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I don’t care what the numbers say I KNOW how I feel !!! August 26, 2010

Posted by Lyn in : Case Studies In Natural Compounded Hormone Therapy, Hot BHRT Topics, Uneducated doctors , add a comment

I just received this e-mail from a friend about her recent interaction with her doctor: “When he asked if I had concerns I told him I was going to the cottage his face got red and he laughed.  He said my labs didn’t indicate I was premenopausal.  BUT, he didn’t offer any other solutions or address my concerns in ANY way.  I am SO frustrated with that attitude.  I don’t care what the numbers say I KNOW how I feel.  Thanks again for helping me get better !  Most of all for understanding and listening to us ALL !”

YOU GO, GIRL!! You are exactly right. Until we women stand up for ourselves to our current non-validating practitioners, we will never be treated any differently. Just because natural hormone replacement therapy isn’t taught in medical school, does NOT make it a non-option. Especially because we are out of the big pharma network does not make us a wrong option. WE are ALL about women’s health and we have your back because quite frankly, no one else does. Isn’t it interesting that he determined you can’t possibly be having hormone issues because your blood levels indicate that. IF he would have used saliva testing, he could have seen your hormone levels at the tissue level of cells where it really matters. Of course that isn’t taught in medical school either. Heaven forbid he also check cortisol levels (only found in saliva-not blood) for adrenal heath AND the T3 in thyroid. Even endocrinologists don’t check T3 levels. Why? It wasn’t taught in medical school. I bet if a drug company came up with a drug to fix T3, it would be taught in the medical community tomorrow!
And let’s talk about bone health, shall we? If I hear one more woman say that she had a dexascan and discovered her bone density is in the osteopenia range (next step-osteoporosis) so her doctor told her to take calcium AND SHE BELIEVES him, I might just slap her! Seriously! The only way to build new bone is to signal the osteoblasts in the bone to make more. Guess what does that?? Customized Natural Homones! We check your current hormone levels and, if your testosterone levels are below range, we recommend testosoterone. NOT those drug coompany drugs currently on the market that actually interrupt the bone-building process. And guess what?? Just taking calcium will NOT build new bone. How stupid are we to believe that? we have to ask why our bones lose density in the first place as we get older? What is different? Is our diet different? Are we suddenly drinking less milk to lose bone mass? And why isn’t drinking more milk fixing the issue? The same reason taking calcium supplements isn’t. One loses hormones through the aging process, so replacing those hormones with natural hormone therapy is the answer.
Until WE stop taking our doctors’ word as law and start thinking for ourselves, things won’t change. YOU are exactly right! YOU know how YOU feel and YOU know there are answers for YOU. YOU are in charge of YOUR journey. Congratulations to YOU for stepping up to the plate and being an advocate for YOUR body. Thank you for your trust in us at the Happy Hormone Cottage and our Piqua Medicine Shoppe. We have your back and I promise you, you WILL feel better.
Warmly,
Lyn

“LET ME CHECK WITH MY DOCTOR!” July 8, 2010

Posted by admin in : Hot BHRT Topics, Natural Hormone Compounding Doctors, Uneducated doctors , add a comment

I love when I hear this…..”I just want to check with my doctor before I sign up for customized natural hormone therapy.” I always think to myself, “WHY??”  I know women love their doctors. I also have a great one, Dr. Paul, whom I enjoy, actually get a kick out of, and I KNOW he has my best health as his goal. But when I took in all of my studies and literature on natural hormone therapy AND I told him this is not only my philosophy BUT MY PASSION (!), he looked at me like I had grown two heads!! He had really never heard about it; most certainly had NOT learned anything about it in medical school, so really couldn’t add much to the conversation. Trust me when I tell you that doctors are NOT learning this in medical school! They ARE learning how to diagnose and treat illnesses with drug therapy. This is just what they do. And that’s not a bad thing! I know when I’m sick, I go to my doctor, he diagnoses my illness, prescribes my medication and I get better. That is his job and I appreciate that. BUT IN THIS AREA OF WOMEN’S HEALTH-HORMONE IMBALANCE-HE IS PRETTY MUCH OUT OF THE LOOP! Identifying a hormone imbalance involves checking hormone levels, preferably through saliva testing, which measures the hormones at the tissue level of cells; and then creating a specific strategy customized for THAT individual to best replace those hormones with customized, compounded hormones that bioidentically match the hormones that are no longer being produced in your body. Pretty simple! It is a matter of determining the CAUSE of the imbalance and fixing that; not just drugging you as a band-aid to alleviate the symptoms. See the difference? One method determines the cause and fixes that. The other simply ignores the cause and just drugs to help alleviate the symptoms.  I discovered that most women in my age group were all on anti-depressants for their hormone imbalance because that is really all their doctor knew how to do. That is why I opened my Happy Hormone Cottage. I just couldn’t take one more woman being put on an antidepressant or worse, a synthetic drug masking as a hormone, where there are serious health risks associated with them. And to have this method as THE standard of care just boggles my mind! How did we let this happen?? I think it is exactly because women say, “Let me check with my doctor.” Why NOT say, “Let me do some research. I know there is information out there….let me find it. I want to become informed and empowered in THIS area of my life!” Because the truth is that if YOU don’t do that and you JUST rely on the opinion of others-probably most especially the opinion of those who have gone to medical school, your hormone imbalance issues: weight gain, fatigue, low libido, memory issues, brain fog, low energy and no joy-will simply be band-aided with drug therapy and you will never really find the cause to fix that. This is why I do what I do. We have to get the word out there. Just because natural hormone balance isn’t taught in medical schools does not make it a bad thing. It just makes it something WE have to learn about and teach our doctors! So the next time I hear, “Let me check with my doctor,” I’m going to say, “Why don’t you go teach your doctor what YOU know.  YOU could be the one to change lives!”

TO BHRT OR NOT TO BHRT-THAT IS THE QUESTION!! June 28, 2010

Posted by Lyn in : Hot BHRT Topics, Uneducated doctors , add a comment

I heard it again! One of my neighbors, late 30’s, actually talked her doctor into doing a hormone check on her and of course, “Your results are normal!” Why the big surprise? Her practitioner used blood serum to check her hormone levels, where the levels have been depleted by the heart, and the ranges that are used are set for post-menopausal women. At least her levels were checked. I do appreciate that. What I don’t appreciate is the “normal’ ” comment. What is normal anyway? Is “normal” for someone else the same thing as “normal” for you?? I think not. Hormone imbalances are not age OR gender specific. They can happen to women age 18-98 AND men. I will say it again: in this area of women’s health, where the waters are very muddy and the misinformation and untruths are perpetuated, it is up to YOU to become empowered and educated. Do the research; read the books. In fact, a great place to start is with Natural Hormone Balance by Dr. Uzzi Reiss. This is a great read and written in layman’s terms to give you the truth on natural hormone balance. Secondly, it IS OKAY TO QUESTION YOUR DOCTOR WHEN S/HE GIVES INFORMATION. Much of what we do is outside the realm of medical training. Trust me on this-NATURAL HORMONE BALANCE WAS NOT TAUGHT IN MEDICAL SCHOOL. For example, when your practitioner tells you that customized hormone replacement therapy is not FDA approved so it should not be an option, YOU can actually inform your practitioner of the reason: The FDA approves drugs that are manufactured for the masses. When we customize therapy for just one, WE are instead strictly regulated by the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy. HOWEVER, THE PRODUCTS THAT WE MAKE ARE INDEED FDA APPROVED: ESTRADIAL, PROGESTERONE AND TESTOSTERONE. So that argument is really an untruth. Let’s get with the program people!! YOU are in charge of YOUR health. YOU need to get educated. YOU need to think for yourself. It is OK to ask questions and to even question your doctor. Only YOU know the best plan of action for YOU.

I FEEL THE LOVE!! (not) June 8, 2010

Posted by Lyn in : Case Studies In Natural Compounded Hormone Therapy, Hot BHRT Topics, Uneducated doctors , 2comments

I have never been one to blog unless I felt I had something significant to say. Boy, do I have something to say now! You will never believe what happened today! We had a client come through our cottage a few weeks ago for her free consultation. We listened to her and together, developed a strategy to deal with her hormone imbalance. In essence she was on board to “get tested, get treated and get better.” At least that was our game plan! Unfortunately, when we got her lab results back and sent our recommendation for her hormone balance to her practitioner to sign off on it, and fax it back so we could make her customized therapy, there was a glitch! This client went to a practitioner who we advise against because she is non-supportive of customized therapy. She would rather slap an estrogen patch on you or presribe a one-size-fits-most progesterone capsule based on your symptoms and be done with it. We strongly, passionately disagree! We feel women deserve to be respected enough to actually check their hormone levels. How is this difficult or even controversial?? Don’t doctors check every other level known to man (and woman)?? Again I beg the answer to “WHY NOT HORMONE LEVELS?”
Why NOT check hormone levels and then plan a strategy for restoring hormone balance via natural options? Why not just customize the therapy for that client?? How hard can this be really?? You guessed it! This practitioner talked our client out of customized hormone therapy that we recommended based on HER body’s levels, and instead prescribed the commercially available prometrium capsule. Although both are bioidentical progesterone, we get far greater success with our compounded progesterone cream because we can make necessary dosage adjustments during the process of balancing your hormones. From our point of view, using progesterone cream is a superior way to treat progesterone deficiency. Being able to adjust therapy is the key to success. I fully expect to hear from this client in the future when she isn’t experiencing the success she was promised. And we have no options to adjust her dosage when she is taking prometrium capsules. OUR focus is helping women get better with strategies that are customized for them.
In this case, this client loses.

Are You Serious? Really?? April 5, 2010

Posted by Lyn in : Case Studies In Natural Compounded Hormone Therapy, Uneducated doctors , 3comments

You know I love meeting with and talking with “my women” who come to the cottage. I really like meeting with them at the end of the process and getting them started on their customized natural hormone replacement therapy. This is after they have already met with their (or one of ours)practitioner, so s/he can sign off on our recommendation for their hormone balance. I swear my life would be SO easy if I didn’t have to keep fighting with practitioners! I am so blessed to have the ones working with me that we have. They are wonderful people who truly respect and validate women-especially in this area of hormone balance-and they believe in what we are doing. They know that we have science on our side. It’s the doctors who don’t want anything to with anything that requires them to think outside the box and maybe, just maybe, approve of something that isn’t FDA-approved that is the most frustrating. You know that the FDA approves manufactured drugs.(drugs for the one-size-fits-all mentality) By the nature of our business, which is compounding, it is a customized dosage made specifically for an individual. So the FDA can’t approve it; it is not manufactured. So when a doctor tells their patients that they don’t like compounded therapy because it is not FDA approved, that isn’t really an argument. Compounding is NOT manufacturing for the masses; it is making a specific dosage with a specific delivery system for a single individual. So that argument doesn’t have any merit. So when THAT argument becomes a moot point, my new personal favorite is what I heard from one of my clients on Friday. She said that when she went to her doctor, (female ob-gyn)and said she wanted to work with the Happy Hormone Cottage and the Piqua Medicine Shoppe and Compounding Pharmacy, the dr said, “Oh, that compounding! It really is BS, you know!!” Really? Seriously? I wonder if she would like to tell this to the Hospice patients for whom we compound transdermal therapy all the time to help ease their pain, because they can no longer swallow (or make the delivery system sublingual, etc.)or the pet owner whose beloved pet needs a customized therapy to save its life, and their only hope is a compounding pharmacy. Or the cancer patient who is so ill, s/he can’t tolerate the FDA-approved manufactured drugs that are available. I like to think that compounding pharmacies are the pharmacies for the people. After all, compounding has been around for centuries. Drug companies have only been around for a few decades. Compounding is problem-solving for the patient. Drug companies are motivated by money. Big difference. So the next time your practitioner wants to put down compounding as a bunch of BS, I would highly recommend you find another practitioner; one who will listen, respect and validate you enough to think outside the box, and work as a team with us: the happy hormone cottage and our compounding pharmacy. Because our passion and goal is to make you feel better by getting at the root cause of your issues…..NOT just drugging you to make you feel better by prescribing a one-size-fits-most FDA approved drug. We need to challenge the accepted belief among some of our practitioners today, and that challenge starts with YOU. When YOU begin to stand up for YOUR beliefs and YOU REFUSE to be emotionally bullied by a doctor who refuses to listen to YOU, then change will begin to happen. It begins with YOU.

It Happened Again! (or doctors’ ignorance on natural hormone replacement…stop the madness!!) March 3, 2010

Posted by Lyn in : Uneducated doctors , 1 comment so far

My husband has told me never to blog when I’m angry! I am not going to take his advice this time! I just got a call from a client who went to a doctor (I have heard of him but he is not on my website as one of the doctors we work with) to have him sign off on our recommendation (prescription) for her natural compounded hormone therapy. I tell my clients all the time to make the call BEFORE your appt to make sure that dr will sign off on what we do, because doctors know drugs and what we do is NOT a drug! So Andie goes to this doctor for his permission and he won’t sign off on it.(big surprise!!) I am ok with a doctor not signing off on something he is not familiar with and admitting it. But this doctor went on to not only say he didn’t know much about it because “hormones aren’t his area of expertise,” he THEN proceeded to put the fear of God into Andie about taking hormones and what too much can do and ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.
He then proceeded to do a blood test to measure the hormomes because he couldn’t validate the saliva testing that we do. On top of that, when Andie suggested that he go to my website where he will find many, many clinical studies on BHRT and the efficacy of what we do, his response was, “I am not going to go to some website and read about this!” The sad truth is that now Andie-periomenopausal and miserable: can’t sleep, no energy, no libido, foggy thinking etc…..all treatable with checking her current hormone levels and then replacing them with customized, natural therapy made just for her….is confused and caught in the middle. Who does she trust? Her doctor or us? I feel her pain! I am totally empathetic! It just makes me so angry that doctors who know nothing about natural hormone replacement have to throw out false facts that scare and confuse their patients, instead of just saying, “You know what? This is not something I am familiar with, but let me check into it for you. Let me read, make some calls, get some answers and maybe we can meet again soon to talk about this some more.”
How awesome would that be? Now Andie is left to muddle through the maze once again. So a woman who could have gotten tested, treated and better is now left to continue to suffer and to have a lower quality of life that impacts the entire family unit……….ALL because a medical professional who knows nothing about natural hormone balance refuses to become educated, therefore perpetuating the myths surrounding hormone replacement. Let me say once again that natural hormone balance is hormone replacement. It is NOT hormone substitution (premarin, prempro, prevara, estrotest, etc) that CAN cause serious health risks. To lump ALL hormone therapy under one umbrella and call it ALL bad is like saying that ALL fruit is bad because apples (i.e. premarin) has been known to cause breast cancer. Does this make any sense to you…or is it just me??!! I hope I live long enough to see the day when doctors will actually love middle-years women enough to take the time to become educated in this area, ask the tough questions and actually find the CAUSE of her hormone issues and maybe, just maybe, realizing that to REPLACE these hormones in her body so she can get her life back JUST MAKES SENSE!