation 20 years ago.

Ultimately, Casaburi’s Serotonin Centers follow a simple objective: to help people look and feel better as they age. It’s what first sparked Casaburi’s fitness journey, and it’s certainly been the driving force behind his career.

“Changing people’s physical appearance is what we do really well,” Casaburi said. “I got into the fitness industry because it’s a way to help people help themselves. This is just the next level of that.”

Serotonin Centers

County Road 537, Colts Neck

732.431.8000 / serotonincenters.com