Teaser: The Reality Of Endometriosis

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It was a really difficult path. And for anyone listening here who knows someone with endometriosis or has had or has got endometriosis, I hear you. I mean, it's a really, really, really tough thing to go through. And it's very debilitating, and it has a huge, huge impact on your quality of life. Like I said, I had adenomiosis and cysts, and my reproductive organs were just a total mess. In that period of time, six surgeries in total.

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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.

Meet Anna Herrera And Her Work

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Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today I'm extremely excited to have our very established guest. Her name is Anna G. Herrera. She is the founder and the CEO of Hormone University, which is an educational platform focused on improving women's hormonal health, and GLOW, its accompanying plant-based supplement brand. Her work was inspired by her own experience with severe PMS, infertility, stage 4 endometriosis, multiple surgeries, and surgical menopause. After struggling to find accessible information and natural support options, she left a 15-plus-year career in corporate beauty. And when you see her, you can understand why she was in corporate beauty, an international brand strategy to become an advocate for women's hormonal wellness. Through Hormone University and GLOW, Anna provides research-backed education, master classes, community support, and clinically formulated supplements designed to help women better understand their bodies and advocate for their health. She was born in the south of Spain and she currently resides in New York. So welcome, Anna. Thank you so much, Dr. Kelly. So pleased I'm here. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome, very excited. So excited by women that have established an online presence that really helps women search out answers. And uh we know you started with needing answers yourself. So just walk us through that process of your diagnosis and the path you had to take. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

So effectively, my diagnosis of endometriosis

Diagnosis At 23 And Repeat Surgeries

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started when I was 23 years old. And at the time, the word endometriosis was not even known at all. It was such a foreign word to me, and anyone around me really was like endomat. Especially at 23. That's so young. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so I was going through very severe symptoms at the time, and that meant excruciating pain every month, very, very heavy periods, and a lot of other symptoms, you know, headaches and vomiting. And I was going through all those symptoms and more, right? So it was just really, really difficult PMS, what I thought was PMS. And I was lucky in inverted comas because I was diagnosed with endometriosis with an ultrasound straight away. Okay. My doctor at the time was one of those old-fashioned doctors that would stay one hour with you, you know, drawing diagrams and showing you everything and staying to explain what that what that condition was and what that meant for my life. And he did warn me at the time and said to me, I'm so sorry, this is going to be a very difficult path because there is not enough research on endometriosis. And so we can either do a hormonal treatment or we have to go through surgery. Okay. So those were my only two options.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

And can I ask you, were you ever on birth control prior to okay? Pills or sorry?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Were you on birth control pills or control birth control pills? Okay. And that really didn't do much in my case. And so, you know, I opted for surgery thinking, okay, this is gonna get rid of it, and that's it. And that was my first surgery. Fast forward 10 to 12 years later, more surgeries in that time. So in the end, it was a question of every time I had a surgery, about two years later, the pain and the symptoms would come back.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Okay. Did you have a family history of any issues?

unknown 5:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Not at all. The only family history was breast cancer of both of my grandmother. So I was also very afraid of just taking hormonal treatments, contraceptive pill in that case. Sure. Because of those potential consequences. And so it was a really difficult path. And for anyone listening here who knows someone with endometriosis or has had or has got endometriosis, I hear you. I mean, it's a really, really, really tough thing to go through. And it's very debilitating, and it has a huge, huge impact on your quality of life. So, like I said, in that period of time, six surgeries in total. And I had other things, adenomiosis and cysts, and my reproductive organs were just a total mess.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

So, for those of you listening that may not know what endometriosis is, it's basically like a scar tissue type tissue that uh can be found in the uterus, but it also can leave the uterus and get into the abdomen and around the ovaries and all that. So, had yours left your uterus?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Big time, yes. Yes. Goodness. And in fact, yes, the mechanism of the lining of the uterus that kind of gets infiltrated in different organs. In my case, I had deep infiltration in my columns. So that last surgery also included a column resection as well as a full hysterectomy. So it was really hard. I mean, it was hard from a physical perspective, but also from an emotional psychological perspective of having to deal with the fact that I could no longer become a mother. And of course, there is that factor of your feminine side of thinking, my god, I have no more uterus, no more ovaries. And then going into surgical menopause, which was huge, huge um tsunami of all the symptoms that classic menopause will give you, but kind of like in in a very aggressive way.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So you were how old when you had your total hysterectomy? 40. 40, okay. And no pregnancies or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Not at all. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And uh

Surgical Menopause And HRT Setbacks

SPEAKER_01 7:55

so going through that, then what did you do for did you do hormone replacement at that point, or did you just try to gut it out without without any hormones? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

So, yes, the doctor prescribed me hormone therapy, and I kind of like want to pause here for again the subject of menopause, because there are several types of menopause, and and of course, in my case was surgical menopause, probably one of the most aggressive ways of dealing with those symptoms. But then you've got women that have to go through an oncological treatment, which means you get induced menopause. Right. And then you've got, you know, perimenopause, which takes around seven years approximately before you get 12 months without your period, and then you're officially on menopause. Right. And so in my case, I I did get uh hormonal treatment, hormone replacement therapy, but I did have a major side effect with a potential clot in one of my legs. So I had to stop the treatment immediately. And Dr. Helly, it's funny, you know, like those are the moments in life when you think, oh my god, so what do I do? Right? What do I do? I'm going nuts, I've got these crazy hot flashes and couldn't sleep, and it was, you know, would wake up with the all these sweat. It was just horrendous. And and I would be crying for no reason, and it it was, I was not the same person, let me put it that way. Right, right. That was my wake-up call to really start to research, and I found

Building Hormone University From Scratch

SPEAKER_00 9:40

that there was very little information specifically on hormonal health. Right. So that was the reason why I decided I've got to do something. And initially it was just uh sitting with a friend of mine and just having an idea of creating a website with great scientific content that kind of make it simple for people to understand and give practical tips and that sort of thing, covering not just the classic menopause, perimenopause, or endomatiosis, but lifestyle, right? Nutrition, exercise, whatever it means. I we even put uh an A2Z of hormones, like we need to understand what they do. So I wanted to really help women not to go through what I went through. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

So you were able to launch your website. You you had mentioned when we spoke before that you had you did a talk at Columbia University. First of all, what were you speaking on?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I was speaking about entrepreneurship and my career in the beauty industry. Yeah. And I I kind of dropped the idea of I'm creating this platform. And a few of those alumni were wow, of course, they were women students, and they thought it was awesome. And they're like, oh my god, I'm going through PCOS or I'm going through this. And and they they were very, very smart, very smart. And I said, Well, look, I need help. I'm gonna need a lot of help to do all the research using Columbia University resources would be amazing. And so they decided a group of them decided to come along and help us create this. So it was just uh one of those very, very lucky moments.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Well, it's very serendipitous. And you know, you you mentioned that your pain turned into your purpose, and that was just one of those serendipitous moments that led you right down the correct path you needed to be on. So was that then the beginning of hormoneuniversity.com?

SPEAKER_00 11:51

That was the beginning, and I was also simultaneously with them looking for a board of experts to help us verify content. Of course, we didn't have AI at the time, but still, even with AI, we still have those doctors that help us and PhDs because you need that human touch, right? You do need that human touch and the expertise behind what you do, at least that's our that's our philosophy. So, you know, part of our mission is to help women get educated on hormonal health. The second part of our mission is to for women to advocate for themselves. And we have a newsletter called The Waiting Room because we want women to sit in that waiting room and have their questions ready, right? Rather than just take it all in and what I'm being told is enough. So yeah, so that was the kind of like the second phase, and we found incredible doctors, and and there are so many anecdotes around that time. And one of our doctors, she's an incredible eminent doctor. Her name is Dr. Elizabeth Poyner. She's an OBGYN, Ph PhD in cell genetics, and I I met someone very famous, very, very famous. Her name is Martha Stewart. My goodness. I, you know, she was I was just telling her what I was doing. She said, This is great. This is the doctor you've got to talk to. And of course, when you go and and email a doctor and say, Martha Stewart asked me to contact you, so that was a great passport, you know, right. Getting to her. And and she loved our vision, loved what I also had in mind in terms of our product line. So she came in as our scientific advisor.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Wonderful. So if someone wanted to, I mean it's you're easy to find. It's hormoneuniversity.com. But if someone wanted to be a part of your community, what would be the benefit of that?

SPEAKER_00 14:06

They well, the first one is education. So we we have invested and continue to invest a lot of time and resources to ensure that women that are part of our community get the right education. And like I said earlier, we we don't cover just one topic or a couple of topics. We cover such a broad range of topics so that we touch every phase of a woman's life. So you can be a woman going through menopause and find a lot of information about that phase of your life. You can be a woman who just got her period, and you can also find a lot of tips and information on how to deal with it, how to eat properly, or you can be just someone who wants to find out about endocrine disrupting chemicals, and you'll get a whole of a lot of information about this. So that's that's the key pillar for us.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

And so that's what women would get, and it's completely free. So that's important. We don't have subscriptions or fees, or it's completely free.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

And you have a a blog. Is that what is that the waiting room newsletter, or is it something different? That's exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

It's a newsletter that we send out on our weekly basis.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

And to sign up for that, they would just need to go to hormoneuniversity.com and that's right. Okay. Some of the things you've spoken about in your newsletter, empowering hormonal health, how to find the best fertility clinic for you, reinvigorate your libido during menopause and feel comfortable talking about it. Three best tips from top longevity experts for be for better aging. Like it just goes on and on. Your resources are are amazing.

Endocrine-Safe Products And Topical Support

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Thank you so much. And then tell us a little bit about your product line.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah, so uh I, as I said, come from the beauty industry. I spent many years launching brands, opening markets all over the world, and truly understanding how a product is made. Uh-huh. What ingredients not to use, and what you should be avoiding when it comes to your endocrine system. And I did a lot of research back in 2012 because the European Union, I was based in London at the time, and the European Union changed the law and regulation on many ingredients that finally were banned from the beauty industry. So that kind of led me into this rabbit hole of why, what are these ingredients doing? And effectively, those are endocrine disrupting chemicals or carcinogenic ingredients. And so when I decided, okay, I'm I'm gonna create a product line, my first presentation without a brand name was an endocrine disruptor-free brand for women. I love it. That's it. Uh-huh. And so that was kind of like the basis of our formulation. And then the second important basis was we need to talk to and co-formulate everything with doctors. I'm not a doctor, I'm just a patient who understands every phase of a woman's life because I've gone through it, right? I've gone through extreme PMS, I've gone through extreme menopause, and every symptom. I mean, we go through over 150 symptoms in our lifetime. I, you name it, I went through it. So I knew very well what women would need, but my gap, my personal knowledge gap, was formulation and having doctors verify and give us the right advice as to how do ingredients interact with each other and how we can formulate in a way that would, for example, not affect your bike from and how do these ingredients help us and support certain symptoms, right? So we have not just Dr. Poino, but we have several other doctors, including pharmacologists, and that was kind of like the next thing that we had to do. And the biggest differentiator that we have from any other brands out there in hormonal health is something that is unusual, and that is topicals. So we use topicals, and that's a great way to help support those symptoms and bypass any microbiome issues you might have. So I remember Dr. Poino saying to me, you know, we're seeing a lot of microbiome issues and gut issues because women are taking, you know, 10 capsules a day and they just, you know, mix them all and everything changes your gut microbiome. So she absolutely loved the fact that I wanted to do topicals, and that's when we started the formulation process and decided to create a very tight range but very specific problem solution for the key symptoms that we go through.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Sure. And in most of your ingredients are plant-based, correct? Or are they all plant plant-based? Most.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Not all of them. Not all of them. So just as one example, we use beeswax in two of our products. So that can't be considered plant-based.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Okay. So this is a wonderful, and I I will it's a way for your body to use plant-based ingredients to get the relief it needs. Sometimes our bodies can take these ingredients, you know, through the skin, and our adrenals will be healthy, healthier, and we can formulate some hormones through the adrenals and things like that. So, you know, you're not applying hormones, if I'm correct. Is that right? That's right. Okay. That's right. But you are supporting the body in a way that it can still produce some hormones on its own and just be healthier in general. Like you have a menopause SOS cream that looked fantastic. Uh stress and sleep formula, uh, cramps and muscle pain formula, a bloating SOS. I love that. And that's such a big problem as we age. Our gut biome just, you know, we have to work. I tell my daughter, I said, aging is brutal. You have to fight it daily. And from the inside out and the outside in, it's just constant. You have to work out harder, you have to eat better, all the things. So, and then you have a stress relief and deep sleep multi-pack. I love that. So, yeah, I think I think this is a fabulous product line by Glow, or it's Glow by Hormone University that I think all our listeners should should check out. Yeah. So, Anna, is there anything else as a hormone hero yourself, because of the support you're giving women and the education, is there anything else you'd you'd like to leave us with?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Look, I think what's

Advocate For Yourself And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 21:35

really important is the fact that we have X amount of minutes with our doctors, right? What I believe and I really encourage people to do is really do your own research before you go to the doctor and advocate, like I said before, advocate for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Because only you can do that. Right. And sometimes I think, my gosh, if I knew what I know now, back in the day when I was 23 years old, I would have avoided so many issues. And you know, just even from a nutrition point of view, I wish I had known so much stuff, or even surgical menopause as we age, as you said. I didn't know everything was going to affect me 10 times worse, right? Right. I mean, have a glass of wine at 25, not the same as having a glass of wine at 45, right? So what I would want to leave your audience with is do your research and listen to these podcasts, because Dr. Kelly, you're doing an incredible job as well. And it's it's only through people like you as well that we can help other women. And I also think it's important that we support other women. And and if someone comes to us with let's call it an embarrassing topic, yes, then no judgment, right? No judgment. And we all go through different situations, and we should be embracing them and using our hormones as our power and not something different.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

I completely agree. I did want to mention you also have a masterclass series, and I recommend everyone get on. It's hormoneuniversity.com/slash masterclass dash series. And there you offer the you can see there what has been offered in the past and what's coming up as well. You offer some things that people can sign up for and join, and they're given by extremely dedicated and educated physicians and PhDs and dietitians and things like that that people can also join on your masterclass series. So thank you for that. Well, I just so appreciate you, Anna, being on today. You are a beautiful example of someone that's overcome the difficulties you've been through and made it, you know, helpful for everyone else. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Thank you so much, Dr. Kelly. And thank you so much to everyone listening.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yes. And everyone check out Anna's website. 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 hormoneheroes.org. 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.