How Bioidentical Hormones Transformed Wendy’s Life
Wendy had such extreme fatigue that she just wanted to say in bed all weekend and take naps at work. She was barely getting by. She had horrible, painful menstrual cycles, miscarriages, mood swings, headaches and migraines. Conventional doctors put her on synthetic hormones and antidepressants, neither of which solved her health issues. Watch to hear how Dr. Hotze helped Wendy transform her life with bioidentical hormones. You don’t want to miss this!
Podcast Transcript
Stacy Bandfield: Thank you for joining us today at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacy Bandfield here with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. Thank you, as always, for tuning in to our podcast and you know where to go to download all of them. That’s HotzePodcast.com. We have a special guest today, Wendy Walsh. She’s a longtime guest here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, has a terrific story that I know you will enjoy hearing. Isn’t that right, Dr. Hotze?
Dr. Hotze: Thank you, Stacy. Thank each one of you for joining us on the Wellness Revolution podcast. If you want to subscribe, be sure to subscribe by going to podcast and putting in “Hotze Health” or go to HotzePodcast. Also, you can go to YouTube and do the same thing.
I wanted to remind you as we start this program that I believe that you and every individual needs a health coach. I believe that health coach should be a physician who takes natural approaches to help you get on a path of health and wellness, and has a team of professionals to help you do that without using pharmaceutical drugs. That as you mature, you feel well.
We have a wonderful guest today, a longtime friend, an ambassador at our center. She’s been a guest here at Hotze Health & Wellness Center since 2007, and this is Wendy Walsh. Wendy, thank you for joining us today.
Wendy Walsh: I’m glad to be here. Thank you.
Dr. Hotze: The reason I invited you is I think you have such a marvelous story, your health journey and what you went through finally to get on a path of health and wellness and what a difference it’s made in your life. Isn’t she a beautiful young lady? Just telling you. She’s a poster child for Hotze Health & Wellness Center, I guarantee you. Look at her blush.
Wendy Walsh: Now you are making me blush.
Dr. Hotze: Well, Wendy, tell us. Tell us what was going on in your life. Tell me about the health issues that you’ve experienced in your lifetime.
Wendy Walsh: Alright. Would you like me to start when I started here or way back?
Dr. Hotze: Yes, way back when you were a young girl.
Wendy Walsh: My medical journey actually started as a young girl. I had horrible menstrual cycles. They were really long and heavy and painful. Then when I got into my early 20s, I went to a doctor because of my horrible cycles and said, “Is there anything you can do for me?” They basically told me that I was a woman and that was just normal and just to deal with it. They were the doctor and I was so naïve I just…
Dr. Hotze: Grin and bear it.
Wendy Walsh: Grin and bear it. I assumed that was what you do. That carried on for many, many years and I just dealt with it. When my husband and I got married and I started trying to have a baby, I had a hard time getting pregnant and actually managed to finally, after many doctor appointments and many, many tests, managed to get pregnant three times. Two ended in miscarriages and one ended as an early termination at five months.
Those were many, many years of heartbreak, which I now after coming to the Center realize could have been avoided by some natural bioidentical hormones. After many years of that, we finally decided to stop having children. I focused my attention on a full-time career and really enjoyed my work. I put in many, many hours. Over time, though, I just started getting more and more fatigued. I had headaches. They were turning into migraines. I was still dealing with the terrible cycles and so forth.
I went to the specialist again and told him all my symptoms. I was on my way to work and I remember going to my first appointment and I was all dressed up. I told him all my symptoms. He looked at me and says, “You look very healthy and very normal.” I said, “Well, thank you, but could you at least run some tests?” He said, “Well, I’ll run some tests, but I know they won’t show anything.”
He ran some tests, and lo and behold, I did have hormone imbalance. Of course, his cure for that was to put me on synthetic hormones…
Dr. Hotze: Right.
Wendy Walsh: …which I now call counterfeit hormones. I know they don’t really fix the underlying problem. It’s a Band-Aid to cover up your symptoms for a while.
Dr. Hotze: Right.
Wendy Walsh: For a few years, I did do better. But after time, a couple years of that, I gradually started having symptoms again. At my yearly appointment, I would go in and say, “Something’s wrong. Things are out of balance.” He would switch hormones around, the synthetic hormones, and then he put me on antidepressants because it must be in my head.
Over the next nine years, I think, I was on every antidepressant that came on the market and still on the synthetic hormones. My energy level just plummeted. I was barely, barely getting by. It got so bad that just driving across town, I’d come to stop light and it was all I could do to stay awake. I was so tired. Then the headaches and the migraines and the mood swings.
When it really came to a head was when we went on vacation on a houseboat trip in Arkansas. I really did not want to go on that houseboat trip because I was just tired.
Dr. Hotze: Right.
Wendy Walsh: We went with a bunch of friends, and every morning they’d get up and have breakfast and they’d go out and go water skiing and tubing and boating and hiking. I would sneak back into my bunk and just go to sleep. After a couple days of that, my friend said, “What is going on with you?”
I explained my symptoms and she, praise God, had gone to the Hotze Health & Wellness Center and she said, “You need to go. They cured me. I got well and I know you need to go.” From the top of that houseboat, she called and made my first appointment, which was July 3rd, 2007. That day was one of the best days of my life.
Dr. Hotze: That was over 10 years, going on 11 years.
Wendy Walsh: 10 1/2 years ago. Going on 11 years, yes.
Dr. Hotze: Okay. You came in. Who did you meet with? Which doctor?
Wendy Walsh: I met with Dr. Ellsworth.
Dr. Hotze: Okay.
Wendy Walsh: He listened to me and spent time with me. It wasn’t like I was a number or in a cattle chute. He prescribed natural hormones for me, the bioidentical kind, that actually replenish what your body has been missing, and natural thyroid, and some vitamins and mineral supplements, plus put me on a yeast-free diet, which was huge, because I’d been on so many antibiotics in my life that I know the yeast buildup was really bad.
I wish I’d kept notes because I remember there was a time, maybe five, six months after I’d come and started the program, I was sitting in the kitchen with my husband and I said, “I feel better today than I have ever felt in my entire life.”
Dr. Hotze: Wow!
Wendy Walsh: Seriously. I’d been dealing with these problems…
Dr. Hotze: Since you were a teenager.
Wendy
Wendy Walsh: Since childhood. I think back then – I was actually lacking, my hormones weren’t always quite in balance. I mean, it’s just been a miracle. I’m just thrilled to be here today and active, water skiing again, started up mountain biking a few years ago at age 60. I’m really proud of myself. How many people do you know that started mountain biking at age 60? It’s just been fun. I’m just blessed beyond all…
Dr. Hotze: You’ve been healthy now for the last 10 plus years.
Wendy Walsh: Yes. 10 1/2 years. It’ll be 11 years in July.
Dr. Hotze: Well, what you’re hearing in Wendy’s story is a very common presentation that we see here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center in women, with the hormonal imbalances and low thyroid. I know they put you on some thyroid, some bioidentical female hormones, put you on some vitamins and minerals. But as we age, our hormone levels decline and become imbalanced. In some women, like in Wendy’s case, it happens at puberty. The hormones never are balanced right and it can cause a host of problems.
Often, the OB/GYN will throw a young girl on birth control pills. They may have tried that for you, trying to regulate things. Those are counterfeit hormones and that can cause a host of problems. The key thing that we see is that when women have hormonal imbalances, which adversely affect their thyroid hormones, as well, their quality of life deteriorates because they don’t feel well.
Then they normally do just what Wendy did, go to a conventional doctor’s office. He basically dismisses your problems, tells you have to live with them.
Wendy Walsh: That’s right.
Dr. Hotze: Buck up, grit your teeth, this is what your plight in life is. Then he found out that you did have some hormonal imbalances. They put you on synthetic hormones and that made you feel worse. They end up putting you on antidepressants because it has to be all in your head. This is very common. We see this over and over again. It’s just a shame because let’s just imagine you hadn’t come in and you hadn’t heard about our Center, never came in here. What would your life be like right now 10 years later from where you were then?
Wendy Walsh: You know, I’ve told many people that I don’t know where I’d be today. I mean, I don’t even know if I’d be alive. Sleeping every weekend, as much as I could. I actually hear it from my husband, too, how tired I actually was. I thought he’d think I was lazy or something. All I wanted to do was sleep all the time. Sleeping, taking naps at lunchtime, crawling into an empty office in the afternoon, hoping no one would notice, taking a 20-minute nap, just to survive. That was almost 11 years ago.
Dr. Hotze: Imagine what it would have been like.
Wendy Walsh: I don’t know.
Dr. Hotze: What’s really impressive in Wendy’s life is she did a 180 and took charge of her health. She decided that she was going to make an investment in her health because she knew that was important. You can imagine where she was going on the trajectory with her health. It was going down, down, down, down, no telling what it would be like right now, if she’d even be alive. Whereas, you turned your health around, you did a 180, and now she’s got a great trajectory. Let me ask you. On a scale of one to 10, ten being the best you’ve ever felt in your life, or zero being no energy at all, how would you rate your overall energy level?
Wendy Walsh: Right now, I would say a 10 because I’m so excited right now to be talking about my life journey and the change.
Dr. Hotze: Right.
Wendy Walsh: You know, there are years or days where I’ve had to adjust certain things. I think as we age, things change.
Dr. Hotze: Sure.
Wendy Walsh: But that’s another thing that’s so wonderful about the program here. It’s tweaked to everybody as an individual because everybody’s so different, instead of going to the conventional doctor’s, where it’s a one pill fits all.
Dr. Hotze: One size fits all.
Wendy Walsh: One size fits all. That’s what’s phenomenal.
Dr. Hotze: Well, this is a great story and I hope this gives you encouragement that you, too, can do a 180 and take charge of your health. Simple regimen, good, healthy eating lifestyle, replenishment of your hormones, vitamin and mineral supplementation, and some exercising. Just get up and walk a couple miles every day briskly. That’s good for you.
Wendy, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your wonderful story. Thank you for being such a great ambassador for our center.
Wendy Walsh: You’re so welcome.
Dr. Hotze: We appreciate you.
Wendy Walsh: It’s my pleasure. Believe me.
Dr. Hotze: Thank you for joining us today on Dr. Hotze’s, that’s me, Wellness Revolution. Thanks so much. Be sure to go to our podcast. Subscribe to it and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Do them both at Hotze Health. Thanks so much.
You, too, Can Get Your Life Back
If Wendy’s story sounds like you, we can help. You, too, can get your life back. Take our symptom checker today to discover if hormone imbalance could be the cause of your symptoms, or contact a wellness consultant for a complimentary wellness consultation at 281-698-8698. It’s time to do a 180 and take charge of your health!
