[00:00:00.000] - Sam Ridgeway
Why would a woman listen to anything I have to say when it comes to hormones? I've never given birth to a baby. I've never had to contend with female gender roles. I've never had to worry if the clothes I wear to a party look similar to someone else's. I've never had a hot flash. I know this is hard to believe, but no guy has ever smacked me on the ass and made me feel as though my livelihood depended upon how I responded. Although there was this one time in Key West that got a little awkward, but that's a different video. My point is I have no idea whatsoever what it's like to be a woman. In fact, there's a study that shows women's hormones just during a single menstrual cycle fluctuate more than a man's will throughout his entire life. So I needed someone to speak on behalf of Viking to the female population, someone who knows what it's like to be a woman. And I've been looking for quite some time. And the reason it took so long is because I had specific requirements. I needed them to be an appropriate age, which is over 45.

[00:00:52.780] - Sam Ridgeway
I needed them to have a story, meaning they had to have struggled with weight at some point in their lives, anxiety, depression. I needed them to be familiar with menopause. What I'm saying is I needed them to understand the hardships most women face on a daily basis, and I needed them to be authentic. But above all, I needed Viking to have been the catalyst that changed their life. So when I spoke with Laurie Miller, which she's a long time Viking patient, I thought this could be that person. Then when she submitted a video showing her presence, demeanor, sincerity, I was like.

[00:01:24.240] - Sam Ridgeway
This is it.

[00:01:25.100] - Laurie Miller
I feel better now than I have ever felt in my life. That is really saying a lot.

[00:01:30.530] - Sam Ridgeway
This is the person that could help me get the message out to women about how hormone therapy improves every aspect of your life. I wanted to make a quick video introducing Laurie, and I wanted to encourage you to watch your first video, which is a quick overview of her personal journey. I'll put that link to the video in the description below. Because to be honest, if I had to choose a gender that hormone therapy can help more than the other, it would be women. I mean, hands down. Let's welcome Laurie, and I want you to look forward to more videos from her about hormones, diet, exercise, and overall improvements in general in the lives of women. Because we're all striving to be better versions of ourselves. Because getting old is inevitable. But gaining weight, not having a libido, never sleeping, and having hot flushes, that has got to be a bitch.

[00:00:00.000] - Laurie Miller
I feel better now than I have ever felt in my life. And that is really saying a lot. My name is Laurie Miller, and I am a registered nurse and a certified personal trainer. I just wanted to make a video to speak directly to ladies who are considering hormone replacement therapy to teach you more about it and let you know basically my own personal story with it, what I've learned along the way, my thoughts on it, and encourage you to look into your own journey for it. Please always consult your own provider, either here at Viking or your primary care before you make any medical decisions concerning your treatment, because you do deserve direct attention and guidance with any medical decision you make. I started in my late 30s and my 40s, and then slowly just starting to not feel as good. I started gaining weight and had really low energy. I started having brain fog. I think as women, we are taught that these are just things that come with aging, and you just have to learn to deal with it. Ultimately, though, I got up to 205 pounds and I did not feel very good.

[00:01:18.550] - Laurie Miller
The main thing that finally did it for me is I really quit sleeping. I could not sleep for several months, and that drove me to really try to find some answers. As I was researching about insomnia, I figured out it was probably menopausal symptoms, and that had never dawned on me prior to that research. I thought menopause was something that was never going to happen to me. But that explained all the symptoms that I was having. I had always been able to lose weight when I wanted to, and I couldn't anymore. My metabolism was tanked, and I was having hot flashes and night sweats. I couldn't sleep. I had terrible low energy and fatigue. I had mood fluctuations from depression to anxiety. I decreased libido, and dryness, joint pain, dry skin. My hair was changing, like getting thinner. Digestive changes, just the whole gamut of things that we experience as women going through that period of time. And that period of change. Perimenopausal symptoms can start in your 30s. And so those have probably been slowly going on for quite a while, but it took them getting pretty severe for me to recognize it and do anything about it.

[00:02:36.020] - Laurie Miller
And I really wish I had figured that out long before I did, because I suffered quite a bit along the way unnecessarily. I was able then to pretty quickly find a provider here at Viking and get started on hormone replacement. I want to say it's not a magic pill, but it is pretty close. That started a change in my trajectory, just the fact that I feel better and that I had went quite a while not feeling good and didn't realize how far away from myself that I had gotten. And so I have experienced lots of changes from that. Number one, I'm sleeping. And if you've suffered insomnia, you know how miserable that is. Just that alone has been worth the price of admission for me just to sleep. I lost all the weight that I had gained, and actually even more than that, because I didn't realize that testosterone really drives motivation. Now I feel motivated to get in the gym, and it helps you put on lean muscle mass. I've got results from the gym that I had never, ever gotten before. And so that really got me excited about it. That's a big motivator because as women, I think a lot of us are constantly looking for body recomp, a little bit of fat loss and some muscle gain looking more toned.

[00:03:57.400] - Laurie Miller
And man, all these synchronized bio-identical therapies really set the stage for that to just go beautifully. I was getting results in the gym. My hair and skin and nails are better. No more night sweats and hot flashes at all. Libido is better. My energy level is sky high. I don't have that fatigue anymore. My joints and muscles are not aching anymore other than after a good workout, which I don't mind. And my m

I put a video out recently, asking for people to email me with the reason I should pay for their Hormone Therapy for life. After so many entries, I chose a winner. And in the process of notifying them I called an audible. Here's what happened...