Retaining healthy youthful levels of sex hormones is the foundation of all preventive medicine.
I’m 71 years old, healthy and active, and my patients often ask me what I do, and have done, to stay healthy. Just for the record, I don’t advise my patients to do anything more than I do to continue my own healthy aging. The recommendations I include in my consultations with my patients I include advice on a healthy diet, exercise, nutrition, supplements, achieving ideal weight and avoidance of toxins. It is my belief that no patient should take advice from a doctor who doesn’t follow the same advice as they give their patients.
An important experience solidified my current belief back in 1983. I vividly remember the moment that changed how I felt about the role of physicians own behaviors in their ability to heal their patients. In the 1980s there was a push for physicians to recommend smoking cessation to all of their patients. I was a resident in OBGYN and I remember the day I got on an elevator with a group of male cardiologists. The doors closed and they all lit up cigarettes! All I could think of was how hypocritical they were, and how hard it must be for their patients to take their advice!
So ever since, I have followed my own advice and share the methods that work for me, always adjusting them to the needs of specific patients. Leading by example is an old-fashioned concept but it works! I try to follow specific preventive lifestyle choices: I replace deficient hormones, maximize the nutrients in my foods and supplements, exercise with weights regularly, keep my mind active with word puzzles and my practice, just to name some of my strategies. So, I thought I’d dedicate one healthcast to the things I believe to be important life choices that can help we humans avoid disease as we grow older. This is my personal recipe for disease avoidance and productivity at any age. Every Item I list is important and they all work together to keep me healthy. They will work for you as well.
- Estradiol and Testosterone Replacement with Pellets When Our Hormones Fail
First and foremost is the replacement of the youthful sex hormones (Estradiol and Testosterone) with BioBalance Pellets, when our ovaries fail us. Sex hormone replacement is the most important factor to prevent the diseases and symptoms of aging. Retaining healthy youthful levels of sex hormones is the foundation of all preventive medicine and antiaging treatment. I started taking Estradiol and Testosterone pellets when I was 47 when my ovaries were removed and I abruptly began to age rapidly in every way. Replacing both hormones literally saved my life and inspired me to take care of other women who lost their hormones from surgery or with menopause and to create BBH. Now at their request I take care of my patients’ husbands. I am 71 and will take my estradiol and testosterone pellets until I leave this life!
- Weight Training and Stretching
I started lifting weights when I was a resident in OBGYN to make me strong enough to deliver babies, move patients on to the operating table and to stand in the operating room for hours. At age 27 I started regularly lifting weights and by doing a circuit of Nautilus machines every other day. I began working out with a trainer 2-3 times a week at Fitness Edge when I was 32. It was where I could receive specific attention to the areas I needed strengthened to do my job. Thirty-nine years later I am still working out with my trainer, Cassie, at the same facility. My husband joined me in my workouts 10 years ago and he has added Pilates to his repertoire. He is 75 and has 19% body fat. Weight training is vital to maintaining muscle mass, bone mass and mobility as we age.
Stretching before and after exercise is very important, and even more important as we age. Ligaments and joints get tighter as we age and that puts stress on these vital parts of our body. Doing a stretch almost every day in the morning is a habit I try to follow, and you should too!
- Achieve MY Ideal weight.
We now have 2 miraculous drugs for treating weight gain that our misdirected American diets have caused. The medications Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound have brought both my husband and me to our ideal weights and kept us there. Every disease of aging is brought about by obesity: Diabetes, Heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory diseases of all kinds that can occur with age. We no longer crave sweets, carbohydrates, or drink more than one glass of wine. By achieving my ideal weight (115 lbs/ 22% body fat) is key to my health.
- Supplements are essential to augment the American diet. We sadly have less nutrition in our food than our parents did. We need to add appropriate supplements, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and Probiotics to stay healthy in our environment. My mother believed in vitamins, and I have taken vitamins since I was 5 years old, handfuls of them! I didn’t appreciate them, but now I do. I believe in focused supplements—individualized to each person. Only a few supplements apply to almost all of us: Pro-Sporbiotic (Mega) to normalize the gut bacteria, neurotransmitters, our immune system and our emotional neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine are all made in the small intestine by our symbiotic bacteria. The second universally needed supplement is a combo: Vitamin D3+Vitamin K2 for every system in the body and the protection from cancer, heart disease, dementia and autoimmune diseases. Other supplements should be chosen for your specific needs.
- My Diet is fresh, high protein, low carb, low preservatives. I eat Raw vegetables or a salad every day, and a balanced high protein diet. Human muscles require animal protein..humans are omnivores and I rarely can take care of a vegetarian who is well nourished.
- Deep Tissue Massage weekly
John and I have had a weekly deep tissue massage for the past 20 years. This cures our aches and pains, relieves muscles spasms so they don’t become something serious. Relaxing tight muscles prevents joints from being pulled out of line and prevents chronic pain. It is a fact that as we age our connective tissue, ligaments and tendons get tighter and are more likely to snap, tear, and shred. Massage helps stretch those tissues out and maintains proper anatomy.
- Prayer/Meditation
I have a running discussion with my God throughout my day. I realize that I can do nothing without Him and his power through me. Being humbled by His power keeps me centered and an open conduit to His healing power.
- Loving the Job You Do No Matter What It Is!
You may think of me as an OBGYN doctor, a Hormone Doctor, or an antiaging doctor, but you don’t know what I have done in terms of the various jobs I did before becoming a doctor. I loved babysitting as a teen, but I needed to make money for high school and college, so I got other jobs…..and I loved every job I did and gained something from everyone.
I was a waitress, which made me very good at fast thinking and taking orders in medical school. It was fun to work for tips and to make people happy. I was a Kelly Girl—a secretary, receptionist—which was a difficult job for me, but it helped me learn to do three or 4 things at once, and I loved it! My next job was a photo model for petite clothes and a voice model on the radio…I could mimic cockney “British” accent and Pepi La Peu “French” and I did the voices on the radio. That was my most lucrative per hour job and it was fun! I learned about radio, TV and advertising and expanded my view past science and medicine.
In 1973 I worked for the KC Royals in PR for the summer giving tours and escorting VIPS around the stadium. It was mostly boring, but I learned how Major League Baseball Teams work and I forged friendships with TV and Radio personalities, players from all the teams, and the owners, the Kauffman’s (team owners). I gave out awards on behalf of the team during the All-Star Game that year (1973) and became friends with Johnny Bench.
Guest relations was my second job that same summer at the new Worlds of Fun. I learned a lot about diffusing the unhappiness of unsatisfied guests, which set me up for tolerating unhappy patients and other doctors as a physician.
My first job in medicine was when I got a job at KC St. Luke’s Hospital as a respiratory therapist. I gave breathing treatments to patients with lung disease, and I learned I wanted to work at the other end of the body….I had seen enough phlegm! My life lesson there was to learn how the hospital worked and what the various jobs were of those folks who weren’t doctors or nurses.
Then I went to med school and learned so much more! Being happy with every job you do no matter how minor and learning something from every experience is vital to mental and physical health.
- Skin and Body care at BioBalance Skin
Your largest organ is your SKIN and you only get one chance to make the right decisions when caring for it! There is no going back. I made many mistakes born out of hubris…I thought since I had tan, Italian skin, I would not wrinkle or get skin cancer….. I didn’t know about the damage the sun does, and no one used sunscreen when I was young. Because of that I have been fighting my way back trying to fix the damage to achieve healthy skin.
What I have learned is that you have to care for your skin from the inside out, and the outside in. Taking collagen, and proteins for your skin building blocks is key to supplying skin cells that are always being made in the dermis. The tightness of skin requires Vitamin D, Vitamin K, Vitamin C and A both inside and applied to the surface.
Exfoliation regularly removes the dead skin for you can bring forth the new cells and care for them.
Removal of the sun and environmental damage done before you were 18 requires lasers and Moxey light therapy, microneedling, or other resurfacing techniques. This is not a one and done, but ongoing treatment like brushing your teeth.
The last enemy is gravity and the laxity of skin as we age. These forces can only be remedies by using fillers, Botox and something called EM Sculpt that stimulates the growth of facial muscles and connective tissue to tighten the skin and hold up your face against gravity.
Yep, I do all that, and more to the aging skin of my body!
- Routine Testing to Prevent and Diagnose Diseases of Aging
I get my routine blood tests, mammogram, and now bone density tests. I check by body composition on our InBody machine to make sure my muscle mass is adequate and not shrinking. The Gallery Cancer Screening is something I do yearly to let me know if I will have cancer in the next year. The genetic test for the best foods to eat help me make choices in my diet and supplements.
- Avoid microplastics and insecticides by making informed choices in every area.
Stop cooking on Teflon (I got a titanium skillet), don’t cook in plastic, or store food in plastic that can leech microplastics into your body. Use glass if possible. Avoid chemicals in cleaning solutions and change to washing detergent without scent or chemicals that are contaminants and will be stored in your body’s fat.
The only sure ways to remove toxins from your body include drinking green tea every day, take probiotics, drink only filtered water, take NAC to clear out the liver, sweat every day by exercising, sit in a red-light booth, if possible, to sweat out toxins and activate your mitochondria.
Everybody is a unique human, and I am sharing because I have been asked so many times what I do to keep healthy….over 70 years you learn what works and what doesn’t. My understanding of medicine years of medical practice gives me an advantage as to what REALLY works to keep one healthy.
