Latest / The Lauren Castle Show / I Didn't Want to Leave Pharmacy. I Wanted to Practice It Differently

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I Didn't Want to Leave Pharmacy. I Wanted to Practice It Differently · The Lauren Castle Show

• speaker-0: One pharmacist in particular came up to me and she's like, I've had IBS for years. I've been on LinZest. I've been to all these GI doctors. I feel terrible. Do you think you can help me? I don't know if I can help you, but we can try. I was like, let's just try it. And she turned her IBS around rather quickly and her blood sugar normalized, her blood pressure normalized and a lot of things just started coming into line for her. And she had said to me, I have been so sick and in so much pain for so many years. Why has no one ever done this with me? And that statement just locked into my brain of, okay, this really works. There's real data to support it. And people can actually get better. And they're not getting better. speaker-1: Welcome to the Loren Castle Show, a podcast for people on a path to well-being, body, mind, heart, and soul. Join us for conversations at the intersection of pharmacy, functional medicine, and psychedelics. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling inspired to step into your power, speak your truth, and live your most authentic life. Let's begin. Hi everybody, we're back with another episode of the Loring Castle Show. And today my guest is Dr. Jen Belou. Jen is one of our original FMPHA members, and we're gonna get into that, but I just want to tell you a little bit more about her first. So Jen helps high-performing women go from feeling like something is off to finally understanding what their body has been trying to tell them. She's the founder of Beyond the Dose, an integrative pharmacist who specializes in the connection between hormones, gut health, metabolism, and cognition, and helps women optimize their health so they can think clearly, have more energy, feel better in their bodies, and perform at the level they expect. With 18 years of pharmacy experience, including 15 years in critical care, Jenna spent her career seeing what conventional medicine does incredibly well. and where there can be gaps when it comes to identifying the root causes behind chronic symptoms. She ultimately built her own functional medicine practice to take a deeper approach to client care. And now she's helping other pharmacists realize they can do the same. Take their clinical expertise beyond traditional pharmacy, practice at the top of their license, and build a career account around the kind of patient impact they've always wanted to make. Jen brings a unique perspective as a pharmacist, a functional medicine practitioner, and an entrepreneur, and she's on a mission to show pharmacists what's possible beyond the traditional model. So welcome, Jen. speaker-0: Thank you, Lauren. So happy to be here. speaker-1: I am so excited for this episode because as I mentioned, you were one of the first people that sort of came into FMPHA. We just interviewed Kim on the last episode of the podcast. And I just remember as I was starting the boot camp and the two of you were just absolutely crushing it. Like every week I would be so excited to see like the responses you'd put into the comment section and like showing up on calls and just. Getting to know you both and watch your journeys over the last few years has been incredible. And I think that it's just proof of what's possible that, you know, there's so many pharmacists who come into the functional medicine space not really sure of like what is this even going to look like? And I think that is the hardest part of all of this is like we find functional medicine and it's like, my gosh, this is the answer. And then it's like, But wait, how do I actually do this as a pharmacist? Right. And the hard part for me is like, I wish I could just give people one clear-cut manual that's like, this is exactly what it's gonna look like. But at the end of the day, because we are each bringing our own unique perspective and expertise to our practice, it's going to look different for everybody. And so That's why I've wanted to do this podcast for so long so that I can interview you guys and show people like real examples of what this looks like. Not just hypothetical, you could do this or you could do that. But like, no, these are these are women and pharmacists who now have been doing this for several years and have grown their practice. And you just have to start. So wherever you're at, you know, you just have to start and You know, I think the other piece too, I'm super excited to hear about, you know, your clientele and the type of patients that you work with, because that's a really important piece of this too. There's a lot of pharmacists and, you know, even patients that could be listening to this, right? Who are kind of wondering, like, well, how is a pharmacist going to help me with my health? Right. Like if we're not just handing you a prescription, like what is a pharmacist going to do differently and their approach? And it's really about that relationship, like the true personal relationship that develops between a provider and a patient and the whole healthcare team. And so I think your story also illustrates that really well in terms of the network that you've built. Mm-hmm. I think is really important. So I'm gonna hand the mic over to you and have you tell us a little bit. As always, I love to start from the beginning because there's always little seeds that get planted early on that somehow blossom into what we have to show today. So how did you become a pharmacist and how did you get into functional medicine? speaker-0: okay. So when I decided to go to pharmacy school, it really was because I love biochemistry. I love anatomy. I wanted to help people. I cannot stand blood. and so like medical school is just off the table. I'm super queasy, I don't like gross things, I don't really like touching people. It just felt like such a natural fit to go into pharmacy. It felt a little counterintuitive. I was raised by hippie. ish parents who were doing a lot of supplements when that was not a thing and juicing and organic food before all of this was popular. And this is like in the 80s, right? 90s. and so it felt antithetical to go to pharmacy school. And I actually got like a little pushback from them. And I was like, I think I can help people more with natural products. And there was a natural products class at my pharmacy school. that was fantastic. our professor had done a lot of research in like Costa Rica and just knew a lot of stuff. So I just thought, I can take this and and use it in some way, but I obviously had no concept of how to do that. Right. I initially really wanted to have a compounding pharmacy. I had read about this pharmacist in Huntsville who was working with women one-on-one and he had made all his own forms. Like, how's your libido? How are your breast tender? How's your sleep? These sorts of things. And he had all these really nice nutraceuticals up front. His pharmacy was beautiful. And then he had the compounding in the back. And so I reached out to him. He was like in NCPA's magazine or something. This was back in the day where you had to like call people. And it's 2008. And I was like, Hey, I really love what you're doing. Can I come shadow you? And he was like, Sure, come on. So I stayed out there for two days. And the women that were coming in were like, honey. Whatever he's doing with the with this, like you learn how to do it because he saved my life or he saved my marriage. And so I got to talk to him and he's taking doctors to IFM, to the Institute of Functional Medicine, because at the time, as you know, pharmacists couldn't be members. And so that was super like, what is the Institute of Functional Medicine and where is he getting all this? Because he wasn't just making it up, but he was getting great outcomes for women. I'm also working at a compounding pharmacy at this point. So I'm making progesterone and testosterone. And I'm going to doctor's offices, detailing them, trying to get them to use compounded formulations. And no one wants to talk to us because it's 2008 and the women's health initiative, right? So everyone's thinking hormones are terrible. and we really didn't get much traction there. It was a little disappointing because I just thought, man, this is this is it, right? So Things with the compounding pharmacy didn't pan out. She wanted me to buy her out. I was young, had little kids. It just was not good timing. And I ended up totally switching gears and going to hospital pharmacy, where I worked 18 years, primarily ICU operating room pharmacist. And so there, you know, you are able to see what what medicine is so good at in the acute emergency situation, but what we were really poor at at At getting the long-term health right, getting the longevity piece and really listening to people and validating them. So I that's kind of how I got started. So all of this is ticking in the back of my mind all these years of student loans, working my hospital job. And then one night I just started Googling functional pharmacists to see if anyone was out there. And that's where I found you on LinkedIn and FMPHA, and you were about to run the first boot camp. And I remember that I I bought the course, not understanding I was I don't even know what an online course is at this point. It was like the whole concept was very confusing to me. And I just bought it and I came into the den and I told my husband, I was like, I just bought this kind of expensive course. I really don't know what it is or what I'm doing, but I just feel like I need to do this. And he was like, Okay. And and so from there, you kind of started to give me a picture. I had seen what this this pharmacist in Huntsville was doing, but he owned his own pharmacy. And I just couldn't formulate what this would look like. I just couldn't envision what what does this look like for me to practice in this way? And is this even is this even possible? so yeah, I I didn't want to leave pharmacy, but I wanted to practice it differently. I do, I love pharmacy. I love medications. I love the biochemistry. I love, you know, looking at cytochrome P450 and Pathways and stuff. I enjoy all of that so much, but but I wanted it to serve people better. speaker-1: Yeah. That is so cool. And yeah, the whole thing about IFM, you know, knowing about that organization as early as you did, right? I think I found functional medicine in 2015. Okay. and so it's like functional medicine's been around for a really long time, like since the nineties. And it's just now really starting to become more mainstream. And the whole goal eventually is that we won't have to call it functional medicine. It's just gonna be good medicine. It's gonna be the standard of care. There's not gonna have to be any differentiation because at the end of the day, functional medicine fully envelops everything that conventional care has to offer and then more, right? Like it's just a slightly different perspective from what most clinicians are doing right now. And most of the reason that we even differentiate the two isn't on an individual clinician basis, it's like a systematic problem of just how appointments are structured, like how insurance models work. And I think that that also is where there can be such a disconnect for people to figure out like what is this going to look like in practice? and I know when I started going to IFM events, my first one was AFM C P in 2016 and or no, 20. 18, 2016, 2018. I showed up and of course I'm like, I'm a pharmacist. And everyone's like, you do compounding. And it's like, no, I don't. So there's a really big education gap there still to help clinicians that are not pharmacists understand what pharmacists do when we're not behind the counter. And of course, we do absolutely still need our compounding pharmacists, like people who are able to create these products, but I think that was my goal with the boot camp and with FMPHA was to really look at all the different practice settings that are possible and how to integrate functional medicine into any of them because you can do it in a compounding pharmacy or an independent pharmacy. You can do it in retail pharmacy. That's, you know, was my background and just integrating it into these little quick counseling sessions. There's ways to even think about doing it in hospital pharmacy. Of course, it's it's more challenging when you're in these really big environments, particularly now that, you know, a lot of health systems are owned by big corporations. But Cleveland Clinic, of course, was one example of that. That was kind of how I started really acknowledging that okay, this could be a viable path. Like if Cleveland Clinic has a center for functional medicine and they're putting out all of this outcomes research and comparing the methodologies and and how it's improving patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, cutting costs, like all of these good things that we wanna see. You know, I think more and more health systems are going to start to adopt this. And of course now it's like twenty twenty six and Dr. Oz is part of the, you know, White House administration and CMS and they're making hospitals change their menus to have real food and cut out processed food and like all of these things that we have been hoping for for so long are finally starting to come to fruition. So I do think that, you know, the times are changing finally and this is not fringe anymore. So for any pharmacists that are still kind of sitting back and wondering, like, what is this online course? You know, yeah. It was a different sort of approach and I always go back to my own story. I'm like, I did not know I was gonna start a pharmacy organization when I graduated pharmacy school. There were signs. Like I was, you know, involved with NCPA as well. I was like our first national student leadership council member from my school. So like I was always super passionate about organizational work and advocacy and education and you know, just the process of bringing people together around a common cause and really the creativity behind it to come up with new models and to really try and shift, you know, the profession at a bigger level. And so whenever I realized like, well, nobody was interested in functional medicine, like the organizations kind of were like, no, we're not so sure about that yet. I was like, okay, fine. Like we're just gonna create our own. space for this. And, you know, I kind of had a a background, I guess, growing up as a millennial and being very in the online space and social media and all of these things that it just it felt natural to me to just start a Facebook group and then build a website and, you know, pull all of this together. And it's it's continued to evolve and that has been really exciting. So I think the the entrepreneurial bug for sure starts to come into the picture a little bit with all of this. speaker-0: For sure. And that can be a big hurdle for for those of us, right, who are not so entrepreneurial or that wasn't in the but that wasn't in the plan. yeah, so it was really grateful to find you because I probably wouldn't would not have done this, honestly, because I've I just really couldn't figure out. Like I said, I just couldn't visualize what this would look like. And and even now, I guess I've been probably doing this about four years at this point. I still feel like I'm I'm honing away like what doesn't need to be there and getting more targeted and what does need to be there because you are really forging your own path and there's not like there's not a a f a full framework for you just to step into for this, especially as a pharmacist. So how do you build your own framework and that it's something that is pretty personal to you? Here we are trying to do personalized medicine with people. But you're also creating something that's very personalized to you that I'm not like looking at other people's websites or other people's systems and trying to replicate that. I actually think that can kind of kill your creativity, but really trying to focus on where my strong suits are as far as getting my clients the best outcomes I can get for them and who are those people, the particularly women. I do work with men, but the majority of my clients are definitely female. Who are the women that I get the best outcomes with? And so, so that's going to be different for for all of us because we all have our own story. We all have our own strengths and and just certain, I think certain personalities work better with with certain personalities. So just kind of finding finding your niche, finding your space in all of this. But if you have passion about it and you're passionate about helping others, and this is, Just like a lot of fun. It's really amazing to work with someone and the dots are finally being connected. Maybe they had a thyroid issue and maybe they're not sleeping and they're grumpy and they keep gaining weight. And okay, how do we start to kind of pull the threads on looking at you from a holistic picture, looking at your gut, looking at your hormones, looking at your nervous system response, which is huge and and bringing it all together. in a way that's very collaborative with that with that client. I think that's something that pharmacists really bring to the table is we are not very hierarchical in our training or in how we tend to interact with people. So it's a much more like level playing field, not like a I'm telling you what to do and this is your plan. Let's co-create a plan that feels good to you, that works well with like the capacity that you have right now. So I'm not overwhelming you, I'm not underwhelming you, and keeping like a balanced plan while we're also looking at all of the labs from their physician and maybe requesting extra labs from their physician. I've my clients have gotten really comfortable bringing their Dutch tests to their gynecologists, which is amazing and something I would have never anticipated three or four years ago when I first started doing this and I was I felt like I was getting a lot more like physician pushback. I I love that I'm starting to be able to collaborate with some physicians in my area. And that's been it's been really cool. So it's just it is working with them, like working with your clients or your patients, and not like from a from a top down perspective. So I think that's something kind of cool that a pharmacist can bring to the table. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. I totally agree. You know, it's like we're definitely the most accessible healthcare providers. And I think everyone is just kind of used to that. And so there's a much more approachable sort of relationship that can happen there. and I love that you also are, you know, starting to collaborate and work with other people's practitioners, right? It was really important. You said there it's like, Your patients are able to ask their doctors for more labs. I think this is a a question that comes up a lot for pharmacists, which is like, who's ordering the labs? Like, am I legally allowed to do this? You know, how does all of that work? And it is state specific. It's also practitioner specific. Like if you are not someone that feels comfortable ordering the labs or interpreting the labs, then you don't need to include that. You can ask for that information from the doctor, right? We're not trying to Step on toes or cross out of our scope. But it it is something whenever, you know, I look back, it's like we learn all of these things in pharmacy school. Like we learn, you know, the lab values. And if a patient comes into the pharmacy with lab information, we're not going to turn them away and just be like, I can't look at that. It's like, no, I I can absolutely look at that. If I don't know how to calculate a creatinine clearance and and do renal dosing, like we have a problem. Or sure. That is expected. Did of a pharmacist. speaker-0: Like pharmacist skill set, right? speaker-1: So, you know, I think some of the the fear is just because maybe it's something we haven't physically done in our practice since we graduated pharmacy school, you know, depending on where you're at. but I think all of that is starting to shift as well, especially now with, you know, companies like Function Health. It's like anybody can order their own labs and get that information and AI can translate it. So that's that's not the thing anymore that's gonna keep functional medicine and some pie in the sky thing that you have to go be a gatekeeper. You know, it's like health information's pretty democratized at this point. So what's gonna set you apart as the practitioner? And, you know, I think you called that out too. It's like there's a specific patient population that you feel called to work with. So tell us a little bit more about that. You know, I think there's a lot there with hormones Cognition, I I definitely want to talk about because there's a nice little connection to true neuro, which is a mastermind that Jen and I are both in with James Maskell and Christine Burke. so tell us how did you start working with these women that are in your practice? speaker-0: Well, I so first first how I started working with with anyone was that I was I talk a lot. and so I would be working on the weekend and the pharmacy and I worked down in the main pharmacy on the weekend and I'm just, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm learning this. And did you know the gut does this? And and the pharmacists around me were like, Really? That's so interesting. And one pharmacist in particular came up to me and she's like, I've had IBS for years. I've been on LinZest. I've been to all these GI doctors. I feel terrible. Do you think you can help me? And I was, I don't know if I can help you, but we can try. I was like, let's just try it. Right. I had done AFMCP through IFM. So I felt that was starting to give me some confidence. Like, okay, I I have this huge fat notebook. And really AI was not super accessible at that point to normal people. So I would just go through all my notes from IFM and was trying to help this pharmacist. And she turned her IBS around rather quickly. And her blood sugar normalized, her blood pressure normalized, and a lot of things just started coming into line for her. And she had said to me, I have been so sick and in so much pain for so many years. Why has no one ever done this with me? And that statement just locked into my brain. Okay, this really works. There's real data to support it. And people can actually get better. And they're not getting better. They all she was doing all the things she had been told to do. She was seeing the GI specialist. It wasn't like she was just like, I'm not doing anything and I feel like crap. She was doing everything and she felt terrible and was in so much pain. So you start to look at, you start to look at it. Okay, so that's and that's interesting. That worked. And then I started through the boot camp and your encouragement. I I put out a few like, hey, if you want to work with me. And I did like a really low intro, like beta group. And then I I asked them if if they came on, if they would just give me like really robust feedback so that I would know, like, what am I doing well and what am I not doing well? Where can I improve? And so those were also it was a mix of pharmacists and non-pharmacists. But the the pharmacists with whom I work were really like my awesome. OG cheerleaders. And they were just like, you can do this. And they were very interested because we all, we all love chemistry and wellness. And so then as I started advertising, I started to realize the majority of my my clients were business owners. I had school teachers and I had professionals and of of all sorts, and I had college students, women from all walks of life. But Think women who are business owners and are used to making decisions for themselves, they didn't have to go talk to a partner or someone about making the investment. They were just like, yeah, I'm in. They're also women that recognize that investing in themselves is investing in their organization. And so as I've started working with more executive women, the reason a lot of them come to me is because they're having brain fog. And they can't perform like they could before. And maybe they get to a meeting and they lose their words. And it's not just it makes them feel bad, they're concerned, they're worried that their brain is not firing like it had been. But they also know that this organization that they're the CEO of is gonna be impacted if they can't function well. And so that's kind of how the executive piece started working in. And I I got Connected, you know, hell sometimes you can meet like a connector who's a super connector. You're a super connector. I have another have a corporate superconnector woman who just has helped kind of push me out into this executive group in Atlanta. But yeah, and so that's that's really how it kind of started. And then when you connected me to James Maskell with the True Neura program, which for people who don't know, that's It's more a it's based on the Evanthea trial, something that's hopefully about to be published soon on reversing cognitive decline and dementia. And the the very cool thing about that, and you have your we all I think have our own personal reasons for wanting to to join a mastermind like that of like family or loved ones. But the interesting thing is, is it's it's all still precision functional medicine, right? It's the same thing. So I can take the information I'm getting from there. And apply it to these women who are not in cognitive decline and they don't have dementia. They're 50 years old and running a multi-million dollar organization, but the same principles apply. And I think that's the beauty of functional medicine. I think it's the beauty of anything that is truth, right? It's it's always true. If something is truthful, then it's always true. And so it it works with someone who's just having perimenopause brain fog, it it it works with someone who's eighty years old and, you know, is having memory and cognition issues. So I you know, I love it for all of those reasons. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. The the true neuro piece has been really fascinating. I actually just presented at the American Society of Consultant Pharmacist Midwest regional meeting that was here in Columbus, Ohio. And I talked about a functional medicine approach to the age-friendly 4Ms framework. So that is a framework that basically just looks at how we can improve care for older adults, but really any adults. And again, same thing. It is It's just a truth, right? You're looking at medications, you're looking at mobility, you're looking at mentation or the mind, and specifically all the different factors that can start to impact your mind. And there's a lot of interconnectedness there. But the fourth one is what matters. What matters most to the patient? Not to the doctor, not to the health insurance company, but to the patient. And that becomes the guiding question for every intervention. That we choose to bring up for a patient. And that aligns with the functional medicine philosophy too, of being patient-centered and really it being this partnership. and so I just loved that like those frameworks work together so well. And it just feels like, you know, the independent consultant pharmacist model. There's a lot of like overlap there. Cause sometimes we hear the word independent, we immediately think, you know. Compounding pharmacy, independently owned pharmacy, but independent consultant pharmacist is, you know, a pharmacist that is really just working outside of a pharmacy setting and doing consultations with patients. So consultant pharmacy historically was more of like working with nursing homes or assisted livings and, you know, going in and doing med reviews and chart reviews that are like legally required for. all of those standards. But now it's like the consultant model is really starting to open up more to be all types of patients, all types of pharmacists. You know, it's sort of the catch-all now. It's like if you're if you're working in this clinical capacity with patients, but you're not tied to a physical practice setting, you're essentially working as an independent consultant pharmacist. Right. And so it's cool to kind of see that model being elevated more by a ASCP and we're we're kind of working really closely with them on this. And I think there's gonna be more opportunities for, you know, billing models as well, which is kind of always a challenge and feels really intimidating for pharmacists to fill out. So a lot of times I'm like, just don't worry about that yet. You know, get get your business model in place, get the program in place and get your feet wet with just working with patients, just like you were saying. Like, free or beta group pricing, like you just it's gonna be awkward and uncomfortable and like speaker-0: So speaker-1: you're gonna feel like you're gonna throw up. Like there is no way around it. It's just you gotta get that first patient or couple of patients to just like try it and see. And I just I taught my first yoga class this week, like on an actual schedule in a studio. I've taught like one off classes on retreats and, you know, like did my teacher training. But like finally I was like, nope, I have to do this. Like I have to do it for myself. And yeah, I I just felt like a complete beginner. I've been doing yoga for 20 years. And I'm like, I feel like I'm in kindergarten. And I'm like going up to the front of the class to do my assignment. And it it's, you know. You never get over that. Like there's there's just something that you gotta do. speaker-0: Part of growth, right? It is. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Because if we all just stay in our comfort zones, we're we're not gonna grow. We're just gonna stay exactly where we were. And that that may and if that's if you're happy where you are and things are good, then that's fine. If you're looking for something different, you're gonna you're gonna have to get uncomfortable. That's all there is to it, right? Yep. And I I tell people, and I know you've heard me say this that like one time, the first time I posted a video on Instagram, I was just like, this is awful. Like I just can't. And I was texting with you and I said I wanted to take it down because I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. And you said, breath plus fear equals excitement. And I have hung on to that through this whole journey. Of anytime I'm like, I am scared, or I have a really sometimes I do have really challenging clients, and maybe we were not such a good fit, but I didn't have the skill set to really discern that before we started working together or something or something, or maybe just things kind of go awry. Like the majority of my clients are amazing and we have like such great, it's actually really fun. And but every so often and that those clients will make me like really anxious, right? And it's the same thing. It's like, okay, I can either be fearful about this or I can see it as a challenge and I'm gonna breathe and it's gonna be okay. And I'm gonna do like the best I can. But but yeah, I mean, you're trying something new and when I started, it was one of those things like I'm gonna hold this loosely, it it may work and it may flop. I have no idea, but I'm willing to take a risk. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. speaker-0: You took your risk with your yoga class and and now it'll just be so much easier next time. speaker-1: a a thousand percent. And that, man, that applies to everything too. It's like you don't know until you try. Like you really have to just try the thing and see. You're gonna learn and get so much more feedback when you do it out in the real world versus when you just think and think and think and imagine and maybe and what about this and what about that? Right. Like. Brain dump all your thoughts on a piece of paper to get out of your head, but then go implement the thing. Go try the thing. You still gotta do the thing. speaker-0: It all day long was you actually have to do the thing. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. speaker-0: So true. speaker-1: Yep. Yeah. So well, I also I want to hear more about your physical practice. So I think this is something else that's cool. And, you know, when it comes to doing the thing and actually like finding a location, right? So this is something else that I think is really cool and unique is like We talk a lot about doing virtual practice. And I think at the time, you know, whenever F and PHA we launched our membership was 2020, it was right at the beginning of COVID. And so everything moved to telehealth and like virtual practice and online practice. And now like we are past that and people are really starting to seek out like in-person connections and you know, meeting with people face to face. and so I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about what that's looked like for you. you know, taking something just from this idea into the real world. speaker-0: Yeah. So initially I would have people come to my house or I would meet them at a coffee shop. And then things kind of morphed a little bit. I still see a lot of people on Zoom, which is not my favorite. I am a I'm a connection person. I like I love relationships. I think all of this is part of this is building the relationship and the rapport with your clients. So being in person just feels so much more natural to me. However, a lot of people are very busy, especially this executive women. They're seeing me at 8 a.m. before their morning meetings or on their lunch break. And so there is no time for them to travel to see me, even if even if I'm right up the street. Like they are busy and in demand. So from that standpoint, I still see the majority of my clients online. I I have an office right up the street. So I'm in Atlanta. I live Decatur, which is really close to Emory University. The Center for Disease Control is right up the street. So I live in a very like medical science area. And there's the a lovely place that it's almost like a like a medical we works up the street from me. So it's shared medical, it's beautiful, it's very soothing, and always like smells really nice in there. It's just really pretty. And so I rent space there and then they have a second office and more like the in Buckhead, which is more like a little bit more exclusive part of town where most of the big corporations kind of house their like all the skyscrapers and stuff are over in that area. So I'm able to utilize these really pretty spaces, but I basically rent the room while I'm there and pay a monthly membership fee. And it's just been phenomenal because I don't have to maintain anything. this the company that I use is called Humanly and they do have locations. I know they have them in Boulder and some in California, like they have locations all over the US. But for me, that has been a game changer to have a place that I know that feels really great. It feels very safe. They both have like really easy parking. And I can just go in and have my laptop and we go through their labs and all the things that that we're doing together or the collaboration with their physician. And we review and come up with a new plan, do some do some evaluation on their nervous system. Like I'll have them fill out forms about their capacity and their resilience and how much they can take on right now or what what type of person they are. Are they the type that like goes really hard and heavy and then burns out? Or are they someone that's kind of a long slow? So so trying to get everyone into a long trajectory of health, because as you and I know. We're probably not going to move the needle for them all that much in one appointment. The minimum to work with me is three appointments. So three months. And then we have some communications in between those appointments. But for most people, five to six months, sometimes longer, is really what it's going to take, especially if we're looking at the gut and we're looking at hormones. And I'm trying to help you get to sleep. Those things are, we're not going to fix all that with like the pill for every ill. I I could load you up with a massive supplement stack. And sometimes that is the right move for people. If they are really miserable and I just need to get them some help on board quickly, we can kind of bridge them into getting better with the lifestyle measures. But it is it is a longer, slower process. And educating your clients on the front end of that is very important. That when when you do a discovery call or however you bring them into your practice, That they know before they sign up with you that this is a very different model than what they're accustomed to. This is not a 15-minute appointment. My first appointment is an hour and a half. It is a massive deep dive. Everyone that works with me has to agree that they will continue to work with their primary care physician. I am not trying to take the role. I really want to stay within my scope. Pharmacists are great collaborators and learning. Learning the nuance of that has been a little tough with trying to figure out like how do you work with a physician and not make them feel feel, you know, a certain way about you working with their patient. And so yeah, so just all of that has just been a learning curve. Thankfully now I have some physicians, if they don't have someone that they really love that I refer to. So that they'll have a primary care or in my case, a lot of them need a gynecologist. So a gynecologist that's very open to them walking in and discussing what we've been discussing and ordering a like like if I send a la list of labs that I would love to see. Obviously, I'm not saying they have to order them, but if they do, it's great. And then I have that information to discuss with the pep with the client. If they will not order them, that's fine. In Georgia, anyone can order their own labs through Lab Core. But usually I'll order their labs for them and and then we have it and I'll send them to their physician if there's anything out of range, if they're you know, if their ferritin's super low or something, or if we've got an healthy little A that doesn't look great, 'cause we really are like looking at the longevity piece while I'm doing this. Like I wanna make sure that we're that we're looking at their heart and their cardiovascular system and that I'm setting these women up so that they feel better now, but that their long term trajectory is going to be so much better because we were able to like turn the ship a little bit and get them kind of launched in a different direction. speaker-1: Hmm. Yeah, I love that. And, you know, again, it's like they're all pieces of the puzzle that we have to look at. And it might not be the symptom that they thought they were gonna need to address, but through that longer term education, like you really do have the time and space to dive into these things and just teach. Like there's so much teaching and education that has to happen. Right. And That's gonna be partly what motivates and drives people to understand and to make the change whenever they can see, I have this lab value, like it's staring at me on this piece of paper. I can't ignore it. speaker-0: Right. And like, so like so the Menopause Society, for instance, doesn't, for right now, I think this is going to change in the future. Like, they don't encourage testing for hormone levels. I think having a Dutch test in front of someone is super valuable, not so much for the information, but for the woman, A, to see what's going on in her body and B to see how her lifestyle is impacting is impacting her cortisol patterns or her estrogen patterns. So it's not necessarily like in the traditional model of I get a lab so I can prescribe a medication or a therapy. This is, we're getting a lab to help you have a solid understanding and an education so that you grow in confidence that when you do go to your physician or when a medical issue arises, you have the confidence to speak about yourself in a way that that doesn't get dismissed. Or if it does, you know to go to somewhere else where you will not get dismissed. So this education piece is is huge. same thing with gut, with the gut health. And you know, if I if I tell you like, I need you to limit your sugar, or I need you to do XYZ, or we need to do some deep breathing. I I mean, everyone's like, Of course, I we should all be doing that, right? But if I have a GI map that's kind of wacky and I can see that your immune system is not where it needs to be, okay, so what how can we work on Like deep breathing could help you here, or eating fiber could help this. So it's really nice to be able to pull the labs, p pull the pieces together for them and then help them create a cohesive picture of of why all these things matter. Especially the nervous system piece. I just think that's something that as we go through this through the next few years, it's just gonna become more and more valuable. To to know those cortisol levels, where are we starting? Are are you like super high up here all the time? Which is where everyone thinks they are. Everyone I work with is high performers, a lot of type A perfectionists, right? And they are fuzzy. They are go, go, go, go, go. They love the dopamine hit of having too much going on, which I get. And that's probably why I gravitate towards these women. They gravitate towards me because I like having too many plates spinning, even though I know it's terrible. I've gotten much better about it, by the way. Learning all of this, I'm like, okay, I just need to go do a yoga class or I just need to take a day off. That recovery is is super important and productive. But knowing that like all this buzziness, like I've been talking to several physicians, female physicians lately, who have left their practices to do something different. And we were just talking about how like they love the job, especially these emergency room doctors. Like they love it. But talking about how their job doesn't love them back. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: So we may love the go, go, go and the stress and the pressure. That doesn't mean it loves us back. And so seeing that, like I said, these women that come to me, they're like, I'm sure my cortisol's off the chart. It's gonna be so, so high. Cause they've watched TikTok and Instagram, and of course they have a cortisol belly. And then you look at it and they've got no cortisol. And they're completely depleted. And so it's It it is valuable to know like, okay, what are which direction are we coming from here? Are are you like high, high cortisol and really producing a ton? Or maybe you're metabolizing it really quickly or not metabolizing at all? Or is that cortisol curve just really, really flat and that's not great for your immune system? And how do we start to support you differently? so yeah, it's it's very personalized, but it really builds on what we've it really builds on our training. speaker-1: Yeah. I like it. speaker-0: And learning how, like we learn, we all learned how to counsel patients, right? For compliance. We're like, this is how you take your blood pressure medication, and you may not feel symptoms, but this is why you need to do it. And that coaching for compliance is critical in this. And we, we've all been trained on how to do it. It's it's very natural for pharmacists. And I think that that's one of the real values we bring in this space. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. I love that. I'm like, I never really thought of it that way, but it's like if you imagine just having all the time and the space that you wish you could have in a counseling session with a patient, that's basically what functional medicine is. That's it. speaker-0: want how do you want to do this? Okay. That's what this is. Would you like to be able to follow up with them in two weeks? That's what you've got here. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just kind of built into the pie. And it it really gives really gives your clients great outcomes. They really do get really great outcomes. Mm-hmm. And that's super rewarding to watch too. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. It's actually reminding me of the the true neuro training just yesterday that Seth Conger and people were in and talking about like how do you actually set up your patients for success? You know, if they're coming out of conventional care and they're they're just used to like in and out, in and out, fast, take this, do that, you know, see you back in six months or a year, and their nervous systems are just wired and like you really do have to set different expectations and even boundaries around this is what it's gonna look like. You know, we're gonna have this time, but I need you to prepare for the time, like you to get the most out of this experience. Like it really is creating this container or this structure and a process for them to follow. And like all of that you know, is I think the part that we do have to learn. It's like you can build this. This is a skill that you can develop to learn how to operate in this way and build a practice. So yeah, I think that that really goes a long way, you know, in in helping patients get the most out of this functional medicine experience. speaker-0: Right, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It is it's very it's different for all of us, right? None of us were trained, or maybe very few were trained. And we as patients have not been trained over the years to approach our health and our wellness from this more longevity view and this long term, you know, more sustainable is the plan, but a more sustainable way that That once we start working on one thing and it improves, that other things start to fall into place. Because right, our body's not working in silos. I like to tell people like, think about like every Venn diagram from your statistics class, everything is overlapping. And so how do we help support things? And I love that in functional medicine, because most of this is lifestyle, that there's very few side effects to what we do, right? Like if I give you a prescription, maybe you're on a statin and now you have muscle pain. If we're if we're eating better and we're going to like a more Mediterranean diet or we're getting sunlight in the morning, there's very few negative consequences to these things because it's kind of like what I was saying earlier about what's true is like the truth. When things are good for us. They tend to build so that something that could help support your gut is gonna help support your estrogen metabolism, which is gonna help support your mood. Like the the good things grow on top of each other. And I think that's really like a beautiful like the art behind like we have art and science of practicing and just seeing like the art and the design behind our bodies. And then when we start to do good things for them, it has impacts in more ways than we anticipated. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. You're speaking my language. I've actually was like I was making coffee the other morning and you know, that's like a simple example of something I'm trying to shift in my own life. I love my coffee. It's very easy for me to grab this cup and start drinking it first thing in the morning. But I wore a CGM for the last couple of weeks. speaker-0: A truth teller. speaker-1: So Lauren's cup of coffee, even with just my like one or two tablespoons of coffee creamer that does have real sugar in it. Woo! Like right away. So was like, okay. Hmm. Yep. We gotta we gotta eat some breakfast first. Right. Some water first. speaker-0: Right. And then we can like love our little coffee and we'll appreciate it even more. speaker-1: I will have my one cup, not the whole carafe. speaker-0: But I mean, but in that case, right? Like knowledge is power. Like you learned something about your body. You did a CGM, something very personalized. And and had someone told you, hey, I really think learn in the morning, you should probably have a little protein and you should have a cup of water before you start on your coffee, you would have been like, Okay, maybe. speaker-1: Maybe. speaker-0: But you saw your CGM and you were like, no, I actually need to do that. I know what I need to do. And a lot of us do know what we need to do. We need someone to walk alongside us and kind of like shirpa you and kind of help you carry the load as you go, give you help give you the information and and what to do with that information. But but yeah, I mean that's a perfect case of like why we use labs. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. speaker-0: Get the data, build on build on your personalized data. speaker-1: Yeah, it makes such a huge difference. And the first time I ran my own Dutch test, because at the time, you know, my gynecologist was very conventional. Like I asked her about testing my labs. I had just gotten off birth control like three months ago. My cycles hadn't come back yet. And she's like, Yeah, it's fine. They'll come back when they're ready. I'm like, No, no, it might not. You know, so it's like I I took matters in my own hands and ran it. And of course, like my Estrogen and progesterone levels were all the way down into like mere like menopausal, perimenopausal range. And I'm like early 30s. So it was very clear at that point. Like, no, my whole HPA axis is all out of whack. Like everything has just been suppressed, you know, and they really wanted to be like, it's probably just like PCOS, and that's why they're just irregular. And it was like, no, that d I do not fit any picture of PCOS P O S now, right? Like we were trying to look at it and ultimately, you know, their answer was like, well just you can take madroxy progesterone, we'll just stimulate a bleed. And, you know, they they have their their reasons behind that, right? Of like, well, there's potential risks if you're not having a bleed, you can develop, you know, cancers and things. We we need to get this going. But I'm like, if there's no lining because there's no estrogen. then there is no bleed going to happen even with it. And that was where I was like, I don't need to take this. I I can read and understand the research to know like this is hypothalamic amenorrhea. Like it's a totally different mechanism. And I'm I would expect like a physician to be able to have that conversation. And it was just like, nope, this is just how we do things. Right. So it's like sometimes you really do have to be your own advocate and, you know, find the right practitioner to work with. And so that referral network is is really important. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's true. It makes all the difference in the world. And I mean, there's interesting data on and I learned this at IFM. They had shared like basically where someone went to a pr provider and got dismissed. Someone gets to a provider and it's hurt. And then the third person doesn't doesn't see a provider at all. They just like don't seek medical attention. And the person that has the worst medical outcomes is the person who seeks a provider and gets dismissed. That's so powerful that now, this is not emergency cases where you're having like a stroke or a heart attack or something, but that's pretty wild that someone would report better outcomes who did not seek medical care than someone who got dismissed. And I think I think that I mean, I've always said like women just get so dismissed. And we do, but men are getting dismissed in the doctor's office too. Like everyone is. And it's not the doctor's fault. It's it's the way our system is created. things are run by Insurance companies, unfortunately, that are looking at a bottom line. So they're gonna try to get you in and get you out. And there's just not, there's not time for the conversation. There's not time for a deep dive. And even if that physician's thinking, well, like maybe a hypothalamus is involved in this, that they've they're like, I gotta, I gotta get your note written and get to the next patient. Like, I don't even have time to even like entertain that thought, right? So then we walk out feeling hopeless. and which is a lot of reason why I started doing this was because I was having my own issues in my late thirties with my cycles were terrible, waited months to see a gynecologist around here who was like had the best reputation and walked out of their balling because the options she gave me for for my particular ins situation were not aligned with what I wanted at all. And when I said to her, I don't think this is the root cause, she said, It's probably not. Or I said this treatment. It's so don't think it's gonna treat the recall. She goes, it's probably not. my gosh, I wish I had known about a Dutch test. Like, I didn't know. I could have done so much at the time, to help adjust like the really high estrogen that I had and the zero progesterone. And I wasn't even forty yet, right? So I'm not thinking that, at age thirty five women's hormones start decreasing. No one had ever told me that. Like thirty five is young. You don't think that your hormones are gonna start or necessarily gonna start changing then. And it doesn't for everyone, but it did for me. And it was just a really it was a really hard time. But that's when I thought, okay, I'm decently smart. I'm a pharmacist. I have access to all kinds of databases. I am going to figure this out. And yeah, that's that was really how I kind of started like tinkering. was just really trying to help myself. yeah, which is probably why a lot of us do it. We all have our own things that we either get dismissed about or no one has a solution. Or the solution is to just give you a pill to treat treat the the symptom, whatever's showing up. But what is that symptom telling us? Like what is the signal telling us about what's actually happening and and our gut reaction is suppress a signal, right? Like I don't want this symptom My body's telling me something, but I just want to shut it down, just make it stop. And so how do we kind of go upstream and say, like, what's causing the signal? And can we modify something further upstream to prevent prevent the signal from even happening? Because then whatever's offending or the body's not getting, whatever the body is needing that is trying to communicate to you instead of trying to shut it down, like trying to be open and listen and And understand that we can do better things than what our conventional model would tell us we could do. speaker-1: Exactly. And that that's really the ethos of what now we're incorporating into our trainings inside of App and PHA and with our boot camp, which you know, it's like we just closed up our fall enrollment when this episode's coming out. And, you know, I'm just so excited to have our cohort going through this and learning this functional pharmacist framework because it really is looking at the systems on a more interconnected level. And figuring out what are the signals that the body is sending, how do we start to use those to detect patterns? And that's that is like the shift in thinking. Instead of it just being this linear algorithmic-based, you know, this symptom or this lab means this one thing. It's really starting to see the bigger picture and the interconnectedness of everything. Right. And then being able to prioritize like very specifically for that patient, you know, their capacity and where they're at and creating a plan for them that encompasses everything, you know, not just one thing, but like really holistically looking at all of the different drivers of what's happening. And so it's just it's so exciting to see more pharmacists starting to step into this work and to have Role models like you. So Jen is our Georgia state leader. Probably should have mentioned that at the beginning. Right. and honestly, I think you were probably one of like the very first state leaders that whenever I got the crazy idea of like, we're gonna build out this whole map because I can't do this alone. I was like, Jen, I need you. Actually, you you for sure were, because you were kind of already like naturally starting to like step into that role. Like you had just started connecting with more pharmacists, and I was like, wait a second. We we really need to do this. Like, there's something here. And so, you know, you inspired me from that regard of like, yeah, it's it's time to like start building this network, right? Building this system of pharmacists all over. speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: And so speaker-0: We have we have so much to offer and we are told from the organizations that hire us that we are not valuable. We just are. And I think that's part of even my struggle in coming into this and and like something I wish I had done sooner was collaborating with physicians sooner. But I was so intimidated because of the hierarchy I've always worked under. But then when you start talking to physicians and they're coming from hospital situations, for example, they're like, my God, the pharmacist was always like the smartest person in the room. And you're like, really? Because we kind of get treated like less than. And so starting to starting to own what you know, and I have not mastered this, but in owning your place. And I heard I think it was Rachel Rubin, who's the she's a urologist who's like done a lot in the menopause space. And she had made a comment about pelvic fluorotherapy the other day and just loving how she's seeing physical therapists really step into pelvic fluorotherapy as this mentopause conversation has become larger. And I was like, wow, how would I like love to take that to a pharmacist as pharmacy is changing so much right now? to have pharmacists like, okay, pharmacist, now it's your turn to start stepping into a new space. I think it's just really hard for us to have that paradigm shift of we have this amazing skill set and training that we're not a lot of us are not able to use in the current model. And so how do we how do we start to step into that space differently? And can we start to make pharmacy look completely different than what it what it has historically Not h not way back historically. I think initial pharmacy was probably pretty awesome to be like the apothecary in the town. Like that was kind of my dream, right? You can work with your community and know your community really well. But that's just not where we are for the most part right now. And so can we like really take a massive shift to especially community pharmacist and and just take it to the next level and not not let the profession die. speaker-1: Hm. Yeah. Beautifully said. I feel like that is no better way to wrap up this episode, right? Don't let the profession die. It starts with you. speaker-0: Good people. We we are like really like we're well trusted, and like pharmacy's a lot of great humans, so yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you would like to connect with more great humans inside of FmPHA, I just encourage you to check out our membership. It's FmPHA.org. We'll have links in the show notes. We'll have all of Jen's links as well. If you're again patient practitioner, want to connect with her, especially if you're a Georgia pharmacist and you just want to like get to know her and meet her. She's amazing, incredible. We've had the opportunity to go to conferences together and just hang out and I can't wait to to get back out there and and see everybody again. So thank you, Jen, for coming on the show and being so amazing and doing all the amazing work that you're out there doing. speaker-0: Awesome. Thank you, Lauren, for having me. speaker-1: Alright, until next time, everyone, take care. That's it for this episode of the Loren Castle Show. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I hope you'll join us for the next one where you'll hear more stories from me and some of my amazing guests. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast no matter where you watch or listen, and check out our website, drorincastle.com and fmpha.org. We'll see you next time.