Episode 92: How Your Doctor is Slowly Trying to Kill You with Dr. Angela DeRosa

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha, 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, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. All right, ladies, so this week we are really getting into it. We are talking about our broken medical system and how it's completely biased against women and prevention and optimizing your health and wellness. We, you know, we're going to talk about why can't you get your hormone levels checked? Why doesn't your doctor know how to balance your hormones? Why can't you get any answers to make you feel better? You just keep getting more medications. So I'm having a really good conversation with Dr. Angela DeRosa. She is a fellow DO who, luckily for her, found the world of integrative medicine early in her career. And so she has been on this mission for a long, long time, which is my same mission to help you guys have a voice and another choice, a different option to get well, you know, let's stop just taking a birth control pill and having surgery. Let's actually figure out what the heck is going on. Let's get to the root of the issue and then let's make you feel amazing again. And a huge part of that puzzle piece is our hormones. As women, we are not just little men, you know, with hormones. We have unique physiology that needs to, to be addressed and embraced. And when it comes to your physician caring for you, they need to be able to do the testing and the interpretation of your hormones and help you get them back into balance. And unfortunately, that is not part of conventional medicine training. I'm just going to tell you right now as a gynecologist and we are supposed to know everything about women's health, but in fact, we don't get special training in hormones and hormone balance in the endocrine system. We get the same training that our general surgeons get and, you know, our family practice doctors. We are surgeons at the core of our training. And so I really want you to understand that you need to seek out a hormone expert, meaning they have studied functional medicine or integrative medicine or anti aging medicine, where they have had specialized hormone training. Because we really don't get it in the conventional medical world. So today I'm talking to Dr. Angela Derosa and I just want to tell you about her real quick because, because she wrote a book that I'm just really proud of her for not being afraid to ruffle some feathers and, you know, expose our broken system for what it is. So Angela, Dr. D. She goes by, is a dynamic professional on a mission to change the face of women's health and wellness and has more than 25 years of experience in the medical field, both on the pharmaceutical side and in clinical practice. As an internationally recognized authority on Women's Hormonal Health, Dr. DeRosa understands the range of health issues women face leading up to enduring menopause as she herself was in full blown menopause by the age of 35. I will tell you ladies, I'm seeing this more and more and we're going to talk about that. So Dr. DeRosa's enthusiasm for educating patient on the realities of menopause and the risk factors hormonal health imbalances was the driving force behind her first bestselling book, how your doctor is slowly killing you, a woman's health survival guide. In 2018, she launched the Hormonal Health Institute Executive instruction for medical professionals, which is a hormonal healthcare consulting designed to instruct medical professionals and provide practice development training on bioidentical hormone replacement therapies. So in addition to her educational and clinical activities, Dr. DeRosa serves as the medical director for Belmont Pharma Solutions where she provides clinical and scientific technical support for all aspects of the business as well as clinical expertise for internal and external customers. So I really like this interview because she, you know, uncovers a lot of the issues that we're having. It's the medical system is run by big Pharma, the FDA is corrupt. I'm just going to say it all and she's going to explain like why this is happening and how it could impact you personally in your ability to stay balanced and healthy. Because they are now trying to shut down compounding pharmacies. They're trying to create a dictatorship in where you can receive any medication, hormones, vitamins, everything. So it's really eye opening and I don't want you to be scared, but I want you to be a little bit pissed off and get with, you know, the program and start to speak up and get yourself behind some really good causes, this being one of them that we need to support women's ability to have choices in their health and how they receive their care, where they receive Their care, the ability to get hormones if they need it. This is a big deal. So please share this episode with everybody you know, because it's so important. Even if you don't need hormones right now, I promise there's gonna come a time when you wish that this was available. So this is a great episode. Stick with me. I would be so honored if you'd hit the like and subscribe button, give me a five star review and let me know what else you want to hear about. Because I do this for you ladies. So let's get into it. Well, welcome Dr. D to the Functional Gynecologist podcast.

Well, thanks for having me. It's always nice to be with like minded folks like yourself who are fighting the same fight.

Yes. Oh my gosh. We need to band together and keep working to change this broken system, don't we?

Oh my gosh. Ain't that the truth? Holy smokes. No true words are spoken.

Well, I would love for you to just share with my listeners, like, what prompted you to write such a controversial book? You know, my doctors slowly try and kill me. I just want to hear, like, what was your thought process? I'm sure you had a lot of, you know, colleagues questioning what you were thinking, what you were doing, going against the system, but bravo to you. I love it.

Thank you. Well, thank you for being one of the few physicians that weren't who have a sense of humor about the title and understand that it wasn't meant to be a complete slap in the face to clinicians. It was really meant to be just a wake up call to women in particular, that unfortunately, and mostly unintendedly, the medical profession is slowly killing them. And unfortunately, as you and I both know, when we go to medical school, we don't really learn about the root causes, often of a lot of the symptomology that could be treated by hormones. But yet we are so quick to dole out loads and loads of medications to treat that symptomology without any thought or discussion about what the risks of that could be. Metabolically and unfortunately, women need to be armed with power. So the book was really largely written for the layperson and to educate them to be armed with information to come in to really question the status quo. Quo. But unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues, as you have alluded to, weren't too happy about it and they saw it as a complete slap in the face. And I really just, I want them to understand that it's not, it's just, it's an opportunity. If I saw Something like that. The first question I would ask is like, well, what am I missing? What am I that I should understand. But unfortunately, you and I both know doctors tend to have some egos.

Yes.

So the book really came out. But to answer the direct question though, the book really was a passion that I was kind of bubbling up beneath the surface for a long, long time. And it really starts with hell have no fury like a pissed off woman. And it started with my journey where I went through menopause at the age of 35 and how I was treated during that journey and vowing that I would never ever allow another woman to be treated the same way. And when I finally had a pocket of time to be able to write the book, I knew it had to be written because I can care for patients one at a time, but if I don't spread the and have global ambassadors to help fight the fight, it becomes less effective.

Amen. And I'm guessing you probably went into premature menopause because you became a doctor is the most unhealthy thing you could ever undertake.

Oh yeah. I certainly think it had a contribution to that. I wish I could say I knew that it was genetically programmed because both my mom and grandmother had hysterectomy. So God knows what their timeline was. But who knows what our environmental exposures stressors that we put on ourselves. And you're right, I mean the study and the hours, the lack of proper food, the lack of exercise, lack of sleep, I mean the poor little ovary went ah, helped. I can't do anymore. Yeah. So I was having all those perimenopausal symptoms in medical school, perimenopause. And I was completely dismissed and patted on the head until that was crazy and to go away.

Why do you think that is?

Well, I find it to me it's so maddening because if the same symptom complex, if I walked in and I was a man in a physician's office, they would get treated with such extreme urgency. In particular, the symptom. I mean, I had all the hot flashes, night sweats, weight gain, mood swings, all the typical stuff. But what was really most alarming to me is I was having an unusual symptom. But most women get heart palpitations with estrogen deficiency. But I was getting runs of V tach which were causing syncope from my estrogen deficiency. And they kind of poo pooed it and I was put on a beta blocker. Nobody really did proper workups. But if a man walked in with those same exact symptoms, they would go to the ends of the earth to figure out what was wrong instead of just giving them an antidepressant and telling them to go on their merry way. So. And you would think in the last 25 years that that would have gotten better. And honestly, I don't think it has. I mean, because although we see more and more women coming into the field, we're the same. Traditional teachings are still occurring and it's not getting that much better. Menopause doesn't get the reverence that andropause or menopause does because men demand more from their health care system. And we tend to be, we always want to be the mediators and the ones that kind of bring the world together. We don't like upsetting the status quo. And I think that's part of it. We assume that what we're being told is correct. And most of the time it is, but a lot of times it's not. And we want, we don't want to seem disagreeable, I guess, without a doubt.

A doubt. And if we say anything, we're viewed as inferior. You know, you can't handle it because you're not a man. And it really calls into question your abilities to function as a physician and to handle all of that, when in fact we shouldn't handle all of that. That's not even realistic. Right.

So, yeah, it just maddening because men get the products testosterone, the erectile dysfunct they need. They have everything available, FDA approved women, we don't. And we get put on psych drugs. They want to keep us quiet and medicated.

So how long did it, did it take for you to figure out I don't need antidepressant and a beta blocker and a sleeping pill? Like, there's got to be something else going on. How did you figure that whole thing out? Because I know.

Yeah, it really came from just an aggressive research and search for finding out what was wrong with myself and also really vowing to learn as much as I could about hormonal health. Because when I was going through my residency and having all these symptoms, I really, it wasn't until hindsight 2020 that I really figured out that what was happening to me, I was in perimenopause full blown. And it really took meeting some key people in my life. When I finally started working at Procter and Gamble, helping them on their women's health line, we were launching a female testosterone patch which got approved in other parts of the world, but God forbid, no, we didn't get it here because our FDA has their head up their ass. My language. Anyways, it was really through meeting international experts in female sexual health and hormonal health that I came to understand and learn from them what was actually going on. Because as evolved our medical system should be and what it appears to be in the United States, we are so behind in hormonal health and women's health compared to other parts of the world, like Italy, Spain and other areas, the United Kingdom, I mean, they just seem to have a better grasp in some areas and have some great data. So it was really through meeting those people, learning all that I could, and then really figuring out, you know, wow, I'm having these symptoms, but if I started hormones, would this get better? And kind of dabbling on my own stuff. I was a guinea pig for myself for a long period of time. And I know I did a lot of damage at some points, but I figured it out. And it was really. When I got understood that it was perimenopause and menopause, I needed hormones. I didn't. All those meds, I got off them, got on the bioidentical hormones I needed, and it honestly, it saved my life. I just was going down a path that was not good.

Yeah. So let's talk about that, because that is really the premise of your book, is if you are in hormone deficiency earlier, especially earlier than you should be, you're increasing your risk of developing diseases that are preventable in essence. Right.

Yeah. And it's like, what's really concerning is that we really focus on estrogen as women. But when we talk about the role of estrogen, which is very important, I mean, we look at how it protects our endothelium to be pliable so that we don't get high blood pressure. It helps with brain synapses, it helps with vaginal health, skin health, bone health. It does all these wonderful things. But our most predominant hormone is actually testosterone in women. And we dismiss it. We just think it's a man's hormone, but it's not. It's actually our most abundant hormone surging through our body at any given day. And we think about testosterone, we pigeonholed it into a sex hormone. And where we. It makes us sex crazy or has libido and desire, which I think those things are all bonuses. Obviously, it increases your libido and your desire. It improves clitoral sensitivity and orgasmic strength, all those wonderful things. But those are a bonus. Testosterone really is essential for serotonin production and synapse in the brain, so it affects our mood, so we don't get depressed, anxious, panic attacks, or frankly, most of us develop apathy, which is the worst thing. It helps with executive function, thinking, cognition, it helps with bone health. It keeps inflammation down so we don't develop cancers. But the most important thing, as you've probably read in the book, is it helps us process sugar. And when we eat a meal, it's testosterone's role to mobilize it, move it into the muscle so it burns as clean energy. And when we lose that, we gain weight in the midsection, we burn out our pancreas, because now the pancreas is stuck with the task of dealing with the sugar. And then we get pre diabetes, which then leads to diabetes and heart disease and that whole cascade. And if we just replace women's testosterone at the appropriate time, that wouldn't happen. And so I think not only is it as our diet and exercise and all these environmental exposures are causing a lot of our health problems, so is the lack of recognition of these hormone deficiencies and their roles on chronic disease state development. And it doesn't get the just due. In other countries, they see pre diabetes. One of the first things they think about is, do I need testosterone? Well, here, the first thing we think about is metformin and insulin.

Amen. It's so frustrating, and we need to keep spreading this word. So let's talk about this a little more because I think it's so important. I'm seeing women younger and younger with the PCOS picture and the misunderstanding that it's a problem with just your ovary, when in reality it's a metabolic syndrome from a hormone imbalance. Right. So what can women do to even start to look into hormone imbalances? Because this is my common patient that I get. My doctor doesn't listen to me. My doctor told me you can't check hormones. My doctor said it's impossible to interpret hormones, so there's no bother testing them. And, you know, it just. It kills me.

Yeah, it's absolutely this. What they're telling you is I don't know.

Yes.

And they want to admit that they don't know because you and I both know you can draw labs at any given day of the month. I can properly interpret them and tell them, tell them if the patient has a hormone imbalance or deficiency and get them on the right treatment plan. But if you don't know what you're doing and you don't even bother to test, how do you know? So it's really, the key, as you're heavily alluding to, is that you need the right person with the right skill set and education because, I mean, you dropped me in an oncologist's office and I were to say, well, there's no treatments for pancreatic cancer or colon cancer because I don't know what they are, the current ones. I mean, that be would. I would be laughed out of that office and saying, you don't know what you're talking about. But somehow with hormones, they would rather just dismiss it versus saying, you know what? I don't know a lot about that area. Why don't you go talk to someone who does?

Right, exactly. And you know, I try to explain to women that just because they're seeing a gynecologist doesn't mean the gynecologist is a hormone expert.

If anything, they're the worst offenders.

Minimal training in hormones. I mean, we are surgeons by training, you know. You know that we spent all of our time in the OR and in delivery rooms using our hands, doing procedures. We didn't sit and study the endocrine system and all of these intricate physiological processes. You know, that was back in Med School 101 for a hot minute. And that was it, you know. So what do you recommend women look for when they're trying to find a physician to help with these issues?

Yeah, and so you're right. Open eyes. And thank God you're an evolved one because you're absolutely right. I mean, they're the worst offenders. But unfortunately, unfortunately, in defacto, the women's health expert. And unfortunately, hormones falls into that. And they're clearly, as a majority, not capable to understand the nuances of it because they typically focus on reproduction, the reproductive tract, and they don't really concern themselves with the body outside of that. And whereas other specialties may look a little bit. But even internists and primary care don't either. So, I mean, unfortunately, hormones has got this weird bad rep and I don't understand it. But at the very back of my book, I put in some checklists of things, things to look for. So questions you should be asking your doctor red flags like that you need to get out of that office immediately as they don't know what they're doing. But like, for instance, I mean, if you get the whole patronistic. There, there, sweetheart, go on a date night, rest, eat better and exercise more without any. Anybody checking anything. That's crazy. Or there is no data around hormone therapy. That's another caveat that just makes me crazy. It's just they don't know it and, or they don't understand the difference between synthetic and bioidentical hormones they use. They say exactly what you said. The labs are useless. So I mean those are things that they need to be looking for and asking because that's not the case. So when I really direct other folks looking for, they should be looking for optimal patient or physicians who specialize in optimization of hormones, restorative medicine, functional medicine, bioidentical hormone, those are kind of key words they should be looking for on websites to really understand regenerative medicine. I mean folks who are going to function and look at the whole picture versus just one body part in particular, these young women. And I'm on a sub mission right now to really try to educate about young women in particular because we are doing, in particular in the ob gynae space, we are doing so much damage with oral birth control pills to women because we don't understand the indirect metabolic effect. Because as you know, all 100% of birth control pills are going to cause 100% testosterone deficiency very quickly after starting them. And these women gain weight, they get depressed, they have low libido, they have cognitive issues, they have all these things going on. And everyone dismisses the role of the birth control pill. And it's not that I'm against birth control pills, they're great for contraception and sometimes controlling bleeding. But you have to understand that indirect consequence and if you don't address it, those women are going to gain weight, they're going to get depressed, they're going to have low libido, they're going to feel terrible and everyone's going to dismiss them or they'll get labeled. That's crazy. Or fibromyalgia. And we are doing this to our patients without, without any reverence to what's happening to these women. And again, we should, we can use them. Just know what you're doing and how to manage it.

Exactly. I think there's no proper informed consent. We pass it out like candy at Halloween. Honestly, you know, they want to put.

It over the counter.

The counter. Like it's not, not a risky medication when in fact it very much is. You know, when you're talking about blood clot, stroke, I believe it increases your risk of cancer. It's a synthetic hormone. But we can't let that kind of data come out. Right? I mean, not even to mention leaky gut syndrome, hypothyroidism. I mean the long term consequences, the vitamin deficiencies go on and on. All day. So thank you for advocating for another way, because I'm not really sure why it's so acceptable to give, especially our young girls, all of these synthetic hormones and to put them out in the world and to be filling our water supply. And now they're getting to our men. And I mean, it goes on and on.

Well, keep it. So here's what just illustrates the kind of the dichotomy and the complete gender bias. People always ask me, well, why don't they have a birth control pill for men? Well, they've studied them and they've done trials, but no man has agreed, will ever agree to stay on them because it creates testosterone deficiency in them and creates impotence, weight gain, mood disorders, and all these different things that it does. Exactly same thing to us. But we're expected to take it. But yet they won't. They won't do it. They say, hell no. And. But yet we take them every single day. And that's the expectation. And I just.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. If you didn't hear that, ladies, that is a truth bomb right there, because that is reality. We are shutting down our hormones production by taking this pill. And it's not okay, so consider an IUD.

I mean, IUDs are fantastic, and they're not the grandma's IUDs that used to cause all the problems. And it's a perfect form of birth control because it lets your ovaries function normally and naturally.

Yeah, yeah.

Again, if you're going to use birth control pills and not against them, just know that it's going to cause that deficiency. And if you're going to use them, also if you're using the low estrogen ones, which are even worse because now you're inducing menopausal symptoms on top of a testosterone deficiency plus a progesterone access. Talk about an access of evil. I mean, these women feel like crap and we're doing all these metabolic damage, but yet that seems to be the whole thing. Oh, it's low estrogen, so it must be good. It's actually the worst thing we do to women.

I know, I know. I remember coming off the birth control pill for the first time in my life. I was, you know, mid-20s. I had been on it from 15 to 17, got pregnant on it, had a baby, went back on it, and then I was on it continuously until about 28. And when I went off of it, I had a libido for the first time in my life. And I was like, what the heck is that, you know, birthright pills are great.

They prevent pregnancy, but they also lower your libido. So you don't want sex.

Exactly. So I would love for you to talk a little bit about the difference between synthetic hormones and bioidentical hormones. Because we really need to get into the discussion of replacing our hormones when we are deficient and getting optimized so that we can feel amazing again.

The way I look at it is people say, well, I don't want medications or different things for my body. Well, think of hormones really aren't medications when they're done properly. They're medication if they're synthetic, meaning they don't look exactly like the molecule that your body was making. So, for instance, birth control pills has a synthetic estrogen called ethylene estradiol, which is a. It's like a synthetic chain that doesn't. That's changed and altered. So it doesn't look like what we make, but our ovary actually makes 17 beta estradiol. That's the bioidentical hormone. So whatever hormone I give, I should give 17 beta estradiol. Because the body recognizes it, it knows what to do with it and itself versus ethylene estradiol. The body doesn't know what to do. It somewhat does, but not exactly. It goes, well, I think this looks familiar. So I'm going to kind of go, go see what I can do with it. But unfortunately, those synthetics are going to put you more at risk. Risk for adverse effects. The body doesn't know how to process it. You may need more of it in order to get the symptomatic benefit, which can also lead to more side effects and problems. So really, when I tell patients I can synthesize in a lab so I could call up the big pharmaceutical industry, say, hey, I want you to synthesize this hormone for me. But it's 17 beta estradiol. It's synthesizing a bioidentical. But that. But I can also go to a compounding pharmacy and I can have them make that too, and it be bioidentical. But keep in mind, some pharmaceutical companies do, like Bival patch has a bioidentical estrogen in it. So it's a patch we use for menopausal women to control estrogen deficiency symptoms. It's a very nice product because it's bioidentical. So you don't need to necessarily compound something to make sure it's bioidentical. But whatever you're giving, you should always ask the clinician. Is This a bioidentical. And what that means is really, is it biomimetic? Meaning does it mimic exactly what your ovary is making? So it shouldn't. Like they had old products like methyl testosterone, which was so dangerous for women, it caused breast cancer, liver problems. But you just want pure testosterone in whatever product you're getting, not methyl testosterone. So it's really about giving back your body, the hormone it makes naturally. Exactly.

And if your doctor says bioidenticals are made up or they don't exist, or they're not necessary, then you need to run, you need to find out.

It's like, and I hear there's all this bad rap too about compounding pharmacies. And really these are highly specialized and trained providers who are pharmacists. They are state regulated, pharmacy board regulates them, the FDA regulates them. There's a ton of regulation. And you're always going to see rogue people in every profession. And it's fairly really rare. But the problem is, is that big pharma is trying to attack them because they're taking $8 billion of revenue and profits away from them every year in the compounding space. But I try to give people perspective because sometimes they think of compounds as a bunch of witch doctors in the back room, like boiling up potions and it's like all this crazy stuff in there. But think of it this way, this is the analogy I like to use. When you go into a restaurant and order a meal, you kind of look at the menu, you decide what you want, and some of us crazy, well, I want this with a little less this. So you look at the menu, order you want, and then the chef goes back and makes your meal. He grabs a bunch of ingredients off the shelf and throws them into that meal and then voila, you have your meal made specially for you. Well, compounds are the same thing. So they start with FDA approved ingredients. So every ingredient that goes into that compound was already approved by the fda. It's in a mass bucket. It's the same stuff the big pharmaceutical companies use. But now they have it in this little, these little vials that say in the back. And they just grab a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and they specialize and make the meal of hormone just for you. So it starts with the same product, it's just uniquely made for that patient. But the products are safe.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like eating at McDonald's versus eating at a beautiful steakhouse, right? A nice, healthy, gorgeous meal prepared the way you need it to be prepared or you can get the McNuggets or whatever that nobody should eat and probably are going to make you sick. Right?

Exactly, Exactly.

So there is a big push for compounding pharmacies to not to no longer make these hormones. Right.

The FDA is using a lot of Trojan horses right now to be able to try to shut down the ability for compounders to make hormones. And really, the fda, although they do great things and pharmaceutical companies, they have a role in medicine and they do wonderful things. But when you try to exclude an area of medicine that's also really helpful and synergistic, that's where I have major issue. We shouldn't be eliminating either side. We should be working together complementary and not using pharmaceutical drugs at the exclusion of something that may be helpful and good for patients. And unfortunately, although the fda, a lot of people think it's an independent body, it is far from it. It is heavily influenced by big Pharma. It takes a great deal of funding. Over 60% of it comes from big pharmaceutical companies and they have strong lobbying groups. And these folks push and there's major conflicts of interest. And unfortunately, these big pharmaceutical companies are trying to push out compounding because they're significant profits away from them. And they hired and commissioned a quote unquote independent committee a couple years ago. And I actually presented to that committee along with Dr. Donovitz and Dr. Glazier and several of us, and they had several meetings that were supposed to be stakeholders, but they had already predetermined what they wanted to do because it was heavily influenced. And they came to the conclusion that there's no clinical utility for compounding hormones and in particular for women, which was crazy. And they based it on 13 studies that one of their folks brought to the table. When we submitted thousands of studies that supported the use, but they completely ignored them. And we had a coalition come together. There's been a legal team that's been amassed, and we basically have identified the smoking gun of all these conflicts. But unfortunately, a lot of organizations like the American College of Obstetric and Gynecology, nams, North American Menopause Society, which are largely funded by industry, another conflict of interest about jumped on that report and now are trying to suggest that compounds aren't safe or there's no clinical utility, which is. Nothing is further from the truth. So unfortunately, when you get things like that coming out, it becomes more and more challenging for folks like us to practice in this area of medicine and women to get what they need. But the good news is that there's lots of money, lots of people, lots of us that are ambassadors and are fighting this fight. And I encourage all your listeners to go to a website called savemycompounds.com and get involved where they'll tell you how to get with your legislators, how to provide your own testimonials. Because the more we scream, that's how it's going to get done. We got to get to our representatives in Congress and stakeholders who are making these decisions so that we don't lose it because. And you should all be a little scared because if these compounds go away, men will be just fine. They have all the FDA approved commercial products that they would need to continue with the exception even including pellet their therapies. Women are screwed because there will be zero testosterone products. And they're basically saying, well, I'll just take the man's products, which is ridiculous and medically inappropriate. So we should be on total alert here because God forbid that they silently try to do this. And the next thing you know we have our hormones taken away from us and we go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what just happened? Good news, bad news that they joined. Obviously the COVID thing was it's, it's been awful, this pandemic, but it slowed that train down on the compounded side because they had obviously other things to focus on. So. But once the COVID pandemic starts to get, which who knows, God knows when that's going to kind of slow down, they're going to take that up again and that's going to be a problem. So yeah, don't let them sneak by you.

No, everybody listening to this needs to go and check that out because even if you're not currently taking hormones, you might need to at some point in your life and you want to do it safely and you want it to be an individualized approach so that you are aren't adding more problems to your problem. Right. I mean the thought of using male, you know, testosterone by prescription just is mind boggling to me. I mean why is that acceptable? So we need to band together because women are not represented in health care. The FDA does not care about you and how you feel, honestly, or a nuisance to them.

And I saw it when I worked at Procter and Gamble and looking at data and research women just with our fluctuation of hormones, the of us getting pregnant while on study drugs and various other. They don't want to deal with us because we're a pain in the ass for their study outcomes. So they just don't risk it and study it. And unfortunately we've been relegated to the sidelines and we don't get the research, the care. I mean again, the gender biases is obscene in medicine and here's a perfect example of that.

Yeah. And so now we just have to suffer and we have to just deal with it. So oh my gosh, such an important topic that I really want women to start supporting. And so if women are feeling like, yeah, I think I have a hormone imbalance, I go to a regular gynecologist, I've been dismissed. Like what are the next steps in your mind for those women?

Come find people like you and I. So the also the couple good things that came out of COVID aside from kind of the slowdown with the FDA on hormone attack, is that telemedicine is really opened. The door was open, wide open. Now that could change quickly and rapidly and these still need to pay attention state by state. But right now, even regardless of where you live in the country, you can get to people like yourself and myself and really just making sure you're finding those right folks. And even the company that I work for, Belmar Pharma Solutions, it's one of the largest compounding companies in the United States. Even if so you could search the web, you could search your local area for folks, you could go to agemed.org, which is AMMG, which is a great group that does complementary medicine and training for physicians like ourselves. Or a 4M does a lot of training, International Functional Medicine. All those folks may have links to folks that do stuff like us. A4M has gotten a little out fringe. So I mean, so I'd be cautious there. But you can always call some places like Belmar or other compounding pharmacies in your local area to find out who the folks are that really specialize in this because you want to get to the right doctor and nurse practitioners and folks who do this medicine because it's important because having the right person is going to really not only affect how you feel immediately, but also your long term outcomes and health. So the good news again, as I mentioned, with telemedicine you can have consults and you could live in Alaska and I can be doing a consult with you. Exactly. Depending on the compounding laws and different things and which companies you're working with. A lot like Belmar. I know we dropped drop ship all across the country to folks. So we, we're limited on the pellet therapies, but we can do everything else because.

Right. Well, I Love that. So, yeah, search us out. We're out there. We can help you.

You know, there's a whole bunch of us. There is.

And it's really said that we're so suppressed and that it's so hard for people to find us. You know, that's why podcasts and things are so important. But I was just thinking about not even sex hormones, but I'll often compound for thyroid hormone medication because you, you know, the fillers have gluten in them and things like that. There's so many other good reasons to use compounding pharmacies, right?

Oh, absolutely. If you have an allergy or something, or dyes or, I mean, everybody, you're right. With gluten sensitivities or the ability to add, let's say if I wanted B12 brought in with something else or just a really unique mixture or a specialized dosing, I mean, there's wonderful reason and to use compounds. And the key is really to make sure it's unique and special for yourself, because as you and I both know, you could line up 100 women and we all have different unique needs, and each one of us have a different requirement and traditional thinking in particular. Again, in the ob gyne space, I mean, a lot of times you'll walk in and they'll treat to your hot flashes. Okay, Here, just take this. And when your hot flashes go away, they think their job is done. But you and I both know that we're not just trying to get rid of hot flashes flashes. We're trying to restore optimal function in your body. And we may be looking to treat to certain levels of estradiol and FSH in our bodies so that we know that that brain is happy, that body's happy, not just get rid of hot flashes. So it's much, much more than just getting that done.

So, yeah, I mean, I often see women go to their gynecologist, complain of hot flashes. You know, they're in the beginning of perimenopause and they get put on some synthetic estrogen pill, which just makes them times worse because they're still having spikes of estrogen. Right? They're still having that estrogen dominance picture, and then it's dropping. And so if your physician isn't understanding that and you're not feeling better with the medication they're prescribing, you know, you got to start to question what are some other common scenarios? You see, also, they miss.

They totally miss thyroid in conjunction. Because when we get about, I think two thirds of women by the time they are perimenopause, have sub functional or suboptimal thyroid function. And unfortunately, traditional medicine waits till you're on death's door before they even intervene. So really trying to make sure that they're making sure that they're looking at all the labs, not just the TSH. It should be TSH total or free T4, free T3, reverse T3, your antibodies, they're not looking at that whole panel and understanding it. Then you need to find someone who's looking at it because thyroid and estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, they're all working together. And so I see that pattern happening a lot. Or nobody's dealing with their vitamin or deficiencies that could be contributing to symptomology. I mean, something as simple as a severe vitamin D deficiency could present as fibromyalgia. Picture. And those folks get labeled as crazy and put on psych meds and pain medications and all they needed was maybe really high doses of vitamin D for a period of time. So taking that whole body approach to look at the picture instead of just pigeonholing people into areas that they're just looking at.

Oh my gosh, you and I think exactly alike. I just, I really want women to understand that you can't look at just your hormones, you can't look at just your thyroid or you know, you can't put things into these specialty categories. I don't know about your area, but in our area, the endocrinologists are, they do women a huge disservice.

Well, they're horrible.

Dismiss them, you know, and talk to them like they're crazy. And they really don't evaluate them properly, you know, they don't listen to them. And it just, it breaks my heart actually.

And they're the ones that are the ones coming after folks like us. And that's what really makes me angry. It's like, okay, if you disagree with how we're approaching it, that's fine. But don't come after and try to make us look like we're heretics because we're not. We have a different understanding. And actually the way you and I approach thyroid is the whole naturopathic community approaches thyroid like that. They get it. But why is it that our traditional allopathic and osteopathic medicine, osteopathic is a little better than allopathic, but not much in the overall trainings now, but that they look at it so narrow minded and narrow focused, but it's important to look at the bigger picture. And again, if you also go To a physician, and all they're looking at is just your hormones. I would take question with that, too, because as you and I both know, we have to be careful that we don't get into our own tunnel vision. So as an internal medicine physician, I also want to look at everything. So. And I'm sure most functional folks do as well, because we want to look at your hormones, but we want to look at, are you showing signs of insulin resistance, Are you showing signs of anemia, Are you showing signs of infection or other things that could mimic hormone deficiencies, that we're not just assuming everything is hormonal because we don't want to miss the cancer or the weird thing that presents or other things going on in our gut or other. So we have to be cautious that we don't tunnel vision our patients as well.

Yeah, without a doubt. So you mentioned the C word, cancer. I think that's one last thing that we should just mention with hormones, because I was trained during the era of the WHI trial. All of a sudden, everywhere in the media, hormones kill you, hormones cause cancer, hormones are dangerous. And we didn't know what we were doing when we tried to interpret that study. So can you just kind of relieve.

People'S minds and that here we are 20 years later, and still the perception is that hormones are killing you from that study. And actually, that's not what that study showed. Which if you actually go back and look at all the data and look at the evolution of the data, because there were significant misleading terms and factors and data at the beginning that they had to correct and statistical things that they had to correct. And a lot of it was done for political reasons to scare the crap out of women. And even the way they presented the data right out of the gate was highly inflammatory and misleading. So to give you the perfect example of this. So first, oh, my gosh, 25% or 26% of women are going to get cancer if you're on hormone therapy. Well, that was what is. You need to understand statistics and be able to understand how egregious that was. Because the way that was an absolute, or excuse me, a relative risk term that was designed to scare women. But what was the absolute numbers, meaning the actual numbers of women were having problems in that study, if you were to believe the statistics were right at the get go was 1 in 10,000, that's way less scary than 25% increase. And also, what they didn't tell you out of the original data set, that the women who were actually on premarin alone. So the synthetic estrogen alone actually showed a benefit from breast cancer. But that data was buried in all the headlines, which would have been incredibly reassuring. And nobody talked about it. So. So when you can go throughout the years and they've had multiple retractions and mea culpa papers, but nobody's still talking about it. And even today, our colleagues still propagate that same myth. But what the Women's Health Initiative actually found was in women who are on Prempro, so the horrible estrogen and the horrible synthetic progesterone actually had a neutral risk for breast cancer and that they really didn't show an increase. They had a neutral risk of cardiovascular disease in all women, but in women 50 to 60 years old, they actually showed a benefit to being on hormone therapies. In the Premarin arm, they actually showed a neutral to beneficial risk of hormone therapy for breast cancer, risk protection, they showed a positive effect for coronary heart disease and all these other positive effects that nobody talked about. Worst case is you're neutral on anything bad, bad in best cases, you may actually have some protection. And this was the worst possible hormone therapies we can give women. So we should be reassured that when properly done, actually hormones are going to be very advantageous to your health. When done at the right time, with the right hormones, the right bias and looking at the overall picture of the patient, we shouldn't be clumping everybody in one size fits all. But what also people don't talk about, and there's exceptional data in this now from Dr. Rebecca Glaser, even Dr. Donovan, that's published some data in the last year about testosterone's role in breast. And actually testosterone is very, very breast protective. There's now great literature suggesting that women who actually have active breast cancer can go on testosterone with estrogen blockers and actually improve their outcomes and have a reduced risk of breast cancer reoccurrence. And women who don't have breast cancer who are on testosterone will have a reduced risk of actually getting cancer. When I look at this all in total, if you're getting bioidentical hormones done at the right time, time, you actually will benefit your overall health, including your breast health. You just need to know the information.

Yeah, I, I am so excited about all the work that she is doing and all the evidence that's coming to light because we need to figure this out and not be afraid. So thank you for explaining that. And we gotta just keep tackling this issue and, you know, not back down. We need to speak up for other women. So I love this. Thank you so much for all this great conversation.

You're welcome. Thanks for allowing a great conversation. Anybody can give me a chance to use my big mouth to talk about this. I'm ready to go.

Yes. So my listeners can find you@doctor hotflash.com, right. And that's your Instagram handle. Do you work with patients one on one or do you have a team?

So I have a team. I now just handle a few of my old school VIPs who I've had for decades. My nurse practitioners however are highly trained. I got them right out of school, I corrupted them early and they've been working for me. They largely do the day to day patient care. I started an institute called the Hormonal Health Institute. So I'm training clinicians across the country now to do this type of medicine. Obviously doing a lot of public speaking and also work for a combination compounding pharmacy. So I'm wearing several hats. But it's all designed to empower women and get out more information because although I love seeing patients, but if I do that, I can only affect change one person at a time. I've now got an army behind me that can do that and I need to go more global and talk. So if they go to my website, Dr.hotflash.com it's got a medical professionals tab. It's got blogs, it's got articles and videos and all this wonderful thing. Access to my book and research resources that folks can obtain to help get them where they need to. But again go to my website. Go obviously your website, all the things that you do and then don't forget save my compounds. Yes, definitely.

I'll have all those links in the show notes ladies. So thank you so much Dr. V. This has been awesome.

Thank you. I so appreciate you and your efforts on our behalf too. In the park. All right.

I hope that episode really got you thinking. You know you should always be questioning am I seeing the right physician or provider? That's a very intimate relationship. That should be respectful. You should feel heard and you should have choices. There shouldn't be this dictatorship or parental authority. Like here's what you have to do. We're not going to have a discussion about it, you know, and if you don't comply, see you later. That is not how a physician should practice. So it should be a respectful two way street of helping you figure out what you need as an individual. And I want you to feel heard and have your thoughts and questions answered. And if they're not. Then I want you to seek out someone else like myself. Dr. Durant, neurosis team There are so many women and men who, you know, specialize in women's health to bring you back to optimal health, to help prevent disease as opposed to managing it. Once you have the diagnosis, anybody can manage the disease. But let's talk about reversing. Let's talk about preventing. Let's talk about optimizing. So I really encourage you to take ownership of your body, your health, and don't be afraid to question, speak up. And if things don't feel right, you know, your gut's like this. This doesn't make sense. This person saying that they are going to prescribe me hormones, but they really aren't comfortable. They really don't test. They're kind of guessing, missing. You know, I would question, I would go somewhere else. So don't hesitate to reach out to me. I'm licensed in over half the country. This is what I do all day, you know, And I just. I'm on a mission to help women realize that you don't have to stand for what you're standing for. You don't have to put up with taking a birth control pill as your hormone hormonal solution. You don't have to put up with gaining weight and feeling tired and blah, and not wanting to do anything in your life that's actually probably a medical issue. It could be a hormone imbalance. And those are all fixable. You can feel amazing. You deserve to feel amazing. So I really want you to embrace the idea that there are people who care and are knowledgeable and have other solutions over the broken medical system. So don't hesitate to reach out to me. I am here for you. I do this for you guys. Share this with every lady you know in your world. Because we need to band together and support each other. Right? It's a sisterhood, not a competition. So let's take control of the our health and our lives together. So go out and have a kickass week and meet me back here next time. Take care.