Misty Williams  00:01

Hey, sister, this is misty Williams, founder of healing rosie.com. And I’m so excited to welcome you to Rosie radio. Tune in to find clarity, direction and hope for your healing. 

Misty Williams  00:10

New episodes drop every Tuesday, we created this show to empower you to regain control of your life and feel like yourself again. Yes, sister, it is possible. 

Misty Williams  00:21

You guys, I’m so excited to be doing this interview today with my friend, Dr. Shawn Tassone because you all know I’ve shared a lot of my story with you about the challenges that I’ve had, really wanting to maintain my quality of life as I get older and having my hormone health severely compromised by some of the things that I experienced. 

Misty Williams  00:38

I had the endometriosis diagnosis after the surgery to remove an ovary, a cyst for my left ovary. Along with my left ovary. It turns out, I dealt with terrible fatigue, brain fog. 

Misty Williams  00:50

After that surgery, I went six days without sleep.  A couple years later I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. 

Misty Williams  00:57

It’s been like one hormone thing after another, they found nodules on my thyroid, like all these things, you know, kind of go back to women’s hormones. 

Misty Williams  01:02

And one of the most challenging parts of that experience for me, was constantly hearing things from my doctor, like, your labs are normal, everything’s fine. 

Misty Williams  01:09

I felt like I was being gaslit honestly, like I was trying to, you know, pour my heart out about these, these symptoms and experiences I was having. And I’m being basically told that actually everything is fine, and nothing’s wrong at all. And, you know, maybe we need to put you on an antidepressant. 

Misty Williams  01:25

You just need to give things more time I had one practitioner say Misty, even if we did run more labs, I wouldn’t know what they meant, which was like, stunning to me.  

Misty Williams  01:32

I was shocked because I had these expectations as a patient of who a doctor was going to be for me in my health journey. And at that point in my life, really, it wasn’t my healing journey. 

Misty Williams  01:44

So over time, of course, I’ve learned to navigate this a lot more powerfully, I eventually went on hormone therapy. It’s been a godsend for me in my life, especially with the issues I have.  

Misty Williams  01:55

 I’ve since uncovered that I had mercury fillings improperly drilled through my mouth. So I’m dealing with mercury toxicity. 

Misty Williams  02:01

I found out last summer that I had mold. So I’m dealing with mold toxicity, I’d likely all of these things converged. And my body was picking them up picking them up around the same time in 2013. 

Misty Williams  02:10

So in the meantime, before all this was uncovered, I’ve been able to get hormone support. And it’s been life changing, like my quality of life has been preserved in so many ways, by supporting my hormones properly. But as many of you know, if you’ve tried to navigate this terrain, finding someone to help you with your hormones is quite the challenge. 

Misty Williams  02:28

We experienced a lot with functional medicine doctors, I think there’s this expectation that if you go to a functional medicine doctor, they’re gonna be able to help you with your hormones. And that actually is not true. 

Misty Williams  02:36

I hear from women all the time in our community, that they go to their doctor, their doctor doesn’t, well, let’s do all the other things first, and hormones really never get addressed. And then they want to help with hormones. And so they’re essentially experimenting, right, they don’t necessarily have the education to really help you with your hormones. 

Misty Williams  02:51

And so women have these bad experiences going down the hormone path, you know, their emotions, you know, get knocked off the rails and they find their their a wreck, or they start dealing with all sorts of symptoms. 

Misty Williams  03:00

My mom has dealt with breast tenderness. We actually my mom works with Dr. Shot too, so we were going down this path and we’re trying to get this area dialed in. And there’s just a lot to it. 

Misty Williams  03:11

We have this belief as women, too, that the hormone experts are the gynecologists in our space. And I want to talk to Dr. Sean about that today because I’ve had a unique experience that it’s not that unique. 

Misty Williams  03:22

I’ve had a different experience than what I would have expected, you know, as a patient. But it turns out it’s actually not very unique at all. So Dr. Shawn Tassone is a board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and by the American Board of integrative medicine. He is the author of the hormone balance Bible and holds a medical degree in addition to a PhD in mind body medicine, to sound gynecology is currently accepting new patients and accepts most major insurance plans, which is a super exciting part of his practice that I’m looking forward to chatting about today. So welcome, Dr. Sean.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  03:51

Thanks for having me. It’s really nice to see you again.

Misty Williams  03:54

Yeah, I’m totally thrilled to have you and I’m excited for us to dive into this conversation you’ve heard me ramble on about my story and the things that I’ve experienced. And as a woman, I think, probably because our bodies are the perpetuators of the species, we’re so sensitive to our environments, and so many things can affect our hormones and our quality of life really is tied to our hormone health. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  04:14

I think I have that too, actually.

Misty Williams  04:14

If you’re dealing with flabby, foggy and fatigue, which is a moniker I use, very often you most likely have issues with your hormones being out of balance. 

Misty Williams  04:23

So you get it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  04:26

It’s not just women. Okay.

Misty Williams  04:29

Well, I would love for you to just maybe help us understand this field of gynecology, and what should we be expecting from our gynecologist and you practice really differently, which is what I want us to focus our conversation on today. 

Misty Williams  04:43

Because I think there’s some good learnings and understanding the difference and maybe a traditional gynecology practice and your practice and what you’re doing. 

Misty Williams  04:52

It is outside the box and different as a patient, my expectation would be that all gynecologists are practicing like you are so it was very challenging. For me, to have a very different experience in the beginning, it was hard to find someone that would help me with my hormones. 

Misty Williams  05:05

The first person that helped me was a practitioner in Nashville, she was used to be an OB GYN, she since dropped to the OB and was just doing gynecology, but she was the first one to help me with my hormones. 

Misty Williams  05:13

So I’ve had a positive experience working with gynecologist but there have been many, that were part of the gaslighting that I experienced early on. And I think if we just understood this better, it would help us navigate this terrain and make better decisions for ourselves.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  05:25

So look at OBGYN as two separate professions, two separate like little time jobs, probably the obstetrics, obviously super important, a lot of energy kind of happiness. But you never know when babies are coming. And so a typical OBGYN will probably see.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  05:43

I’m just looking back at when I used to do it 40 to 50 patients a day. And they also have people laboring up in labor and delivery. And so their minds are always they’re super multitaskers, because that’s what they have to do in order to do everything. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  05:57

They got people calling for refills, everything. So they also have to have a very good staff, which is super hard to find too. And they are usually and I will say this because I’ve know a lot of them. Usually super nice people like OBGYN family practitioners, pediatricians generally are those kinds of people that you’d like hanging out with on the weekends. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  06:15

That’s where they go into those professions. So they tend to be more personable. I think what happens though, is we are limited now.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  06:21

I only do GYN, I might see 20 patients in a day, which is still a lot. But when you do that, when you take insurance, it’s a double edged sword, because you can only see somebody for 15 or 20 minutes, I will set aside 30 minutes for a new patient. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  06:34

But you know, I’m still getting paid. I mean, if I saw her in five minutes or 30 minutes, I get paid the same. And that’s kind of one of the issues. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  06:40

Now when you see a functional practitioner, they might charge 700 $800 for an initial visit, you get an hour and a half. But you know, it’s costing more. So it’s a give and take. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  06:49

And I think that the OB is what happens is they’re just so worried about the cattle call, as the patients that they’re working through, that they want to make everybody happy. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  06:59

And at times, the woman that comes in somebody like you, that has all these issues, and if they think a birth control pill can solve it.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  07:07

They’re gonna put you on the birth control pill, because in their training, and in their experience, it’s worked for other people, and you’re not going to get any of the answers, but you might have this long list and you might not even get to them because you just feel moved through. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  07:18

I think one of the ways that we have seriously failed as a profession is one simple thing. And that’s just listening, I think, if we would listen more and sit down and you know, I’m not perfect, either I do pride myself on listening and being there. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  07:34

But you know, everybody might have a headache or something, you know, you’re not there for necessarily every single patient every single time. But it’s expect it’s setting your expectations. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  07:44

So I would always say write your questions down ahead of time and realize that they can probably do three to five questions. They may not answer him the way you want them to answer per se.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  07:44

So when you go see an OBGYN, write down three to five questions. Don’t go straying off down the path if you want them to follow you down a path, stay on the path and don’t you know, go well, my husband and you know, whatever, all because it’s easy to do that and you want to tell your story, you feel pressured because you want to get it all out. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  08:11

You might get where people to and if you meet 10 people at a party, you might like eight of them and you might not hit it off with two of them. Same with doctors, we have different personalities, different styles. And it doesn’t mean they’re bad, or they’re a bad practitioner, they might just have a bad bedside manner. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  08:27

You just need to be prepared for your visit, know what you want ahead of time. And if they can’t provide that for you. Don’t be angry, find somebody that can help you. Because the good news is, you know, now this person isn’t the one that’s going to help you so and that’s okay, you know, I mean, and it’s the thing that sucks is that you do have to hunt and pack. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  08:46

But the beautiful thing nowadays, with the internet and Instagram and Facebook is there, you can find these people a lot easier, because you can see someone’s personality coming through on social media. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  08:55

 So but I think the point is, is that you’re going to resonate with certain folks. And so you find that practitioner that will work with you and you just have to be persistent, it’s your healthcare. Don’t let somebody tell you.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  08:55

If you’d like there, I mean, I just had a lady today with her husband come in, it’s pretty funny because he’s the one that watches me and he records it for her. And so it was kind of funny because I’m about as blue collar as you can be grew up poor and my only child and but my, they acted like I was this celebrity and it’s pretty people might get that from women in your group, if they actually meet you at some point. Because they you see they see you all the time. And I’m just like, you know, I’m just like, Oh, I get  embarrassed. I’m like, I don’t know.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  09:24

I just put up a post the other day on Instagram, you know, the doctor saying, Oh, your results are normal, and they’re right right down at the bottom of normal and the patient’s like laying on the floor, like, you know, but they’re normal. It’s yeah, and that’s a busy OBGYN because they got all these other things going on. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  09:49

And I’m I kind of enjoy for me. It’s kind of more like a detective work. It’s, you know, what I love is when I talk to a patient, and I’ll tell the story of low testosterone and their heads just Going up and down, up and down, that to me is what’s really fulfilling about this. It’s that acknowledgement that they’re being acknowledged. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  10:06

I have done my job over 20 years and listen to all these other stories that have come. And so that’s why I think women, it’s funny because I can’t really take credit for it, I’ve just had the opportunity to hear all these stories in my brain works in such a way that I was able to filter them into 12, different imbalanced types. And so, but it does resonate.

Misty Williams  10:25

Well, I think it’s, you’re bringing up a really important point, in creating a great relationship with your doctor, we actually just spoke about this in the interview that I did with Gretchen Bronson recently, and that is it’s you need to go in with your health goals. 

Misty Williams  10:37

And you need to go with a clearer idea of what you’re wanting to enroll that doctor, in helping you resolve. 

Misty Williams  10:43

There’s this perspective that we have as patients that we’re going to go in, and the doctor is going to tell us like, they’re gonna look at our labs, and they’re going to tell us, well, here’s everything you need to do. 

Misty Williams  10:52

And the challenge with that is, there’s so much about our lived experience that the doctor has no clue about, right. And if we can direct our care, we’re going to be a lot happier with the results. 

Misty Williams  11:00

So going and saying, like, when I sit down with you to talk about my mom, my mom has osteoporosis, one of the things we want to do is to begin a protocol to help her regain her bone loss. 

Misty Williams  11:10

She’s dealing with a lot of fatigue, she’s falling asleep in the afternoon, you know, she was struggling with sleeping at night, although that’s gotten a lot better. And her energy overall is getting better on hormone therapy. 

Misty Williams  11:19

But you know, we came up with very clear things that we wanted your help on. And then you’re correlating that over here to our lab work. And you can see how hormones, we didn’t just talk hormone support, by the way we have hormone support can help. And then also some lifestyle things that need to be happening so that we get the results that they want very targeted, focused, here’s what we need out of the visit. 

Misty Williams  11:25

And my mom is having a really great experience. So I think I think what you’re describing here is really useful for all of us as we forge these relationships with our doctors.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  11:46

Yeah, definitely. And like I said, when I know that you really want to focus say on osteoporosis, I can talk about testosterone, estradiol, vitamin D, weightlifting, nutrition. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  11:58

I can direct the part of my brain that’s in the book that pertains to them. But before that, you try to get out as much as you can.  Then what you don’t realize too, is that after your visit, I have to go out and then chart all the stuff. And that’s another 15 minutes. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  11:59

I have like, like I said, I tried to jam all this in. And the beautiful thing now that I have the book is I can actually now if people want more information.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  12:23

So it’s like, we’re always I’ll go home and I’ll have 20 charts, I still have to finish, you know, at home at night. And some of the doctors that make more money, they have scribes that will actually do it all while they’re in the room. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  12:33

I just haven’t gotten to that point yet. And I’m, I just don’t want to pay people to do something I can do. Like, yeah, I’m blue collar, but color. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  12:40

But yeah, it’s just, it’s just like you said when your mom came in and she knew what she wanted, it’s easier for me to focus my discussion as well. But we know we still hit estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, thyroid panels, we do all that and will we get it in and a half an hour. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  12:56

The thing that I also do too, is I try to once I see somebody physically, I can take care of them for a year through telehealth, at least through Texas state laws. And the beautiful thing is, I can check in with them every month, every two months. So it’s not going to be like one discussion.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  13:14

I was on a board today on Facebook, a doctor board and they’re like, Oh, I usually only see my patients once a year. And I’m like, How can you know what’s going on with them? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  13:21

You know because a lot of the times women will, they’ll feel better, but they’re not exactly where they want to be. And so they’ll just grit it out. Women are so good at powering through than men.  Men, you know, we have a cold or whatever, we’re out. Women power through. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  13:35

Like I asked my grandma one day when she was still alive, what her menopause was like, and she said, What the hell is menopause? You know, just because shes a world war II lady, you know, she just powered through. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  13:45

And so and women, we’ve taught women, it’s okay for them to suffer. You know, I think  that’s a societal thing. Women, should bear the burden of all the ills of the world and you know, even down from Eve, eating the apple, and we’ve punished her ever since. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  14:00

But I think that if you understand that you’re supposed to feel good, it’s okay to feel good. And then the ultimate thing is if I get somebody feeling better, they always, always ask me, When do I stop? And I was like, well, when do you want to stop feeling good? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  14:15

You know, it’s like, why would you stop if you feel great? You know, don’t you know I wouldn’t put you on this if I was afraid it was gonna hurt you. And so we’ve also scared the hell out of women thinking that hormones are horrible, and that it’s only for a limited time. It blows my mind all the time. 

Misty Williams  14:29

to unpack that a little bit more because I definitely hear that in the in the healing Rosa community women saying things like well, if I start bioidentical hormone therapy, how long will I have to be on it? 

Misty Williams  14:38

You know, like, there was, I remember one posts, one of the ladies that you know, you’ll, pry my estrogen from my cold dead hands and I just cracked up because I feel this I feel the same way.  Like I’ll be on it as long as my body can tolerate it because it’s so important for quality of life. 

Misty Williams  14:53

This BioIdentical Hormone Replacement Therapy is controversial actually, and For the functional medicine space, I think it’s much more.  There’s an openness to it. Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of the research and data on bioidentical hormones that we have on pharmaceuticals. 

Misty Williams  15:12

But I’d like for you just to help us understand the difference between conventional synthetic hormones, right and the hormone treatments and bioidentical hormone therapy. What are the difference between those two things and help us understand what their place has traditionally been inside gynecology umbrella? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  15:28

Well, traditionally, when I was trained in the 90s, we had Premarin and we had prempro, which was the horse based aqualen, estrogen and a medroxyprogesterone, which is probably one of the worst medicines ever invented. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  15:41

But it’s a progestin progesterone-likecompound. And that’s kind of all we had. We had esterase, which was a bioidentical estrogen, but it was super expensive, like $100 a month, so most women couldn’t afford it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  15:52

And fast forward. Probably over the last 20 years bioidentical hormone replacement, has become more mainstream. So there are tons of bioidentical hormones prometrium. The most of the patches now are bio identical. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  16:05

You can get estradiol tablets, I mean, so it’s available, but it’s not hasn’t been really co opted by the big pharmaceutical companies. Some of them have come around and they they do have medications. But what the controversy is right now is compounded bioidentical hormones. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  16:24

So those hormones that are made at a local pharmacy, and it’s just because the compounds that they’re using are FDA approved your testosterone progesterone assertion, but they’re not the the lab where they’re being made.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  16:34

The pharmacy where they’re being made isn’t FDA approved, because the FDA doesn’t approve pharmacies. So that’s where the controversy is, and it is a big business. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  16:42

The pharmaceutical companies that have dabbled and have put their fingers into the pot are seeing that there are a lot of women that go on these products. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  16:49

And so they’re wanting to shut down the compounding pharmacies so that they can have all of the market share. So that’s where the controversy is coming in, it’s with that compounded piece. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  16:57

Now, all of the hormones are synthesized technically from like soy and wild yam but they are bio identical in the sense that they look like a natural hormone. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  17:06

They’re not made from a horse or you know, and that’s the thing with like Ashley with Premarin primer and  if you notice, never went generic, and most medications go generic after 10 years, primer and to this day has never gone generic. And the reason is, they can’t tell because they don’t know all of the compounds that are in it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  17:25

There’s so many things in it. They can’t even reproduce it so it can’t go generic. I think they lost count at like 35 bioidentical bio pharmaceutical compounds, you know, horse estrogen, ethanol, estradiol. There’s all these different estrogens and we don’t even know what half of them probably do.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  17:42

Bioidentical progesterone, estrogen. Testosterone is a single thing. It looks exactly it fits the lock.  The key fits that lock perfectly. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  17:50

It’s not like birth control pills, ethanol, estradiol, and progestins, which are both synthetic, they fit the key, they’ve the key fits the lock, but it hits so hard, that you have side effects. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  18:02

That’s why you have issues with breast cancer and bleeding and uterine cancers and fibroids. And because it’s just it’s the way birth control pills in general are about seven times stronger than hormone replacement for menopause. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  18:13

That’s what I think also doesn’t come through in the translation is the breast cancer risks that came out with the Women’s Health Initiative 15 years ago, really screwed the whole thing up. I mean, it was it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  18:26

I was talking to patients about this today. It was most or all of the women in the study were over 63. So they were all older women. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  18:34

They use Prempro and Premarin which were synthetic hormones, so they don’t even correlate to bio identicals. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  18:39

There were no topicals involved, no sublinguals. And so, family practice, all these doctors stopped prescribing hormones.  Women were scared upon it to this day, I hear it all the time. And my caveat is, estrogen in and of itself doesn’t cause breast cancer. If it did, every woman and man in the world would get breast cancer. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  18:56

Now, if you have a breast cancer cell that has an estrogen receptor on it, and I give you estrogen, it could stimulate that cell to grow. But it may not necessarily cause the breast cancer. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  19:06

And I think women’s risk of osteoporosis and heart disease are much higher than women getting breast cancer, although breast cancer is much scarier, but I do think that we talked about being happy and feeling good. And hormones are never, they don’t have to be for the rest of your life. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  19:25

If you ever want to titrate them down, stop them, you might just go back to feeling like you did before, which may not be very fun, but it’s not life or death. It’s usually symptom based for the most part. And obviously, if you’re losing bone or something, then we’d want to work on that too.

Misty Williams  19:39

So I’m curious to hear a little bit more from you about the kind of training that you guys get in medical school. You touched on it briefly. But I just want people to have an idea of how to discern who has the right. education and credentialing.  

Misty Williams  19:52

because, you know, one of the things that we know, with some of the work we’ve done in our community is that there are instances where you can appeal certain things to your health insurance and if you do the appeal process correctly, you can get things like bioidentical hormones covered that’s obviously not a universal thing you know there’s there’s a lot of hoops you have to jump through. 

Misty Williams  20:12

But one of the things that is instrumental in being able to jump through those hoops is getting you know a letter from your doctor and it’s if it’s a GYN, it’s especially the right doctor, you know, that’s kind of making the case for this, but not a lot of gynecologist actually have the expertise that you have in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. So I’d love for you to fill in the blanks on that for us.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  20:32

Most work in that particular area is probably post graduate. So it’s like, you go into medical school, you learn about the body, you learn about biochemistry, microbiology, and then you start, you know, you take Psych and internal medicine, surgery and all that and you’ve kind of figured out what you like to do. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  20:50

And then residency, for OB residency is a four year program you learn a basic obstetrics, high risk, obstetrics, basic gynecology, GYN oncology, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, some geriatrics, and maybe some acute care stuff. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  21:07

But half of your training is OB, if not more, depending on where you train, a lot of doctors that go to Parkland up in Dallas is kind of like the obstetrics mecca of the country. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  21:16

And so they’ll get a lot of obstetrics experience and not a whole lot of surgical or hormonal stuff. And so it’s kind of a trade off. So a lot of the doctors that learn this stuff, do it after residency. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  21:30

The best way to learn is to do in my opinion, I think you can go to a weekend course and get a little bit of a taste of what this is all about. But you really just have to start seeing patients. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  21:39

So the credentialing, you know, there’s a lot of people out there that use the word experts and Guru and whatever they want to use. And most of them aren’t usually credentialed are licensed health care providers. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  21:51

And that’s neither here nor there. It’s just the reason people go to them is because we’re not helping them, the licensed people aren’t helping them. So they have to find help somewhere else. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  21:59

And so most of your Doc’s, first of all, I would look at their background, what’s their profession? Are they emergency room? Are they internal medicine, pediatrics, and they just learned hormones? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  22:12

How do they set up their practice? Is it really heavy on? You know, not that selling things is bad? But are they you know, a lot of supplements involved? A lot of programs to buy into? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  22:21

Do you feel pressured? is it something where there’s a lot of stuff, but you just feel like, yeah, I can try that, or I can try this. And then I would ask them, you know, it’s hard to know their background, or how many people they’ve treated, because most of us don’t know a number. But you can tell by the time you leave, whether or not you feel like you are listened to.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  22:45

 I think Americans tend to have this false perception that the more you pay, the better it must be. Which isn’t always true. Obviously, in medicine that doesn’t mean it’s quality. If you pay more, it sometimes means good marketing and strategies to get people in and to keep people. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  23:03

But the main thing is, do you feel better after the treatment? Do you feel secure and safe in the sense that you just don’t have that achy feeling? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  23:12

I’ve gone to functional medicine practitioners here in Austin, I’ve spent a lot of money. And when I left, I was more confused than I was when I went in. And I had like, I’m not kidding, $600 worth of supplements.  A lot of them had ingredients that overlapped and I’m pretty savvy, and I still did it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  23:29

Then you feel kind of like you know, I joke about this, but when women go get their hair done, if they don’t like their hair cut, a lot of the times they’ll stay sometimes what their style is because they feel bad. They don’t want to make them mad, you know? 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  23:41

And it’s kind of like, you know, it’s like, if you don’t feel, go, yeah, go go, go get a second opinion, go find somebody else. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  23:46

Don’t keep going back, because you feel bad for them. And they’re going to be fine. They’re going to be okay, the main thing is you feeling like you got the help that you need. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  23:55

I hate pellets.  I hate hormone pellets, I talk about it all the time. I do meet women occasionally that will argue with me that they love their pellets. And that’s good. I’m happy for them. And I think that’s good. It’s a very small number. But I would never tell somebody that their pellet experiences is wrong. It’s their experience. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  24:14

But I just see so many women that have bad experiences. And that’s why I’ve come to dislike them. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  24:19

So we all have our opinions about certain things. And that’s the other thing is in this field, I call it the Wild West hormones, you can find a study to prove anything you want. And, that’s what a lot of providers will do.  

Dr. Shawn Tassone  24:32

I see a lady come in and she’s on pregnenolone. And I don’t usually prescribe pregnenolone because I think it’s kind of silly, because of the mechanisms and whatnot. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  24:40

But a lot of people prescribe it and their reasoning is okay. But it’s just another piece of information. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  24:45

So I I look for two things with hormones. One is are you going broke to do it and you shouldn’t have to. And two is the provider that you’re seeing making the protocols so complicated, that you you can barely figure it out. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  25:00

And sometimes I think providers will do that, because they make it look like they know more than the rest of us when the reality is, it’s just something they’re doing, like, take this at two o’clock and then take this at six o’clock. It doesn’t have to be that way. I mean, it should be relatively easy to use, and you’ll get great results,

Misty Williams  25:17

I’d love for you to talk a little bit in the time that we have left about some best practices around prescribing hormones. 

Misty Williams  25:23

Because, you know, as a patient, you go in to see your doctor, and you’re at the mercy of whatever he or she tells you to do in that visit. And you know, you can be the guinea pig for that, you know, trial and error, but it’s so I feel so much more empowered, navigating this course when I have an idea of what it looks like when it’s done well, right. 

Misty Williams  25:42

It’s this is especially relevant to the toxicity side of my journey, like took a long time for me to uncover all this toxic stuff. And I talked to a lot of different practitioners and I didn’t know the questions to ask right as I started digging deeper, because I was so frustrated that you know, I’ve, I’ve made progress on my journey, but I’m not better meaning,  there is something still going on in my body that I have to be so propped up. 

Misty Williams  26:03

When I started digging in and seeing what great protocols look like, it helps me so much in navigating it finding a doctor that was going to help me kind of discerning if if my feet are on solid ground, is this a good way for us to go. 

Misty Williams  26:16

So I’d love for you to just help people understand what a solid protocol looks like, like how are how are you prescribing? 

Misty Williams  26:22

Is there some sequencing that’s important to how you’re putting women on hormones? 

Misty Williams  26:27

Is there a way that they can like kind of hedge their bets, that they’re going to have a positive experience? I think this could be really helpful.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  26:34

So the one thing that’s being discussed right now on the on the web, as if were one of my colleagues who she and I do not agree on anything, Jen Gunter. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  26:45

She doesn’t like to test she thinks testing is stupid. And I’m like, How do you know what you’re doing? If you don’t test what you know, if someone’s 55, and they’re menopausal, you can probably guess their extreme progesterone or zero. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  26:56

But in the perimenopause woman and then you’re not checking thyroid, there’s some naturopaths like Tori, Hudson, she doesn’t test a lot either. But I like to test and I like to test as frequently as the patient wants to do it. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  27:06

My typical setup is I usually will get the hormones done before your visit. So I have them when you come in, and then I will have women tell me what their symptoms are. And I will correlate those symptoms to the labs, and I will then tell them, Okay, like, let’s say you’re low in testosterone, I always look at hormones this way, too. Neither. It’s normal or abnormal, whatever. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  27:27

So normal just means that you’re in the house. Okay. But then the question you should always ask is, where am I in the house. So with a test, a free testosterone, normal is 0.2 to 6.4, I could multiply the point to 34, they would still be normal for a woman. That’s a huge range. So let’s say you come in at point four, you’re at, you’re in the basement, you’re laying on the floor in the basement of the house, you’re normal, but you might feel horrible. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  27:50

I like to get women up into that main floor, maybe a little bit above the main floor. And that’s where I find women do really well. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  27:56

So what I will do is I’ll talk to him, I’ll say low, low testosterone, fatigue around five in the afternoon hair thinning, decreased zips. So if it was a t shirt, it might just say, man, you know, and everybody’s like, Oh, my God, yes, that’s totally me. And so it’s not like I’m a mind reader. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  28:12

I’ve just heard this 10s of 1000s of times. And then so what I’ll do then is I’ll come up with a plan. Now I tried to simplify the hormone. So I will if I can get three or four things into one cream for $45. I would rather do that for the patient. Because it’s easier to apply. You don’t have four different times you’re taking things now. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  28:30

Most of the time, what I’ve been doing is because progesterone is the one hormone that makes you sleep or helps you sleep. I’ve been taking the progesterone out of the topicals. And I’ve been giving an oral progesterone at bedtime. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  28:40

And then I’ll use like estradiol testosterone DHEA in the morning, on in a topical cream, so it’s still only two. But what I’ve noticed is sometimes if I give a woman project everything at nighttime, then by about three or four in the afternoon, it’s kind of wearing off and so she’s getting more symptoms. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  28:55

So I usually split it out like that, but that’s about as fancy as I will get. thyroids a little different sometimes I’ll dose that twice a day just depends on how the patient’s doing. But my goal is the lowest costs for the patient combined with the easiest route of delivery, and that can be either topical or sublingual for the hormones.  Oral,  I will use occasional.   oral I’ll use for progesterone. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  29:18

And occasionally if I just can’t get the patient feeling good on estradiol or testosterone, I might try oral as a last resort. I’m not a huge fan of vaginal creams because I just think they’re messy, and the vagina absorbs a lot faster and easier than the mouse does. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  29:34

So the dosing can be kind of questionable, and you’ll get super high levels. It does seem to me that pellets would be the best route because you don’t even have to think about them and they’re in there for three to six months and you don’t have to do anything. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  29:46

But the problem that I’ve been seeing with them is one they’re super expensive and two, the levels are crazy high just like I mean higher than your husband sometimes and I’ve had women crying because they feel bad and I can’t do anything because you got to wait for it to wear off.  So that’s just why I’m not a fan of pellets. But cost and simplicity should be the two big things that we look at.

Misty Williams  30:06

I want to ask you a question about that. Because I see people talking about hormone stuff a lot in the healing Rosie Facebook group, especially. One of the things that can get tricky with hormones, it seems,  that women will start all the hormones at once, and then they’re having side effects and they don’t know where it came from. We don’t know what it was. So how do you navigate that?

Dr. Shawn Tassone  30:24

Well, it depends on the side effects. Probably the most common side effect I see, I probably see it three, four times a day is breast tenderness. That is usually a progesterone beta. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  30:32

So you know, sometimes certain things might be related to certain hormones, bleeding or spotting usually is either estrogen or progesterone, heart racing, anxiety, probably more thyroid, too much thyroid. Aggression, irritability could be testosterone. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  30:47

So you can kind of go down the path by listening to some of the symptoms that they’re having. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  30:52

I will also ask a woman, let’s say I have low testosterone and low thyroid. Those are both energy hormones, they’re both gonna give you a pick me up, metabolism and whatnot. But you may not need them both, right? So some women will choose, 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  31:07

I always give the option we could start the testosterone, we could start the thyroid, we could do both. Or we could pick one and just give it a four weeks and see how you’re feeling. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  31:14

Maybe you don’t need both of them. And what I’ll usually do is I’ll say, Look, your, your thyroid is your free T3 is in the 10th percentile of normal, your testosterone is around the 40th percentile of normal. So why don’t we start with the thyroid, bump that up, and maybe you’ll feel a lot better or maybe she also has high estrogen. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  31:32

And sometimes if I can just get the estrogen down using fiber and maybe the Calcium D-glucarate or something. The sex hormone binding globulin comes down that free testosterone goes up, thyroid goes up. And so sometimes you can work on one thing and one thing alone but high. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  31:46

And then I have women that are like they don’t want to go on any medication. So they want to do more natural approaches and it’s easier to do natural stuff and perimenopause. Menopause is kind of like you don’t have any hormones. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  31:46

It’s funny because you have different types of patients. There’s definitely the woman that comes in and she wants everything. Give me that give me the whole schmear. I just I feel miserable. I want to try it all. 

Misty Williams  31:56

yeah you don’t have anything to work with. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  32:08

That’s harder, but but you can still try it. Sure. And so you.  I will sometimes piecemeal that’s why I see patients in a year I might see people three, four times depending on how many times they need to see me. But every time I’m thinking I’m adding I’m taking away I’m just because especially perimenopausal women, they’re changing all the time. So that’s a moving target. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  32:27

And it just, you know, and I’m always about the I’m also not a big fan when I do things, like I said simplicity. So if I’m going to give maca as a supplement, because I think it will help. I don’t give a maca that has like 15 Other things in it like lavender, you know, Valerian and blah, blah, blah. I’ll just use maca because I want to know what’s working. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  32:48

Magnesium. I’ll just use magnesium or vitamin D. I’ll just use vitamin D with K probably but but so I tend to be pretty like one component based and then I’ll add things or pull them out.

Misty Williams  33:00

Yeah, for my mom. So my mom is one who freaks out. My concern with my mom, first of all with all of her symptoms and things. She’s experienced all classic menopause stuff, right? 

Misty Williams  33:09

My mom is 74 Now she started working with Dr. Shawn last year. I knew from my mom that if she went on everything and her body started wigging out anywhere. She may just want to stop it. All right. So if you’re that kind of person, I’ll tell you what we do with my mom. 

Misty Williams  33:23

First we started the thyroid. Dr. Shawn prescribed thyroid, my mom’s hypo thyroid. So we started on thyroid and we waited a week or two weeks, I can’t remember. And then we added in the prometrium, which is progesterone. And we waited two weeks. And then we added in the estrogen we did the patch for my mom, which is what I’m using to waited two weeks and added testosterone. 

Misty Williams  33:43

My mom had breast tenderness, that was her major symptom, it was the result. Talked to Dr. Shawn about it. 

Misty Williams  33:51

We pulled the prometrium which was the progesterone, we pulled that out. It did not improve for my mom and progesterone was really helping her sleep, you know. So we pulled the patch. And that’s what it was. So what now what we’re trying to figure out is, what can we do to support detox, she did a cleanse, a liver cleanse, it really helps. 

Misty Williams  33:56

She was able to go back on the patch for a week. And then she started experiencing that tenderness again. So we need to figure out what support does she need on an ongoing basis to be able to do the estrogen. 

Misty Williams  34:13

It’s important for her she has osteoporosis, right. But we just staggered it. So if you’re the kind of person that might psychologically have a hard time if if you start getting symptomatic, you know, I think that could be a great strategy for those that maybe have some concerns about going all in but my mom actually came down and was able to see Dr. Shawn in person and I have my aunt signing up right now. 

Misty Williams  34:35

So for women who are in full menopause, both of them, I’m so grateful that I have Dr. Shawn to recommend to them because I know he’s going to take really good care of him. 

Misty Williams  34:43

He takes insurance which is almost impossible to find if you want to do BioIdentical Hormone Replacement Therapy. Most practitioners that do it don’t take insurance. 

Misty Williams  34:51

So he’s a gem in that way that he takes insurance and he’s super easy to work with. And you know, I have two women in my life that I love that are older are the big thing that they struggle with is the brain fog, the fatigue, having trouble sleeping, and they’re both experiencing versions of weight loss resistance. 

Misty Williams  35:07

Although my aunt is a little worse than my mom, you know, you get to the point where it’s like nothing, nothing works anymore, which, you know, for someone like me, I’m like, we’re gonna go upstream. 

Misty Williams  35:15

That’s where I found, you know, all of my victory, but I just really ungrateful Dr. Shawn for the contribution that you are to our community. If you post in the healing Rosie Facebook group, you’ll see that you’ll come in and chime in and really try to support the women who are figuring out how to navigate this part of their life. 

Misty Williams  35:29

I love and I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to do bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, as I’m getting other things figured out in my body, this idea that you need to, you need to wait for nutrition, and you know, a few other protocol things to work for long periods of time. Certainly, maybe for 90 days, that seems reasonable. 

Misty Williams  35:44

But I see women who are struggling with what I can, they’re not sleeping at night, and may have low progesterone, and from my perspective, I’m like, Oh, you just support your progesterone, you can sleep if you’re not sleeping, you’re not healing, I want to see them get that support. 

Misty Williams  35:56

And they’re working with doctors who don’t really appreciate the value of supporting your hormones to a woman’s quality of life, you know, and you just suffer needlessly, for so long. So you’re doing really important work, Dr. Shawn, and I’m so grateful that, yeah, I get to share you with our community. 

Misty Williams  36:10

I would love for you to tell people if they’re interested in working with you if they want if they’re, you kind of mentioned a little bit if you aren’t in Austin, Texas, and are looking for someone to work with Dr. Shawn does take insurance and he can work with you under certain conditions. So why don’t you tell people what they need to do and how they can how they can book their appointment.

Dr. Shawn Tassone  36:27

So state laws differ on telemedicine. Usually, it’s required that I see at least physically once a year, I can usually get people started or I can draw the labs and at least kind of get people started. 

Dr. Shawn Tassone  36:40

But I’d need to see you probably at around the second visit. If not, I can always try to give you a plan that I would prescribe. And then you would at least have that in hand. But yeah, all end you know, Austin’s a great place to come visit. But yeah, it’s usually like just that one visit. We’ll get everything started. And then we do all the follow up kind of stuff on the phone. And yeah, I bill insurance. I don’t know why. 

Misty Williams  37:05

I think that’s awesome. Yeah, my mom is on Medicare, y’all. And Dr. Shawn actually ran a bunch of labs, beyond just the hormone labs, because I wanted to see I wanted to get a picture was happening to see what other care to bring in for her. And Medicare did pay for all of her labs, because Dr. Shawn requested it as part of the visit. So that was super helpful. So you got to code it, right? It’s all in the coding. It’s all in the coding. Well, this has been amazing. 

Misty Williams  37:28

Thank you so much for all you do to be a contribution to, to women in our community, women everywhere I know that you spoke feel a special connection to us you’ve been inspired to work with, with women because of your relationship with your mom. 

Misty Williams  37:38

And I hope everyone will go get his book, The hormone balance Bible. It’s awesome. You can get it on Amazon, I have a copy here. It’s a great reference tool. And if you talk to Dr. Shawn, he’s probably going to tell you which profile you fit. So you know, it’s really it’s really wonderful for to have something that represents someone’s life’s work. It’s a great way for us to empower ourselves. 

Misty Williams  38:00

So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Dr. Shawn, for sharing your wisdom with us and we’ll talk to all you guys soon. Bye for now. That’s it for this week’s episode. 

Misty Williams  38:08

Thank you for listening. I hope you’re feeling more empowered to overcome your flabby, foggy and fatigue and to reclaim your life. If you haven’t subscribed yet, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button right now so you don’t miss any of our episodes. 

Misty Williams  38:20

We have some awesome shows coming right up. I love reading your reviews and comments too. They inspire me and encourage other Rosie’s to hang out with us and learn all these amazing strategies for healing and living our best lives. Till next time sister. Bye