Speaker 2: 0:03

Welcome to Hormone Heroes, where I share testimonials from real people who have experienced bioidentical hormone therapy. Men and women share the symptoms they have experienced and the difference proper hormone replacement has made. I'm your host, dr Kelly Hopkins, and I have been in the functional medicine space for over 30 years, with a focus on hormones for 20 years. Please keep in mind this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult with your physician or practitioner for medical advice. Let's get started with today's guest. Welcome to the podcast. Today we have Renee Penlack. She is a nurse practitioner in Memphis, tennessee, and she is the owner of De La Belle Wellness and Spa. So welcome, renee. Thank you so much, kelly, for having me. Yeah, we're excited to have you. You're a beautiful person inside and out and I've had the privilege of knowing you for a few years now, but just and I immediately continued to practice my background was at St Jude.

Speaker 1: 1:29

I worked there for 17 and a half years and so a lot of what I did was brain tumors and other solid tumors and that's kind of where I really started to learn about optimization of hormones through patients with brain tumors and how those patients that can't make certain hormones from their brain and how the endocrinology team works with the solid tumor team, that works with the brain tumor team. And that's where I really got my first love of wow, we can really take a sick person and help them be well, or we could take somebody that's maybe not feeling their best and help them feel better. And so that was in a whole side of pediatrics. But I graduated with my master's. I continued to work at St Jude as a nurse practitioner and then a lot of my patients at that time had brain tumors and so I looked at faces all day and there was just kind of a bug in my ear that said you know, renee, if you're going to do something, now's the time. And I think that I turned 40 and they say the rest is history.

Speaker 1: 2:36

I decided that I was going to turn in my month's notice and I was going to go into wellness and aesthetics and, honestly, having no real experience in those fields other than what I had gleaned from doing procedures at St Jude and what the training that I had gone and gotten all weekend which by no means should anybody, you know, use that as their only means of injecting someone's face but between my passion, my love and my just endurance of studying it and doing it, I started working in a walking clinic helping them open up a wellness and hormones, and that gave me my first experience in adult wellness and hormone therapy and replacement therapy, and so it was just kind of this wonderful coming together of everything that I'd already learned and all of the new things that I just loved. And you know, if you love to learn something about something, it's not really work. You know what I mean. It's like you love it.

Speaker 2: 3:37

You want to read about it.

Speaker 1: 3:38

You want to eat it, drink it, sleep it and honestly, that's just kind of how aesthetics blew up with me and wellness and hormone therapy. I like to tell my patients this, and it's true my mother owned a health food store in the eighties, when that was way not cool, right, right.

Speaker 1: 3:55

And she went to vitamin school in Utah and you know she was from the South and and you know it's just. You know all of these things that she talked about. You know yeast and the gut before anybody else ever talked about that on the news. And so I always just say you know that love of wellness came from her. It really did. It came from the way she fed us. It came from girl. We didn't have no sugary cereal in our house. I had to go to Allison Becker to take me to the grocery store, you know.

Speaker 1: 4:25

So it was just that coming together. And so after in 2002, I graduated and in 2014, I set up my LLC and in 2015, january 1st, we opened Dayla Bell Wellness and Spa. And Dayla Bell actually stands for the beautiful and it's a play on words. My daughter, who's now 18, her name is Isabel and my son was in French class in high school and I said I want to come up with a name that kind of is a play on your sister's name, and so it's a coming together of my two children helping me pick the name.

Speaker 2: 5:06

Oh, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 5:07

We specialize in aesthetics I just finished doing some filler on a patient and PDO threads and we offer weight loss. I always struggled with my weight and my very first job in nursing school I ran an at-work Weight Watchers program at the local hospital. So when I was in nursing school and in clinic, I was also working at the hospital running an at-work Weight Watchers program at the age of 19. And so I just I get to do all the things that I love, which is, you know, coach people, replace people's bioidentical hormone therapy which we both know they need and inject people and make them feel better about themselves.

Speaker 2: 5:50

So it's just a win-win all the way around 100%. So you got to see the power of hormones very early in your career, working at St Jude's, and now, with your aesthetic practice, you understand deeply how hormones practice. You understand deeply how hormones, you know, helps the beauty from the inside out, and then all the surface things you do as well. So let me just ask you a little bit about your own personal hormone story. When did you start to notice symptoms of hormone deficiency?

Speaker 1: 6:20

You know, actually that's something that was very apparent to me around the age of 35. And I really didn't know why. And the same guy that I ended up working for as I was opening this practice and working with him with hormone replacement just a great guy taught me so much. We did my hormone panel at that time and I it was in the process of I knew him through there and then he ended up hiring me, so it was kind of like that kind of a thing, and so we started me on progesterone and that I went from not being able to go to sleep at night to being able to go to sleep, and I didn't have a lot of experience with progesterone at that time, and so I'm like this is like a miracle you know, and so I think even my own hormone journey really opened my eyes to wanting to do it for my patients.

Speaker 1: 7:17

I think that it really started there already with that love of wellness how do I help you feel better, or how do I keep you from being ill, or you know all of the things that wellness stands for and so I went to work with him. I started working with patients with hormone deficiencies and we did at that time, we just did, you know, creams and troches and you know, sometimes we would use, you know, a compounded testosterone shot. And there was just a little talk back in those days about pellets. Yes, I remember thinking, well, that's just not going to, how can I manage this treatment with just a pellet, like that's just not going to be the best for my patient. And I remember like being very like, oh no, that's not the way to go, that's not the way to go.

Speaker 2: 8:03

What year was this, would you say?

Speaker 1: 8:04

that. So this is like 13, 14.

Speaker 2: 8:07

Okay.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Yeah. So then I opened in 15 and I was trying to think, like I think it was like 16 or 17 when, like you or I like when we met through this, and so I mean I'm almost two years into my practice and I was ready to have that actual program, like that hormone program. It takes time to start something, and so when this is all happening, I'll never forget it, it was August of that year and I was taking my daughter to school and I started having dizzy spells and that just was not me. And the backstory know, the backstory of that is is that I was diagnosed at 28 with hypothyroidism and I, you know, got on the Synthroid, did the whole thing, thought that that was going to magically make my weight issues go away, and then, 10 years later, you know, I'm full blown into. You know hormone therapy and what it means and all this stuff. You know hormone therapy and what it means and all this stuff, Yet I had not checked my own hormones.

Speaker 1: 9:07

Now here I am taking care of everybody else's, but I am not checking my own and most of the time and I loved my GYN she's now retired. I loved her, but if I didn't specifically say to her I want you to check this, this and this, she wouldn't. And I assumed that those things were being checked. So here we go. I'm really having a hard time. I'm really really tired. I'm really really having a lot of weird symptoms, to the point where I'm at my neurologist office and I was getting weakness in my hands. Wow, my hands are very important to me. I use them to inject faces with.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Sure.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Having just a lot of fatigue, a lot more headaches. I mean it just felt like it was. Just I didn't really know what was going on. So I started at the top as like, or started at the bottom really, and I said, okay, went to my GYN. I said, look, I'm tired, we need to look at my hormones. Look, go to my neurologist. I'm like something is not right here. I'm having this, this and this. We start working up, we start the MRI, we start the whole. I mean my symptom panel mimicked almost like an MS patient, the way it had all kind of come on. I didn't have full-on paralysis, so it was very gray, but I was being worked up to rule out MS. So so that was, you know, on the front end. And here I am trying to start this program, not feeling like I have any bit of energy at all, and enter Kelly and I will never forget. You said, hello, have you checked your hormones? And I'm like, well, yeah, they told me everything was fine.

Speaker 2: 10:45

And? But you had started progesterone, correct. Oh yes, I was already on progesterone, yes.

Speaker 1: 10:50

My thyroid was completely out of whack. I went to my endocrinologist. I mean, I literally had things that were just really just all out there. It was just like this cloud of things that were just happening and there wasn't a lot of answer on why, and so the long and short of it was I had zero, testosterone zero, and I don't want to say that it was just you know kind of an overnight thing.

Speaker 1: 11:16

It was kind of a journey back to get started on the cream and then to transition into a pellet, and all the while trying to keep up with a family and a business and my own personal health struggles. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's during that time and didn't really get any guidance, even though, again, you had this medical community. I'm part of that medical community, I'm a family nurse practitioner. But if you do not get outside of what the norm is and have an open mind to what functional medicine or functional wellness or hormone replacement therapy is, you're not going to get that information as readily as you should. And I am the prime example of how, if I hadn't have fought for my own health, knowing what I know, I can tell you I would not be running this practice today. I wouldn't have the ability, the concentration, the energy to be able to do it.

Speaker 2: 12:16

So for anyone that might not understand what Hashimoto's is, can you describe what that means?

Speaker 1: 12:23

So, basically, hashimoto's is an autoimmune disorder. It really is. And so I had already been diagnosed with hypothyroid, meaning my thyroid function was sluggish. That's very important in my life because my mother died of thyroid cancer, so I really am very aware and I was diagnosed about a year after she passed away. And so, you know, I've had the ultrasounds, I've had, you know, different cysts, I've had a lot of issues, but I didn't have that stamp of Hashimoto's until my late 30s.

Speaker 1: 13:03

And so, basically, your thyroid is attacking itself and there's not a lot of things that you can take other than looking at it from a very wellness perspective of support, supplementation and all of the things that we do, because that one medicine that you get at the endocrinologist which I still take, by the way, along with some other supplements and things that's not going to cure your Hashimoto's, right.

Speaker 1: 13:32

And so you're dealing with an autoimmune disorder that your thyroid just continually flares and attacks and flares and attacks, and then what happens to the person is you're fatigued, there's no other way to say it. You don't have enough energy and you don't really know why, because you're like, well, hey, I'm sleeping better and you know I'm working an everyday job just like everybody else. This is underlying level of fatigue that you really can't wrap your brain around, and I'm one of these people that if I can't run at 100 miles an hour, then what's the point? You see what I'm saying, right? So I really hold myself and really look at how I can optimize my glutathione levels, my NAD levels. I mean, I'm doing all things and I can tell you that I'm controlling my Hashimoto's. It's not controlling me, but for the people that are out there and they're searching for answers, it's a very great diagnosis, but at the same time, we know very clearly that your thyroid is just really fighting its own self.

Speaker 2: 14:36

And it's not. Yes, and sometimes what causes those autoimmune attacks on the body can be food sensitivities. Definitely, gluten is usually a culprit. So food sensitivity testing is a good help for those type of issues. So the type of hormone therapy that you've tried over the years has been creams. Kind of walk us through your progress, through your therapies, kind of walk us through your progress, through your therapies.

Speaker 1: 15:03

Oh, yes, so until I brought pellets into my office and really went through that certification with you, I loved it and have been so thankful for you and your support. And there's no turning back. There's no turning back from replacing your hormones with bioidentical pellet therapy. But until that I had access to that, I did use testosterone cream and I will tell you that it did help a little bit with some of the fatigue, but in no way did it compare to how I feel and my energy level now, my ability to focus. That's kind of the start of it. And then, once you replace that thyroid or, excuse me, that testosterone hormone, what I have found is is that it also guess what helps my thyroid stay in a lab value of good. You see, yes, and it is allowed that.

Speaker 1: 15:59

And I had this conversation with a new GYN and she was really making me feel guilty for my testosterone level and I simply said you know you and I are going to have to agree to disagree, because I am not trying to have the more is better. I am trying to tell you that I know what I need for this number to be so that my thyroid stays on track too. I have the energy to run my practice and do the things that I want to do, and there's not really a whole other way to say it. And he even tried to tell me that I was giving myself PCOS, and then it was just. And then that's when I said well, I have to agree to disagree. And I said you know, here's the thing I said when your patients come into your office and their testosterone level is under 70, you and I both know that when you tell that patient that everything is fine, you're not taking care of that patient.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Yeah, how did she take that?

Speaker 1: 17:05

Oh, she didn't write that she didn't like it, and I said it exactly that way, in the most respectful way, because that's how passionate I am through living through this and for those that might not know, pcos is polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Speaker 2: 17:20

For those that might not know, pcos is polycystic ovarian syndrome and one of the symptoms of PCOS is higher testosterone levels. But the problem is it's not appropriately balanced with certainly progesterone and estrogen, and it keeps you from ovulating every month, which can cause your ovaries to have cysts. So it's all about hormone balance, but we certainly don't need to be afraid of higher testosterone levels in females. So are you currently just doing testosterone pellets? Have you added any estrogen?

Speaker 1: 17:52

I haven't. I recently checked my estrogen level and I really borderline is pellet time again. So we're going to see. Up until now I have been totally fine with my estrogen values and I still take progesterone every night with DHEA.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Okay, wonderful. Do you mind if I ask are you still having a menstrual cycle?

Speaker 1: 18:14

I do. It seems like it waxes and wanes and I would say that there, for a hot minute, I seem to have a more breakthrough bleeding and that kind of went on for a couple of months, probably back in the spring. I didn't ever do any sort of manipulation of my progesterone. I just I was too busy to try to stay on any sort of okay, do this or do that or do this or do that the way I would take care of my patients. I didn't take the time to do that to myself but it ended up regulating itself out and I don't have them quite as regular or I haven't had in the last three months.

Speaker 1: 18:55

I usually will have a period. It's usually anywhere from 28 to 32 days. Some days I will have, you know, heavier bleeding for that first 24 hours and then some days it's just kind of hit or miss. So my periods have definitely changed in the last 12 months of my life. So I just turned 50. And so, but I still pretty much have a regular cycle, pretty much regular for me. You know I still pretty much have a regular cycle, pretty much regular for me. You know I used to never miss and I had heavy periods my entire life.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Okay, so you don't mean that you bleed for 24 or 32 days. Okay, okay.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Just my cycle of my period and it was like 22, 24 days and that was kind of what we were on a routine for for a couple of months and that was kind of pain but it's kind of regulated itself back out. Like I said, that was just kind of a transient, kind of three or four month thing back in the spring.

Speaker 2: 19:48

Okay, and just to make a note that perimenopause is kind of where you and I both are, and what that means is 15 years or so prior to actual menopause, our hormones start to fluctuate and it's a dance that you need a really knowledgeable practitioner to help you navigate that, and it can change monthly.

Speaker 1: 20:15

At this stage, I feel like I'm having that conversation of that perimenopause with my patients, younger and younger. Because when someone comes in to lose weight and I tell my patients this, I'm like, look, you're meeting with me and I'm coaching you, but I'm listening to you. I'm not just telling you what to do because somebody told me what to tell you. I'm listening to you with my nurse practitioner brain. So when we're meeting to talk about weight loss, we're really going to talk about a whole lot of other things, because I'm listening to what your life is. So I don't get.

Speaker 1: 20:51

The average weight loss customer is needing that, whether it's an eating plan or whether it's the GLP-1 shots. You know, whatever those decisions are, it's that guidance that's most important. And so I feel like I'm having this conversation with you know my early 30 patients and I know, even just from my own experience, I know I was experiencing perimenopause at that time. I just didn't know it at the time. And when you hear these young girls like they're just tired and they're, you know they can't lose weight, and I'm like I'm glad I'm here to listen because I can't imagine showing up somewhere else and then being like, oh, that's just how you're supposed to feel. It's like no, yes.

Speaker 2: 21:35

Well, and don't you notice when you're working with a weight loss patient that if you manage their endocrine system and their hormones, that they have so much better success with weight loss and it's more sustainable?

Speaker 1: 21:49

So, much.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Have you noticed any side effects to your hormone therapy?

Speaker 1: 21:56

I will tell you the only side effect is hair Hair growth.

Speaker 1: 22:01

Hair growth Hair growth and I've always been someone. I'm naturally dark, dark-headed, and I've always had a little mustache when I was younger and I had electrolysis and I had laser hair removal back in the day. So that's something I've always kind of fought my entire life and I've even noticed that I didn't even have any hair even after having a baby and sometimes that can kind of like stir up your hormones and I had Isabel at 32. And I would say that that was kind of the beginning of the end. Yeah, because I even noticed that the hair on my legs had even kind of stopped growing. But again, until you're kind of in that frame of mind, none of that ever dawned on me when I was just trying to get through life in my mid-30s. You see what I'm saying, yes, and so now I would say that that is really the only thing. But you know what my God gave us laser hair removal, that's all I have.

Speaker 2: 22:53

That's right, that's exactly right, and I would say the same thing personally for me. So do you have any fun patient stories that you'd like to share?

Speaker 1: 23:04

Life-changing stories, oh, life-changing stories. You know, I feel like that, my patients that, and now it's like I've been doing it long enough. I'm like, okay, so I'm not going to have to tell you my story. I can just tell you what my patients tell me now, cause I'm sure people are like, why are you telling me your story? Like, yeah, but I feel like it's so meaningful because it's like I'm not just selling this to you. You see what I'm saying, like I'm a believer of this and this is why and I really feel like that it really I guess it speaks to my honesty and my passion, really, and I think that my patients understand, look, she's in it for the right reason and I think that that's just important in developing a relationship, because it's not always going to be easy. There are many other stories of patients that still are so appreciative of it, but it hasn't been an easy journey.

Speaker 1: 23:54

And I recently had a patient that had asked for her chart and we had reached out to her and she was just like you know, I'm going to start going to my GYN because you know it's closer for me. I was about an hour and a half away from her and then she had, you know, switched and had started with the new GYN. And we were like, sure, sure, so we, you know, we summarized her chart and sent her on her way. And you know I used to. You know that happens sometimes when people move. And I was just like, oh, I wish her well and et cetera, et cetera. And looking at my schedule, I'm like wait a minute, what is this patient doing back on my schedule? Like she moved her care, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 24:36

And so I went into my room and welcome back what's going on and she was just like Renee, I have felt like crap for the last six months and I was with you for two years and I never had felt better in my life. And she said the doctor that I switched to she said she just wouldn't treat me, she wouldn't give me the dose that you gave me, number one, and she said she just kept telling me that was too much, that that was too much, that was too much. And she said I am dragging, I just can't tell you how I have struggled for the last six months. And she said I just can't go back there. She's like no one listened to me and she said they were even trying to make me feel bad for asking for more and like I was a drug seeker or something. Wow, and I'm like this is so, like it's a.

Speaker 1: 25:35

This was happening around the same time that I had my own experience with my GYN annual exam and I'm like I've got to do better about getting a word out on this, like which is why I'm so glad you're talking to you because people need to understand that this is a safe treatment and it's a life-changing treatment and and it's something that you're worth doing fighting for yourself and saying there has to be more.

Speaker 2: 26:07

Yes, and unfortunately, you know, the medical community hasn't sought out the studies that are available on this stuff and the clinical outcomes that are now more and more available every day, outcomes that are now more and more available every day. So the good news is there are a lot of good OBGYNs that do this therapy.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Totally yes, and I never want to come across as bashing my own community. I mean, I'm raised in the medical community, I'm a nurse practitioner, I grew up in a hospital. I tell the girls that work in the clinic with me I'm like it feels like this is a clinic. This is not a spa.

Speaker 2: 26:46

But you definitely have to seek this out on your own. You have to seek out anti-aging medicine teachings post-medical school, wouldn't you agree?

Speaker 1: 27:00

Oh, totally. They're not taught this. I just was reading a study about testosterone in females and males, and you know we really have clinician data now. Clinician data, not statistics, not just statistics. Or having a statistician read numbers, statistics or having a statistician read numbers. We have clinical trials, although they may be small, but we don't need $600 million that they spent 35 years ago to show that estrogen was bad. We've already disproved all that. You just have to spend the time to find it.

Speaker 2: 27:38

That's right. So a little change of subject. Do you treat men as well, men and women? I?

Speaker 1: 27:44

do you know I would love to have more male patients. I actually have kind of planned and talked and planned and talked on how to present ourselves to be. We're a lovely clinic as far as like the comfort level because we have male patients that come in for aesthetics. Comfort level because we have male patients that come in for aesthetics.

Speaker 2: 28:07

But for every, you know 10 females. I have, I have a man. I would love for it to be more diverse in that way. Sure, and a lot of women are probably bringing in their partners or husbands.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Or their partner is scared, or the partner gets testosterone shots and doesn't want to think about anything different because they're already kind of on something. You see what I'm saying, sure.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Yeah, sure, sure. So, as a hormone hero, renee, which you definitely are, what would you like our audience to know if you had to put everything in a nutshell, for?

Speaker 1: 28:42

ladies and for men if you've gotten to a place in your life it does not matter whether you're 25, 35, 55, and you don't quite feel like yourself, you have lower energy, you feel more anxious, you feel more snippy with your loved ones. I used to explain it that I felt like I was coming apart and I didn't know why. I wasn't an anxious person by nature, but I felt very overwhelmed, much easier than what my normal capacity to deal with stress had always been. I keep a quick schedule and I found myself not being able to tolerate that or handle that. So you know yourself the best, and when you start feeling those symptoms of I really don't know what's going on, but something's not right. I just want to encourage people to have an open mind and to find a provider that will have an open conversation with them about hormones, because we know, kelly, that nine times out of 10, it's their hormones.

Speaker 1: 29:51

And if we can regulate that, who's to say of all the other things that they will avoid getting All the diseases and inflammatory things and all the things that we fight over our lifetime that we are given a steroid shot for and an antibiotic or pain pill and move on to the next one, and so there's so much more to wellness and to feeling your best, and I just want to encourage people to seek those treatments or that information out with someone like me or someone like you that really can be respectful to what we have in regular medicine and how we can optimize it with what we do with hormone therapy.

Speaker 2: 30:37

Amen, sister, preach it. So I would like to once again give Renee Penlack a shout out. She's in the Memphis, tennessee area. The name of her wellness center and spa is De La Belle Wellness and Spa. Renee, what's your phone number there? It's 901-433-9024. Wonderful Anything else before we sign off here today.

Speaker 1: 31:05

Anything else? Holy, look at my notes.

Speaker 1: 31:12

No, you know what girl I think we covered everything and I just I think that it just supports all of our body functions and I just I get so fired up about it. I actually had a patient that came to tears because I was telling her this, that the other, and she goes no one's ever listened to me, and I'm probably because no one has ever listened to me, and honey, she, she's running a race, you know, because she feels like you know. I just want to get the word out that it's safe and it works and you don't have to be tired and cranky.

Speaker 2: 31:45

That's exactly right. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Renee. I look forward to seeing you next time I'm in Memphis.

Speaker 1: 31:53

Yeah, girl, let's get together. Bye-bye, bye-bye.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Thanks for listening to Hormone Heroes. Take a moment to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. While you are there, help us spread the word by leaving a rating and a review. If you would like to share your bioidentical hormone story or need help finding a physician in your area, please email us at drkelly at hormoneheroesorg, that's d-r-k-e-l-l-y. At h-o-r-m-o-n-e-h-e-r-o-e-s dot org. We want you to be a hormone hero.