Where This Started
Dr. Peñate graduated from medical school knowing how to diagnose and treat metabolic disease. What he was not taught — what no one in his program was taught — was how to identify the decade-long window between optimal health and diagnosis, or what to do in it.
In 2012 he founded Peñate Medical Centers, a primary care group serving South Florida. Over the years he built a practice doing what primary care is supposed to do — comprehensive, attentive, longitudinal care. He was good at it. And year after year he watched patients arrive with a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, or a cardiac event, and reflected on how the trajectory was visible in retrospect. The labs were available. The markers existed. They just were not part of the standard of care.
The turning point came from the research — specifically from the work of Joseph Kraft, Benjamin Bikman, and exercise physiologists studying lactate thresholds and mitochondrial adaptation. The science was not in question. What was missing was a practice designed to apply it systematically.
That is what Valens MD is. Not a reaction against conventional medicine — Dr. Peñate refers patients to primary care and specialists constantly, and considers that relationship essential. It is a specific practice designed to do one thing conventional medicine does not: identify and intervene on metabolic dysfunction at the stage where intervention actually works.
A Brief History
Medical Training
Medical degree and residency training in internal medicine. Foundational education in metabolic disease diagnosis and management.
2012
Founded Peñate Medical Centers, a primary care group in South Florida. Built a practice grounded in comprehensive, longitudinal patient relationships.
2019–2021
Deep engagement with the insulin resistance research literature — Kraft, Bikman, Crofts — and the emerging body of work on exercise physiology and metabolic adaptation. Recognition that the tools existed; the delivery model did not.
2023–2024
Designed the Valens MD evaluation framework: the five-biomarker panel, the four-tier classification system, the lactate threshold protocol, and the personalized Plan of Care structure.
2025
Built the clinical infrastructure: InBody 770 acquisition, lactate analyzer calibration, physician workflow design, and patient intake systems.
2026
Valens MD opens in Miami. Cash-pay, appointment-only, precision metabolic evaluation and optimization practice.
How We Work
Six principles that shape every evaluation and every protocol at Valens MD.
Measure first, prescribe second
Nothing at Valens MD is prescribed before it is measured. Protocol decisions follow data — not population averages, not clinical intuition applied without evidence, not assumptions based on age or weight.
Optimal, not normal
Reference ranges are built from population distributions. Optimal targets are built from outcomes data. A fasting insulin of 14 is within many labs' normal range. It is not optimal. We work from the right standard.
Mechanism over symptom
Metabolic dysfunction expresses through symptoms — fatigue, cognition, sleep, body composition. Treating the symptom manages the surface. Addressing the mechanism — insulin resistance, mitochondrial dysfunction, gut axis dysregulation — changes the trajectory.
Time horizon matters
The interventions with the largest long-term metabolic impact — Zone 2 training, dietary pattern, sleep architecture — take weeks to months to register in biomarkers. We tell patients that honestly and build protocols around real timelines.
Integrate, don't compete
Valens MD is not a replacement for primary care. We communicate findings to existing care teams, refer when appropriate, and view integration as the right model — not a limitation.
The data belongs to you
Every patient leaves with their complete results, their tier classification rationale, and their Plan of Care in writing. You should always know what your markers are and what they mean.
The Physician
See what precision metabolic medicine actually looks like.
Book a consultation — your results, same visit.
