Hormone Heroes
Testimonials from real people who have experienced bio-identical hormone therapy. Men and women share the symptoms they have experienced and the difference proper hormone replacement has made. Men discuss the advantages of testosterone and women discuss the benefits of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone therapy. The roles of thyroid, adrenal health, insulin resistance, intermittent fasting, and micronutrients are also discussed.
Hormone Heroes
Sotopelle Hormone Pellet Training: Carol Ann Tutera's Journey with Bioidentical Pellets and Medical Innovation
Ever wondered about the groundbreaking world of bioidentical hormone pellets? Join us as we sit down with Carol Ann Tutera, the insightful CEO of Sottopelle, who shares the remarkable journey of transforming a vision into a pioneering force in hormone pellet therapy. Learn how her late husband, Dr. Gino Tutera, unlocked the potential of these pellets after a life-changing move from Kansas City to California, leading to the creation of an innovative approach to hormone therapy. Carol Ann recounts the fascinating story of expanding their practice from Palm Springs seminars to a thriving presence in Scottsdale, Arizona, and their dedication to training physicians in this cutting-edge field. Her experiences and personal reflections offer a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and triumphs of running Sottopelle and Tutera Medical.
Discover the transformative impact hormone pellet therapy has had on patients, like the inspiring story of a woman whose life changed dramatically after she began treatment at 42. Feel the pulse of industry challenges, from FDA restrictions on sourcing pellets to the importance of standardizing physician training. Carol Ann also sheds light on the international reach of their educational programs and the additional offerings at their clinics, such as aesthetics and weight loss injections. Learn about the Caitera product line, designed to support health and wellness, and understand the significance of regular lab checks for effective therapy management. This episode is a must-listen for those curious about the future of hormone therapy and the untold stories that drive this medical innovation.
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. Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today we have an extremely special guest named Carol Ann Tatera. She is the CEO of Soda Peli and the co-founder, along with her husband, gino Tatera her late husband and she lives currently in Scottsdale, arizona.
Speaker 2:Welcome, carol Ann, thank you very much for having me, yeah.
Speaker 1:So first of all, let's just let our audience know who you are and what you do in Scottsdale.
Speaker 2:I am currently running Soda Pelly and our own offices to Terra Medical here in Scottsdale, which keep me very busy, and I have a product line, kiterra, that we brought in the fold and expanded after he passed, so I'm a busy camper these days.
Speaker 1:Yes, you are. Now. Do you have more than one location for your actual clinics?
Speaker 2:We do. We have three locations in the Phoenix area and we're putting in a fourth and possibly a fifth in the next year.
Speaker 1:Perfect. That's great and describe for our audience what Soda Pelly is.
Speaker 2:Soda Pelly is a method in training physicians how to use pellet therapy. Dr T came up with Soda Pelly. Being Italian chose a nice Italian word. Soto is under Pellia skin, so he did a play on the words and came up with Sotopelli.
Speaker 1:Do you train physicians? Do you have a training company?
Speaker 2:Sotopelli is the training company that trains physicians how to use the pellets, how to manage in dose, how to market. It's a one-stop shop we developed in the 90s when we started late 90s, when we started training physicians how to use pellets.
Speaker 1:So Soda Pelly is sort of the grandfather hormone pellet training company. Can you tell us how Dr Gino got started?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a great story. We moved. We're both from Kansas City, which is where we met. A great story we moved, we're both from Kansas City, which is where we met, and we moved from Kansas City to Rancho Mirage, california, which is outside of the Palm Springs area A lot of people know that name instead and a physician came up to him and said hey, how would you like to help put in a pellet?
Speaker 2:And he said, sure, but what's a pellet? And he realized he found the missing key, the last part of the puzzle to using a bioidentical platform for women. Yes, he started working with this gentleman while he was doing the birthing center for Eisenhower of how to put in a pellet. Unfortunately, this physician went to play golf one day, went to his country club, sat down, had his favorite drink and I'm not kidding, this is how the story goes and that was it. He passed at the country club. Oh, my goodness, yeah. So Dr T had a plethora of patients to treat. He was trained how to put them in. Everybody was getting the same dose at that time, though. Ok, he was a very common sense guy and he said hey, wait a minute. Y'all don't wear the same size shoe. Why am I giving you the same dose? And at the time the estradiol was way too high for women and the testosterone was way too low. So he was back there shaving pellets and figuring out, exactly along with the lab work, how much to give everybody. And he came up with the individualized dosing. It's in play today. So that's how he was taught how to do. Pellets Came up with the individualized dosing.
Speaker 2:Many years later he had me in his office working and running the practice and this is a great story of how he got started on this big journey of really training everybody. Yeah, I heard a bunch of women in the waiting room cackling, like we do. You know, we're talking with everybody, we're excited and the voices go up and everybody's talking and I'm thinking why are these women so excited to be in an OBGYN office? I couldn't figure it out Right. I went in there to talk with one of them and she was a pilot from Scottsdale and she flew people over on her plane every couple months to be treated because she was one of the original patients that this other gentleman had that Dr T inherited, okay. So I started listening to their stories and they were really happy to be there. I don't know of any woman who's happy to be in an OBGYN office if they're not being treated for pellets. So I got to know them, became friendly with them.
Speaker 2:We were talking about how he should be putting on seminars in the Palm Springs area for people to really understand what pellets are. As you well know, being a pellet provider, they've been around since 1939, but nobody really knows that and understands that, right. So we started putting on seminars there. And Miss Patty said to me you know, flying everybody over is getting a little expensive. What about coming to Scottsdale? So we looked at each other and went wow, isn't that a unique idea. There are a lot more people in Scottsdale than there are in the Palm Springs area.
Speaker 2:We go over once a month, on a Saturday, and we had the most fun. It was a blast because you'd go over Friday, you'd have Friday night to have fun in Scottsdale, treat patients in the morning on Saturday, and you're back home in the desert of Palm Springs Saturday night, right. Well, that quickly turned into Saturday morning, friday afternoon, all day Friday, saturday morning. Let's back it up. Thursday, friday, saturday. We're going to back it up again. Wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday. Until I said whoa, we got to back the train up, because I can't keep doing this every month and being gone this long. I had a sudden high school Right, so we decided to flip where we worked. We came here to Scottsdale and started doing more seminars here. With the help of some of our patients, the word really got out and wow, we just ballooned and started training more and more physicians out of the Scottsdale office rather than Palm Springs.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he, dr Tutera, started out by trying to treat all the patients he could, and then he quickly realized that the only way to really spread the word and help the most patients is to train other physicians. Spread the word and help the most patients is to train other physicians.
Speaker 2:Yes, he wanted other physicians to know the best method and the best modality, the best product for their patients. Like he was sitting with his patients.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Just so our audience knows, dr Tutera has been gone now for nine years and you have carried on his vision and built the company, so can you give us an idea of what that looks like for you as far as a training company?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know if it was so much his vision as it was more mine, but I've expanded it that we're branched out, we're training more and more physicians. We're doing online training also. Now that hit right after COVID hit, so that was perfect clandestine opportunity. Sure, we have offices we're training all over the world now. So I've really taken the vision of seeing how far Sotopelli can go and I'm taking the vision now to also take more and more to our medical offices across the country as well.
Speaker 1:That's awesome Way to go. So give us a little history about you You're from Kansas City and give us a little story about your own hormone journey.
Speaker 2:My father was self-made in the men's retail industry so I saw him while growing up open more and more types of stores. We had boutique-y type stores in Westport, which was a funky little area. We had menswear suits, we had menswear in another line for a different trade, and that's what I saw growing up. So I turned into a entrepreneur myself. Unbeknownst to me of this person who really likes expanding and growing, I am a little project person and I love it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So you were able to take the and you're probably a lot like your father in a lot of ways in that entrepreneurial spirit. So when you started to notice your own symptoms of hormone deficiency, when was that and what were your?
Speaker 2:symptoms. Oh my gosh, I was 42 years old. I'm just shy of 70 right now. I was 42 years old, I'm just shy of 70 right now. So I could not remember. My attitude was very cranky and irritable. My son didn't like being around me I'm a big exercise person and I was not losing weight, but gaining weight. I'd forget where I put things. My night sweats were so bad I was soaking the sheets and I looked at my husband at the time and I said there's something wrong with me and I'm living with you and you're not telling me. He wanted me to come to the conclusion there's something wrong, sure, and I had the blood work done and he said I had the insides of a 70 year old woman. Oh good, no. When I had the first insert of a 70-year-old woman oh goodness no.
Speaker 2:When I had the first insertion put in, I just started crying. I thought, oh my God, I'm too young to go through menopause and I can't believe this is happening to me. But after a couple of weeks and having them in the blood system, wow, what a difference. What a difference. I completely perked up. I was happier. I wasn't cranky, I was able to stay up past four o'clock, which happens to a lot of people and I found the joy in life again. I thought I can feel this good. I know everybody else can too.
Speaker 1:Yes, because you knew there wasn't anything wrong with you other than you were just getting a little bit older. And yeah, and listen to her. So what? Did you? Go straight to pellets or did you try anything else first?
Speaker 2:I went straight to pellets. So that time he was such a big believer in him he said there's no way I'm putting you on anything else. Yeah, because, as you know as a physician, patches, pills and creams all put you on the roller coaster ride. Where pellets don't, they give you the nice steady stream of hormones constantly, without really having to do anything.
Speaker 1:That's right. So have you noticed any side effects? Just just to play devil's advocate here.
Speaker 2:For me? No, absolutely none Knock wood, I'm extremely healthy. My Medicare rep says I'm one of the few people who have the lowest drug plan ever, because I am on zero meds except for my progesterone. Yes, life is good.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, so let's go back to talking about Soda Pelly Awesome, so let's go back to talking about Soda Pelly. And we have listeners that are patients, listeners that are physicians. Is there anything?
Speaker 2:you would want our physician group to know about your training program. Well, I'll tell you how Dr T used to explain it that he could traina monkey to put in pellets, but it's the managing and dosing he was so specific about. That they need to learn. Sure, we have a very inclusive training program that takes you majority of them like the online program they do at their leisure takes you from what are hormones all the way through of how to manage patients.
Speaker 2:We built the only multi-patented dosing site. We did that in early 2000s with my son's help of taking all the information out of his brain into a dosing site which helps them dose. They can always change the dose if they want to. It's extremely important. They understand they're sitting in front of the patient. The computer's only providing information, but you make the final decision and we have a very nice support team who's constantly there for you. I run a really tight ship with my customer service, with my sales, with my providers, with my lead provider who's teaching and training as well, and everybody loves the fact that we're constantly on top of any questions that come in at all times.
Speaker 1:That is perfect because anyone that's a new physician getting into this. I totally agree. It's all about the management of the patient. Once the pellets are in, the procedure itself is fairly simple. So do you have a vision for where you would like to see SodaPelly go in the next 10 years?
Speaker 2:Well, I'd really like to see personally the entire industry cleaned up. I think it went sideways for a while with a couple of people who are training out there, who should not be training because their field is not even GYN. Yeah, that's like me saying, okay, I'm going to train you now how to pull a tooth, and that's because I went to a weekend course, right? You know, I ask all physicians to stay in their lane. We're very particular on who we train and I think it's important that we really clean the industry up and stop overcharging providers for learning how to do pellets.
Speaker 1:So how long is your training program?
Speaker 2:He used to do a two day. We were the original two day. You come in, you have a good time, we take you to dinner, we, you know, schmooze you and give you all this information. And Dr T said wait a minute, I'm taking you out of your environment, I'm taking money out of your pocket to come and train. So he modified it to one day training and then I took all that information, put it on online. So now you can do the online training from the comfort of your own home, which is the beauty of online, and it's just like you're doing it there and also do it. We've done it virtually, so you feel like you're in a course, but you're still in the comfort of where you want to be Right.
Speaker 1:So I noticed that you treat men as well and transgender First let's talk about. So Dr Gino went from treating women and then was educated on testing and treating men, and then tell us a little bit more about moving into the transgender world, because that is something that is becoming more and more of a need.
Speaker 2:It is, and he realized that when we lived in the Palm Springs area. Palm Springs area is known to have a very large gay community and they started reaching out to him in the 90s when we were there, and he started figuring out how to treat them when we were in Palm Springs. So, as the years have moved on, while he was still with us, we've modified the training and then, even after he passed, we've modified it again and we do train physicians how to treat transgenders. We treat you how to go from male to female and how to go female to male in one of our courses.
Speaker 1:And that is with the use of pellets only or other things.
Speaker 2:Nope with the use of pellets only Absolutely. We even have a patient who flies in from Bangkok to see us. Who's so thrilled seeing us because they know we have the history, they know that we know how to do this. We're not guessing how to treat you.
Speaker 1:There is a strict protocol to follow and that's why they find us. So you mentioned that you are training physicians worldwide. Do you struggle at all ever to find a source for pellets all?
Speaker 2:the time, all of the time, we can't ship outside. Well, I don't make pellets, but the people, the 503Bs that we use, they can't ship outside the US anymore. That's been restricted by the FDA. So the Brazil location has their own pharmacy. Spain has their own pharmacy. So when we go into a country, we have to make sure that we partner up with a pharmacy there and they get trained by somebody to be able to have a local pharmacy, because that's really the only way to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's always a challenge. Is sourcing the pellets after the physician's been trained?
Speaker 2:Even in the US it's a challenge finding them, because the FDA is really coming down hard on quite a few of these facilities that make pellets.
Speaker 1:Yes, so how would you say, Carol Ann, that hormone therapy has changed your life?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm a much happier person. I can deal with life a lot better. I can handle life because my emotions are check, so I know I've got the support of my body, supporting me and being able to function in a healthy way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're beautiful. The audience won't be able to see you, but I can, and it just has a very anti-aging effect as well.
Speaker 2:It does. People are wondering if I'm Bernadette Buttons instead of Benjamin. I'm Bernadette because bison is so healthy from the estrogen that's pumped into it all the time. I take care of myself, I eat the right foods, I exercise. You know I'm living the dream being close to 70 and looking. I mean I do. I know I look great. Yes, some of my friends go. Ok, you know.
Speaker 1:I think anyone would look at you and want to have what you're having for sure.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, and a lot of people think I'm in my 50s and I kind of surprised them.
Speaker 1:Well, as far as they know, that's all they need to know that you are. So tell us a little bit more about what your clinics around Phoenix offer other than hormone therapy. Do you do aesthetics or anything else?
Speaker 2:I have a couple of my providers who do the aesthetics. We do have a Soda Pelly spa there for a private room for them to take care of that. We do the GLP-1s to also support those with hormone therapy.
Speaker 1:And GLP-1s. Just for the audience that doesn't understand what that is. What would that be? The semi-glutide, the weight loss injections?
Speaker 2:Right, right, yes, finding great. As everybody knows, you find great results with that, and it amazes me to read and hear the news of how many different areas it's really helping the body now, not just the weight loss Right. We also do a procedure for those who have leakage issues of you know, you sneeze, you leave a white scab or a contiguous wit, so we do that as well, but our main lane really are the pellets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's sort of the cornerstone for everything else. Tell us a little bit about your product line.
Speaker 2:Oh, Cartera is a wonderful product. Dr T developed three of the products while he was alive. The first one is the health and wellness, because while we were in Rancho Mirage the cancer center was below us on the first floor. We were second floor and he was treating some of those patients because they had no energy. So the health and wellness is great for those who have the low energy.
Speaker 2:The Epstein-Barr the hair repair product was developed because he was looking in the mirror one day and you literally could look through his scalp and, being an Italian guy with thick hair, he was not too happy seeing that scalp.
Speaker 2:So he worked with a chemist and came up with this product and within months it was thicker and fuller. Now, after he passed, I did a third party testing on it and, lo and behold, it does what it says High 80s, low 90 percentage for thickening, strengthening and lengthening not only your hair but your nails as well. So it's a beautiful product that helps support those on pellets and have hair issues. It's also for anybody who has hair issues and I took some of that product and I built it into our shampoo and conditioner to really help build a solid team of helping the scalp for the hair and, working in that direction, we do DIM, he discovered. He's the one who realized that DIM is a great breast protector and brain health, and now we're adding a couple more products to the line as well that help support the body. So I really am. I never was a supplement person until about five, six years ago and went, wow, there's really something to these. I take them myself.
Speaker 1:So do you have to be a Soda Pelly provider to be able to use the Kiterra product line?
Speaker 2:Not at all, absolutely not. It is available online for anybody to purchase. And what?
Speaker 1:is that website C-A-I-T-E-R-Acom Dot com? Okay, wonderful. So anyone that patients or physicians alike that would like to utilize the Kiterra line that's how you would find it Absolutely Remind us of the name of your clinics in the Phoenix area. In the Phoenix area, we're called Tutera Medical. Okay, and is there a website or a-O-T-T-O-P, as in Peter, e-l-l-e therapycom? That's great. So, carol Ann, you and Gino, both are both hormone heroes, so what would you like our audience to know?
Speaker 2:I think it's important that everybody get their lab levels done. To have a base level, you need something to work off of whether you think you're in perimenopause or menopause or andropause. Without the labs, you have no idea where you are. So I tell all my friends and anybody start with your labs, get those done, so you've got the base to work from.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that can be as early as mid-30s.
Speaker 2:That's what we're seeing now too. Absolutely yeah, I think because of the environment, the foods, everything we ingest, it's really taken a toll on our system.
Speaker 1:Stress really taken a toll on our system. Stress, no. Stress is a killer, yes, and stress depletes our hormones as well. So if you're in menopause and you're under a lot of stress, we all need pellets. Well, is there anything else you would like to say before we sign off? Carol Ann, no.
Speaker 2:I've had a great time. Thank you very much. I enjoyed visiting with you and sharing my life story and my journey, and maybe we'll chat again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's nice to finally meet you, even though it's virtual here. But I've known of you for at least 15 years and just hate I never got to meet Dr Gino oh he was a love.
Speaker 2:He was a big love. I feel like I'm the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. Now you'd be back.
Speaker 1:The curtain and you know that's right. All right, thank you so much. Thank you. 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.
