Meet Sam
Why I started Coasta Vita.
I'm Sam, the dual board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner behind Coasta Vita HRT & Longevity. You may also know me as Sam the NP®.
- Provider
- Samanthia McGlaughn-Tomcho
- MSN, APRN, FNP-C, FNP-BC
- Certification
- Dual board-certified
- Family Nurse Practitioner
- Hormone & metabolic health
- 1,600+ patients cared for
The Foundation
My career in medicine began long before hormones, metabolic health, and longevity became the focus of my practice.
I started in retail pharmacy, where I worked for more than six years while earning my undergraduate nursing degree. After graduation, I joined Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, working in cardiovascular critical care and caring for some of the sickest, most medically complex patients. I had the opportunity to work alongside pioneers in cardiac critical care medicine, in an environment where advanced technology, clinical expertise, and split-second decisions could mean the difference between life and death.
We were directly across from the CDC, and I was there during a period of renewed Ebola concerns. I had friends and colleagues involved with the Ebola response team. Being surrounded by that level of medicine early in my career shaped the way I understood disease, physiology, and the responsibility that comes with caring for another human being.
From there, my career took me to Florida, where I transitioned into plastic surgery and aesthetics. It was a completely different side of medicine, one that expanded my understanding of how physical health, appearance, confidence, and quality of life can intersect.
The Turning Point
Then came COVID.
I returned to critical care in Northeast Georgia as the pandemic unfolded, working in one of the region's busiest critical care environments. Our COVID response expanded across multiple ICUs, including makeshift critical care spaces, as hospitals struggled to accommodate the growing number of critically ill patients.
And I was pregnant.
I found out I was expecting my son in April 2020. Ten days later, I tested positive for COVID. Within another week, I was hospitalized, isolated in a negative-pressure room, dealing with a newly discovered atrophic kidney and a serious kidney infection while still in my first trimester.
I was no longer just the nurse standing at the bedside. I was the patient in the bed.
Eventually, I returned to caring for critically ill patients while navigating a high-risk pregnancy of my own.
I worked through a period when the uncertainty was relentless, the conditions were extraordinary, and healthcare professionals were being asked to adapt to circumstances none of us had ever experienced.
We were reusing equipment that was never intended to be reused. Stretching masks and protective gear far beyond what any of us had been trained to consider acceptable. Holding up iPads so families could say goodbye to loved ones who were sedated, on ventilators, and unable to speak for themselves.
Those are moments you don't forget.
Then, in November, my own body reached its limit.
I collapsed at work and was taken to labor and delivery, where my blood pressure reached 224/112. I developed severe preeclampsia and spent nearly three weeks in the hospital before my son was born.
I had spent years caring for people whose lives depended on critical care medicine. Now, I was experiencing firsthand what it meant to need that level of care myself.
And that changes your perspective.
I witnessed extraordinary medicine during those years. I worked alongside clinicians who gave everything they had to patients in crisis. I will always respect the people and the medicine that carried us through those moments.
But those experiences also made me think more critically about the healthcare system as a whole.
Why are we so good at intervening when someone is critically ill, yet so often wait until their health has significantly deteriorated before asking what brought them there?
The Philosophy
I knew how important it was to save someone's life.
I became increasingly interested in what we could do to protect people's health, function, and quality of life long before they ever reached that point.
As my career evolved through oncology, surgical specialties, primary care, and advanced practice, I began seeing a different side of the healthcare system.
Patients who weren't necessarily critically ill, but weren't feeling well either. People struggling with hormonal changes, metabolic dysfunction, persistent fatigue, changes in body composition, or the frustrating feeling that something in their body had changed, even when they couldn't quite explain what.
The people who kept being told their labs were normal, even though they knew something wasn't right.
And while laboratory testing is an important part of medicine, a single result is only a snapshot of one moment. Values fluctuate. Trends, symptoms, medical history, and clinical context matter.
I wanted to practice medicine with enough time and depth to consider all of it.
That pursuit led me into hormone optimization, metabolic health, preventive care, and longevity medicine. Not as a replacement for conventional medicine, but as an opportunity to approach health more comprehensively.
Since transitioning into hormone and metabolic health, I've had the privilege of caring for more than 1,600 patients seeking a more individualized approach to their health.
That experience has reinforced something I believe strongly: no two patients arrive with the exact same history, concerns, physiology, or goals. And they shouldn't leave with identical treatment plans.
Understanding the science is essential. But applying it in clinical practice, recognizing the nuances, and knowing when to adjust course is where experience matters.
That's why I created Coasta Vita.
I believe in identifying what is dysfunctional, strengthening what is foundational, and optimizing what is clinically appropriate.
That means asking better questions, looking beyond isolated symptoms, and developing care strategies based on actual clinical findings rather than simply offering whatever treatment someone came in requesting.
Sometimes medication is appropriate. Sometimes hormones are part of the conversation. Sometimes the most important intervention involves nutrition, sleep, movement, or another factor that hasn't received enough attention.
And sometimes the right answer is explaining why a treatment isn't necessary.
My goal isn't to sell you a prescription or promise you a magical transformation. Although I have been known to work a little magic.
It's to help you understand what's happening in your body, what deserves attention, and what we can reasonably do about it.
Because I don't believe healthcare should begin and end with whether you're sick enough to qualify for a diagnosis.
And I certainly don't believe that simply feeling normal should be the ultimate goal.
Feeling normal was never the goal.Optimal is what we're working toward.
Welcome to Coasta Vita.
— Sam the NP®
Real answers start with a comprehensive evaluation.
We take time to understand your symptoms, health history, goals, and relevant clinical findings, considering the bigger picture rather than a single lab value.
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