Episode 14: Unlocking Your Beauty with Rachel Varga

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha.

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Season.

I can't wait to see you in there.

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Functional Gynecologist. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, and Insomnia, you name it. Then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome.

Okay, ladies.

This is going to be an awesome episode. So I interviewed Rachel Varga for the podcast. She's a board-certified esthetician. Aesthetic Nurse Specialists, and she's been doing this since 2011. She's an international clinical trainer, a speaker, academically published award-winning author in the field of plastic and aesthetic nursing. So through education on skincare, laser rejuvenation, and non-surgical procedures and healing lifestyle practices, Rachel helps inspire women with her unique toolkit to navigate and strategize aging impossibly well using the science Of beauty, we're going to talk about all that on the podcast today, and definitely check out the show notes because she does have a free ebook that's available to you called Unlocking Your Vitality eBook. It's a strategic guidebook for learning about the most effective rejuvenation solutions available today. If you want to find out more about Rachel after listening to this episode, which I know you will, check out her at rachelvarga. That's her website, rachelvarga.ca, and the link will be in the show notes as well. So she does one-on-one virtual consultations in which she does a personal assessment for you, educates you on your skincare needs, skin and laser treatment options, and non-invasive skin rejuvenation procedures. She also has an awesome masterclass called Unlocking Your Vitality. Which is an exclusive 30+ expert video series uncovering exactly what her most vibrant patients are doing to get the skin they want and aging impossibly well. So here she is, you're gonna love her. Thanks for listening in.

Well, welcome, Rachel. Thanks for coming on my podcast to share your wealth of knowledge. When I first—

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, you're welcome. When I first When I first saw you online through our Mindshare community, I was excited to see that you were practicing in such a holistic manner, incorporating the mind, body, spirit. You're helping women with their inner beauty through their outer aesthetics. I think that's really cool. You know, I'm always worried or working on their inner stuff, and I think when you look good, you feel good. So tell me how you got into this.

Oh, this is a question that I actually love getting asked. I first started my nursing career as a pediatric ICU nurse, and when I graduated nursing through the University of Victoria here on Vancouver Island, I didn't quite feel finished with learning.

Okay.

And I actually thought that my path was going to be either as a naturopathic physician or a medical doctor. So I actually did all my med school prerequisites while I was working as a peds ICU nurse and fell in love with physical sciences. Had a rejuvenation treatment myself and thought, well, I feel like I could have had better pre-post care assessment education. And I feel like I have a pretty good eye for symmetry and alignment and proportions. My father's a carpenter and he would teach me at a very young age, Rachel, do you notice that that roofline is a little crooked? Or that painting is a little crooked and needs some adjusting. So that was kind of instilled in me at a really young age, the idea of aesthetics and geometry and proportions and, and, and sort of spatial awareness and things like that. And I really wanted to understand what it was like to actually run a medical office. So I found a great oculoplastic surgeon here in my community and wanted to see what it was all about running an office. So I promised him a year as an aesthetic nurse, and it's been almost 10. So I just I kind of just fell in love with aesthetic nursing and, and all the learning opportunities and ways to help people in a very holistic way, not just on the outside. But if you want great skin, newsflash, you have to do the inner stuff too.

Yes. Yeah, that is what I really want my patients to understand and my listeners. Tell me, what are some common things you can look at someone and see in their skin to know that they're not healthy?

Well, first of all, if they're a smoker, they are going to have a dusky appearance. Their skin will have this sort of grayish pallor to it. And if people present with having a lot of diffuse redness to the nose and the cheek area, sometimes they've been told in the past they have rosacea. 9 times out of 10, this is anecdotal, of course, but I just find that they're just lacking in a couple of key areas of their skin. Just kind of 4 basic steps: cleanser, moisturizer, sunscreen, exfoliation. And yeah, breakouts can often be a sign of really what's going on on the inside. Same with eczema and psoriasis. So that's where practitioners like you come in with the functional medicine background to really kind of tie it all together and link the skin to the gut and all of that.

Yeah, I love that. So is there a basic skincare regimen that you would recommend for all women or? Do we all have to, you know, find something individual?

I would say it's great to work with a professional. So, for example, my patients that come to see me in the clinic or online for online consultations, I can take a look at their skin, if they're dry, if they're oily, if they're sensitive, if they're acne-prone, if they have melasma. Different skin conditions can require a different type of protocol. But in general, if people are cleansing the skin morning and night, I like to have a little bit of glycolic Acid in the cleanser just to work as a really nice chemical exfoliant. And chemical is not a word to be afraid of. Water and air are chemicals.

Right.

What matters is if they're toxic. Yeah. And then moisturizing the skin morning and night, using a mineral-based sunscreen, not a chemical filter, and doing some mechanical exfoliation a couple of nights a week. But I noticed a big difference in people who use medical-grade skincare, which is backed by research and properly formulated with a professional chemist. And has great actives like vitamin C, E, hyaluronic acid, peptides, a little bit of vitamin A, as opposed to what people will get at Shoppers Drug Mart, or, you know, the department stores, which is usually full of toxins, and it's got a lot of marketing behind it, not necessarily science and research.

Yes, so true. So true. So let's talk about your virtual consultation. That's pretty unique. thing that you do, right?

Yeah. I started to clue into the fact that when people were coming to see me and I was spending an hour with them and going over what their goals were, what a basic skincare routine could look like for them that could help address their goals, and really diving into the different rejuvenation options alongside a personalized one-on-one assessment and education session, it really took a full hour. And people would come to see me and say they'd had another consultation at another dermatology office or plastic surgeon's office or med spa. And someone only spent 15 minutes with them talking about, say, for example, lines between the brows or lines around the eyes. And I just started to clue into the fact that the level of care that I was providing unfortunately wasn't the norm. And I thought, hey, this isn't fair for just people in my local community to access this. People all over can really benefit from this. So, you know, we are in the age of information. So there we go. You can book a Skype call or FaceTime and I can help you out from wherever you are, which is really great, especially for a busy professional. You don't necessarily have time to go from appointment to appointment and it can be done from the comfort of your own home. It's very private. It's great.

Yeah, that is wonderful. What would you say is your most popular procedure? That you do?

Oh, I'd have to say the HydraFacial.

Okay, and what does that entail?

Oh gosh, I must have done 2 chemical peels and 3 HydraFacials today, actually, alongside other, alongside other treatments. But the HydraFacial, have you ever wet-vacced your carpet or your upholstery?

Yeah.

It's kind of like that for the face.

Oh, nice.

It's pretty funny. So it uses vacuum to pull out dirt and debris from the pores, and then it infuses different cleansing solutions into the skin or a glycolic acid chemical peel, anywhere from a 7.5% to 14%. And also you get an infusion of peptides, and the skin is just beautiful, glassy, hydrated, dewy, a little bit shiny from all the goodness that's been applied. And that's a great sort of first treatment. And this is better than, say, going to the spa for a facial because you're getting a bit of a deeper chemical peel and dermal infusion with it. But it's different than a dermal— dermabrasion or like a salt facial or some of these other pieces of technologies that are out there. The HydraFacial, in my opinion, is kind of the bee's knees right now.

It sounds pretty amazing. It's like a deep cleanse.

Yeah, it's like a skin reset. Okay. Good for every change of season.

Okay, that's wonderful. Do you do any light therapy?

Yeah, we were talking about this before getting on the call. The IPL type of device, intense pulsed light, and the brand of IPLs you and I both use is the Sciton BBL. BBL stands for broadband light, and there's 2 amazing Stanford studies actually on the BBL. One of them that basically had people look at people's faces after getting these light therapy treatments, getting rid of redness and brown spots, broken capillaries. And they were basically said to look 10 years younger. And then there's another Stanford study that talks about the change in gene expression. So in our 50s compared to our 30s, different genes are turned on and off. It's almost like a switch has gone off.

Yeah.

And so the expression is like opposite. So the BBL actually helps to take that gene expression in a 50-year-old and have the genes function in a way that's closer to a 30-year-old.

Yeah, it's wonderful. I love the whole skin tight. It just, it brightens women up because it just, they look fresh and rejuvenated, you know, they don't look worn and tired. And so I love the skin tight with BBL. That's fabulous.

It's kind of like taking a magic eraser to the skin.

I love that.

Awesome.

Yeah, exactly. What type of things do you recommend to your patients as far as like diet and lifestyle to help with their skin?

Keep it clean.

Okay.

Meet with a nutritionist, figure out what your specific constitution needs. So if you have to do gene testing, if you have to do like a 200-point questionnaire with your nutritionist like I did, I thought I was eating really well. My husband's a pro athlete, but it turns out I do terrible with dairy and grains.

So like so many, like so many.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So really just find out what's right for you. So it's not about going gluten-free or paleo or vegan. It's like, what is right for your constitution? And you're not going to know that by trying to Google it.

Right.

Meet with a professional, figure out what your body wants.

Such, such good advice. Oh my goodness. So we were also talking before the podcast started, you do vaginal laser rejuvenation the same as I do. What got you into that area?

I spent about 2 years getting my hands on some of the quote unquote top devices out there and was actually really disappointed with a lot of the lasers that are touted as being amazing for skin tightening or skin lifting or resurfacing. Either they were too painful, they didn't provide the results that the patient wanted or that I thought was acceptable for the price point, or weren't detailed enough so we couldn't get the periocular area or the perioral area, which means around the eyes or the mouth area. And so I stumbled upon this one laser. It's called the Fotona. And it's the Tona SP Dynamis. So the vaginal rejuvenation on that one uses an erbium laser. So it basically finds the water in the tissue and it's looking for a target, which is called a chromophore, and it heats it up. And it's really great for causing vaginal tract tissue contraction. And so it's great for tightening, it's great for lubrication, it's great for sensation, takes you down from like 20 minutes to 5 minutes, if you know what I mean. There's so much great technology out there now. I see it help a lot of women with urgency. So if they're on a car ride and they have to go for, you know, a washroom break every 5, 10 minutes, after these treatments they don't have that same urgency anymore. Or I had— I've had a number of them done and they're amazing. And I used to jump rope at the gym and it kind of felt like, oh, like maybe I could have a little bit of leakage. And then all of a sudden, I was jumping rope. It's like, oh, everything like feels really nice and like tight. And, and you don't have that sensation of like, oh, am I going to lose my bladder?

Maybe. Mm-hmm.

Helps with so many different things.

Yeah, I would say that's probably what my patients rave about most is even after their first treatment, they're no longer peeing their pants at the gym. You know, a lot of them quit going to the gym just because it's so embarrassing and invasive. So they just love that, that laser tightens everything up and supports So we don't have to get these, these meshes anymore. I know. I used to do those meshes. I used to do all those vaginal reconstructive surgeries, put mesh in patients, and, you know, I was a pretty good surgeon, so I didn't have complications, but I was always nervous and worried because it is a permanent foreign object in patients' bodies and it can cause complications and issues. So I was super excited to find An alternative solution to that?

There's a couple of different vaginal rejuvenation options as well, and the Sciton one, that one's an erbium, and then it has another application as well. And the photonal one that I'm talking about is erbium, and then there are other ones that are either radiofrequency and they're kind of ionizing the tissue, and then other ones use magnets to stimulate muscle contractions.

Oh, yes, I sat on one of those. What was the name of that? Impress or something? Do you know what I'm talking about?

There's a few out there right now and I'm not sure about them.

I'm not either because I sat on it and it was so intense I couldn't stay sitting on it. I've had a low back injury in the past and so they think that's why I was so sensitive to it, but You know, I'm sure a lot of women probably couldn't handle it. It was pretty intense. But I do like the idea of tightening up the pelvic floor and strengthening all those muscles, that type of thing.

We'll see if it passes the 8-year rule test that I have.

Yes, I've heard you talk about that. You know, let it be on the market for a few years before you show it to your patients, and I completely agree. That's why I've wanted the vaginal laser for many years and I finally just got it this year because you want to make sure it's safe. And, you know, if anything's going to come out, it's going to come out in the first couple of years, any concerns. So I think we're in the clear.

Yes, conservatism is king with everything.

Right, exactly. So what is your best advice for helping women to age well?

Well, first of all, It's not just one thing. So it's basically putting all the little pieces of the puzzle together. And I really hold people's hands through this type of journey of understanding that in my ebook. And I have a full web series called Unlocking Your Vitality. And it's all about, well, really just what I've seen my most vibrant patients do. And it's not the 20-year-olds with the clear skin and all the collagen. It's the 60-something-year-olds that have really learned to develop their self-care practices, and they radiate so much brighter than my younger patients that, you know, they don't have that learned wisdom. They don't have their, you know, body, mind, spirit, and energy practices kind of dialed in. They haven't really discovered that yet.

Yeah.

So it's really body, mind, spirit, energy. And obviously, all of those are massive topics on their own. But it's really all of that. It's— you can get all the injectable treatments in the world, all the laser treatments in the world, have all the money in the world for makeup and cosmetic creams and this and the other thing. But it's really the holistic stuff. I know that probably sounds a bit cheesy, but it's just the straight up truth.

Yeah, no, I spend hours with patients working on all that other stuff. So I completely agree. I agree wholeheartedly. And I think we neglect ourselves for decades as women a lot of times, and we wait until after we're done having children and we're getting through menopause, and then we finally look at ourselves and the damage is done. You can see it. And so I really encourage women to take more of the preventative approach and start earlier. You know, it's a lot easier to keep the skin looking beautiful than to get it back. So I think all of those aspects are so important. I do remember you talking on a different podcast about what you think about Botox versus neuromodulators. Can you talk about that for a little bit? Because that's pretty popular, you know, we don't want to have wrinkles, that type of thing. So can you speak to that?

Yeah, for sure. And I don't want to kind of shoot myself in the foot with this or kind of like irritate people, but there is an alternative to Botox. So there's a number of different neuromodulators on the market. Let's just talk about the science quickly here. So neuromodulators, botulinum toxin has been used since the '80s and it has a great safety track record. And in terms of spread, there has been To my understanding, on the black box label, no known cases of spread of the product to other areas of the body. There have been cases of spread with, say for example, children with cerebral palsy. They're getting like almost 1,000 units in their quadriceps. Sure, some of that might have gotten into a blood vessel and gone systemically. And we're using 100 units or less in our face, and it might migrate about a centimeter. But the thing we want to pay attention to now are the protein complexes and the potential for neutralizing antibodies to be formed. What that means is the protein complexes have been shown to potentially cause people to not respond to the treatment over time. So this is kind of what we're seeing now. And that could be a huge pain if someone's getting treatments done and they're like, oh, it's not working anymore. So there are other options that don't have the extra complexing proteins. And I don't know about you, but I like my skincare to be as clean as possible, free of parabens, phthalates, artificial dyes, fragrances.

Right, right.

All of that. So I personally choose to go with some of the cleaner options out there. So what you want to do is really just look at the molecular weight of these things. So Botox has a molecular weight of about 900 kilodaltons. Dysport is another option. I think that one's about 750. And then Xeomin just has the active component and weighs 175. I wrote an academic article and made a little table up kind of showing the difference in— the differences in weights and what the complexing proteins are made of. So if you're wanting cleaner, there are cleaner options out there. You're— we kind of hear Botox as like Kleenex, right? The brand Kleenex. There's other types of tissues there. And so they can often get confused. But the thing is, is that if you're not feeling well, if you're fighting an infection or viral infection, kind of have a cold or the flu, like don't get any of these cosmetic procedures. They're elective. Have them done when you're feeling well. So those are the neuromodulators. They help to modulate the message from the nerve to the muscle and they work locally. And I've had patients do really well with them over the last decade that, you know, I've been offering these treatments. But I do like to offer cleaner options at this time, me personally. And then there's dermal fillers like hyaluronic acid fillers. Well, hyaluronic acid is already in our body. We lose it over time.

Mm-hmm.

So actually, hyaluronic acid fillers carry a higher risk than neuromodulators because we could inadvertently block blood vessels in the face, causing another area of the face to not get the blood supply it needs or even blindness. So there's this massive epidemic. I know I'm going on a tangent here, but this is really important for people to know. Do not buy your skincare products and any injectable products, any sort of at-home devices off eBay or Amazon or any of these, you know, potentially shady websites. And you can watch a documentary on Netflix called Broken to kind of explain why. But the counterfeit beauty industry is a bit of a health epidemic right now. So there's a lot of aesthetic nurses all over North America speaking out about this. Because people will actually try and buy these injectables online and inject themselves. And then so many of my colleagues are, you know, posting complications from people that bought this filler from China and it was super cheap, but it looked like the same thing. Well, you know, that Louis Vuitton on eBay sure looks real too, doesn't it?

Right. That is so scary. So safety is key.

Work with the professionals.

Yes, definitely. Oh my gosh. Okay, so we've got to send everybody to Rachel Vargas' website so we can do it safely. Oh, the one last thing I think about being a gynecologist is how our skin receptors— our skin has estrogen receptors, and a lot of women notice skin changes after menopause. Have you noticed a difference in clients who are on bioidentical hormones versus not, or can you speak to that at all?

Yes, I'll preface that question with sharing a paper. I actually have this paper posted on my social, on my Instagram, and it's a paper that was published in 2017. It was looking at the facial shape changes over time between men and women, and I hate to say this, but women from age 50 to 60 experienced 3 times faster Mm-hmm. Their facial shape changes compared to men. So what that means is women just are inherently going to age faster than our male counterparts during that time with, with hormonal changes. And yes, I'd say at probably 37, 38 to 41, I start to notice a drop in elastin in my patients' skin. So it gets a little bit thinner and crepier. So whatever we can do to mitigate that that change that's going to happen in our 50s, the better, right? So it's not just waiting to learn about skincare until after you've had your kids or your kids have moved out. It's what can you do along every step of the way to care for yourself?

Yes, definitely. And I think that's where BBL also comes into play. It does a great job of maintaining your collagen, your elasticity, you know. Wouldn't you agree?

Light is energy. Yeah. My mom actually said yesterday, I had a little visit with my mother and I did a BBL for her about a month ago. And she's like, oh, I feel like the skin around my jowls is a little bit tighter. What do you think, Rachel? And yeah, I thought it looked great. I treated my mother-in-law too, and her skin is like glowing right now. It's insane. Yeah. The bioidentical hormones, I'd say it's not for everybody. My mother actually developed estrogen-receptive breast cancer and she was on HRT. That was the bioidentical stuff. So I'd just say it's different for everybody. You know, she also wasn't really looking after herself. She was a night nurse and she dedicated her life to caring for others. So would she have still had that breast cancer diagnosis had she have been actually looking after herself as opposed to putting other people's needs before hers? I don't know. So I would leave that up to the professionals like yourself if someone's a candidate for HRT.

Yeah. Well, I love that you give women other options to keep their skin looking beautiful. So I, I just think that's so important. So you have an ebook, Unlocking Your Vitality. Where can women find this?

Just on my website at rachelvarga.ca. If you just scroll down, you'll see, you know, you can access The book, my course, or a consultation with me. And I just love helping people out. So if you don't have any funds to spend on purchasing, just follow me on social, podcast, Rachel Varga Podcast. I do some really funny celebrity plastic surgery reviews on YouTube.

Yeah, yeah.

I drop some knowledge bombs there too. So, you know, I just kind of— I think it's important for men and women, no matter what their, you know, socioeconomic background is, to be able to learn at least the basics. And for sure, I share that stuff everywhere.

Awesome. Well, wonderful. Yeah, everybody go watch, go follow Rachel Vargas. She's doing awesome things. I love every— watching everything you're doing. So thanks for joining me today. It's been great.

Yeah, I have a question for you. So I'm I'm seeing a really big shift with traditionally trained medical doctors transitioning into functional medicine. And I just want to say good for you.

Thank you.

Because I think that there's still the stigma in medical training that alternative and holistic therapies isn't backed by science. Well, that stuff's changing. And I just really want to commend you for being on the forefront of that. So why did you get into You know, switching from an OB-GYN to adding that functional medicine practice?

Oh, well, thank you. It's been a hard transition. You know, I agonized over doing this, actually, but I've been on a health journey for a long time trying to figure out my Hashimoto's thyroid condition and trying to figure out why I had chronic fatigue and exercise muscle-induced fatigue and other things. And a lot of it was my lifestyle, you know, being an obstetrician, being up every couple of nights, not getting sleep. It was a horrible lifestyle, eating poorly, living stressed out all the time, worrying about life-and-death situations. And it wasn't until I injured my back and had to be off for 4 months that I finally found clarity. I was trying to fix myself because conventional medicine failed me, and I found the world of functional medicine and it just opened my eyes to so many amazing opportunities and situations to heal. And I just thought, wow, I've really had blinders on. I've been in this system that is controlled by the pharmaceutical industry and the government. And it was really scary to realize that I was in that place and that there was a better way for me to treat my patients. And once my eyes were opened, I couldn't go back, you know? I would try to go back to my job and I lasted about a year, but all of a sudden I wanted to talk to patients about their diet and their stress management and Their sleep habits and their relationships, and that doesn't work with 15-minute appointments, you know. So that, oh, that took me on a big journey, and I tried to fight the system and they didn't want to work with me, so I had to leave completely. And now I work at a wellness center where I get to have an hour, an hour and a half with a patient and really dive into what's important and what's actually going to Heal them, getting to the root cause of their issues. You know, I just, I couldn't give the pill for an ill and push them out the door anymore. It just wasn't sitting well with my soul. And I've gotten a lot of backlash from my conventional colleagues. And to some extent, I don't blame them because they don't realize what they don't realize. You know, I had no idea. what was out there. And I'm in Michigan, and I would say the majority of people don't know what functional medicine is yet, but, you know, I've never lived by the rules, really. I've always been a rule breaker, so I'm just doing it. I'm bringing it out here. I'm being brave, and I'm just trying to spread the knowledge because that is where science is. They are at the forefront of science, and, you know, the research is panning out. And it's going to take medicine a long time to acknowledge and be, you know, open to change, but I'm okay being the black sheep. That's okay. So thank you for asking. It's been quite the journey.

Yeah.

But, and now I just feel passionate about, like, sharing this message and getting it out to women because, you know, out on the West Coast or where you're at, It's common knowledge, but it's just not for a lot of the country still.

Yeah. And I think it's great because there's a lot of times in regards to health and wellness, you just don't know until you know.

Yes.

So if you're not taught this, you know, holistic way to care for yourself, you can go on your whole life without hearing the good news, right, if you will.

Yeah.

And I just think it's great what you're doing. So keep it up. Keep sharing the information that you have as a medical doctor with your many years of experience helping people in those life-and-death situations. And it's great to actually give you a bit of contrast to really highlight the importance of the functional piece too. So I'm really proud of you.

Oh, well, thank you. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I think all we can do is keep sharing and helping each other out and spreading the word, right?

That's right. And, you know, vaginal rejuvenation, it's pretty awesome.

Yeah, I tried it. And it's for everybody, honestly.

Yeah, it's great. It's, you know, it gives people back their vitality and their sex life with their partners.

Yeah.

And it's a beautiful thing. We are designed to make love and procreate and enjoy it in the process. I mean, what other species does that? So I know for me, it really, it really helped in that regard, like I mentioned earlier. Just with, with the sensation and, and all that.

Yeah, so many women think there's no option and they just have to live with it, and they're going to either have painful intercourse or they're not going to have that relationship with their husband anymore. And that's devastating. It shouldn't be that way. You know, that's the whole part of having a partner or a husband is that you have that special, you know, intimacy that you don't have with anyone else.

So what I've seen help women is to, you know, before kids, after kids, around menopause, after the kids have moved out, it's actually not a bad idea to have some of these treatments at really any of those stages if you feel like you need symptom relief and would like an improvement in some of the areas like tightening, lubrication, sensation, bladder control, bladder urgency, can help with all of those things. And then what's important to know with these treatments is you kind of want to maintain it. So if you don't have the funds to maintain it and make your follow-up appointments, you know, that's fine. It's not like your vagina is going to fall apart. But if you can maintain your treatments every 6 months, a year, year and a half, just to keep the collagen levels nice and healthy in your vaginal canal, it can be a beautiful thing.

I completely agree. I think that's fabulous advice.

And I'm sure your listeners are probably like, well, how much do these treatments cost? Why don't you just tell us what they cost?

Yeah, I mean, it's different everywhere. It's usually anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000, depending on what area you live in. But I like to think of it as an investment because it can be so life-changing for your relationships, for your activities, being able to exercise, all of that.

Yeah, and with some of the different technologies, I know with the, with the Erbium blend that I work with on the West Coast here of Canada on Vancouver Island, the prices can be anywhere from about $1,000 for the initial treatments and then the maintenance costs are a little bit less than that. So yeah, it just depends on the technology and your area. Yeah, awesome.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today, Rachel. It was great talking to you, and I hope we can connect again soon. So everybody, check her out. Okay.

All right, have a good night, everyone.

Bye.

Oh my gosh, Rachel is just so sweet.

I'm so glad that I got to connect with her and that she got to share her wisdom with you guys. So please check her out at rachelvarga.ca, and don't forget to subscribe to the Functional Gynecologist podcast. Tell your friends, you know, help me get the word out there and support your fellow women. I love it. So go out and have an amazing week, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Bye!