Women’s Hormones and Wellness: Dr. Mistry Answers a Female Listener’s Question About Hormone Pellets and Hair Loss
Dr. Mistry: Hello! This is Dr. Mistry, your host of the Armor Men’s Health Hour, joined today by my office manager and cohost, Donna Lee.
Donna Lee: I was wondering what words you were going to choose there.
Dr. Mistry: Yes, I’m trying.
Donna Lee: And it’s practice administrator.
Dr. Mistry: There you go.
Donna Lee: Not office manager.
Dr. Mistry: I’m a big, I’m really big about titles.
Donna Lee: No , you’re not. Because you’ve been calling me your office manager for three years.
Dr. Mistry: That’s correct. Perhaps, perhaps I’ve been a little off, Miss Manager.
Donna Lee: You’re a doctor, a board certified doctor.
Dr. Mistry: That’s right. I’m a board certified urologist. This is a men’s health show. We are the Armour Men’s Health Hour here on news radio KLBJ. Thank you so much to our team here. Donna Lee is my practice administrator and this show is brought to you by our practice NAU Urology Specialists. We have been here established in 2007. We have offices all throughout town and Donna Lee’s going to tell us where those offices are, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about our practice.
Donna Lee: That’s right. You can reach us throughout central Texas. Our main hub is Round Rock, Texas. Do you know there is an actual round rock? Like I Googled it.
Dr. Mistry: Yes.
Donna Lee: What or where is that round rock?
Dr. Mistry: It is in a body of water.
Donna Lee: Oh, okay. Well, I Googled it and I knew that, but I didn’t know where it was. But we are also located in North Austin by the terrible DPS office at Lakeline Mall .
Dr. Mistry: Tickets for all of us.
Donna Lee: That’s right. Oh, sorry about that. We’re also in South Austin and our Dripping Springs location is fabulous.
Dr. Mistry: They love dripping and dripping.
Donna Lee: And dripping. So we don’t love dripping and dripping. We want to fix dripping.
Dr. Mistry: We want to keep you from dripping.
Donna Lee: And dripping. Our number is (512) 238-0762 . And you can send your questions….
Dr. Mistry: That is not our number.
Donna Lee: (512) 238-0762.
Dr. Mistry: Oh, I guess it is. Aren’t you did I say wrong ?
Donna Lee: Our email addresses is armormenshealth@gmail.com and I will respond to everyone of your questions and we will answer them anonymously on air with Dr. Mistry’s brilliant advice.
Dr. Mistry: Our practice is a little unique when it comes to standard urology and even medical practices. We have a team of four physicians. We have a team of five physician assistant and nurse practitioners. We have a functional nutritionist on our staff who through your insurance, we give you amazing integrative medicine type advice. We have two pelvic floor physical therapists because…
Donna Lee: One’s not enough!
Dr. Mistry: …because we believe that a biomechanical cause of many pelvic complaints can be found, and we like to avoid medications when possible. We have a sex therapist on staff who can also treat other , you know , psychiatric or psychological issues. And we have an amazing staff, just an amazing staff, really dedicated to helping you get your appointment as quickly as possible, get your surgeries done as quickly as possible. And you know, all of us are kind of working our butts off to keep you safe in our office, to get you in the operating room in the office when clinically indicated, make sure you’re getting your medicines and getting your care because regardless of what’s going on in the world, it is important to not delay care. When you have a medical condition,
Donna Lee: That’s right. You don’t have to have surgery. It sounded like you were going to take everybody straight to surgery.
Dr. Mistry: Well, you know, I am a surgeon.
Donna Lee: You do like to do surgery.
Dr. Mistry: I do love to operate.
Donna Lee: Well we promise to have a good diagnosis for you and a reason to do surgery.
Dr. Mistry: That’s right. I mean, if your surgeon’s crying because he hates what he does all throughout operating on you, you don’t want that guy. You want the person to be kind of excited about what he’s doing.
Donna Lee: You know, what I like about your vasectomy is that you always have New Order radio station on.
Dr. Mistry: That’s right. That’s right.
Donna Lee: You think the patients know that subliminally? They’re leaving here singing one of the songs?
Dr. Mistry: The patients are always, “Oh, I like your jams.” And then the , the nurse helping me is like, “Not again.”
Donna Lee: That’s right. It’s always the same.
Dr. Mistry: The same radio station.
Donna Lee: You need some variety there.
Dr. Mistry: So Donna Lee, questions really keep this show going. And of course the patients that we want to take care of are so important to keeping our practice going and keeping our ideas fresh. So if you have questions, that’s armormenshealth@gmail.com, armormenshealth@gmail.com is where we send the questions. And do you have a question?
Donna Lee: I do have a question. We had a couple of questions that came in from ladies. Even though this is a men’s wellness program, I did have a patient reach out to us and she said she would like to learn more about the pellet insertion and if it helps women with hair loss.
Dr. Mistry: That’s great. So usually we’re dealing with hormones that people lose as a result of aging, but in women, they also have another unique time where hormone abnormalities can rear their heads and that’s if they’ve had a hysterectomy. And that’s even if you’ve had a hysterectomy where the ovaries were, quote unquote “spared.” Oftentimes the blood supply to the ovaries, a lot of it comes from the ligaments that are come along the ligaments that are cut during the course of a hysterectomy. So even if you think your ovaries are behind or you’ve had a hysterectomy and you thought your ovaries were left behind, you could suffer from hormonal deficit. So hormone deficit in a woman will include three different hormones: progesterone, testosterone, and estrogen. And each of them has a different role to be played when it comes to restoring your health and making you feel good. Now, when it comes to hormone replacement in women, there’s a lot of fear that people have that perhaps it’ll put them at increased risk for heart disease, stroke, or breast cancer. And what the data has shown is that if you are within 10 years of menopause or 10 years of a surgical hysterectomy, then your likelihood of developing cardiovascular side effects or breast cancer is decreased compared to your control population. So it’s really protective in women to be placed on hormone replacement therapy early. And this helps them maintain a lot of the things that you would, if you want to know what hormone replacement therapy will do for you, think about what you naturally would expect to happen to you as you age. You expect to lose elasticity of the skin. You expect to have changes in hair color and changes in hair consistency. You perhaps expect to get hot flashes and not be able to tolerate temperature change as well. Sexual functioning kind of as an expectation of getting older is expected to get lower, you know.
Donna Lee: And it does.
Dr. Mistry: You have no excuse. You’re like 32 years old.
Donna Lee: Yeah, OK.
Dr. Mistry: So then you have vaginal dryness, you have libido, and then there’s energy. And most importantly, I think, is cognitive functioning. This idea that you’re just not as with it–more forgetful, things of that nature. And I see these commercials from these very expensive on, you know, hormone, you know, hormone clinics that advertise, and I don’t want to mention one by name, but you know, you see these expensive ads and people are talking about how much better it makes them and I’m like, “That poor woman just spent $2,000 a month for something that we do for like, you know, $40 a month.” So…
Donna Lee: And if you watch KVUE, it’s the same lady in the same commercial, and she’s like…
Dr. Mistry: She did great! Trust me, she’s really happy with her outfit .
Donna Lee: She’s like, “I can’t keep my hands off my husband!”
Dr. Mistry: ” I can’t keep my hands off my husband!” Greatest, greatest ad ever.
Donna Lee: Because she’s paying $2,000!
Dr. Mistry: The problem with these kinds of centers is that if the hormones don’t work, I say it over and over again on the show: if you go to a place that does one thing, you’re going to get that one thing, regardless of whether you need it or not. So if you go there and you have very low sexual desire and you are a 24 year old woman, somewhere along the way, don’t be surprised if somebody sticks you on some hormones. When in fact some of our other therapeutic options might work much better for you: Vyleesi, Addyi, we use off label Wellbutrin.
Donna Lee: Those are like female Viagras?
Dr. Mistry: These are all like…well, you know, female Viagra is actually Viagra, right ? But what these medicines are, are they’re actual medicines that enhance libido. Like men out there, if you were wondering how come there’s not a drug that increases libido in women, there is, there is, okay? And these have all been FDA approved. They’re safe, effective, and something that we take care of. So when we get somebody who’s in their , let’s say, you know, early forties, who’s still hormonally intact, but complaining of very low libido–first things first. I tell her husband, “Do the laundry, fold a towel.” That’s my, that’s my Donna Lee sexual libido trick. Just go home, just take, unfold a blanket and just fold it right in front of her and say, “You think I’m hot now?”
Donna Lee: Better yet, wash a dish in front of me. Wow. That gets me going!
Dr. Mistry: Man, I feel like your barrier’s pretty low. So if that barrier doesn’t work, though, some of these medicines like an oral pill called Addyi or a little injection called Vyleesi are known and been FDA proven to enhance sexual libido desire and number of intercourse episodes.
Donna Lee: You’ve had some patient testimonials.
Dr. Mistry: Yeah . And it’s an amazing opportunity. So I included that in that hormone wellness kind of question the answer for that, because the purpose shouldn’t be to get hormones, the purpose should be to feel better in a certain way. And you know, your energy can be affected by your thyroid. It could be affected by your weight. It could be affected by so many different things. And so I have an integrative nutritionist on staff that’s going to help you make sure that your diet is not being affected or something you’re eating is not worsening your , the way your gut feels or the way your hair and skin are doing. And then we have, you know , of course, hormones and we do offer hormones in a pellet form: bioTE hormones for women. They run about $300 for three months because the way that women are dosed, the dosing is a little smaller. In men, the same bioTE pellet–well, a different, higher dose pellet–but the same kind of procedure lasts longer, about six months. If you’re going to , we can do pellets both for estrogen and testosterone, and if you still have your uterus, you’ll need to get progesterone as well, which is given through a very tiny oral pill that you take daily and sometimes a little less, less often. But then we also have natural supplements to help with symptoms of menopause if you’re not interested in doing a hormone replacement program. And just a really great program here for helping you deal with aging and menopause and making sure you don’t lose those things that you love. So how do people get ahold of us ?
Donna Lee: You can call us during the week at (512) 238-0762 . Send us questions to armormenshealth@gmail.com. And we’ll be back to the Armor Women’s Health Hour.
: Dr. Mistry wants to hear from you. Email questions to armormenshealth@gmail.com. We’ll be right back with the Armor Men’s Health Hour.