Unlocking Optimal Health: GLP-1s, Hormones, and More

Our latest podcast episode features a deep dive into holistic wellness strategies, highlighting cutting-edge treatments like GLP-1 medications known for their role in medical weight loss. We discuss how these treatments can also improve overall metabolic health, moving beyond just weight management. 

The episode emphasizes the importance of bioidentical hormones, which can truly make a difference in managing aging effectively. While synthetic hormones have been the go-to for many years, understanding the importance of naturally aligned hormones can lead to better health outcomes for both men and women. Our conversation intertwines these topics with new, exciting assessments at Premier Dermatology, including state-of-the-art metabolic evaluation techniques to tailor health plans based on individual needs. 

We introduce our membership program to ensure that these advanced strategies are accessible throughout the year, empowering everyone to take control of their health and well-being. Whether you're curious about the role of gut health in weight management or looking for tips to optimize your hormonal health, this episode is packed with knowledge to help you thrive. Tune in and invest in your future wellness journey today! Please remember to subscribe, leave a review, and join us for the next enlightening episode.

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Premier Dermatology is located in Bentonville, Fayetteville, & Bella Vista, Arkansas!

Chapters

• 0:48 Introduction to Thriving in 2025
• 5:30 Exploring GLP
• 12:05 The Role of Bioidentical Hormones
• 19:45 The Power of Peptides and Supplements
• 30:00 Comprehensive Wellness Assessments
• 39:30 Introducing Membership Programs at Premier

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, my friends, if you are ready to thrive in 2025, this is the podcast for you. We are going to be talking about all of the good stuff. We're going to talk about GLP-1s for medical weight loss. We're going to talk about bioidentical hormones. We're going to talk about peptides. We're going to talk about supplements. We're going to talk about metabolic assessments. We're going to talk about all of the good stuff to make sure that you are A-plus on your longevity game and you're ready to thrive in 20 and 25 and beyond.

Speaker 1: 0:30

All right, so today, friends, we are going to talk about why in the world I chose to bring wellness to Premier Dermatology and Aesthetics. Well, of course, we have always been all things skin under one roof. That's been our mantra since the very beginning, and I've always wanted to bring the latest and greatest and the newest you know technologies, the newest teachings, the newest medications and protocols here to Arkansas, to premier aesthetics and dermatology, dermatology and all things. Skin has kind of evolved over time and you know skin is your biggest organ. So what is essential for healthy skin? Well, of course, optimizing your overall health, and you guys know I've been a board certified dermatologist since 2003.

Speaker 1: 1:19

During COVID, I was extremely bored. So I got a second board certification, bored because I'm bored. I got a board certification because I was bored Isn't that ironic? Anyway, so I got certified in laser medicine and surgery during that, and so you know I'm obsessed with devices and I buy devices, like most women wear shoes or buy shoes and handbags because they're my favorite thing. But then over the last year I obtained a third board certification in integrative health and anti-aging medicine, because, guess what, I'm aging, I'm in my 50s now. You know that whole menopause thing yeah, it's a real deal. And it was so interesting to me that a lot of the things that I was reading and the podcasts that I was listening to were not really translating to what I was hearing from local doctors and I was not getting the kind of treatment, you know, that I really wanted to have for myself. And I heard that same story from a lot of my clients, you know, that are my age and even older. They were getting really information that I thought was truly misinformation about hormones and a lot of my patients were still on synthetic hormones and a lot of my patients, you know, were doing GLP-1s but they were coming in so gone and with huge, you know muscle atrophy and you know, yeah, of course they were losing weight, but they weren't healthy. They were what I would call skinny fat. You know they were skinny but they didn't have any muscle and you know their metabolic health was not good. Their overall health was not good. So I thought, you know what somebody's got to do this really really well and I decided I wanted to do it really really well. So that's why I got the third board certification in integrative health and anti-aging medicine and that's why we're bringing wellness to Premier.

Speaker 1: 3:11

So what is going to be included in this wellness program at Premier? Well, certainly one-on-one consultations to really assess your goals, get your labs, review your labs, determine your wellness plan, and regular follow-ups to assess your improvements. Of course that's going to include a skin analysis where we look at everything going on with your skin with Avizia and seeing what's happening there. That's also going to include a full body skin exam and then we're going to talk about all of the things that you're concerned about from a health and wellness standpoint. We're going to offer you the medical grade supplements that really are going to meet your needs. We're going to do a Pinoy VO2 Max patient assessment for you. That is a really cool assessment that we do where you breathe. Basically, it's a breathing assessment called a VO2 Max, and it helps you to figure out your metabolic health. It helps to understand your metabolic age. It helps you to understand your metabolic age. It helps you to understand what kind of nutrition is gonna be best for you, what kind of fitness and workout planning is gonna be best for you. And we're also going to offer red light therapy, because I have become an absolute junkie of red light therapy not med light, sorry of red light therapy, because I truly believe in its benefits. We're going to offer medical grade weight loss and we're going to do it really, really well with the GLP-1s and also peptides that support muscle mass maintenance, and doing it really healthy and in a way that is not going to make you look gaunt and make you look unhealthy at the end. We're going to do peptides and antioxidant injections. We're doing bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and, of course, we're doing customized laser and in-office treatment planning and customized skin care because, as you know, I believe in homework.

Speaker 1: 5:01

So the first thing that we're going to talk about today is the GLP-1s, because that is really where the buzz is right now. Everybody is looking at medical weight loss, and these drugs are really, really amazing. They do lots of things. What's so interesting is that GLP-1 is made naturally in your gut. So if your microbiome your gut microbiome is not healthy, you're not making your own GLP-1. And that starts this whole inflammatory metabolic dysfunction cascade that literally affects every organ in your body, from your brain to your heart, to your stomach, to your lungs, to your liver, to your kidneys, to your pancreas. All of those things are related. All of the organs in your body have GLP-1 receptors and that's very bizarre and the brain has GLP-1 receptors, which is kind of interesting. So what we found is that these medications don't only help you lose weight. They can actually help improve your cardiovascular health. They can help improve your kidney and liver health. They can actually keep you from craving things that you shouldn't crave, like cigarettes or alcohol. They're actually amazing for people that have substance abuse disorder. They're amazing at preventing a lot of disorders down the road that are based on inflammation, because if you get your metabolic health under control, your body's not inflamed anymore and every other organ in your body works better. So we are going to customize GLP-1s to make sure that people are losing weight appropriately and well, but also maintaining healthy muscle mass and supporting their metabolic health with good supplements that support the microbiome and support their own GLP-1 production, which is something that I don't think anybody else in the area is really doing very well. So that's number one GLP-1s.

Speaker 1: 6:53

Number two we're going to do peptides and injectables, and peptides are this compound. They're compounds. They're basically proteins that are strung together in different chains that do different things. Most of the hormones in our bodies are peptides. Glp-1s are peptides, but then there are other peptides that you can use to kind of supplement overall health and well-being. One of those is called samorilin and a lot of patients that are on GLP-1s need to be on that. It's a human growth hormone secretagogue. There's a new word for us secretagogue. So basically, this compound increases your body's production and secretion of human growth hormone and over time our bodies kind of stop producing human growth hormone. So it's harder to put on muscle mass as we age, it's harder to maintain that strength that we want to keep. So if you do some oralin along with your GLP-1s, as you're losing weight, you maintain that muscle mass and it's amazing.

Speaker 1: 7:53

We're also going to be doing NAD+, which is an amazing. Basically it's an antioxidant. It helps to repair DNA, it helps to regulate your metabolism, it supports healthy skin, it supports cognitive health. It just helps to calm down inflammation through your whole body. Same thing with glutathione, another antioxidant. It helps combat all the free radicals and all the damage that your cells and your body sustain, and so it helps you recover from any injuries, from, you know, disease, to help to prevent inflammatory disorders. Nad and glutathione can be huge for that. We do B12 supplements, because so many people are going to be deficient in B12 and so many people are deficient in vitamin D. So those are things that we're going to be helping really to supplement to really over you know, overall improve overall health for patients. There's also a really cool peptide that I'm super interested in that we're looking at called GHK-CU, and it is a copper peptide that is hugely anti-inflammatory and extremely good for overall skin health, so it helps to also remove damage and scar tissue. It helps to rejuvenate healthy tissue. So it's going to be one of those peptides that I think we're going to be recommending for a lot of the big procedures that we do, because I think it's going to really help people get optimal outcomes and really heal better and faster, with less risk of scarring, so really excited about some of the peptides that we have bringing you here to Premier. So the next one is going to be why are we talking about bioidentical hormone and hormone replacement therapy?

Speaker 1: 9:30

Well, I started on hormone replacement therapy several years ago, turned out that I ended up having horrible fibroids. This is too much information for many of you guys. So if you're a guy and you want to not hear about periods, you might want to tune out for about 14 seconds. But I was having these horrible periods like every two weeks and literally I felt like I was bleeding to death and it was horrible. This was back when my best friend was still alive, my dear, dear Dr Paige Partridge-Hicks, and she promptly said we're having, we're getting, a hysterectomy, we're getting rid of this business, and that was wonderful, best thing that ever happened. And my ovaries continued to work for a couple of minutes after that, and then what I found out, you know, down the road about a year later, is that often when you have a hysterectomy and you have just your uterus removed, your ovaries can stick around, but the blood supply to the ovaries gets compromised sometimes, sometimes, and often the ovaries are not far behind and they just kind of quit working. And that happened for me. So I went through fairly abrupt menopause right before I turned 50.

Speaker 1: 10:36

And with menopause and guys, menopause happens to you guys too. It's just not called menopause, it's called andropause. Some people think it should be called manopause, but you know, either way, it's just semantics. Either way, what happens is everybody that suffers these things starts feeling forgetful. Women have hot flashes. Men and women both have mood swings and loss of motivation and lack of focus and lack of energy. All of us lose muscle mass. Men start to have mild to moderate to erectile dysfunction. Women start having vaginal dryness and pain with sex, headaches, insomnia, weight gain, bone loss all kinds of bad things start happening.

Speaker 1: 11:19

And you know, I just read this book that says normal is not optimal. And you know, what I was hearing from a lot of doctors is that, you know, menopause is normal, andropause is normal. Andropause is normal. Ok, well, fine, just because it's normal doesn't mean it's optimal. You know, why should we suffer these things? Why should we have an increased risk of osteoporosis as women? Why should we have an increased risk of heart disease and cardiovascular disease? Why should we have an increased risk of Alzheimer's and other types of dementia, because our hormones are decreasing with menopause. It's not optimal. We don't want to live like that, you know, into our 80s, 90s and sometimes even beyond. Now we're really taking care of ourselves. So why not support the hormone status of your body so that the rest of your organs maintain their health and longevity, just like you're planning to do with the rest of your organs? Maintain their health and longevity, just like you're planning to do with the rest of your body. So hormones are very important, and bioidentical hormones are the hormones that are identical truly to the hormones that are in your body, and nothing that you get from a true pharmaceutical company can be bioidentical, and that's been an epiphany to me.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Why are doctors still prescribing synthetic hormones? Because synthetic hormones are not natural. They are not as good, they don't bind to the same receptors. Sometimes they actually can increase your risk of cancer, like oral estrogens. If you take an oral estrogen, it gets converted to the more dangerous type of estrogen called estrone in your body, which can actually increase your risk of breast cancer and other cancers. If you do bioidentical estrogen, either topically or in pellet form or in a patch type form, that is identical to your natural estrogen and it's going to do all of the good things in your body and actually decrease your risk of all of those bad things, including breast cancer and other cancers. So as long as you're doing bioidentical hormones, you're doing great.

Speaker 1: 13:17

But so many doctors don't know anything about bioidentical hormones because much of our education, sadly, is from big pharma and big pharma cannot create a bioidentical hormone because they have to come up with a new substance. They have to come up with something that is different from the identical hormones that your body makes, because that's the only thing they can sell. Fda won't approve that. So all of the estrogens and progesterones and things that are coming from big pharma are different from your bioidentical hormones. And that's not because big pharma is bad or evil. It's just because that's how they make money.

Speaker 1: 13:57

And most of the doctors have learned from big pharma which drugs are best for you, rather than learning from what really your body needs, which are the bioidentical hormones. So you can't be mad at your doctors. You can't throw bioidentical hormones. So you can't be mad at your doctors, you can't throw them under the bus. But you can also learn that bioidentical is definitely what you need and that's what we're offering and we are customizing the treatment based on your hormone levels. We're monitoring you super closely. We're watching everything, not just your estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. But we're watching everything, not just your estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, but we're looking at your cholesterol, we're looking at your blood count. We're looking at all of the things, including your thyroid, because all of the thyroids in your body work together to make you healthy and if you're not optimizing all of them, then you're not going to get a great result.

Speaker 1: 14:45

So that's why bioidentical hormones, hormones and that's why we're bringing it to Premier is because I felt like we needed more of a holistic approach to all things wellness and all things longevity. I talked to you a little bit already about some of the medical grade supplements that we have. We have some of the best supplement companies on board with us. We're working with Pendulum Health, we're working with Calroy Science. These are a lot of the you know the companies that, a lot of the big people out there that are really proposing, you know, this longevity approach, like Peter Attia, Mark Hyman, you know a lot of these guys are really talking about this longevity push and this, you know, really not just living longer, but living better. We want to, you know, live to our very longest potential. But we don't want to live to our longest potential sick and debilitated. We want to live to our longest potential feeling really healthy and getting to do all the things that we want to do, including travel and work and all of those things.

Speaker 1: 15:46

So we are going to be bringing lots of things, including microbiome support, because a lot of people may not realize, but gut health leads to everything else. Most of the antidepressants that your body naturally makes are made in your gut. Your GLP-1s, which are the peptides that help you maintain your weight loss. They're made in your GI tract. Your GI tract is responsible for absorbing every medication, every supplement that you take, every food that you ingest, and it's responsible for detoxing your body as well. So if your microbiome and your gut health is not there, then nothing else is going to be very good either. So we really have great microbiome support, including powerful probiotics and prebiotics and lots of things that can support your microbiome, along with all kinds of other supplements that can help you, based on your deficiencies and what your lab work shows. So we're really excited about the medical-grade supplements that we're bringing to you guys as well.

Speaker 1: 16:48

So, beyond supplements. You know there are things that can really alter your DNA and that sounds bizarre, but it's kind of the wave of the future and looking at things that can really help fix issues, especially fix issues that all of us suffer, which is telomere shortening. So, first of all, what's a telomere? Some of you guys have probably heard of telomeres, but maybe not, maybe not all.

Speaker 1: 17:14

Telomere comes from a Greek word called, called from telos, which means end, and telomeres are an essential part of human DNA. They're basically the little caps at the end of each strand of DNA that protect our chromosomes, kind of like the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces. Ok, without that coating or without that protective telomere, the DNA becomes sprayed like old tennis shoelaces and the DNA then can no longer do its job. So the DNA strands become damaged and their cells can't replicate, and then the cells become damaged, sometimes cancerous, sometimes obsolete. They kind of into what are called zombie cells that just basically do nothing good in your body. They just hang around as damaged material.

Speaker 1: 18:02

And so there is a very, very cool new supplement called TA-65 Pro that is actually telomere support. It's a patented and all plant-based compound. It helps maintain or rebuild your telomeres, and so it is very, very cool because, as the length of a person's telomeres tend to really mimic their lifespan, so if your telomeres are short, you're not going to live much longer. If your telomeres are long and really healthy, then your cells are really healthy and they're not as likely to have damage from exterior or outside forces, and so you're going to live longer. So the real biologic age of a person's body is more or less measured by their telomere length leak. So it's very, very cool.

Speaker 1: 18:59

In order to stay healthy, you need to be able to, at the cellular level, promote and protect your telomeres, and TA-65 is the only supplement out there that can do that. So, really excited about this, I'm taking it, of course. Well, I'm taking everything. You should see this handful of stuff that I'm taking, but I'm definitely taking this. I'm super excited to talk to you more about TA-65 because it's a very, very cool, very interesting and different supplement.

Speaker 1: 19:23

So the next thing I really want to address with you guys and this is something that's super, I think, important in just overall wellness is to really see where you are as a person. You know a lot of places you go in. You kind of do this cookie cutter regimen. Okay, yeah, we're going to put you on this dose of GLP-1. Yeah, we're going to potentially maybe give you this hormone supplement. Maybe we're going to give you a little B12. Maybe we'll give you a little glutathione infusion. But no one's really assessing the person to see where you are and what you actually need. And that's what we're bringing to the game now.

Speaker 1: 20:00

So we have brought this really cool company in. It's called PNOE, p-n-o-e, and it's a metabolic assessment tool and it is amazing. It can help you with weight loss, it can help you with weight loss maintenance, it can just help you with overall health and well-being, depending on what your goals are. So what you do is you come in and we do this Pinoy test. It's actually a VO2 max, is what it is. So you can do it just resting. It's a breathing test. All you do is sit there and breathe and then there's a kind of more of an active form where you get on a bike with the same equipment. There's a kind of more of an active form where you get on a bike with the same equipment and it really assesses your VO2 max, which tells you your metabolic health, your metabolic age, which can help you figure out. You know where you are in your longevity battle.

Speaker 1: 20:47

And then this technology is amazing because it analyzes your metabolic, cellular and lung fitness in such a precision way that it really helps you break down your optimal exercise regimen. It can tell you how much cardio you should be doing, how much interval training you should be doing, how much resistance training you should be doing, customized specifically for you. It can tell you, based on your natural calorie burn, how many calories do you need a day, what's your optimal intake to sustain a healthy weight or to lose weight, and it's also going to measure your fat burn with very accurate precision. It's going to help you figure out what. How much carbohydrates do you need? How many grams of you know protein do you need in a day? Yeah, of course, everybody's saying 100, you know, I'm hearing 100 milligrams. You know as do you need in a day? Yeah, of course, everybody's saying 100, you know, I'm hearing 100 milligrams. You know as kind of this 100 grams as the standard. That's not a standard, that's just a generic thing. This tells you, based on your body and your specific fuel burn, and what specific fuel mix you need. So how much fat do you need, how many carbs do you need and how much protein do you need and it carbs do you need and how much protein do you need. And it's also going to help you understand, metabolically, you know what foods are going to give you those things. Maybe you don't want to take a handful of supplements every day. Maybe you want to get this mostly from your food. This is going to tell you exactly what you need. And at the top tier of our wellness program, you actually get personalized consultations with nutritionists from Pinoy and also exercise physiologists from Pinoy. So you're going to get a customized plan that is going to give you everything you need to really optimize your health, optimize your wellness, optimize your fitness and your nutrition, not just lose the weight.

Speaker 1: 22:35

And then, while you're doing all of those things, of course we're going to be supporting your skin. Of course we're going to be recommending the best skincare out there for you. We're going to be recommending laser procedures or chemical peels or in-office treatments to really keep your skin healthy and optimized, like we always have. And we're also going to be offering some treatments that maybe are going to help with female wellness. We're also going to be offering some treatments that help with skin tightening as we're losing weight. That's the biggest problem that we're seeing with the GLP-1s is that people come in with a lot of skin laxity.

Speaker 1: 23:10

So we have Cutera TrueSculpt. That can actually help tone the muscles for you in areas where it doesn't matter how many sit-ups you do, you're not going to get a lot of toning in the abdomen or sometimes in the glutes. It's really hard to build muscle there and the TrueSculpt can really help you do that, along with the other things that you're doing from a nutrition and working out kind of standpoint. So we have TrueSculpt that can help. We have TrueFlex that can help build muscle mass, and so these are amazing things that we can be doing. We also have Emcella, which can help with pelvic floor dysfunction. So women that are having, you know, incontinence or maybe really feeling like you need to get up and go to the bathroom 15 times at night, maybe you leak urine when you sneeze or when you try to, you know, do jumping jacks and things like that M-Cella can really help with all of those things. We also are partnering with QTERA to bring their newest technologies and in-mode their newest technologies and in mode their newest technologies for feminine health that can help with vaginal atrophy or vaginal dryness and help with tightening of the vaginal wall and things like that. So improved sexual function, improved vaginal health, improved, you know, natural secretions, and all of the things that are just going to make your intimate health much, much more fabulous for you. So we're working full body, total body, total person to try to bring optimal health to all of our patients and, of course, our staff Our staff are super excited about all of this because they're getting to jump on board to do all of these fun things too.

Speaker 1: 24:53

We have launched a membership program, and memberships are something that we've never really done. We've had the open house events, which have always been great, where people can put money on account both fall and spring and then get 20% off all of the procedures that we offer for the most part, and also skincare and things like that, but a lot of people, even though we try to make open house really accessible, a lot of people do not, you know, take advantage of it, or they miss it, or they're out of town, traveling, and so we've decided that what we want to do is we're going to have three levels of membership and at each one of these levels, you basically get open house price all year long, so you don't have to put a bunch of money down at open house. We're still going to have open house. So nobody, nobody, panic. We love open house and we're still going to have these big parties where we show you all the newest and latest and greatest things that we bring here to the area.

Speaker 1: 25:53

But the memberships are just going to be, you know, another option for people, and so what we found is that we're going to have three different tier memberships. Tier one is going to be the lowest one. It's going to be only $75 a month, and if you pay in $75 a month, that money just gets banked. So it's not like a lot of other membership programs where the fee is just something that goes away and you don't really get anything for it. So that $75 is going to build. So every month you're going to get another $75 in your bank. You're going to get open house price for everything. You're going to get a customized Vizia analysis, which is a skin analysis that we offer for our patients, and we're also going to do a customized makeup application and mini session for you. And then at the second tier, which is just a little bit more per month that's $175 per month You're also going to get the open house pricing.

Speaker 1: 26:48

You're going to get the Vizia analysis. You're going to get the makeup application. You're also going to get a full consultation with me after your Visi analysis and after your Panoe evaluation. That you get complimentary and we're going to really make a customized plan for what you're going to do for the whole year, for your wellness journey, for your treatments at Premier, for your homework, for skin care and health and wellness. We're going to just sit down and make a huge plan and I'm going to walk you through that.

Speaker 1: 27:17

You're also going to get access to red light therapy at Premier. We've brought in a juve, red light wall and Theradome and we also have red light masks that everybody can take advantage of when they're there for treatments. But they can also just come in and have red light therapy based on the tier of membership that they have. And then the very top tier of the memberships is going to be $375 a month. Sounds like a lot, but that's your money and it's just getting built. You're just putting it in. So that gives you a yearly subscription of $4,500 that you're basically just putting away every month and you're just doing it just directly for your health.

Speaker 1: 28:00

For that, of course, you get open house price all year long. You get the full body red light therapy sessions. You get two busy analysis a year. You get two of the pinoy tests a year, so that base the first one that gives us that baseline and that plan and the consultation with the nutritionist and the exercise physiologist, as well as the full assessment with myself, and then you get that whole thing done again six months later so we can really see where you are, where your progress is, and we can make the tweaks to make sure that you're getting the best results that you can get. You also get early access to all of the promotions that we do. You get really, really cool customer service.

Speaker 1: 28:41

We're providing a member-only concierge line for those people who sign up for this top tier.

Speaker 1: 28:47

You will get a phone number where you get one person and you can call, text, email Chrissy she's the queen of memberships and she's amazing.

Speaker 1: 28:56

She's been with us for decades, she's great and she will be your concierge.

Speaker 1: 29:03

She will be the one that helps you schedule appointments and, by the way, you get priority aesthetic scheduling with an appointment within two weeks guaranteed if you're in this top tier and that's a big deal because a lot of us are booked out for months and months, so this is going to be really special for those patients that sign up for the top tier. So we're really going to hold your hand, we're really going to make it easy. We're not going to take your money and just give it away on fees, but we're helping you bank your money so that you can really make yourself a priority and you can really really thrive in 2025. So, guys, thank you so much for tuning in to an episode of All Things Skin. We sure appreciate you being one of our listeners. Not only do we thank you for listening, but please continue to follow us, give your reviews on any of the podcast platforms that you're listening on, and we can't wait to see you on another episode of All Things Skin.