Busting the Myths: Hormones, Health and Happiness

Robin Fisher Roffer: Dr. Vonda Wright and her team published a paper, I believe it was in 2023, that talked about the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. And when I read the paper, I was like, yes, finally, I feel as if I've been saying this for years and nobody has heard me. But I was saying a lot of our aches and pains, those joint pains that we get, the ow, the uh, the noises that we're making when we get up, it's not just, oh, you're getting old. I really believed long time ago that it was our hormones that were decreasing and those hormones played an intricate part in our body's physiology. And so she talks about how estrogen in particular has been linked to a lot of our joint pain as we get older and it drops. Think of it almost like losing that WD-40 that helps to keep everything nice and lubricated up so that you can continue to move. Welcome to the Plenty of Husbands podcast for women who are older, wiser, and hotter. This is where we inspire women in midlife to believe they can love again. And I'm your host, Robin Fisher-Roffer. Now let's meet our guest. Today we have a truly, truly inspiring guest. Her name is Dr. Lakisha McMillan, and she's a renowned hormone specialist, a speaker and author. With over a decade of experience as an integrative gynecologist and hormone specialist, Dr. LaKeisha, as her clients call her, is dedicated to empowering women, particularly those navigating the complexities of perimenopause and menopause. And through her concierge practice, she treats women who are struggling with the depleting hormones that they have in their body that are leaving their body, and she helps rebalance them. so her patients can regain mental sharpness and restore their energy levels. Now, as single women in midlife, you may be asking how hormonal changes impact not just your health, but also your confidence and relationships. Dr. LaKesha believes that understanding and balancing your hormones, that's what's essential for living a vibrant life and fulfilling connections. Now, she's here to share her expert insights. that will help you feel confident and empowered so you can embrace this exciting chapter of life with clarity and purpose. Join us as we explore the vital connection between hormonal health and dating, self-esteem and sex, and the journey to finding love in midlife. Now, whether you're looking for practical tips or a deeper understanding of your body, this episode, don't go anywhere because it's packed with wisdom you won't wanna miss. and you are gonna wanna share with your friends, your sister, anyone you love who is going through this change of life. Welcome Dr. LaKeisha. Thank you Robin. ⁓ my gosh. I love, love, love what you're doing here for this community, for your community, for women during this time. This is such a powerful and needed conversation. I am so excited to be here today. Well, I'm thrilled to have somebody that's so passionate about this subject. I shared with you before we jumped on the recording that I have been on a hormone replacement journey since I was 40. I'm now 64. And I plan to put them on until the day I die, right? And take You know, for me, it's bioidenticals. We'll talk about the difference. ⁓ But it has been like seriously my life, blood and my oxygen, like as important as those two things to me. So I really wanna get into it. There's so many myths. So Dr. LaKeisha, can you share your journey into the field of hormone health? What inspired you to focus on women in midlife and help us get through this change? That's such a great question. I tell people all the time, if you were to look at my highlight reel, you you call it the ESPN highlight reel, right? Where they show you all the wonderful clips, right? It will look as if I was checking off all the boxes. I was, you know, going to college at my parents' alma mater. I was, you know, First I started out as a biochemistry major, then I changed to biology with chemistry minor so I could get into a research project that was only to biology major. So I got into that. I got into medical school early. I went to Loma Linda School of Medicine. I knew that I was going there. I got accepted in my junior year of college. know, so people are like, yeah, you're checking off all the boxes, checking off all the boxes. I knew I wanted to be a doctor from the time I was 12 years old. run in the house and tell my parents, I wanna be a doctor. And they're like, great, you can do it. And they're like, we're educators, we're not doctors. You need to find yourself around one to make sure that's what you wanna do. And that's exactly what happened from the time I was 13 years old till the time I left for medical school. I worked at Dr. Hicks office in Huntsville, Alabama, starting with the filing, the old fashioned get the chart out. open up the chart, put the lab in there, put it back, put it back, you know, all the way through to managing his office and going on rounds with him. And so I was able to know for sure, was like, yes, this is what I want to do. And I knew it was women's health that I wanted to go into. And so as life would have it, I got accepted, went to residency, and then life hits you with a one-two punch. And my one-two punch came in 2009 and 2010, where within 10 months I lost my dad and my grandmother. And I was in a free fall. I say I was blessed to come from a two-parent household. My parents were educators. My dad was an elementary school principal. My mother worked at the college that I went to and was a professor there. And so our tight knit family got the rug ripped from underneath us. My brother and I would always say, dad was our cheerleader. Mom was our coach. Like I said, we'd run in and say, we want to do something. Dad would say, yes, you could do it. Absolutely. Mom would put out the notepad and say, I need the SOP. I need to know how we're getting there. I need to know all the steps. What are we doing? And so now I am sitting on labor and delivery one night and my blood pressure is 160 over 110. And I am like, I need an exit strategy because I'm not happy anymore. My patients, when they call, I'm mad at them for calling me. That's not me. I don't want to be the happy-go-lucky doctor that's, ⁓ it's time for another birthday party. Yay, let's go in and deliver this baby. And I was like, there has to be more to this. And that's when I came home. I came to be mom to my kids and... you know, enjoy time with my husband, y'all. He's kind of cute and I like him. So, you know, I was like, okay. And during that time, it was when I discovered one physician heal thyself because I needed to start doing some healing work. And I really started diving into the world of integrative medicine. And so Loma Linda, their motto is to make man whole. And I feel they kind of set me up for that. because they have this wonderful way of looking at the whole person. So that was the lens in which I was already looking at my patients. And now I'm like, okay, what is the next, what happens to women at this point? What happens after the babies, after we deliver them, or even if they're not able to have it, like what happens now? And understanding our bodies change every decade and then the hormones change and it shows up. as serious symptomology. It shows up as everyday things that happen in our lives. And so when I started really taking a dive into that, I was able to take a step back and then reintroduce myself as Dr. LaKeisha, your integrative or hormone whisperer, your menopause whisperer, taking and helping perimenopausal women and menopausal women validating their symptoms. Helping them to crack their hormone codes and then providing them with a personalized symptom solution blueprint. And that's kind of how I got into this space and have been here for. Is Loma Linda one of the blue zones? It is. It is. So when you said integrative and you said like whole person, you're talking about everything. You're talking about food. You're talking about. Sex, you're talking about sleep, you're talking about fitness. This is when we say whole person and hormones is right in there. Exactly, exactly. And I was saying, like I said, I was already practicing a little bit of that in what most people would call traditional medicine. Because when I have a patient, they would come in and they would say, ⁓ no, something is going on with my period. It's kind of wacky now. It's not doing the same thing it's been doing. I would step back and say, okay, when did that start happening? About three months ago, what changed in your life three months ago? What happened three months ago? And they would look at me like, what does that have to do with it? It has everything to do with this. It has everything. So you're looking at the total person, maybe even what's going on in their head or what's going on in their life. And like you said, you had a moment where the rug was pulled out under you. It completely changed how you approach medicine. It changed how you felt going to work every day. And knowing what these changes are, of course, the body-mind connection. Now, you published a book called The Other PMS, Your Survival Guide for Perimenopause and Menopause. And you, in that book, you debunk the myth that women are doomed to misery for the rest of their lives once they hit perimenopause. What are some of those myths? And tell us, Dr. LaKeisha, why are they still out there? Robin, this is a great question. I feel I am qualified to answer this question because I was there. And what do I mean by that? It was 2002, July of 2002. I am a brand new doctor. I have my long white coat on you all in the hospital. That's significant. That means you are now the MD. You don't have the short white coat on as a student. And I am in my residency program. And my program director comes into one of our morning reports and she's waving this piece of paper and she's like, oh my gosh, we have to stop, we have to stop. The three of us that are interns look at each other like, what just happened? What's going on? The WHI study was published and came out in July of 2002. So think about this, July, 2002. You have people like me that have been told for 20 plus years now that have been practicing medicine this long, hormones are bad, they cause cancer, they cause blood clots, don't give them to women. And we did not take the time to really understand that study and be able to take apart the pieces of it and then give it to our patients and say, this is how it applies to you or does not apply to you. And so what happened is in that study, they looked at synthetic hormones. That's the big deal. It was horse urine that was conjugated equine estrogen that the estrogen was made from. The progesterone was a synthetic chemicals progesterone. And what happened is there was some information that came out that made it look like it was causing some increased risks that were very detrimental. What that did to women's health was detrimental. because we took away an option for women to help them feel like themselves again. And so what happened is in this timeframe, we now have bioidentical hormones that have come out that are used, usually their base of it is an organic base. It looks just like what your body used to make. Your body knows how to break it down and it is an option for most, if not all women. And there's some caveats to that. but it is a tool to help you feel like yourself again. And so that is what has happened is that you have doctors that have been practicing since that study came out that have been told this information and because of their situation, their patient load, whatever it is for them, they have not had the chance to go back and read information and get the new information and education. And so they are still going, hormones are bad. We're not gonna do that. That's not an option. And this is why women are suffering because they are suffering in silence because hormones really do help with physiological processes in our body that help us feel good. Absolutely. Like I said at the beginning, I don't even know where I would be without this. I mean, the way it has optimized my energy level. and my ability to have more strength, you know, through the working out that I do, right? And build muscle, all these things. So that is just, it almost feels, I don't wanna use, I hate to use word conspiracy, but it almost feels like, you know, not giving women the information they need to optimize their health seems pretty cruel. And now it's still lingering out there, cause I hear it every day. I had a friend, ⁓ that I asked her, you on hormones? And she said, no, I'm too old. I'm, you know, in my mid-60s. Is that true, Dr. LaCashia? I can't put somebody, because I'm thinking I want to take them, like I said, until they put me six feet under. Is it true you can be too old to take hormones? So here's one of the myths that you were asking to debunk. One of the myths I want to debunk is that perimenopause and menopause are solely age-related. Okay, if I had a dollar for inflation, y'all, for every person that came to me and said, my doctor said I'm too young to be in perimenopause or I'm not in perimenopause, my symptoms are not perimenopausal or menopausal. It is solely about hormone dysregulation. Okay. So if your hormones are not at the levels that they used to be, if they're dropping too fast, too soon, that is one of the things that's happening. to put you in what we now can call perimenopause or menopause. That's one of the myths. The other myth that I think we're going to be debunking is this lingering understanding of shortest, lowest dose, shortest amount of time. So what has happened is that there are some studies that say if you start hormone therapy about 10 years after you've gone into menopause, there seems to be some associated risk with increasing cardiovascular risk, okay? So we're looking at women that may be, like you said, in their mid-60s or even in their 70s. Now, what I believe is going to be happening is that when you have someone like myself that can evaluate you and truly look at your risk factors and your lifestyle, and be able to start you on bioidentical hormones, that will be something you can do and carry it later on in life. But you can't just be given them and say, go have a good life, bye bye, and I don't monitor you. So I do believe that there are some parameters that need to be in place to make sure you're safe, to make sure if your physiology changes, if something else changes. that we know about this and can make an informed decision, help you make an informed decision. Have I had women that are in their mid-60s that have come to me and said, hey, I feel awful, never been on hormones and I started them? Yes, absolutely. And have they been on hormone or do I have women that have been on hormones since their 40s or 50s and they get to 60 and they're like, do I need to stop? I'm like, no, you can stay on them. And in my humble opinion, I believe that hormone therapy or some people call it bioidentical hormone therapy, hormone therapy, however you want to call it or label it, those that are on bioidenticals, it will be almost like a supplement for you. Something that you're just going to have in your rotation that you continue to take because it helps you to be able to be the best version of yourself. And we have to understand that when we don't allow women to be the best versions of themselves, we take away institutional wisdom. We take away community wisdom. We take away how the community can run because we then do ourselves a disservice. Absolutely. And I'm, you know, I'm thinking of myself into my eighties and nineties now. I want to be on the floor playing with my grandchildren. I want to be dancing at my kids weddings, our mitzvahs, you know, all of the big occasions. I do not want to be in a wheelchair. I do not want to be in a walker with a walker. I want to be vibrant. Am I wrong to say that hormones are part of my strategy to get to that type of vitality at a later age? I really believe yes. Absolutely. Dr. Vonda Wright and her team published a paper, I believe it was in 2023, that talked about the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. And when I read the paper, I was like, yes, finally, I feel as if I've been saying this for years and nobody has heard me. But I was saying a lot of our aches and pains, those joint pains that we get, the ow, the uh, the noises that we're making when we get up, it's not just you're getting old. I really believed long time ago that it was our hormones that were decreasing and those hormones played an intricate part in our body's physiology. And so she talks about how estrogen in particular has been linked to a lot of our joint pain as we get older and it drops. think, I say, think of it almost like losing that WD-40. that helps to keep everything nice and lubricated up so that you can continue to move. And so, yes, I believe that this is going to be something that you continue to use and be safe about and that you can. You can then go into your 80s, your 90s. You can be that grandmother, that great-grandmother, that great-auntie that everybody's like, what is she doing? How is she doing this? She doesn't look her age. She doesn't move like she's in her 80s or. Wait, I love this. So. I love the idea of thinking of estrogen as WD-40. I like love that so much. Strengthening everything, including your skin. Yes. And making it taut. So there's all kinds of, so what are the downsides of just, I'm just gonna go through menopause. I don't, you know, the woman who says, I don't have cough flashes, I don't have headaches, I don't have mood swings, my sex drive is fine. I'll just sail through this. My mother sailed through it. My grandmother sailed through it. I'll get on the other side, I'll be fine. I don't need hormones. What do you say to a woman like that? There are some microscopic benefits that you may not have overt symptoms for. For instance, we know that hormone therapy can help with our cardiovascular risk. It helps with our bone health. It helps even have a protection for certain types of breast cancer. And I just named the top three things. that will interrupt your quality of life or actually kill you as a woman. Number one is cardiovascular disease. Yes, that's our number one killer. Number two is osteoporosis and number three is breast cancer. And when I list those in order, a lot of people go, wait a minute, breast cancer is number three? And I go, yes, absolutely. And I kind of say it tongue in cheek and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I say breast cancer has a great PR department. And I'm saying that in admiration because they have gotten the word out. So we know about breast cancer. We're very aware of it. We need to be that aware of these other two that actually will impact the quality and the longevity of your life, which is cardiovascular and osteoporosis. So estrogens, we have learned estrogen and testosterone have protection to our blood vessels. They also have protection for certain types of breast cancer. We also know that they protect our bones from getting soft as we get older. So those are the benefits that you may not have a symptom for as you're going through menopause. So I'm not saying that everybody needs to be on hormones. I'm saying it needs to be discussed so you can make an informed decision. I say informed refusal is just as important as informed consent. So you know what you're saying yes or no to. That sounds great. This hormonal imbalance. I know that you've done a lot in your book and when you give speeches talking about women's confidence and how it can diminish without hormones. And what I would also think that would translate to dating during midlife. What are your thoughts on all of that? Absolutely. First of all, one of the things I believe hormone therapy does, and if I could be very transparent, I am on hormone therapy myself and been on it for probably 11, 12 years almost now. I started in my forties. Yeah. And I'll be 52 this year. Yeah. So 12 years this year. And one of the things that I noticed was my cognitive functioning. And it's not that you feel as if you're losing your wits about you or anything, but sometimes it's even putting the words together. I'm a speaker. I'm an author. I used to be able to get up and talk very fluently. And now I noticed I could see the word in my head, but it wasn't coming out and I was having to go, wait, hold on. so cognitive functioning, brain fog. And when you feel as if your intellect is not where it used to be, that can attack your confidence. And when you're not as confident, you're not going to bring your full self forward. You're going to, I don't know. And that can impact your dating life. Not saying that, you know, your body changes can impact your dating life, you know, all of those other things, but just feeling comfortable in your skin can significantly impact your dating life, can significantly impact your sex life. And so having that tool has been a game changer for me personally. bet, I bet. Me too. Tell me about, let's break down. the three main ones. So you've got estrogen. We've talked about that, how that helps with osteoporosis and heart health and might even prevent breast cancer. You've talked about testosterone. Let's get a little deeper and that's kind of the new one. And then we'll move to progesterone. Give us some why you should take each of those last two. Absolutely. So testosterone has been known to help with our mood, motivation, focus, helping to build lean muscle, you know, as we get older and we're, you know, doing our workouts and we're like, wait a minute, the scale's not moving or I'm not toning like I used to. So testosterone really does help with that. Testosterone and estrogen are also known to help with insulin sensitivity. What does that mean? So as we get older, we get a little bit more insulin resistant. Let me take y'all to school really quick, okay? So when you take food in, think of it as just fuel. The body takes that and goes, I know what to do with that piece of broccoli. Actually, I can break that all the way down to a carbohydrate. That's the thing I can get all the way down. to this nice little molecule. Okay, now I have a carbohydrate, because vegetables can be carbohydrates too. I have this carbohydrate, but it needs a chaperone. So I need to send a message over to the liver and say, hey, send me some liver to the pancreas, send me some insulin. Insulin comes out and it takes the hand of your carbohydrate and it shops it around your body, because it's the chaperone. It knocks on the walls of the skeletal muscle, says, hey, Are you about to go for a walk or are you sitting watching Netflix? Now I'm sitting watching Netflix. Okay, let me go over to the heart. Heart, are you good? Okay, yeah, you're good. Let me go to the brain. Are you just watching Netflix or are you really reading a paper and trying to use your brain and decipher some information? No, you don't need me either. Okay, so where do I go? Well, I gotta go and just get stored. So let me go back to the liver. Let me get packaged up as glycogen and glucagon and fat and get stored somewhere. And so that becomes that insulin resistance. When all of those little cells that used to take in glucose goes, we don't really need that right now. And that's what can happen as you go into perimenopause and menopause, you become insulin. The body doesn't feel like it needs that, that glucose anymore. And so it starts storing it and it starts storing it in that midsection. Okay. That's why we get a little midlife bump. In our belly? Exactly. I never knew that's what was happening. Exactly. So testosterone can come and help you build more lean muscle, which is more metabolically active at rest. so that when that glucose and insulin come by, goes, yeah, let me use that. Don't store that. I'll actually use that a little bit. So I can, you you can actually make this lean muscle. It actually helps your body to utilize what is called brown adipose tissue, which is your brown fat. And it helps you to make sure that you're burning these calories and not storing them. So testosterone is very important, not just as the sex hormone. A lot of people just equate it to libido, wanting to have sex, but it really does help with your brain health. It helps to decrease your risk along with estrogen for dementia. It helps keep certain structures in the brain nice and plump instead of letting those areas shrink as we get older. So it's very vital in a lot of different organ systems. Now progesterone, progesterone, she doesn't get her shine. She really doesn't. And I call her the Goldilocks hormone because you have to get her just right for people. Progesterone is known to help in starting the cascade that happens in our brain to help us go to sleep. Progesterone is also known as Nature's Xanax. It helps us lower our shoulders from up here, being all like. like a cat on the ceiling, it says, calm down, everything's okay, we're good. And so there is this old adage that says, if you don't have a uterus, you don't need progesterone. I debunk that in all my webinars, especially with practitioners. say, don't use that anymore because progesterone has so many other jobs in the brain and in other tissues in our body that are so helpful. It's mainly in the brain. Progesterone really does help with our pain pathways, our dopamine pathways, our serotonin pathways. Progesterone is really, like I said, she doesn't get her shine the way she should. Well, I love her and I take it to go to sleep actually. Exactly. That's before bed and about an hour before and it calms me down. I was, you know, and I was taking a little bit in the morning. and a little bit at night and I put it all at night and that was a game changer for me. So, ⁓ you're giving me a thumbs up, I love that. So, you're making me feel like I'm doing some things right, because I really am all about longevity and whole body, you know, integration and that's what you do, Dr. LaKeisha. Can you share some success stories from women who have transformed their lives by focusing on their hormone balance? Absolutely, ⁓ my gosh, I... love my patients. They are truly the stars of the show. I tell my patients all the time, you tell me where we want to go. You know your body. You are the expert of your body. Tell me where you want to go. What is your goal? And I'm going to sit in the passenger side of this car with you. And I just happen to know the GPS coordinates to get you to where you want to go. And so we're going to work together as a team. to be able to punch the different buttons and go where we need to go to get you to where you wanna be. So, ⁓ my gosh, success stories. I have one for you here where there was a patient of mine who had a history of actually having endometrial cancer, like very early endometrial cancer, had to have a hysterectomy, had her ovaries taken out and was not told that she was going into menopause literally overnight. She was an athlete, was... spine, all this other stuff, got her hysterectomy and her ovaries were taken out and she could not sleep anymore. Like overnight she couldn't sleep. She found a practitioner that would give her hormone therapy and so she was like, okay, starting to feel a little bit more like herself, but then he retired and nobody else would touch her. And she found me and we started working together. And I was like, yeah, sure, absolutely. Through her whole history, this lady, I had to get her up to 400 milligrams of progesterone nightly before she had a good night's sleep. I remember when she called me the next day in tears saying, I finally slept for the first time in three years. She was like, thank you so much. And both of us are just on the phone like, ⁓ my gosh, this is awesome. Cause I was even like, okay, let's go up another hundred. ⁓ my gosh. Are you sure? you not, you're not drought what? And I'm like pushing it up slowly, slowly, slowly. And this is what I say. I actually let my patients titrate up their progesterone because I said, you know, when you get drowsy enough and you'll get to sleep. And then the next day, as long as you're not too drowsy, that's your dose. And then tell me what you got up to. And that's going to be what I'll write your prescriptions for going forward. And that's just one of the examples. have patients that I, so I lay on functional medicine testing with your story that you give me. And part of that is also looking at the interdisciplinary, what happens with all these different organ systems. So we have not only the sex hormones, you have the adrenals, you have the gut. and you have the thyroid. And so when I'm looking at all these different areas, I'm helping the patient to know, okay, let's work on the gut because the gut is gonna help with phase three detoxification of your estrogen. Let's work on your thyroid. Let's work on your adrenals because if we don't work on the adrenals. All this wonderful work we do with the sex hormones, the adrenals are gonna steal from that and you're not gonna feel anything. So these are some of the things that I do where I'll say, hey, how are you feeling? And I have to remember, they didn't get here overnight. I know it feels like we did. I know it feels like we woke up one day and missed the memo, but your hormones were starting to change, you know, almost like every decade, really, your hormones are changing and then you wake up. And you're like, whoa, what just happened? I really feel the change. So it may take you a few months to get your dosing right, to feel like yourself again, or actually feel like the new you is what I say. You're in a new body. I stopped using the term post menopausal because I had women coming to me saying, I'm done with menopause, but this and this and this is happening. And I'm like, ma'am. this is your menopausal phase of life. Like things are just going to be happening because your hormones are dropping. And so this is what we have to, these are the different tools I'm gonna give you at this point in time. So you really need to work closely with someone like you. Absolutely. Because you're tweaking it, you're tweaking it to get just the right dose. You don't just get. the meds and like once a year go get tested and refill them. It's gotta be like I would, I mean I'm going about every six months I get retested, we take a look at it, we talk, yes, right. So you need a practitioner like you. That's the key, it's a partnership. Don't you think Dr. That's it, exactly it. It is a partnership, that is exactly what I tell them. And I tell them like you can't break up with me without telling me, okay. So if something's not right, tell me. Like don't just stop coming, stop calling and then go off and do your own thing. Come back, say this isn't working. This is what we, what we tried to do this time. This is working. Well, this is amazing. I have another story for you. Another patient I've been working with for probably about a year and she was very hesitant about starting. She told me, she was like, I'm really scared about this. And she's like, because of everything I've heard and I know that you're telling that. Yes, the myths. She's like, I'm really nervous. And I said, okay, we're gonna go low and slow. And I said, so I level set expectations. Know that your symptoms may not change yet because I'm not even giving you a dose that's high enough that's gonna, I said, we're peeing in the ocean right now, okay? So we're not even doing anything. And she's been slowly, we've been titradial, we've been adding on, we've been doing things with her adrenals. And she wrote me just even today and she was like, I'm feeling so much better. I'm so excited about this. I'm sleeping better. She's like, matter of fact, I fall asleep some nights without taking my progesterone. She was like, do I have to take it? I was like, yes ma'am, you still have a uterus please. Like, okay, because progesterone is protective. I want to caution before I ask you the last question. Sure. I want to caution people to listen to their hormone specialist, not their Western medicine MD who's 20th century, not their sister girlfriend, somebody who's like, why are you on that? You don't need to be on that. Mama wasn't on that. Like you've got to partner with somebody like Dr. LaKesha and you. got to listen to them and your body. And together you're going to get there. But just stop it right away because somebody scares you and says, hey, didn't you, you know, and starts to myth you, give you all the myths, then you're going to fail at this. And this is for your life. I love what you said at the beginning. It's like, it's going to be like a supplement to you. That's exactly how I feel. So if you had one key takeaway, you want our listeners to remember about the importance of hormonal health. What's a one key takeaway? that everyone should walk away with this and put into action. Let's take the boogeyman out of hormones. Let's take the boogeyman out of it. Know that it is, that there are options out there for you that are safe and effective. And so when we start opening ourselves up, Like the parachute, know, the whole story about opening up the parachute, that's the only way it works. When we open up our minds, when we come into conversation with people like myself that have been doing this work for now, I've probably been in this world for over 10 years now. I'm probably knocking on about. year 14 rather, that I really have studied this and it's something I'm doing myself. I wouldn't even do something to you that I wouldn't do for myself or even my mom. I wish I knew this when she was going through it. I say this now, I'm like, oh, I just want to take her and bathe her in a tub of hormones. I wish I could just do that for her because I'm seeing all the effects of what has happened over the years of what now she's dealing with with her medical history. But I say take the boogeyman out of hormone therapy. Have an open mind, have a conversation, get your questions answered. And if you don't get them answered in the first session, get them, keep coming back, keep going and saying, okay, I have more questions. This is what I wanna understand now. Can you help me understand this? Get your questions answered. Beautiful, I love that. So how can listeners connect with you if they want to work with you? Can you work with people on Zoom? Absolutely, absolutely. I do telemedicine and I do a virtual consult visit if you go to talkhormones.com. So sometimes you have to put the www. in front of it, depending on your browser, or you could just put in talkhormones.com and schedule a virtual consult visit with me. I am out of network for all insurance companies, but it is a very minimal nominal fee for you to come and spend some time with me and talk to me. And then I can see how I can be of service for you and see if we need to work together for three months or longer or things like that. And I can tell you how you can work with me there. That sounds great, Dr. LaKeitha. I am so happy we're on plenty of husbands today. You taught us all so much and I am. So grateful. And I just want to say to everyone out there, please at least find a doctor who they're an expert in this and get educated and get on a course if you can. It's been life changing for me. It's been life changing for Dr. LaKeisha and it is her passion. Mine too. So that's a wrap on the show today, everyone. Thank you for coming to plenty of husbands. And I just want everyone out there. to practice their ABCs, action, belief, and courage. That's how you get to live your greatest love story. Bye now.