Midlife Perimenopause Symptoms | Why You Don't Feel Like Yourself

0:03 SPEAKER_02: This is What the F just Happened.

0:06 SPEAKER_03: The podcast that proves life is messy, midlife is so wild, and laughter is definitely non-negotiable.

0:13 SPEAKER_02: So grab a cocktail or a mocktail or your favorite emotionally supportive snack, and let's get into it.

0:33 SPEAKER_01: We're so thrilled to have Amy Milker back. She is owner of Medical Rejuvenation in Gladstone, Oregon. We had her on for an amazing episode. What was it, episode, I think, four? So if you haven't listened to that one, go back and listen. But we are having her on tonight to talk about all things hormones, which all of us women need to talk about and dissect. And we're so thrilled that you came back on. So I'm going to turn it over to you. Tell us first of all how you got into this. Like I obviously you've been in this space for a while, but how did you specifically start being interested in women's hormones?

1:10 SPEAKER_01: And then we have a ton of questions to go through.

1:14 SPEAKER_04: Yes. So so excited to be back. And it's like hormones rapid fire because I could do a marathon. We we could do a fundraiser for women and talk for 24 hours. We could have people paying us to keep talking. There's so much to talk about. But the reason why I got interested is because I went to parametopause. And I think that's having kind of an awakening in America is we're having providers who are going through parentopause and menopause. So I'm a church practitioner. I've been in medicine for almost 30 years, which is insane.

1:43 SPEAKER_04: Primarily trained emergency room ICU and then cardiology. And as I got into Botox just for fun, because I was wanting to say Botox. So I thought I would just do it for me and my friends and my colleagues. And then women were coming to me and begging me, please, will you please like also offer pellets what they asked for at the time? Now I don't love pellets anymore, but um that was all that was available, even just a few years ago. And so it was ironic because I had just gone to my doctor and said exactly what we kind of talked about before we started this show.

2:17 SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, I just felt like I just I was much energy, like all the things, like we all say the same things, right? And then I was like, maybe I should. And I started studying it, which led to more studying, which led to a few of my colleagues and I like starting prescribing for each other and just starting doing lab draws. And then I really got invested, started investing in classes and training, and then launched it about two years ago here at medical rejuvenation. And now we just because we do labs here too, we've just we've really got we've probably the first year we went really overboard.

2:52 SPEAKER_04: Anyone who wanted to get labs drawn at any time we did, we did labs for free. We did labs if you were coming in for Botox, we did labs. I mean, for because it was it's one thing to hear people talk about symptoms, but it's another thing to match what blood work was saying about those symptoms in a 40-year-old, 50-year-old, 60-year-old, seven-year-old, and male and female. So we were just, you know, we're just labs coming out of our ears. And through that, we've been able to really master what's what common symptoms are and and the treatments that go along with that.

3:25 SPEAKER_04: So I love it. I'm 52 now, and I am on testosterone and estrogen and progesterone, and I have agile estrogen cream, and I take vitamin D and I take vitamin B, and I take uh dried beef organ protein powder and dried beef organ supplements and like all the things. It's just like the whole body. So I'm here to share everything that I've done and what works and just make it available for everybody.

3:50 SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, that's amazing. So I want to start with our first question that we had was just give us a definition because I I think for me, I'm always speak for me, is I think maybe I'm finally getting to perimenopause at 56. I am not in it by any means at all. You're also what tell me, like, which is ridiculous, by the way. And I need to have where's the pill that stops all of this crap. Right. What what does it mean when someone says, okay, perimenopause, and then your menopause and then postmenopause, just tell me what those stages actually mean?

4:24 SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

4:25 SPEAKER_04: Well, I'm gonna make this really simple because it's it's so confusing for women. And when we put categories on women, we you know, I don't want to say weeks, I don't put myself in this category, but providers use that to gaslight women and make them all confused about what category they're in. And we're all trying to find a category, and it doesn't matter. I mean, if you want to be clinical, menopause is when you've gone 12 months without a period. Who the F cares? Like I don't I don't care if I have a period or not.

4:59 SPEAKER_04: I care that I'm not sleeping and then I'm 150 million degrees at four in the morning, and that I have painful urine, you know, stacks of, you know, or name your symptoms. You know, I kill my husband, I I I can't go off my best friend anymore, or I don't, you know, I mean that's what we care about. So I just want to tell everyone, let's all just like take a deep breath and be like, we don't care what category we're in. Yes, all we care about is how we feel, and our symptoms matter. And we live in America, we can get our blood drawn, and our blood will tell us what hormones we need.

5:35 SPEAKER_04: It's really not that difficult. So the the the challenge is that menopause is normal, it's not a disease. It's not a disease, we shouldn't be going to our doctors who treat diseases and ask them to treat something in our bodies that's not a disease. And that's where the the disconnect is coming is it's natural to die. It's natural, we all die, it's a normal thing. So if your doctor tells you you're normal, you can be like, Yeah, I know, and you could tell me I'm normal when I'm dead, because being dead is normal, it's a natural thing to happen.

6:14 SPEAKER_04: Am I right? Yeah, let's not do that, you know what I mean? But it is normal. Like we it is normal, and so I think the problem is we are going to providers who treat diabetes, heart disease, neuropathy. Like, like we're we're going to a doctor who treats disease and we're asking said a doctor to treat a normal thing happening in our body. And you're saying you're normal because you don't have an endocrine disease. So I can't, we can't really tell the doctor they're lying because I don't have an endocrine disease.

6:49 SPEAKER_04: I'm in menopause, but I feel a hell of a lot better being out of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, L-theanine, magnesium, microdosing, and GLP. I mean, so the problem is is that we look to our gynecologists, we look to our PCP as our our support. Like, like, I don't feel good. And you know, it's part of their it's it's partly their fault because you go in and they're like, How are you sleeping? You're like like shit. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Um, how's your relationship with your partner? Like shit.

7:22 SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay. Um, you know, and and then they and then they tell you to leave. Yeah. Oh, and it's like, well, wait, wait, wait a second. Like, don't you have a for don't you have a medication? Don't we have a medication for like me not sleeping? And it's like, well, no, that's normal. You know, that's normal. You know, you're in your 40s, so you know, just take some time for yourself and make sure that you don't, you're not on your phones before you go to sleep. Yeah and um, you know, make sure that you're journaling and you drink some tea before you go to bed, you know, and you leave and you want to tear your hair out because you really feel like you're dying inside.

8:00 SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, I'm just gonna tell every woman like you might have a provider who will throw something at you. It might be birth control because that's already pre-dose. Yeah, you they might, they might give you an antidepressant, they might give you, we're starting to see some some prometrium being prescribed, which is natural progesterone. So that's great if you're getting that. But if even if they give that to you, they might tell you they have no idea if it will help you or not. Uh, you might have your doctor give you like the tiniest drop of testosterone, but then they'll say it's just a placebo effect, and there's no study that's ever been shown that anything helps you.

8:37 SPEAKER_04: And so, you know, us women are feeling real things, real feelings.

8:42 SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

8:43 SPEAKER_04: Things are happening to us, and and we're being told there's no answer for it. Or, or if we're being giving something, it's completely different than what our best friend got, than what the person at work got.

8:53 SPEAKER_03: That's what I was gonna say. Everyone's on everybody I know is on a different dose of all the things. Their doctor, yeah. So we I'm like, So who are you, who do you go see? And when are you supposed to get your blood drawn? Yeah. But I I have room for five more people. That's it. And that's it. Yeah, yeah.

9:10 SPEAKER_04: It's it's really, I mean, it's it's just as real as your feelings are, CD. It's just as real as we don't have providers to help you. Yeah. That is the that is a real truth. So I will tell you exactly what you need, and I'll tell you exactly what will help you. Um, but but unfortunately, it's all prescription. So because it's prescription, you you you need to have a prescriber write it. Well, you know, I mean, there's there's um, you know, there's online hins and hers. You know, um, I mean, there's all kinds of you know, online, and Hillary, we talked about this, right?

9:48 SPEAKER_04: Like, wait, where should we be investing, you know? I mean, because every single woman is gonna go through menopause, right? I mean, yes, most women will lose weight, so that's where the like semi-glutide and the ozapic thing came in, but every woman is gonna go through menopause. And you know, Hillary, you might actually go through menopause and and barely have any symptoms at all, but you still need to be on hormones because you don't want to get Alzheimer's, you don't want to die from getting a hip fracture and then and that and then never getting your strength back.

10:14 SPEAKER_04: You don't want to die from getting a urinary tract infection and then getting septic, right? So even for the woman who doesn't wake up burning at 500 degrees at four o'clock in the morning, um, even for the woman who still sleeps fine or still enjoys, you know, sex until she's 80, right? She still needs to be on hormones to strengthen her bones, to strengthen her tissues, to protect her brain.

10:35 SPEAKER_01: I had no idea. Yeah, you just scared the shit out of me. I mean, I had no idea. Like, why would you take, you know, I heard that. Yeah, I had to do that. I heard that I'm gonna say a little thermenopause. I liked that part. That was great. And then you went into a whole bunch of stuff. I had no idea. So I guess really quickly, the first thing is before let's say you go to the online companies, yeah. What questions do you ask your, let's say, I have a nurse practitioner or your doctor, what do you ask them to gauge if they even are aware that they can help you?

11:05 SPEAKER_01: Because maybe they can't, and that's when you need to start searching out some type of other provider or information. So what do you do with that?

11:14 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think just asking, just asking your PCP, what do you offer women who are going through perimetopause? I mean, that's just so we don't even need to use fancy words. What do you do for women in their 40s when they don't feel good? And if their answer is X, if their answer is, oh, you know what, it's it's normal. All women go through it, you're gonna be fine, then you leave. Okay. You don't ask, you don't ask another question. You know, if they say like, oh, let me know when you're not feeling good and we'll put you on uh we'll put you on some birth control, you leave.

11:46 SPEAKER_04: Okay. Yeah, you leave. If you if you do not be birth control, uh hey, I I love birth control. Think, think you scientists for birth control, because I did not want to have seven kids. Yeah, right. Thank you. I will take all the risks, just scoop up all the risks and bring them right to me. You guys did the same thing with Ozempic. We're like, we don't want vaccines. What? Ozempic, it might kill me, give it to me. It might give me pancreatitis, it might die, give it to me.

12:13 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, literally. I'm like, don't care. Maybe my eyesight, don't care. All get glasses are stronger. Because I want to lose weight.

12:21 SPEAKER_04: I don't care. I have to die of a stroke, but I'm gonna be skinny.

12:26 SPEAKER_04: No hair, we can't see shit. Yeah, all of that, yeah. I want it. So, no, I it's like, you know, I think to make it really easy. First of all, I am so thankful that it's 2026 and you can actually get natural progesterone from a pharmacy and our insurance covers it. Oh, okay.

12:47 SPEAKER_03: So that's actually gonna be one of my first slides there.

12:50 SPEAKER_04: Let's, you know, because I I can talk to you for hours about hormones, but let's just start with and I don't know if insurance has not figured it out yet. I think they haven't figured it out. But prometrium, natural progesterone from a plant, no side effects, calming, speaks to our GABA receptors in our brain and calms us down. So calm is covered by insurance. I think they're gonna figure out that it's natural and they're gonna pull it from us. And then we're gonna hop on over on our phones to get our ex and we're gonna put in Prometrium and we're gonna look at CVS and Walgreens and Costco and we're gonna find out which one is the cheapest.

13:28 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and we're gonna take our pharmacy over our prescription to that pharmacy and say, yes, please, I'll pay$50 a month for my natural progesterone because it makes me sleep good and I'm really calm and I don't feel so crazy. And so even if my estrogen is going up and down, I can I can handle that a little bit better.

13:47 SPEAKER_01: So no, is that in a non-is that in a pill format that people are taking? Yeah, it's a capsule. Yeah, okay. It looks like a little vitamin E. So when you sort of start to feel because I mean, I sleep like crap, but I have slept like crap since the kids were honestly babies. Because I had three kids in three years, and my sleep just got very dysregulated, and I've never been able to figure it out. Maybe now it's because I'm older. I don't know, but I without my ZQL and my melatonin, I sleep terribly.

14:14 SPEAKER_01: But is that something I should be looking into going on now?

14:18 SPEAKER_04: Oh, it's so good for you. Absolutely. I would go on prometrium and you know, if you you could all, I I have the 222 rule. So women for sleep. Now, I am not against any medication. I love everything and anything that's gonna help you. Just know that with each medication, be Ambient or Xanthlex or Modron PM or Trazodone or a THC gummy, they all are gonna affect your REM sleep a little bit. But I I'm all for any medication that will help a person sleep. Sleep is very important and we need it, right?

14:51 SPEAKER_04: So I'm not against any of that. But let's educate ourselves. So I start with the 222 rule. So the first thing that a woman or a man starts with, but I primarily take care of women, is you take two L Theanine, which works on our GABA receptors in our brain, calms us down with two progesterone, which works on the GABA receptors, and we take it two hours before bed because these are natural plant-based. But you guys, all of our medicines in the world are made from plants. It's just some are, well, I'm sorry, I should say that, because some are made from horse urine or pregnant, right?

15:24 SPEAKER_04: That's some of our hormones that we get. So, but a lot of our medication is made from plants. It's just the pharmaceutical companies will alter it in a certain way. Um, and then they'll start making synthetic ones that that match it because yeah, chemists are so smart, right? And and they can do all these different things. But the base of medicine, the base of cocaine, the base of nicotine, it's plants. Plants are powerful. Like we've forgotten about how powerful plants are. So I start every woman off.

15:53 SPEAKER_04: And I would I would have both of you guys do this. Two, two, two. Get ask your doctor for 200 milligrams of permetrium. I like to prescribe it as 100 milligrams so that you can decide how much you want. So we prescribe 100, 100 milligrams of permetrium and the L-theanine, get it from Walgreens if you want, or if you want to make sure you're getting really high quality pure encapsulations, you can buy it on Amazon. You can get L-theanine with other nice sleepy things in them, like melatonin. But if you want just natural, so two of L-theanine, two of progesterone, two hours before bed.

16:29 SPEAKER_04: And my words, in about an hour and a half after you take it, you'll just start feeling really calm. You'll feel your whole body just kind of like settle. And if I can say that, because I run around like a crazy woman, has mean devil bouncing off the walls. If I can tell you that it can calm me down, trust me, I'll give you a hundred bucks if it doesn't make you feel calm.

16:49 SPEAKER_01: Love. And is that something I tend to go to sleep really easily? That's not my challenge. I have that. I wake up, you know, in the middle of the night and just, you know, I don't have anxiety. I'm just awake. And it's probably the bathroom. So I go to the bathroom and then get back in bed. And it's without ZQL, which I've learned is causes cognitive decline when you take it for longer than, you know, yeah, it's to be used, which is sporadically, then I can't go back to sleep.

17:16 SPEAKER_04: And that's like I tell my patients because there's all different scenarios. Some people fall asleep, but then wake up. Some people can't fall asleep, but then once they fall asleep, they'll sleep good. So I just say that's just my beginning recipe. Now you might say, okay, I'm going to take it. Um, the second I wake up to the bathroom, I'm gonna have my L thing in it, my progesterone at my bedside, and I'm gonna take it. So when you get back in bed, you know, with like about an hour, hour and a half, oh, I'm gonna read, or I know this isn't gonna work for an hour, so I'm gonna go fold some laundry.

17:49 SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean? Or or read a book or you're in a tunnel. What did you say? I didn't hear you. Did you say laundry folding? And you know, and then go back to bed because I think some of the sleep anxiety comes because we're laying in bed and we can't sleep. So if I I'm gonna wake up at three, I'm gonna take my two healthy and my two progesterone, and I'm for me, I'm gonna get something done. I'm gonna open my laptop, I'm gonna start charting, I'm gonna turn on a show, I'll chart for an hour and a half.

18:14 SPEAKER_04: All of a sudden, oh, I'm so tired. Hey, I've not even productive. So now I don't stress out that I'm gonna sleep an hour and a half later because I've already done an hour and a half work, go to bed, and then I feel great in the morning. I've already started my work of the day. I feel good, I'm rested. So I would just start there and then you layer. So I always tell people that's your foundation. Start with your natural hormones. Then you can layer, you know, try a Benadryl, try a gummy, you know, if you're if you have a prescription for Xanax, maybe take a little bit of Xanax and and figure your own body out what works the best for you.

18:44 SPEAKER_03: So that's a great just like baseline when you're feeling like crap in your 40s and in your 50s, get into a doctor. Maybe it's not a specialist. I think part of the problem is is like, you know, a lot of people want to use insurance, and a lot of our specialists, like hormone specialists or what have you, don't take insurance or concierge med concierge medic medicine. I do, yeah, it's exactly what I do, which is amazing. But you know, so for the average Joe, whatever, like me, like I want to use my insurance, I want to, I'll go to a PCP that can go armed with the information you just told me.

19:23 SPEAKER_03: I think I want a prescription for progesterone.

19:27 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and and there's and there is no reason why they will not give that to you.

19:30 SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and then that's kind of like the base like start there to get yourself feeling better. Because I feel like we're walking around in our 40s and our 50s like zombies. And if you have the ways and the means to get to somebody like you or somebody, maybe there is a hormone specialist that takes insurance, um, let's talk about the next level up of when you're going to the next level, getting your testosterone, whether it's pellets, I don't know what I'm I'm like, I'm I need a little bit of education about all of it, but progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, what does that look like?

20:04 SPEAKER_03: Does insurance cover it? And how do you find somebody like you in a particular area that you know will actually like listen to you instead of saying, like, you're good, just like come back. We'll give you antidepressant or a birth like you're good.

20:20 SPEAKER_04: Yeah. And that's why I love how we're doing this. And it's it's I really appreciate this platform to talk with both of you because the people who will listen to this will probably never even talk to me because I'm in a different state. Yeah. And so I even with these opportunities to, you know, talk with Nicole or talk with you, I'm even changing how I organize my conversations because does it really help your listeners? If I drone on for eight hours about how all the hormones work in the body, I, you know, it's like I just want to empower women.

20:53 SPEAKER_04: So, step one, we already have. You can go to your PCP and every PCP will write you a prescription for progesterone. There's no reason, it's a calming natural hormone. They might say you don't need it because you've had a hysterectomy, and you say, that's really that's very interesting that you said that, but I would like it.

21:10 SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

21:11 SPEAKER_04: You know, just just push a little bit harder, give a little nudge. Yeah. No reason why they won't prescribe it. And make your power, right? It doesn't that it's not that expensive. Just go on good or act. So that's step one. Okay. Let's go to the next thing. Step two, estrogen. And we have two arms of estrogen. We have estrogen cream that is not absorbed systemically, can be used on all women who have had breast cancer, who have estrogen-driven breast cancer, and it is cheap as cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap.

21:37 SPEAKER_04: Okay, it's like$12 for a tube of estrogen. Um, if somebody gets uh, you know, if you go to a pharmacy and they charge you more than$15, um, kindly take your prescription and go somewhere else because I don't know what they're what is it's S cream has been around for decades. Yes. So that protects our vaginal tissue, which is real important. Okay. We all want Robust, healthy vaginal tissue. That's good for health and it's good for pleasure. So if you are over 40, just start taking it. It doesn't matter if you have got good tissue, just start taking it.

22:13 SPEAKER_04: It's just gonna make your tissues healthy. It's great. So what if you take it a little bit early? It's not gonna hurt you. Nothing's absorbed systemically. So we've got progesterone. Now we have everyone mid-40s on estrogen. Great. Two of the four done. Now estrogen patches and tablets a little bit trickier because our estrogen fluctuates all month long. Even when we're in our 20s. But when we're in paramedic pause, it fluctuates, but it drops every once in a while. And as we get older, it drops more often.

22:45 SPEAKER_04: So those drops are what make us wake up burning hot at four in the morning. Those drops are what make us break out in a sweat. Those drops are make it where we can't sleep. The drops are what make us anxious. So I love estrogen. I love estrogen because I feel like this is why women should rule the world. I can manage 10 different things. In fact, while I'm talking to you, I can about what my girls are doing, what I'm planning next week, what's happening at work tomorrow, what my husband's doing out in the office, what I need to repairs I need to do on my car, what my son's doing in Miami.

23:20 SPEAKER_04: Like my mind's just gone all over the place, right? You guys could do the same thing while you're talking to me. You could probably be texting with your kids, with your neighbors planning like a meal train, um coordinating a couple, ordering some balloons for a birthday party you got going on, you know. And that's that's estrogen. Yeah. And you we should love estrogen. Yeah. Sounds amazing. Yeah. But too much of it makes makes us crazy. Because estrogen, imagine you're like doom, doom, doom, doom, do good, this, this, this.

23:52 SPEAKER_04: And then because your testosterone has dropped and your progesterone has dropped, you don't feel right because your estrogen's out of balance. And then you go to the doctor and they give you more estrogen.

24:03 SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

24:04 SPEAKER_04: Problems that you have, now you're like, ugh, I'm like, I don't need my progesterone's drop. I really can't sleep. You know, I feel worse. And then it's like, oh, you just weren't ready for it yet. Let's take that back from you. But you still just feel as bad. So that's where I tell people, oh maybe before you really press your provider to give you estrogen, be on progesterone first. It doesn't matter if they don't agree with it or they don't think you need it. You can just say, Oh, that's so nice.

24:36 SPEAKER_04: I'm just so glad you don't think I need it. Yeah. I need it. I want it. Uh-huh. Progesterone. Get your vaginal estrogen cream. Nothing bad's gonna happen.

24:46 SPEAKER_01: It's all good. So, how long? And so let me clarify this because I don't know about vaginal estrogen cream either. So that is by prescription only.

24:56 SPEAKER_04: It is, but it's it's literally because of Rachel Rubin. Thank you, Rachel Rubin. We need to like all contribute ten dollars, every woman in the world, to to build a monument for her because she's a female urologist, and she was the one that this year got the FDA to admit that all the warnings on it were bogus and they removed it, which takes a mighty, a mighty influence. Wow. If she's a female urologist and she got them to say, you guys, there's no backing of this. You have to remove this. These are lies.

25:27 SPEAKER_04: And they actually removed it, and now she's looking to get the indication that all women being admitted to the hospital are put on it to decrease the risk of women in the hospital getting urinary tract infections and neurosepsis and dying. It is this is a this this kills thousands of women every single year in their 70s.

25:46 SPEAKER_03: Wow.

25:48 SPEAKER_04: It's because her mom went to the hospital and she was terrified that her mom was going to get a urinary track infection because she's a female urologist and her mom's in her 70s. And they they were like, No, that's not, you know, it's not indicated. And she that just lit her fire. And that became her platform. And, you know, and we can dive into that, why that's important. But uh, if you don't want to have urinary incontinence, vaginal tears, and rectal prolabs and incontinence when you're 70 and 80, then you shouldn't be starting vaginal estrogen cream.

26:19 SPEAKER_04: And we need to get every woman, uh, I would love mid-40s, but definitely 50s. Uh on vaginal.

26:24 SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, I'm like 56, so I'm like low overgetting. Once a month once a week. Okay, so once that's I was gonna ask you, so you get some prescription only because I'll be pinging my NP after this on the portal. Yeah, and then I use it once a week. And you live in just like it's like applying like lotion, but for your badge area.

26:44 SPEAKER_04: There's a tampon applicator. I actually on the on my Instagram I have a highlight, and it's a gynecologist who said, ladies, I'm gonna give you a tip here. Throw that applicate applicator on the trash. Okay. Put cream on your finger. Yeah. Put your finger inside you. Okay. And because where like our let's talk about nanomie real quick. We'll we'll take a quick nanombra. Uh labia majora, large labia, labia minora, small labia. That little tissue inside that kind of leads to um the the perineum, right?

27:22 SPEAKER_04: You know, that goes down into like um well, I guess I you wouldn't really call it perineum. Sorry, let's let's so because the perineum is really your the vaginal wall to the rectum. That's where we tear when we have the baby. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the tissue above it. But that it's the same type of tissue, very tender. If you take a scalpel and cut right down, open that up like a fish, we'll lay it, right? Our urethra is right there. Sorry.

27:51 SPEAKER_04: I just got on that. Why listen? Let let can we just be women? Like, why are we here?

27:57 SPEAKER_03: No, no, it maybe a middle because I have many stitches after my children and that would be wild, yeah. All of this goodness down here, this is the love of the world.

28:08 SPEAKER_04: You know, I'm like it is the soul of the why are we embarrassed? The bigger, the healthier, the juicier. Absolutely. I love it. We are here for all of that. Like, I am done. I am done. Men talk there about their penises all day long, from the time they're six years old till they're 89. And we're all like, oh no, I guess I have some discharge. I don't want to talk about it. It's embarrassing. Yeah, no, it's true. It's like normalize all of it. All of it. See, all of marketing, everything is because of this girl right here.

28:43 SPEAKER_03: You know, I mean reason any of us are here. Let's talk about the practice pussy. We got our power.

28:50 SPEAKER_04: We have let it is right in our power. I agree. I agree. And let's let's keep her healthy and strong. No, do that. So she knows how to clean herself.

29:02 SPEAKER_00: Okay.

29:02 SPEAKER_04: Like, right? So it's like, yeah, so that area, so that tissue back to the tissue. Back to the tissue. Right right in between the little tiny small lips, that tissue, if you would cut it, our urethra is right there. Okay. So our tissue gets dry. Think of like dried meat, right? Dried meat, when we dehydrate meat, it gets cracky and dry. Well, our tissue dries, and so it gets really delicate. And it has little micro chairs, more 60, 70, and 80, which is why these poor women, when they're 70 and 80, they they physically can't have sex.

29:36 SPEAKER_04: Like it, they they literally rip. You know, someone's arm, that's crazy. Like a 70 and 80 year old, their skin is really thin. They'll be back, I'll hit the wall and they'll tear their skin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they, but back up 10, 15 years, right? You have micro tears, which is not a problem because our bodies use our own bacteria. But then we get in a car accident and we go to the hospital and they put a catheter in us. And now we've compromised, we've compromised our normal flora, we compromise our normal like safety mechanisms.

30:13 SPEAKER_04: And more, maybe we have surgery, and then we have gauze, and we have dressings, and we have people touching and doing things, and we're walking. Now we have all this bacteria, and we have these tiny fissures, these teeny tiny little, and that bacteria goes right inside there and hits our urethra, boom, horrible infection. And our immune system is down because we're already weakened by whatever we're in the hospital with. Very interesting. Now all of a sudden they have a raging urinary drug infection that goes into the bloodstream, they have septis, they die.

30:46 SPEAKER_04: So they don't put on the death certificate. Oh, death by uld, urethra, bacteria from catheter. No, they just say like urol sepsis. Done.

31:07 SPEAKER_03: The estrogen is what we need. Put on your finger, get it up there, get things lubricated and healthy for from your 40s on.

31:16 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's no different, right? Give me a flower that's dying, and let me sunshine and put some um fertilizer on it, and that flower that's dying will be like, Oh, I know, yeah. This is a hormone. So in our vaginal tissue is responsible. Think about a baby, a baby girl that's born, right? The the the the lips, the labia are all engorged.

31:41 SPEAKER_04: Sure. Right? So we we want hormones, right? Our our that tissue, our vaginal tissue for men, that tissue is hormone driven. Give the tissue the hormones, please. Yeah, we we want tissues to be robust and full and moist and healthy, and it's so easy.

32:02 SPEAKER_01: It is so is that something that uh it's just literally once a week for any age, whether you're in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or more as you get older.

32:12 SPEAKER_04: So if you're getting, if I treat someone who is like, Amy, I've been having urinary tract infections like once a month, I I might do like every day for two weeks and then twice, you know, because I I'm just desperate to get that tissue robust. You know, if someone has really bad acne, I'm gonna have them on doxycline every single day, twice a day for three months, and then start pulling back. But you know, and and I'm being I'm being really generous for saying anywhere in their 40s. But the reason why I say that is I want to make things as simple as possible.

32:42 SPEAKER_04: Sure. So maybe like I I I think I've had one UTI in my life. I have no problems with vaginal dryness, but I've also been on testosterone, which your body makes estrogen. So maybe I would if I wasn't on that. But I'm still like, I'm game, I'm game, I'm 52. I don't know. I'll I'll put some cream down there once a week. It's a hormone on my face every single day. Why am I my vagina? True, absolutely, and and all the the my lady. Oh, yeah, no, I'll I'll be getting that tomorrow. Like, look about our neck where we're all worried about our neck.

33:12 SPEAKER_04: What about this? What about her? I'm not worried about my neck because you had so you took care of it. Exactly.

33:19 SPEAKER_03: I will say that I have uh two uh women in my life, um, I will not name names in their 70s um that struggle with a ton of UTIs and very pretty recently. So this is like mind-boggling information to me. Um, one I believe is was diagnosed with um IC, and that's what apparently causes them. Um, and the other one is kind of like unknown UTIs, but definitely more in their 70s than they've ever had in their life. So um just their tissue is just delicate.

33:54 SPEAKER_04: I mean, you can save your life. See, this is what I'm saying. Like your podcasts can save women's lives. Go to their providers, ask for vaginal estrogen cream. It's not complicated. Ask for if you don't even remember, ask for some hormone cream.

34:09 SPEAKER_03: Yeah, what's the hormone cream I put on my finger and I just shove up my vagina so it's nice and flowery? That's what I'm gonna tell them to ask for.

34:19 SPEAKER_04: Yes, and it's safe. Yeah, it makes it, it's it's it's really important, even if they're like, I'm not married, I'm never having a sex scan my whole entire life. It matters good, but you don't want to get a raging urinary tract infection. It's horrible for your health.

34:35 SPEAKER_01: Yeah. That's so that's it's I've never heard of that. That's amazing. Okay, so then moving into let's say when you need to go on to estrogen patches or something else, is that because of just how you're feeling? And then how do you bring that conversation up? Right. And what do they do? How do they do this at labs? What's next?

34:53 SPEAKER_04: The reason why you get a lot of pushback from providers for doing labs is that our hormones change every day. Um, that being said, because I am a concierge provider, you are gonna get a little more one-on-one care. I draw all the labs because it gives me a snapshot in time. So, Hillary, if you come to me and you say, Amy, I cannot sleep. It is my sleep is shit. I'm still gonna give you progesterone, but I'm not gonna know for sure if it's genetics, anxiety, some other neurological thing going on.

35:31 SPEAKER_04: Maybe the temperature is bad in your house, maybe you have a horrible mattress. So for me, I just think as a medical provider, I can draw your blood. Why would I not just draw your blood? Because if your progesterone is a hundred, I'm gonna be like, okay, Hilary, I'm gonna give you some progesterone. I think it's gonna help you. Uh-huh. I don't think it's that your progesterone is low. Let's let's maybe think about, you know, think about your this next month. Why don't you just kind of keep track of the nights when you sleep or what was going on?

36:00 SPEAKER_04: Are kids home, not home, husband home, not home? What did you have to eat? Because maybe there's something else we could help you with. If your progesterone is zero, I'm not saying there's nothing else going on, but I'm gonna be like, oh, yeah, okay, this makes sense. It's because your progesterone is zero. So it just helps me match your labs with what you're telling me, right? So that you get some validation for that. So I like that. I can draw blood so easy.

36:28 SPEAKER_03: Is there a certain day like after your period counting back that you're supposed to get it drawn?

36:35 SPEAKER_04: Or is it like a yeah, that's actually a really great question. I I don't know if you know that like that's because our progesterone drops right before our period. So that's where it would be the lowest. Oh, so you want to draw right before your period, or you wanna like if you're really want to go to someone, if you go to naturopath, they're gonna probably do like a dudge test or they're gonna do like if you do really want to know your progesterone, you actually have to collect urine every two hours for 48 hours and treatment.

37:01 SPEAKER_04: Oh, no one has time for that. Yeah, so I'm not this is the thing, like I'm not trying to say that I'm an endocrinologist and I've been treating some rare pituitary or like you know, um, ovarian disorder. That is not my skill set by any means.

37:17 SPEAKER_03: Um I feel like better. So, like, yeah, we we just want you to draw our blood and read it and say, like, here you go, here's your prescriptions. You're gonna be a new woman in four weeks. Right.

37:28 SPEAKER_04: And I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I want to know what state you live in. It kind of gives me an idea. Oh, are you in Florida? Are you in Oregon? Are you in Idaho? But I don't need to know really like your town and your street and your address and the paint in your bedroom. Like, I just want to kind of get a gist of like, oh, you literally live in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, it just does, it kind of paints a picture for me. Yeah, you know. So, um, so I wouldn't worry about that. But that's why you get a lot of pushback from providers.

37:58 SPEAKER_04: And honestly, again, let's keep this super simple because there's very few people like me, and there's a lot of people who don't want to take that money out of the budget, even if they had the money, maybe they would rather use their money to buy uh, you know, Louis Vuitton bag or hippox or whatever, you know. So I I'm just saying that like let's as simple as possible, it's just if your provider doesn't want to take labs, fine. Just understand that like you start low, but first be on progesterone because the worst thing that you can do is make your symptoms worse.

38:30 SPEAKER_04: Because what happens, have you guys heard of the term estrogen dominance? Maybe it kind of gets floated around. It's not a real term, it is kind of a made-up term. And so doctors like to really be like, oh god, who are you seeing? That's not a diagnosis.

38:44 SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

38:45 SPEAKER_04: Um, but it it does happen because because our hormones are fluctuating, if you're someone where you start dropping progesterone first, you will have estrogen dominance, right? You might just be someone who you're like, I've never been chill in my entire life. I I run around like I get a lot of stuff done, but I'm I'm high strung. Well, you might just be genetically you have more estrogen than progesterone. If you're someone who just is more type like C personality, like you're gonna do your work, but you know, you're gonna just enjoy relaxing the rest of the day.

39:18 SPEAKER_04: You're gonna sleep amazing. You might just be more feet right now. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. So you might just have more progesterone, but I just really warn people get your progesterone on board first because that's your calm. And I don't, you know, if you go to a provider and they're not checking labs, you know, be careful because I again I'm obsessed with estrogen. I love it, but too much estrogen makes us a little cray cray. It's like I love my espresso in the morning.

39:48 SPEAKER_04: If I drink espresso every two hours through the day, I will like literally crawl inside of my body and crawl outside of my body, and I'll just have stomach pains and I'll feel jittery and miserable. So a little bit is great, but a lot is not good. So that's just where I get a little bit like, you know, it's like for example, just for me, and I'm only one person, but I've been on testosterone for four years. My body made natural estrogen from that testosterone. It was beautiful. I had natural estrogen to create my body, matched with my declining estrogen.

40:21 SPEAKER_04: And then after four years, finally I was like, oh, I'm waking up at three in the morning, fiery hot. Okay, let me draw my estrogen. Oh, look at that. It's 30. Okay. Now it's time to go on estrogen.

40:32 SPEAKER_01: So when you do labs, and I don't think I will I go in every year for my annual and I just do normal labs. Are they drawing estrogen and progesterone? Or is this where you specifically have to go and have them be asking them to do this? Because I don't think I've ever, I talk about my A1C. I talk about, you know, like your ADL, your LDL, but where does this fall into that?

40:53 SPEAKER_04: So you if you mostly, okay, if a prescriber draws labs, they're not paying for it and you're not paying for it, they're asking insurance to pay for it. So that's also some of the pushback is they have to code it so your insurance will pay for it. And let me warn you and all of your listeners, if you have a really nice doctor and you're like, oh, my doctor's so nice, they're gonna draw what just and I I tell people, I will give you my labs. This is like a$1,200 panel. Yeah. So just know if you have a really nice doctor who will put in all those orders, you also want to follow up that question with, are you coding it so my insurance will pay for it?

41:27 SPEAKER_04: Oh, we we realize that in the past six months. You could have a real nice doctor and the insurance is like, F you. Yeah. They are not paying for this, you know. So just make sure. But that's sometimes where you get you get a little bit, every single thing that a doctor orders on you, they need to justify it, which also isn't hard. There's a ton of ICD codes, but then they also have to result it, then they also have to communicate with you about it, then they also have to follow up with you about it.

41:55 SPEAKER_04: So every lab that they put in, they're creating more work for themselves. And I know this, I can speak to this personally because I I do a huge panel. So every panel, like Sadie, I could draw labs on you in three minutes, but it's gonna take me an hour to go through and interpret everything. Yeah, type everything up, then give you my recommendations, then send it to you. And then if there's anything abnormal, follow up on it. So it wouldn't be easier for me to be like, oh, Sadie, like, you know what, let's not, let's, we don't need to do your labs.

42:23 SPEAKER_04: You're good. You're tired. I'm gonna write that you're tired. Here's a here's a progesterone prescription. Come and see me in a year. Yeah, that's really helpful to know gotten something done. And we're all happy, and no one has to worry about an extra bill or more work.

42:40 SPEAKER_01: That's actually, I mean, I feel like, and this is my own experience, and I'd say the last year is insurance has really changed. I feel where everything is pushed back, everything is denied, and then they have to adjust it or say go back. I've never had that, and we have good insurance, but I just noticed that in the last, let's say, 18 months, everything gets kicked back as denied immediately, and then you have to go and ask for whatever it is the small stuff is. So that's really good to know about asking specifically and then also asking the question about insurance because you don't want people to get a huge bill that they're not prepared for.

43:13 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and you know what's actually interesting. Let's say, like, let's say we're all millionaires, okay? Well, you're actually good because Quests now is they're they got real smart and they're like, wait a second, why are we only doing labs for providers? Let's make a separate business. And this was a great idea of whoever their CFO was, they said, let's let anybody walk in the door. I just saw this. I just saw this. Yes, you can walk in the door, and I I think my mic totally died. So just if my if my um totally good is it five, yeah.

43:40 SPEAKER_04: Um and just requests and you can get any lab you want, and they're happy to take your money. Yes. So if you're a millionaire and you want to go in, go in and they have panels made for you. You can get a weight loss panel, you can get a hair loss panel, you can get a hormone panel, you can get a female over the age of 50 panel and they'll just draw your blood and give you a bill for 800 bucks a thousand bucks fifteen hundred bucks two thousand bucks you can get whatever you want done and I love that yeah no I love that so who reads if if I were to go in and say oh but I want yes I'm like so then what do you do?

44:18 SPEAKER_04: You go to you go to chat and you pay twenty dollars for for an AI prescription and you take pictures of it and you say um okay yeah we have that I'm gonna do it now actually you know all these people that are against AI I mean come on let's get what this oh I love it it's so it's actually really good now I will I will just say that that it is just a really fast search engine so you know I've seen this with hormones um because there's so much mixed information online it can pull some things that are not exactly true but it's pretty darn good it is pretty darn good because before chat or Claude or name your AI partner I you would be I would tell you honestly do you really want to spend you know$600$700 on your hormones because you would have to know how to read your follicle stimulating hormone your luteinizing hormone to see where you were in the cycle because I do read that and so I can look and see where the estrogen is the progesterone is and say like oh this is where it should be because of where the FSH and the LH is if you don't understand that at all it's it is a little based.

45:30 SPEAKER_04: Yeah um but now you can take pictures and literally put it in your chat I mean I don't know if the free version does this but it's crazy 29 I mean and then it will even lead on it will say what age are you and how about this and what have you been doing and you might want to consider this and here's a prescription that would help you and do we want me to help you find a provider to do that. I mean yeah it's it's full service I mean medicine's gonna change ladies I mean it is it's gonna change rapidly using all of I so I mean if you're a millionaire you can do whatever the hell you want right and good for you but like for people who just have insurance like why are women's stuff not covered?

46:13 SPEAKER_01: Why can't you or how do you tell your provider like I feel like crap I can't sleep I've got if you have insurance they should pay for freaking stuff they don't because I know they don't but like what can you say to your doctor to make them give you and draw these labs that that should be paid for you're already paying astronomical amounts for health insurance.

46:33 SPEAKER_04: Well and that's why I say thank goodness it's 2026 because they are now paying for some of it because and the only reason why is because they linked lack of estrogen to Alzheimer's disease. Oh interesting okay yeah or then there remember insurance only covers sickness like you can't have car insurance and ask them to pay for a car detail. Yeah to keep your car up to snap and I mean I think women's right I hear what you're saying but women's hormones your body is actually affected and you're right it's not disease but why do we have to get sick before they actually I mean I know it's a whole other conversation that's just how our system is I mean yeah that that is literally what we pay for but because now the studies are showing that lack of estrogen is almost directly linked to Alzheimer's now they'll pay for because now they're like well that's oh well now they they don't want to pay for memory care because they're like that's a because let's be honest insurance let's stop thinking that insurance people care about us it's a thing the commercials and all it's a rocket it's a total rocket so that's then you get your stuff drawn you can have all three covered by insurance now vaginal say that one more time you you can have all three covered I have all three covered now on my own myself your progesterone progesterone your patches they're all covered your patches are going to be more expensive because they're newer okay so oral if you're if you're someone who's on a very very tight budget I would go on oral now it's not absorbed quite as well and there's a little more risk but don't don't you be a provider telling me and and threatening me because you you you threw me on that birth control faster than you can walk out of the room and it had all kinds of stroke risks and all kinds of problems and they just they just throw out that birth control like no one's business.

48:25 SPEAKER_01: So don't Can I ask about that? Because I don't know about that I haven't been on birth control since I was like 22 because it gave me um melasma and so like I would get that pigmentation and I got a little tiny one on my face and I was like just come off of this. So I haven't I have an IUD now but I haven't been like let's say on a pill but why are they I didn't even realize that birth control was like a step for women who are going through all these changes. So is that something that they prescribe?

48:51 SPEAKER_04: It shouldn't it shouldn't be but it's something birth control does have risks. You you know it carries the risk of stroke and blood close blood clots stroke um and then just a bunch of things that don't make you feel good.

49:01 SPEAKER_01: Some women get really emotional some people get really depressed some people get suicidal some people get floated so but but no you know they just said oh sign on the dotted line and here's your birth control calls by but what's it what's it do for your body though as a woman let's say in peri menopause post what is it doing for your body because it's giving you hormones so okay so it's replacing the hormones that you basically okay which I guess control all birth control does is makes her body think we're pregnant.

49:27 SPEAKER_01: Okay.

49:27 SPEAKER_04: And that makes up ovulation so this let me just say this really quick because this is a really big thing with testosterone right now um is people are like oh if I take testosterone what if I don't want to take it my whole life will it destroy my body's natural ability to have testosterone like fear mongering you know it's like okay well you just said birth control for 30 years and suppressed your entire body's ovulation no one cared. Yeah no cared agreed you went off birth control and you had a baby and then you went back on birth control for 10 more years and then you went off birth control and you had a baby and then you went back on birth control right so don't don't be like fear mongering me when I want to go on testosterone and feel stronger and leaner and more energetic and have a better sex drive that like oh no it might suppress and same with men I tell men the same thing.

50:15 SPEAKER_04: I had a man come in yesterday his testosterone was 250 I'm like my testosterone is more than your testosterone and he's like I know they said it was normal and I'm like yeah because you're not dying from it but I'm like that's horrible and he's like well is it gonna suppress my own natural testosterone I'm like yes it is right you need I'm gonna take you from 200 to a thousand yeah and it is gonna suppress it just like all of us women have our cycle suppressed when we're in birth control. No one cared about that.

50:42 SPEAKER_04: True yes it is gonna suppress it and you can stop it whenever you want and then when you stop it you're gonna go right back down to 200 because that's your body's genetics right if I take off if I take my contacts or take off my glasses I go back to seeing how I was seeing without them. Yeah wearing glasses doesn't make me become you know have worse vision.

51:04 SPEAKER_01: Yeah so it's like yeah so when do you need because I'm what I just heard you say was I can get leaner I can get stronger. I knew you were gonna say that you little bitch. I don't need any help with my sex life because that's all amazing. You're good with that yeah I'm good with that but I mean I'll take another notch up that's totally fine. Like Sean probably will like you know lock the door on me but whatever. But how what do I need that? Because I feel like I know I need a lot more where do I get that and what is it going to do for me?

51:32 SPEAKER_04: Yeah so that's now we're talking now this is going to be the hardest thing to get testosterone. So we've got every everyone in the world because of our podcast now is on progesterone. Imagine estrogen we all got nice big lovely flowery right we maybe have a touch of estrogen just to make sure that we're not wake up at four in the morning so we're good. Now testosterone this is now the impossible feat right this is the impossible feat oh it's a proof for men and it's a proof for you as a woman if you want to become a man.

52:08 SPEAKER_04: I can yeah so if you're a woman who wants to feel better as a woman no you don't get it it's not FDA approved okay because it's not FDA approved you you're not gonna get a provider who's working under the malpractice of their practice prescribe something because when we prescribe things that are not approved and I do this too we pay a very high malpractice okay which is another reason why people who are like me don't want to do it. It caught it takes us more time is hard. You have to have a passion for it.

52:40 SPEAKER_04: It takes a whole lot of time takes a whole lot of empathy and you don't make much money doing it and your license is always being inspected because it's a controlled substance which is silly but it's every single testosterone prescription I write is reported to the PDMP which is the nice nationwide database for controlled substances you know I mean it is just it is a complicated thing the reason I'm willing to do it is because it is so helpful and it's so healthy and it's so good. It it's in us it's literally a natural occurring substance in our bodies it's not unnatural it comes from the yam plant it comes right from the extract it you can put it on a cream you can inject it you can put it in a pellet I don't love it because it's really like this um but it's just natural and it just and so so to answer your question hilarious why does it make you leaner and stronger it's because it's testosterone it was made for the man to run after the buffaloes and like catch them and rustle them to the ground and bring the food home you know if we want to if we want to understand everything let's just go back to we are just reproducing and dying yeah right that's all we are we're born we have puberty we are attracted to the opposite sex we we have babies the men provide food for the babies the babies grow up and then we die.

54:02 SPEAKER_03: Yeah that that's like seriously so eye-opening to me because this is why it's so hard to find a provider like you in uh different states you know I mean I'm in Facebook groups that every single day there is a post that says um anybody have a hormone specialist anyone know of any good doctors I mean it is like that's by you explaining how much work it is your insurance your malpractice the the amount of hours it takes it's no freaking wonder that it's so expensive it's so expensive it's concierge medic concierge medicine but it's I mean it's such a gift that you're giving to women especially like on this podcast who can't go and see you or are in our states or other states but that opens my freaking eyes as to why it's so hard to find someone that will take care of us saying we can't like all of our symptoms.

54:59 SPEAKER_04: Well and you'll see too I mean we chart you know our prices are like$225 a month right and you'll most people are like five six seven hundred dollars or like scraping by like I I in fact I was just talking with Nicole and she's like you know what you should do is all of these handouts that you're just handing out for free I'm just two and three dollars you should because then it's like it would help you support your business because it it really is true ladies I can't even tell you like I work morning tonight because when you have a woman if I take you Hillary I'm gonna look at everything and then it's like I mean it's not much but just you know every single thing that I check and write a note vaginal estrogen cream you know writing the prescription here testosterone I have to get that from a compounding pharmacy and I have to like you know it's it's$20 everything's FedEx overnight I don't even have a choice everything's FedEx overnight so we assume the cost for it and I mean it's just like my DA license is nearly a thousand dollars that you have to renew every year and then all of the CMEs that you have to do like providers just don't want to do it.

56:03 SPEAKER_04: So you might have you know all of my classes that I did all of my education I paid out of my pocket for you know if I decide to get licensed in more than Washington Oregon I have to have an RN license I have to have an NP license I have to have that and I show a DEA license. I mean and then you have to have really good notes because if let's say for example they go their PCP and they're like I show up as a name on their well who's prescribed me this what is this you know I have to be ready to have a full note to say this was the assessment this was the diagnosis this was the treatment this was the one this is how I'm overseeing this woman you know and then I have a woman who doesn't follow my instructions who's on vacation doesn't take her progesterone now all of a sudden she starts having vaginal bleeding oh God I just had a period well you know okay now we have to send them for a vaginal ultrasound you have to get a measurement oh my gosh I'm so tired and then no and I will I will have a phone call for an hour with a woman who's like are you sure it's just because I just skip my progesterone and I have to explain how the hormones work in the body and what they need to do and that you don't have to take it I mean I'm not I'm not kidding you guys it is it is a labor of love.

57:12 SPEAKER_01: And so as much as it sounds like it that's that word yes take your fucking pill and shut up and leave me alone.

57:19 SPEAKER_03: That's why they say that to us just take a pill leave us alone we're not dealing with anything that Amy is even remotely gonna do right now which is most people then you add on to that that it's not FDA approved.

57:31 SPEAKER_01: Yeah right I mean no one is is that because they don't want to study because it's testosterone in women so it's just like oh they have a little bit of it they'll need it is that the whole gist you tell me Hillary you tell me why Viagra got approved in three I was literally gonna say that like how is it that that's like oh that's how's that approved and it's like that's a thing and I I get the whole disparity in women and men's health but do most women as they grow older do they need a little bump of testosterone?

58:01 SPEAKER_01: Is that something that you see that actually really helps or is that just for specific cases based on their whole their other profile?

58:09 SPEAKER_04: It's all it no I mean our bodies um so let me have you ever heard have you ever heard this saying and and we would say this in cardiology and this was kind of a marketing thing to help people be aware of heart health because one of the number you know I I don't I don't know if is it still the number one killer of men and women is heart disease. I know when I was like it was like it um they would say okay when you start getting abdominal fat that's when you you know be careful like take care of your heart do you ever remember hearing that is the risk for heart disease right yes it's not abdominal fat it's when our testosterone starts to drop right we can't build muscle without testosterone so when our testosterone starts to drop then our body fat starts going up body fat visceral fat belly fat is where it comes on belly fat hip fat women men just just go and go to the mall and look at all 78 year olds and they don't have big huge arms and calf it's all here right and that's visceral fat around all of our organs right here increased risk for heart disease so it's you correct the testosterone problem I mean look at a 30 year old man and look at a seven year old man tell me what you see.

59:15 SPEAKER_01: Totally yeah man is totally like that's literally if I should really go to my NP then because that is my that's my that's my scale which I can't you know not going to talk about the name brand that told me I was fat basically but I have that and granted do I have some of it because I had three kids in three years and I can't get rid of that pooch. Yes but that's my concern is that I have visceral fat in that area. So maybe my testosterone because I've never tested that maybe that's lower because I literally I know I was saying as I hit this plateau of losing weight and I I can't get it off in in certain places.

59:48 SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking like oh maybe it's surgical maybe it is but if it is visceral and it according to my scale that like did the whole like kind of DEXA thing yeah I have a high level of internal visceral fat.

1:00:01 SPEAKER_04: So does that mean I get to go to my doctor and say hey like maybe my testosterone's a little off and maybe I need a little bump of that no you you can but they won't they won't give it to you because there's just I mean the only studies that you know studies take money the only studies that we're seeing come out right now is bone density and muscle mass with testosterone which is great I'll take those I'll take anything. But um you know look at women we have you know an a normal my goal for women is to have 25% of fat man a man's goal is like 12 like and muscle mass in a man is much higher than testosterone you cannot build muscle interestingly you can't really orgasm without testosterone you know so I should be fine I'm like I feel like Hillary's is just I feel like I'm good then but I still have extraviseral fat.

1:00:51 SPEAKER_04: Like the amount that you need to orgasm is like five and the amount that you need to have like really good muscle mass is 200.

1:00:57 SPEAKER_01: Oh I think okay then I am low. Yes okay so I mean what I hear you saying is I need to fly to Oregon become one of your concierge patients and you can actually run these tests on me and we can figure out where all my because I do feel like some of it's maybe genetic and some of it is maybe it isn't really my hormones or you know some of the things are off.

1:01:16 SPEAKER_04: Well all women have very low low hormones and it's just it just isn't studied like they barely studied menopause. There's no there's no study is not they're not gonna even study something that doesn't isn't FJ approved like the the this the good studies are driven by pharmaceutical companies and they cost billions of dollars and the only reason why they're willing to invest millions of dollars is because they're gonna try to make a medication that they're gonna make billions of dollars on yeah and that I have no problem with that.

1:01:46 SPEAKER_01: I mean people are like oh pharmaceutical companies I'm like they're in business guys I mean I but if there's a ton of women and we're all gonna go through this then hello your market is gigantic and it's always you're always in a hospital a pharmaceutical company is not going to make a non-fda approved medication.

1:02:02 SPEAKER_04: Yeah they're not gonna do it because they know that the prescribers won't prescribe it. They're not gonna get their money back. So until until it is FDA approved I mean it's gonna be it's gonna be years. I mean honestly even men I mean that man came to me with 220 and his doctor would actually no that's not true. His doctor actually gave up a female dose of testosterone this is how poorly it's studied and you have to be really I've seen this with a few doctors. They give them a female dose of testosterone because they don't know what they're doing and they're so scared and it will it's just enough to suppress what they have and then they're brought down even lower.

1:02:45 SPEAKER_04: On the testosterone but I've seen men where they started at 400 and the testosterone was just enough to suppress it and it they dropped down to 200. But a lot of providers won't check it again. They put them on a cream they don't know what to do and there's an accountability when you check labs and so if a provider is like I don't really know what to do they're not they're just gonna be like oh well see if this works you know we'll try a little bit let me know how you do in a year. And there's such little support for even men I mean you know I do have sympathy for a man who's walking around with a 400 or 500 testosterone.

1:03:16 SPEAKER_04: I mean that's a horrible level and it's really bad for his health you know then they have guess what their body fat goes up right their muscle mass goes down and you I see it so there's a lab that I draw that looks for cardiac inflammation because I as a as a medical provider and uh and a prior cardiology provider, I don't look at the outside I don't care if you have hair extensions, lash extensions, you are lipstick, no lipstick I don't care if you wear jeans or skirts or heels or flip-flops. I really don't care about the external part.

1:03:46 SPEAKER_04: All I look at is the labs. I hear the symptoms I hear it but I look at the labs and I look at the body scan. And I always tell people when you're my patient I get what I want and when I get what I want you'll get what you want. Yeah is they want to be thin and they want to look and they want energy but if they only go for what they want I'm not gonna get what I want because they're gonna dose their GLPs wrong. Yeah it's gonna go up but their scale is going to go down because it'll burn through all their muscle they're not gonna watch their vitamin levels they're gonna do like too little or too much testosterone which is going to like cause other problems.

1:04:21 SPEAKER_04: So I always tell people let me have what I want to get what you want because all I care about is getting that body fat down to protect your heart getting your estrogen to protect your brain getting your testosterone to protect your bones getting your vaginal estrogen cream to protect you from having a urinary tract infection but if I get what I want you'll have great sex you'll have a strong lean body you'll be lean you'll have all the energy in the world you'll be sleeping good so just trust more do we need we are going to work in stats this is my question can uh uh somebody in Idaho or California wherever can we be your patient if we cannot be your patient because you can't prescribe in a certain state what have you um what is that um what's the best way to find somebody like you in our state yeah so yeah I'm not licensed in Idaho and I was talking to Nicole about that the problem is I just I don't I can't even treat I don't even have time for people here.

1:05:18 SPEAKER_04: Yes.

1:05:19 SPEAKER_03: No it's like I just can't um and so here I mean you like everyone's every naturopath every NP here that you have to get into it's like months to get in.

1:05:31 SPEAKER_04: Yes I know I it and it's yeah because someone who's willing to do what I'm doing and you know it's interesting because I even tell people like here's the price we are now it might be twice that much New York because you know I'm a higher nurse who has a master's degree she's not inexpensive. You know I had to have her to organize all my hormone things. I was drowning and she doesn't even see hormone patients. She just organizes like she just draws their labs and gives them their vitamin injections but I was Dying, right?

1:06:01 SPEAKER_04: Um, it is very expensive. And but what I tell people is I I can't speak to the online places. They're something, but they're very poorly managed because they're also it's a corporation that's trying to maximize profit. So to maximize profit, you have to have the the most inexpensive providers with the most inexpensive medications with the most inexpensive malpractice. So you're so it's something, it is something, but I'm never going, I'm never gonna tell someone to go to uh an online. I think it's like it's like McDonald's, it's food.

1:06:37 SPEAKER_04: Sure, but it's not right, it's not probably your best.

1:06:48 SPEAKER_04: I mean, it would literally be cheaper to get a flight and come here and have me draw. We charge$250 for like a$1,200 panel, and that's not negotiated. I'm not gonna take credit for that. That was uh it's a huge nationwide um functional medicine company that I am a part of. Um, but anyways, I'll give you the panel, it's not a secret. Yeah, and then I'll I do a$500 consult where I just spend an hour totally like this. And I'm like, okay, now this is what you need. Now take this, now take this to your provider.

1:07:16 SPEAKER_04: Okay, you look for your own providers, but say, would you be willing to give this? Because what I what I offer is not unusual. It's not I don't do anything crazy, ladies. I'm not, I don't take men super high on their testosterone. You don't need it. You have fishing rewards. I don't do crazy things with women. I just get levels normal and supplement with the vitamins that I can test in blood to make sure that you're getting them. It's normal. So anyone that that is a good provider and sees my recommendation will be like, oh my goodness, my work is done.

1:07:46 SPEAKER_04: Absolutely. I'll take you in. This is exactly what you're seeing. Done.

1:07:50 SPEAKER_03: I've done all the work is so important too, is like you're educating us us on this podcast. So somebody like me who can't come to you, you know, say I did fly to you, I got my blood, and I take my paperwork and I go to my doctor and I say, Amy said this is her recommendation. Here's all of my information, and my keywords are I would like progesterone, I would like these things. But unfortunately, I need you to write the freaking prescription. So can you do that for me?

1:08:19 SPEAKER_04: Well, and it's nice too because the we actually um purchased a dictation service where um it's it's everything is problem-based. So and it allows me just to email. So, like let's say you ask me, I do your hour consultation. I'm not scribbling notes. It's a fully dictated medical note that has I C D codes that you email to you. So it's literally your provider could literally just scan it, put it in the chart. Oh my goodness, if my patients came to me with that, I could see four times as many people.

1:08:51 SPEAKER_04: Labs are done, assessments done, charting's done, ICD codes are done. Um and this is a thing, people can use FSA.

1:08:59 unknown: Yeah.

1:09:00 SPEAKER_04: I can't say that because it is a per it is a prescription medication that's not covered by insurance. So I tell people if you want to do it when it comes time to put money in your FSA, right? You know, my services are like$2,500 a year. I think something like that. And that's less than your max of what you can put in. It includes all your shipping, all your labs, all your hormones. You know, so that's where you can see like once you pay that, you don't pay for anything else.

1:09:29 SPEAKER_03: But you need to raise your prices because I think my sister pays medicine.

1:09:36 SPEAKER_04: It's like I think like triple what you're charging. So there's a reason for it. It and like it's really like I I you know, you start off thinking that you can do it so much quicker, so much easier. Um and it's it's it's a it's a little bit of work in the first year because the women, you know, it's they have like for me, I'm I've never taken a meds. I now have to have a medicine. I also have to take my progesterone every night. Yeah. I also have to take your estrogen. Like, yes, they're plant-based hormones, but they're powerful medications.

1:10:08 SPEAKER_04: So, you know, I have I have a seven-day pillbox that is in my travel bag. Yeah. Extra, so I'm not forgetting it. Like, I still it's like it's like a uh insulin-dependent diabetic. Yeah. Because you have to give yourself the insulin doesn't mean it's any less important than your body doing it naturally. You can't take an insulin-dependent diabetic and be like, oh, I'm gonna go on a vacation, I I'll just get my insulin.

1:10:32 SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they'll be dead and laid on the side of the board.

1:10:35 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you still have to give yourself, you'll still feel differently. If I don't, if I take my progesterone sometimes, and I've even started to dial it in where I'm like, uh, you know, ladies, listen, you you probably will feel even better if you take it the same time every night. Our body is there, loves that circadian rhythm. And I'm so I'll tell you that right straight up front. My self-care. I'm really I got we got these rings. I'm trying really hard. I think I slept four hours last night. I sleep between four and five hours a night.

1:11:02 SPEAKER_04: It's horrible. I was gonna tell you that, Hilary. If we we're gonna work on that this year, and you are gonna start sleeping. That's why I I got this, just so I can at least see how poorly I take care of myself. Yeah. Um, but our bodies love rhythm. So, you know, if you're taking something natural like healthy and into sleep, or you're taking progesterone, maybe take it the exact same time every day. I bet your body will even feel better. Yeah, as you can do on a routine, our bodies love routine, feels so good, you know.

1:11:28 SPEAKER_01: Can we circle back really fast to the estrogen patches? Because I think we kind of like I I know a lot of our friends are on them, and I know that that got really scarce, and I think some scarcity stuff is going on. But yeah, when you start to let's say have your estrogen drop and you're starting to like now you're let's say really in going into menopause or in menopause, yeah, you get let's say you go to your provider and then they will obviously test you, and then they give you is it estrogen, is it cream or is it patches or what is it?

1:11:56 SPEAKER_01: Cream cream is totally separate. Okay. So this is patches, or this is is this also oral you were saying you can take it orally? Yeah. Okay, so then that so that's when and when you're on that, does that mean you're on that for the rest of your life?

1:12:11 SPEAKER_04: Well, it's like glasses. I mean, I can it is okay. Yeah, your body isn't your body, your reproductive system is is gone.

1:12:19 SPEAKER_01: Okay, so once you let's say are in they're through menopause, is that when it is you're going into menopause?

1:12:24 SPEAKER_04: Whenever you start having the symptoms that you need it, you will always have those symptoms. Okay, I gotcha. So then that's something.

1:12:31 SPEAKER_03: That the cream can be started like in our 40s, right? Yeah, we're gonna start that now, right?

1:12:38 SPEAKER_04: Like it must be how, and I I'm not I'm not a biochemist, and I'm not a chemist, and I haven't done a super deep dive on that, but it must be the way that they made the estrogen cream because we use cream. I mean, I don't know, I guess our retinal doesn't get absorbed systemically, but I always feel like when I was pregnant, you would take a suppository and that's in your mucous membrane, and you're putting your vaginal cream in your mucous membrane. But so I'm not gonna, I'm not don't say I've totally broken that down.

1:13:03 SPEAKER_04: I just know that it doesn't.

1:13:05 unknown: Yeah.

1:13:06 SPEAKER_01: The big thing is sometimes you go, you you have a patch or you take it orally, and then people are, for example, one of our girlfriends was having a really hard time, it was out of stock, right? And she was like, I'm losing my mind. Like, I need to get this. It's gonna continue. So that's gonna continue. So then what do we what do we do? We just you look, you have to just kind of scour everywhere to try and find it.

1:13:27 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's really bad. And I think I I don't know how bad it's gonna get. I think it's however long it takes, because just like we're talking, and whoever listens to our podcast, like you're gonna go ask for vaginal estrogen cream today, you're gonna go ask for vaginal estrogen cream, and maybe on the day that a hundred people listen to it, they're all gonna go ask. So this is happening across the nation, right? Right.

1:13:48 SPEAKER_03: So the demand is multiplying exponentially, which is great for us, but not great for creating the product.

1:13:57 SPEAKER_04: It's great for us, but this is just I mean, this is literally happening as we talk. Like that's what we said. Like, if this was 10 years ago, we would be paying a very high price to get through a compounding pharmacy that would be very hard to find because before GLPs, we I mean, hundreds of thousands of compounding pharmacies came out of the demand for GLPs. Oh, yeah.

1:14:20 SPEAKER_04: You're gonna be like, oh hey, I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna open up my own business, I'm gonna make my own GLP. Right. $500 a month more because it's half the price of what you know Norman Nordisk is charging for it. Yeah, right. Genius. People made millions of dollars off of this, right? So we now have compounding pharmacies, which I'm thankful for. But like I will say, like, for example, if I have to get progesterone from a compounding pharmacy, right now it's two dollars a pill.

1:14:49 SPEAKER_01: Okay.

1:14:49 SPEAKER_04: So, you know, that's as today. Now they get to they get to change the price however they want, whenever they want. Okay. So you know, if you have a provider like me that has an account with a compounding pharmacy, then I can get you that medication within a week.

1:15:05 SPEAKER_03: Um, but this is you're saying that's the compound. You talked about the um the other, the little like the pill you can ask.

1:15:13 SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's just at Walgreens cost of already being made. But are they just they're having shortages already and it's gonna get worse and uh and it's gonna affect me, you, everybody, because it's like um what me think of a think of a situation in life where all of a sudden you have a huge demand and then there's just like that pause, pause, like toilet paper during the house. Yes, yes, and then everyone, everyone is like, I need it, and everyone grabs it, and then there's nothing, and then you wait for it, right?

1:15:48 SPEAKER_04: Yes, wait, yes, I don't know because they don't make much money from it. Remember, everything is over money, which is fine. It's fine, price business, capitalism. But like if agile estrogen is so cheap, I think, God, how cheap is this? I just bought this for 12 bucks. Like the packaging, the pharmacy, the factory, the container, like this must be five cents to make, you know, right. My progesterone is 30 bucks for uh 90 days. Wow, this must be really cheap. My estrogen is like seven dollars for three months.

1:16:25 SPEAKER_04: Wow, they're not making any money, so there's really no driving factor for these pharmacies to be like, let's hire, let's, let's build a 45,000 square foot building and hire all of these workers so we can make a dollar a prescription. Totally makes sense. They're gonna keep making you know their their new medication for someone who has a crooked penis.

1:16:48 SPEAKER_01: But we'll stop strong. By the way, it's a whole other podcast. It's a whole other podcast.

1:16:54 SPEAKER_04: It's a whole other podcast. I mean, you know, I would say that's a real I would tell women, you know, find a compounding pharmacy near you, find a compounding pharmacy where you as an everyday person can make an account and know that that's a good thing to do because then when you go to your Walgreens and they're back ordered for three months and you go to Costco and they're backordered for two months, yeah, and you can just call up your compounding pharmacy and and just be like, Yeah, okay, well, I'm gonna pay a hundred bucks a month for my progesterone.

1:17:21 SPEAKER_04: And that sucks, but you know, so does it suck when your HVAC system goes out, and we sure find money to fix that.

1:17:27 SPEAKER_01: Sure, absolutely. So you take so like can you I know you don't have to share this because private, but you obviously take like what are you on and how long did it take you to feel better from sort of like from oh my god, I feel like crap, and like now, granted, you're still not sleeping well, so that needs to get fixed, my friends. That's where the thing is holding, and I'm gonna message my girls really quick, you guys, because I I told them I oh oh my phone's dead, actually.

1:17:50 SPEAKER_04: Um I I probably have about 10 minutes dead.

1:17:53 SPEAKER_03: I just literally this is my body. And I'll remind you too, my brother owns many compound pharmacies in California, and I wonder if you guys can connect and and work out, you know, he can compound because he's stuff all over. Oh my gosh.

1:18:07 SPEAKER_04: If you're yes, if you're yes, let me I'm gonna just let me I might go dark for just a second. I'm gonna message my doctor. Oh my gosh.

1:18:14 SPEAKER_01: So we can talk we can talk about crooked penises. I know, yes.

1:18:18 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

1:18:20 SPEAKER_03: Let's talk quickly about uh the uh the Mel Robbins podcast that uh that came out about um wild. Wild, like I yeah, it would like crazy that the uh what did she say? The average average size went erect when erect and to heal hear Mel Robbins say went erect, it killed me. When erect is five and a half like so crazy.

1:18:50 SPEAKER_01: I don't know. I mean I I don't know. I guess I feel lucky. I don't know. Like, where's my ruler? I you know, I mean, credit, like we all come in different shapes and sizes, but really like that's the average.

1:19:04 SPEAKER_03: What is five and a half? I mean, what is five and a half inches? Like I won't have my ruler, but that just seems like like this is an inch.

1:19:13 SPEAKER_01: Wait, like yeah, like that. No, what get where's your ruler? I don't have a I'm you have your phone, yeah. Getting on your phone, you've got on your Apple iPhone. What? Like the ruler on the place. You're totally tech. I'm not tech. I've never like the whole measuring tape on the iPhone. I've never seen that. Uh look at now. Okay, please. If I am gonna win on technology, then ruler on phone, ruler on phone.

1:19:39 SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah. Um, so when Amy's done, how do we uh what do we want to wrap up with?

1:19:48 SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, if you're in basically what Oregon Well, first of all, this is all the information you need, but no one go get it because we want to make sure that we can also get this.

1:19:57 SPEAKER_03: So maybe we should actually not even release our podcast until you're just kidding.

1:20:03 SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I would say that okay, it's going to hang on, please hold. I'm aiming the camera. Okay. I'm initializing. Yes. So we're clear, people. You can't actually see this, but okay, can you see? Measure a virtual table. Okay, wait. This is like stuff. This is like big, this is big information.

1:20:22 SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So, Mel, I don't know if you heard us when you were messaging your girlfriend.

1:20:25 SPEAKER_04: I totally heard that. Okay, this is so funny because that seems like that's so interesting. Because one of my girlfriends, when she was talking about my ex-husband, she's like, Yeah, his piece was like a lipstick tube. Like, imagine a lipstick, like a lipstick tube. No, turn up. We just we would just laugh and laugh and laugh.

1:20:42 SPEAKER_01: This is why men don't listen to us because, like, no, come on, that's not five and a half inches.

1:20:46 SPEAKER_04: You know what? You know what? I that's not five inches. No, this is like two. Yeah, that's two.

1:20:52 SPEAKER_03: Okay, I mean, that's a whole we're gonna actually, I feel like we need to do like a Mel Robbins podcast follow-up. And because when I went to her podcast and I read like all of the messages, uh, I would say 99% of the women were like, size matters. Like, what are you talking about? Because the the the doctor she had on was basically like, ladies, size doesn't matter. You and they can satisfy you other ways.

1:21:16 SPEAKER_04: So that's a whole other well, and I mean that's that's okay, that's true. Totally true. There's other things you can do. Of course, yes.

1:21:31 SPEAKER_04: Which I'm gonna just I'm gonna attempt your summates with another topic on that note.

1:21:36 SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay, just so we're clear, I'm looking at what this measureing tape is for five and a half, and like it's not large. Well, but yeah. So more power to you. You can do all the good stuff with that because like Amen. Hallelujah.

1:21:49 SPEAKER_04: Okay, anyway, all women are poor men, all the women are gonna be like, okay.

1:21:59 SPEAKER_04: Like, hey, no, okay, that makes it on me with this, and we're not gonna talk about it now because I gotta have this. I'm gonna have a virtual date with my girls. Um, but uh clitoris size, yeah, and testosterone. Okay. Uh-huh.

1:22:16 SPEAKER_03: Okay, and I'd also like to have me come back and let's talk about um like the different styles of our labia, our flowers, like all how we think that they, you know, maybe they don't look as good. What like, you know, I think it was such an eye-opener for me to have you say, we have to take care of them and moisturize them. Like, what?

1:22:39 SPEAKER_01: I was like, what are you talking about? I want to talk about when we do this again is I and you have a med spa, so I don't know if you guys offer that, but our local one here has like, I think it's called Empower Your Flower. And I think it's like tightening. Yeah, like sign me up.

1:22:53 SPEAKER_04: And I'm just gonna say really quick, we can talk about that more. But what I encourage people to do is before you pay thousands of dollars for radio frequency, vaginal wands, the P, you know, the PD injection, all those things. Yeah, go on vaginal estrogen cream and then come and talk to me later.

1:23:10 unknown: Okay.

1:23:11 SPEAKER_01: Okay, I love that. Okay, so wrapping it up. So A, thank you. We could literally have you on every freaking day, but you have fine. Yeah, I've already but now that you only sleep like three or four hours a night, like Amy, you're available. We can like get you on like it's four in the morning. I'm up at four in the morning. There you go. Yeah, and that's what we'll do for the hour that we can't sleep. We'll just jump on, do a quick series, and I'll go back to bed. You're amazing. Thank you so much.

1:23:38 SPEAKER_01: But we will list all the information.

1:23:41 SPEAKER_04: And also, um, oh my gosh, I just saw speaking of being a mother, uh, Caitlin goes, because I was gonna do, I was gonna drive to them tonight because I for some reason I had the timing different in my head. And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna be later. Let's all order food and we'll have dinner and just on Zoom. But I never said anything to Megan, who's the youngest. And Megan's always like, Mom, you literally never tell me anything in life. You don't have anything going with the family, nothing going with anyone.

1:24:06 SPEAKER_04: And and Caitlin just goes, uh, by the way, you never even said anything to Megan about this.

1:24:10 SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, so she thought you were coming. Like, I only have so much time in my life.

1:24:14 SPEAKER_01: It's not because I don't love you. You can't keep up with hard. Well, that's actually one of our next podcasts is gonna be about parenting and just parenting and also parenting adult children. It's like parenting is wild, it's so wild. So you go be with your family and your girls. Thank you so much for all of your amazing information.

1:24:34 SPEAKER_04: Literally, like, and let me just because you did say you asked me what I thought really quick, so I'm gonna tell you. Oh, yes. Um, so I'm on testosterone and I'm on estrogen, and I am on progesterone, and I have my little vaginal estrogen cream that I just got, and I take vitamin D in the morning and vitamin B, and I take L-theanine and with my progesterone at night. And I think it's really important for women to check their ferritin level too. A lot of women are really low on ferritin. So when you're taking hormones because they're plant-based, it's a couple of weeks before you notice anything.

1:25:09 SPEAKER_04: So that's the one thing I tell women and men this is not a drug, this is not a drug, this is a plant-based. Some people are very sensitive to hormones and they're like in the first week, they're like, oh my God, I already like have more energy. I'm waking up and I feel so great. And other people are like at four weeks, like, is anything changing? And I just say, the second you took it, things are changing in your body. Oh, okay. Notice it, but it is so it's a couple of weeks. But it really, what I really want to encourage women to do is when we cross over from raising children to taking care of ourselves, yeah, it is really takes intention.

1:25:43 SPEAKER_04: You have to go from taking your our kids are always number one. I my girls, I could be starving hungry right now. I could have not eaten all day, and I could have someone put a big steak in front of me. And if my daughter came by, she could come by and just eat the whole thing, and I would just sit there and be like, okay, of course, of course. That came by, I'd be like, Fuck off. Like, what are you doing?

1:26:05 unknown: You know?

1:26:06 SPEAKER_04: So I it's like, you know, it's like we we're we're so trained at that maternal love. We put everyone else first, but you have to switch. And I'm working on that this year, and I'm not there. I'm part I'm proud of you. That's why I'm that's why I work night and day.

1:26:22 SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the whole thing about the plane, right? The plane's going down, your oxygen mass is like drops. You're not putting it on your person next to you, you're putting it on yourself because you got it. And I think that's actually something we can talk about later on another episode is when women go through these, there's obviously we just talked about the physical changes, but we didn't really talk about the emotional changes. And I think the emotional changes and what we talked about in the beginning of talking to your kids about your emotion, uh, how you feel and you're a little off, it's affects your relationships with yourself, with your partner, whoever your significant other is, your friendships, your children.

1:26:56 SPEAKER_01: We need to talk about that because if your body is going through something and you're in a heightened state, everything else is affected. And I don't think I've ever talked to friends about the menopause other than the physical stuff going on. And I didn't know it having the, I didn't know it came with anxiety, and it came with all of these other symptoms that have nothing to do beyond how you're feeling. So I mean that's something totally different, and we'll we'll sidebar that for the minute. But that's I think critical too.

1:27:23 SPEAKER_04: And I I just want to circle back because you started this podcast saying that your friends, or was it Sada that said it had a friend that's on the brink of divorce. Sada said that you have two friends on the brink of divorce because of Um I don't do we don't have friends on the brink of divorce.

1:27:37 SPEAKER_03: Um not that anyone that I know of. Well, oh, you mean yes, yeah, yeah. So I can't name names, but there are uh women in my life that are on the struggle bus with all of these symptoms, maybe had kids later in life. So they're going through this forties and fifties uh shit with their body. And thinking it's raising kids when really the body, it's the hormones, it's the depletion, and also trying to raise children in these later years. Cause I do think now women have kids a little bit later and get married a little bit later.

1:28:15 SPEAKER_03: So, yes, absolutely. I didn't say that.

1:28:17 SPEAKER_04: So I just want to say that because my same analogy of the stake, we're all give it to someone else, but not my husband. I want to just open up the conversation and say that it's okay to say that we don't love our partners unconditionally. Yeah. Sure. I just think it's the taboo subject, and like you're so mean, and how could you possibly ever say that? But we don't love our partners unconditionally. I'm sorry, but we don't. Like when they're mean to us, we don't like them. And when they're mean for us two years, we get divorced.

1:28:44 SPEAKER_04: Do you know what I mean? So we're not meant, we're meant to breed, you know what I mean? We're not meant to care for our partners. So this is why going through hormones affects our marriage relationship, is because when we're miserable inside, we might be able to fake it to keep our job.

1:29:07 SPEAKER_04: But the man becomes the enemy. Now becomes like the thing that we have to take care of. And that's why that relationship is affected the most by the hormones. So I think such an important conversation.

1:29:23 SPEAKER_03: This has to be like a completely separate episode because this is like maybe even more massive than the actual conversation we're having here, which is the emotional, internal, marital, uh, all of that. Like um, of how to even like freaking stay married in this time, uh this day and age while you're going through the stuff that is, you know, yeah, this is so good.

1:29:47 SPEAKER_01: So good. So in this for part one, there will be a part two. After Amy, you get to like sleep eight hours a night. Yeah. Well then like in eight months, we'll do it circle back. That's your that's your goal is to go have dinner with your children. So say hello to them. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you to everyone who's listening. And we're hoping to get these uploaded up so we'll actually have videos you can see our gorgeous friend, Amy. And just thank you so much for all your time and your insight and all of your knowledge.

1:30:17 SPEAKER_01: It is so incredibly appreciated.

1:30:20 SPEAKER_03: We love you to pieces, and we're so grateful that you take time to take care of women when so many other providers don't. Like it is just you need to raise your prices, but we're grateful for you, is what I'm saying.

1:30:34 SPEAKER_04: I appreciate it. Oh, it's so nice to see you guys. I love doing it, Virgil. It's okay.

1:30:38 SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so much fun. So great seeing your pretty face. Say hi to your girls. Hitting you and seeing your face too soon. Okay, bye, Hillary. Love you. Okay. Voice mammals. Yeah, absolutely. Tomorrow.

1:30:51 SPEAKER_01: Bye.