YouTube interview (Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter interviewing Amber Schacter) in which Amber, co-owner of Pinnacle Integrative Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, describes becoming BRCA-positive at age 33, undergoing prophylactic surgery (hysterectomy, oophorectomy, mastectomy), and suffering severe post-surgical menopausal symptoms. She recounts unsatisfactory conventional medical responses and the onset of fatigue, hair loss, hot flashes, low libido, and diminished quality of life that led her to consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.
We are with Amber Schachter. She is the co owner and Pinnacle Integrative Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Wichita Falls, Texas. And Amber's going to talk a little bit about her own journey with bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Amber, tell us how you got interested in bioidentical hormone replacement.
Well, I was never interested in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, but Unfortunately I was 33 and I found out that I was BRCA positive. That's the BRCA gene that if you're found to have it, have this genetic mutation that you have to have a full hysterectomy. That means your ovaries and your uterus need to be removed along with a mastectomy. So all of my breast tissue, so all the estrogen sensitive tissues in my body were gone to reduce my risk of cancer. And after that happened, I went from hero to zero. I was tired, had had no energy, hair loss, terrible hot flashes. I'm a mother of two and I just started a new business and I go to my doctor and they tell me this is just how it's going to be. This is what to expect. My traditional gynecologist threw a bag of samples at me and told me to try them. And that was a disaster. My oncologist told me that it was best for me to just try to grin and bear these terrible side effects. And a lot of women do it and I would be fine in a few years. That didn't really come true for me. I continued to be lethargic. I had no sex drive. I think I was probably pretty difficult to be around. If you were to ask my husband.
Right, Josh, I think she was a.
Little difficult and I just wasn't thriving as an individual. Luckily, my husband, who is a physician, had just dealt with his own journey and found a wonderful doctor locally who had done a lot of work and knew kind of everything about hormone replacement therapy. So Josh got on testosterone and then I soon went to this doctor and he ran a full panel of labs. I don't know, took a lot of blood, but also spent a lot of time and talked to me about my history. Long story short, after a few months, I had amazing results within the first treatment. Within 48 hours, I didn't have hot flashes. I slept through the night for the first time in two years. These are life changing things for me. I then continued on the treatment, was able to lose weight, get back to my workout routine, enjoyed physical intimacy with my husband again, really felt like myself for the first time in Years I thought that it was the surgeries and my age, along with stress, that was making me feel the way I felt. I was convinced that this was just life and I needed to suck it up. And I am so grateful that I found a doctor who used the latest cutting edge science and technology to really treat me as an individual. But I'm more grateful than anything that we're able now to share this information with other people. I know so many women my age, older and younger than me, who are on this path, who the chemicals in their bodies are not serving them well. And there's no reason in this day and age that we should suffer. There's no reason to suffer in silence. This old studies that convince doctors to stop giving hormones have all been proven wrong and that they were false research and it didn't make sense in the way we actually treat people. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, these are all the things that we need. This is the fuel of our bodies. This is a part of the chemical cascade. And it gets so much more complicated than that. But. But I can tell you from my own journey that without bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, I wouldn't be a successful business owner. I wouldn't be smiling in front of you right now. I have no idea. The depth of depression and the way that I felt, it was really not bearable. So I have to say, and I urge everyone, of course, do your own research. Talk to your doctor. I'm not a medical professional, but I am an individual whose life has been changed so much for the better because of these sciences and technology. And I really urge anyone who are having these experiences, who had the feeling that I had, even if you've been told by a doctor that this is normal, even if somebody has told you that maybe hormone replacement therapy is dangerous, do your research. Come see our doctors and our wonderful nurse practitioner. She'll sit down with you. My experience with JC has been phenomenal. She really sees her patients and she's on her own formal replacement journey. So we're all speaking from a place of our own knowing and aren't selling anything that we don't participate or buy.
