 and welcome to this episode of Create a Life You Love. I'm so excited for this show, because I have someone who has literally changed my life here with me today. Her name is Dr. Luanne Morasky, and I'm gonna let her explain all the ways that she has changed my life, help me, so on and so forth. Hi, Dr. Morasky, how are you today? I'm doing fabulous, thank you. Grateful to be here. Oh gosh, I am so honored to have you, and it's so exciting to have you on this show because I just am so excited about the work that you do and the changes that it implements in somebody's life. Love it, and I'm so excited to be here to talk about my favorite thing. It's really, really fun to make people feel good. Yeah, so before I get too carried away about myself, which is easy to do, I'm gonna go through a few questions that I have for you and let you answer them so people can be a little bit more informed and hopefully if this is something that can help them they can completely embrace it also. So first of all, you work at, or you're with your MD, Y-O-U-R, your MD, and it's a clinic in McWan, Wisconsin. Can you tell me a little bit about the clinic, what it offers and how it operates, just... Absolutely. Your MD is a full service, direct primary care clinic. We are in McWan, Wisconsin. I am an internist and a pediatrician. My partner, Dr. Lewis, is a family medicine physician and we do full service primary care for people and we try to include everything that is encompassed in health and wellness. So we do things like hormone replacement. We do some aesthetic services. We do full spectrum primary care procedures, everything like that. Basically trying to take care of everything a family could need. And I love that concept. I absolutely love that concept. It's really fun and like I said, it's nice. It's so nice to be able to go to a familiar environment, see familiar people for all of the things that you may need, both when you're sick and when you're well. Yeah, 100%. And one of the things that we are gonna discuss today, and specifically, we may touch on other things, but the main reason and the best reason that I was like, I have to have you on this show. This needs to get out there because I heard about this through a friend who said, just go see, just go see Luanne. And I was like, hesitant. I actually waited even three months to make that phone call. I wish I did not. So it's hormone replacement and health. So a lot of people are familiar a little bit with hormone replacement and you do what's called bio-identical hormone replacement. Now the name can freak a few people out. So exactly what does bio-identical mean? What we're trying to do is not just replace hormones in the body, we're trying to optimize your body's natural systems that help maintain health and wellness and we optimize them using hormones. Now hormones are just chemical signals in your body. Bio-identical hormones means that we're using exactly the same chemicals that your body makes itself. There's no additions, there's no parts on it, or there's no additional chemicals with it. It's exactly, so when we talk about molecules like estradiol or testosterone, it's exactly the same testosterone or estradiol that your body makes itself so that it works where it's supposed to and doesn't work anywhere else. Okay, so now a lot of people have misconceptions about this. They've heard one person or one story and they have a ton of misconceptions about the safety. Absolutely. Or the process of this. So can you speak a little bit about that? Absolutely, if you go back to 2002, 25% of all post-menopausal women were on hormone replacement. A study came out called the Women's Health Initiative that said that your increase of certain kinds of cancers goes up by 50% if you're on certain hormones. Now, since that time, that study's been re-looked at and the results have been published that don't support an increased cancer risk. However, that didn't make the news so much. So for the last 20 years, almost people haven't hormone replacement, hormone optimization hasn't even been offered as part of routine primary care. So what we're doing is we're going back, we looked at the evidence and it shows that if you're on hormone replacement, women in particular live seven years longer, all cause. So when you're taking care of your health, when you're trying to get your hormones optimized, what happens is you take your body back to a state where it's not aging at the same rate or not aging at all and you get all the benefits associated with that. Your body goes back to being in a building mode in a development mode. So you see changes like better muscle mass, you see skin changes where your skin gets clear, but more importantly, you see things like improved mental clarity, improved sleep, as well as the obvious things, improved libido, things like hot flashes in women, those kinds of things that we can really hopefully eliminate. Yeah, there are also some health benefits for women as far as the heart goes. Absolutely, for both women and men, one of the most important reasons to consider hormone optimization is to decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease. One out of every three people is going to die of heart disease and that's a big number. That's huge. So if we can decrease our risk of heart disease, that's an important thing to do. Other risk factors associated with heart disease like high blood pressure or diabetes, hormone optimization can actually help improve those outside of the medications and the lifestyle changes that you may have already made. So one of the big goals with hormone replacement for everybody that we see is to hopefully decrease their cardiac or cardiovascular risk, their risk of heart disease stroke and blood vessel disease. The other risk especially for women is osteoporosis. After menopause, when you don't have estrogen at the same levels anymore, your bones start to thin. And by optimizing your hormones, we can actually not only arrest that process but hopefully reverse it. Yeah, and that's another huge, just completely huge benefit other than some of the benefits that we're gonna get to in a moment. Now there are many different hormone replacement for lack of a better- Methods. Methods, thank you. Thank you for using words for me this morning. Sorry. No, I appreciate it. I was searching for that word. Methods on the market. Correct. And I have a couple of friends that are utilizing another method. And I'll talk about the difference between them and me in a second, but I want you first to talk about some of the differences. Why you use the method you use. First, what is the method you use? And what is the difference between some of the other methods on the market? Absolutely. So for when you're talking about hormone optimization, you want to use bioidentical hormones because we don't, we want, again, we want the things that we're using, we're using the body's own chemicals as a treatment. We want them to work where they're supposed to and not work anywhere else and then be excreted from the body quickly. So bioidentical hormones over synthetic hormones, in terms of when we do put hormones back in, we obviously prefer bioidentical. Then the question is how to get them absorbed. As most as any other chemical, you can absorb it by taking it as a pill, you can have it absorbed through your skin, what's called transdermally, which might be like a cream or a patch. You can inject it into a muscle like a shot or you can do it as a form of pellets under the skin. Pellets are little pellets about the size of a grain or two of rice. And if you implant them under your skin, your body says, ooh, that doesn't belong there. It sends a blood supply to it and you get a perfect delivery system that lasts about three to four months, depending on which pellets we use. So in terms of method, we do use a system called Biot, which is a hormone optimization system that is very medically rigorous with lots and lots of backup and support in terms of the work that we're doing and how it affects individual people, but it allows us to know exactly what pellets we're using, where they came from, what's in them, that we know for certain that they're gluten-free, additive-free, et cetera. And that we're doing it basically the best way possible when if we're talking about something that we're gonna implant in somebody's body, we want the best that's out there. Oh my goodness, yeah. So this is not the time for a bargain baseman. Trial and error, yes. Also because you're trying to get consistent dosing levels. When we're not, your body has hormones to help in younger life with fertility. We're not talking necessarily about trying to help fertility. We're trying to optimize how you feel every day. So we want a steady state. We don't want a cycle or up and down. And use of the pellets allows us to get good steady state levels in your body that last a long time. So you only have to think about it every few months. Which is amazing for someone like me. I have a friend who's using the creams. And she has to put it on every morning, one of them. And then one of them on every evening. And I just think, first of all, I'm not that person. Right. Seriously? Right. I am not. Better put it by my toothbrush or it's not getting done. Even if I put it by my toothbrush. If I'm in a hurry or, and then she has to take a day off and she's always forgetting her day off, she goes to put it on. Plus, it's like a click or a certain amount. Sure. And one thing I've noticed in all honesty, she's been on it a little bit longer than I have with the cream. Probably a month or so longer. But my energy level, like I'm back to like running hills at the lakefront. And I feel like I'm 30 again. In such a short period of time. I'm like killing it. I'm crushing those hills. No slowing you down. And she's still a bit lethargic. She's not at that point yet. Well, first of all, it depends on what hormones you put back in. Usually we're talking about three primary hormones. Estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone for women. Testosterone for men. And which ones you put in. And again, the medicine is only as good as how much hits your system. So there's a rule, absolutely a rule for creams for some people, if we need to have things that are reversible, there's a rule for it. But it's more work. And not everybody absorbs creams through their skin very well. Or the absorption changes depending on whether it's summer and your sweat might crazy out at a picnic or it's winter and you're hibernating in the house. Yeah, and how active you are. Absolutely. Is it gym day or is it home day? So the absorption of creams is one of the concerns. Same thing for the patches. Patches can be a great option, especially to deliver estrogen. They don't always work with all skin types. That makes so much sense. So let's talk about why a man, what symptoms would a man have that he might say, maybe this is good for me. Maybe I should be doing this. What are a man's symptoms? Because this is good for men and women. Oh, absolutely. Women, they always talk about women and menopause. They don't realize it starts with men. There is a manopause, I'm just gonna say it. Absolutely, it even has a name. It's called andropause. Okay. But even in men who are in their 30s and 40s, there's a rule for prevention. Everybody's seen the commercials and a lot of everybody thinks about it's one of these issues. And we're talking about erectile dysfunction or changes in urine stream and things like that. And that is a reason why a lot of men do seek help and seek treatment. However, most people don't realize that things like fatigue, central weight gain, like all of a sudden where the dad bod come from. That's part of andropausal changes in how your body processes fats. And again, back to that cardiovascular risk, blood sugars go up as we age, blood pressure goes up as we age, helping to maintain fitness and your cardiovascular system is all part of that. Other things that people don't always expect, especially for men, fatigue, that why am I wearing a wet blanket? I'm just tired, I'm busy, it's the kids, it's work. But a lot of that fatigue could be a sign of low testosterone. Lack of mental clarity. I can't focus like I used to. I don't have the same completion whether I'm at home or whether I'm at work trying to do something. I'm just not as focused as I remember it. That can be a sign of low T. Sleep. I'm just not sleeping. And again, gets written off to stress or environmental things. And no, that can be a sign of low T. And here's the problem. I'm just gonna say, one of the things that I've noticed just based on what you're telling me is men will be on three or four different drugs for each of the, maybe some Viagra or some stimulation type drug for erectile. They're taking their ZMA supplement. They're taking Viagra or Cialis when they need it. They're on their cholesterol medicine. They've got maybe an antidepressant thrown in there too, which throws the whole thing back. Plus something to help them sleep at night. And ambient for sleep. Something, a lot of caffeine to help them get going during the day and throughout the day when if they would just get their hormones checked, they might be back in that place. So let's talk about some of the symptomology for women. What do women experience that says, hey, this isn't something in just this area. It might be an all over thing that we need to get tested. Absolutely. And for women too, we especially for women over the age of 45 or so, we do see a lot of, I just don't have any libido. Sex becomes like taking out the trash, once a week as fast as you can. That's not a good relationship builder, but it's also hot flashes and I'm on fire all night or during the day or those menopausal changes are absolutely something that can be treated with hormone optimization. But it's a lot of the other things like for men as well, focus and clarity. The sleep is absolutely a huge deal. And your sleep is your, we tend to discount it like it's just something that we do for hopefully eight hours a night, but sometimes we take a whole lot less. That's our body's primary restive and reparative time. If you're not sleeping, you're not healing, you're not regenerating, you're not improving. That's when that all happens. So getting women back to sleep is absolutely a huge priority with hormone optimization. And then you also have the additional benefit of bone density, which is a growing concern because now we've had almost two decades of women who haven't had any hormone replacement. They're getting their initial DEXA scans done and their bones are thin. And how you live today is how you're gonna, how you live today is how you're gonna feel in 15 years. And that's so crucial. We're in a world now, like 30 years ago, the world was completely different as far as the way men and women aged. And they just aged, they just aged out. But today, like they always say, oh, 40 is the new 30 or 20. And we feel so much younger and so much more vibrant, but we just sometimes can't get there. Now, one thing I wanna speak to is, actually two things, that lack of sleep, it looks very different for people. You might have restless sleep or wake up every hour or two or three times a night, or you just can't fall asleep because your mind is just racing and you can't stop. I call it crazy town. You can't stop going to crazy town. Like I always say to my friend, or I used to say I'm on crazy train heading to crazy town and I can't stop the loop. Exactly, he is active. Right, because you just like have these thought processes and you're like, okay, there's something inside of you that says this isn't normal, this isn't the way I am. In the moment, I just wanna say the moment you say, what the heck is going on, this isn't the way I am, that's the time to come in and get that panel, which we'll talk about in a moment. Ask the question, it might not just be, and especially for women, we just accept. This is just how it is. This is just how things are now. No, we don't have to do that. And you know, I know you mentioned 45, there are so many people like that are starting at 35, 32. Absolutely. That these symptoms are kicking in. Absolutely. And don't take it from me, do not wait. Do not wait. Absolutely, you can use hormones, optimizing your hormones can be done preventively as well in women as young as their late 20s. Oh yeah. And men as well. We do see this. It's certainly not as common, but we absolutely do see people in their late 20s and we look at their blood work and they're having typical late 20-something problems. They're juggling work and family and they're tired all the time and we check their hormone levels and their hormones are way, way off. Yeah, absolutely. So now, and when they are, that's not the first go-to thing that people think about. No. They take the symptom, the one symptom and they try to fix that one symptom with something else. Absolutely. And that gets to problems versus what's the root cause? I'm not sleeping, so I take a sleep aid. Exactly. I'm tired, so I go and drink too much coffee or I need a stimulant. I don't have mental clarity, so I need a medication for that. As opposed to what's the root problem, fix the root problem. Exactly. Now, once a man comes in and he starts the healthy hormone, hormone replacement system, what will he begin to notice and what kind of, what's the timeline on that? And let's, I think we can probably talk about men and women in the same breath with this because I think it's about the same. There might be some differences like with libido and erectile dysfunction, but what can they notice and what's the timeline on that? One of the first things we see is sleep, which is fabulous. It's not uncommon to get a phone call and say literally within days, that's the best sleep I've had in a decade. Yes. So that happens pretty quickly. The clarity of thought can be very, very quick. Other things which are beneficial as far as when we're looking at timeline, libido can be very quick. We can usually figure out the right dose and the right interval to do of any type of hormone replacement, usually within the first few months. It's not an extended process. And once we get it right, then we continue to see benefits through the first two to three years. Usually by about six months, we really see the skin changes. All of a sudden people are asking, like, do you have something done? Or, what are you doing? Your skin looks amazing. In the sort of three to six month range, we start to see that. We see the weight after an initial period because of your body adjusting to the hormones. Sometimes we see a little bit of transient short-term weight gain, scale weight. Not physically bigger, but you're holding a little extra fluid. And by a year, that's reversed and people are losing weight, but they're losing weight the same way that they gained the weight, you know, five to seven pounds a year. But instead of five to seven pounds up, it's five to seven pounds down. And our experience has been that has been sustained for as long as we've been doing pellets with people. We see improved muscle definition. Instead of, you know, you work out and you're like, okay, I'm working out and I'm staying the same. Now it's, I'm working out and I'm seeing the benefits that I used to see when I was in my twenties and thirties. I see the improved muscle definition. I see, all of a sudden this goes away. What is this? You know, and this starts to melt and you go back to a younger pattern of results from the efforts that you put in both in terms of nutrition and exercise. So, and we see a lot of the benefits absolutely within the first three months to six months, but those benefits can be sustained or improved even throughout the first three years. Oh my goodness, yeah. And the energy levels during the day, like you can wake up no matter what time in the morning and just go like a teenager throughout the day. Again, it also depends on how you came into it. We've had patients where, you know, they've been in menopause for 10 years and then all of a sudden we put the hormones back in. Right, they're like, who plugged my battery back in? You know, it's like, so it's revolutionary. When we see some patients who are younger, the changes aren't quite as dramatic, but they're more sustained and they have that more sustained energy during the day. All of a sudden, their focus is back. They're doing better in terms of job performance and things like that because they can actually hold their attention back. Oh, absolutely. Now, when somebody is thinking about this, what is the process they go through once they make the appointment and come into your office? Well, that's absolutely give our office a call. And what usually happens is we have you come in for a consultation. During that consultation, we will draw a fixed panel of labs that covers all kinds of things because if we're going to fix one thing, there's no point in fixing one thing and not fixing other things. So we try to look at everything that's involved in basic, both primary care and health and wellness. So we'll look at your thyroid. If your thyroid isn't working, the hormones aren't gonna do their best job either. We look at your vitamin D levels. We look at your blood counts, your kidney, your liver function, your vitamin B12 levels. All of these things, everything that could play a part into how you're feeling on a day-to-day basis. We look at a blood panel of all of those things. We talk about the hormone replacement, what the options are available, what would work best for you, what the process is like, what the side effects could be, how do we handle those? Basically an overview of what this could passably do for you. What are your particular concerns? What are you looking for? Again, a lot of people come in because I'm worried about my bones and they never even thought about their heart. Or I'm here for, I want anti-aging and they didn't even realize that sleep would be a benefit as well. So what to expect, how the process works. And then when we get those blood tests back, it's about a week, we have you come back in, we go over all of them, as you and I did, start to finish. Welcome to lab school, and go over all of them and what they mean, and then decide to make a decision about how we're gonna move ahead, whether it's with pellets most frequently, or do we need to use an alternative like creams or other things, or injectables and then. Right, excellent. So now, once they do that, you don't just leave them, there's a point where they come in and they have a second blood draw to make sure everything is working okay. Absolutely. And the levels are exactly where they're supposed to be. Absolutely, we can always make adjustments at that we wanna find out what that initial blood level is, because everybody is different, everybody absorbs things differently. And understand, even though we're using the body's own chemicals, we're using those chemicals like a medication. It needs to be followed like a medication. This isn't something that you do and just continue to do. Like any medication, there can be side effects, there can be complications. You need to have a physician who's following it with you and making sure that not only are we doing it optimally, but we're doing it optimally safely. Absolutely. So I could talk about this all day with you. I would love to, I have like a million more questions. So if somebody does have questions or they're thinking about this, how can they contact you to get further information or maybe come in and have that consultation with you? Absolutely. Some people are always afraid of the phone call at first. I would absolutely direct you to Biot, B-I-O-T-E. If you Google them, their website, they have excellent instructional videos about the process, how it works, benefits, before and afters, there's plenty of information like that. If you contact our clinic or email at info.yourmdmecwan.com, you can send us a message, give our clinic a call at 262-226-8899 and you'll speak with Jackie Jessertanya and ask your questions and we can get you scheduled to come in and talk about it and if this could be right for you. Yes. And I wanna say everybody at the clinic is just amazing and kind and nice and it's the greatest experience and I wanna thank you also so much for being on the show today. Absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. It has. I'm so grateful for this and I wanna thank you for joining me here today. Don't forget to set your calendar for the next episode of Create a Life You Love. Until then, this has been Tony, have an amazing life and make miracles.