The Concierge Doc Podcast with Dr. Jason Littleton, M.D.
The Concierge Doc Podcast is hosted by Dr Jason Littleton, M.D., where he features medical content to make smart lifestyle choices for optimal health, wellness, energy, youthfulness, longevity, balance, and happiness.
The Concierge Doc Podcast with Dr. Jason Littleton, M.D.
Unlock Hormonal Balance with CarolAnn Tutera & Pellet Therapy
Visit Dr Jason Littleton's website: https://www.jasonmd.com/
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Watch Dr Jason Littleton on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@therealdoctorjason3340
Disclaimer:
Access to the Information and materials contained in this podcast is at your own risk. The information contained is presented for the purpose of educating the consumer on a variety of wellness and health care topics (the “Information”). Nothing contained is intended to be instructional for medical diagnosis or treatment. The Information contained is compiled from a variety of sources. The Information should not be considered complete and not exhaustive and should not be in place of a visit or consultation with your own primary care doctor.
Access to the information and materials contained in this podcast is at your own risk. The information contained is presented for the purpose of educating the consumer on a variety of wellness and healthcare topics. The information nothing contained is intended to be instructional for medical diagnosis or treatment. The information contained is compiled from a variety of sources. The information should not be considered complete and exhaustive and should not be in place of a visit or consultation with your own primary care doctor.
Speaker 1:Hey, everyone, welcome to the Concierge Doc Podcast. I'm your host, ceo and founder of Littleton Concierge Medicine. Welcome to the podcast. We have a great show today. I'm really excited because, you know, today we have Carol Ann Tatera and we're going to be talking about hormones, specifically pellets. She's going to explain all that. I'm really excited. A lot of people have questions about this. A lot of people want to know how they can change how they feel their mood and what they can do about this in terms of the health space. And she's the CEO of Soda Pelly and she's going to tell us more about this. Carolyn, thank you, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for being a part of this today. No, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. There's a lot to talk about when it comes to pellet therapy, believe it or not.
Speaker 1:You know. Tell us a little bit about your company, how it founded, how that started.
Speaker 2:It's a really wonderful story because we were actually in Kansas City. Dr T and I traveled out to Rancho Mirage, california, which is outside of Palm Springs area, and he was asked to do a birthing center. While he was there at the birthing center, somebody came up to him another physician and said hey, how would you like to put in a pellet? He said, sure, but what's a pellet? He had no idea what it was. Maybe it was something that got slipped under the skin in the arm for birth control? Wasn't quite sure. Under the skin and the arm for birth control Wasn't quite sure. So when he started working with this physician, he realized this was pure estradiol and pure testosterone that he was giving to women and a few men at the time. After three months the physician who trained him played golf, sat down at his country club and ordered his favorite drink, and that was it. So DrT inherited this practice of people flying in from all over the country.
Speaker 1:And who is Dr T to you?
Speaker 2:Dr. T is my late husband Dr.
Speaker 1:T Tara.
Speaker 2:So after working with patients for a while, he realized, because he had a lot of good common sense, and he thought well, wait a minute here. Y'all don't wear the same size shoe, you don't wear the same dress or outfit, so why am I giving you the same dose of estrogen and testosterone? Back then everybody was getting way too much estrogen and not enough testosterone and I would see him whittling down pellets until we found a pharmacy at the time to work with us in making the sizes that he wanted. So he truly revolutionized the HRT world with pellets and individualizing them for everybody. That's how our story started in Rancho Mirage, and then there's another part of it, how we got to Arizona, which is where the company is now.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. I mean again, how many facilities do you have right now around the world?
Speaker 2:Around the world. I couldn't even begin to tell you I know we've trained thousands here in the US. Couldn't even begin to tell you I know we've trained thousands here in the US We've got multiple locations in Spain and Brazil and still expanding more.
Speaker 1:That's just incredible. It's phenomenal. Some people may want to know how pellets work If they've never been exposed to someone who's had pellets or they've never had it themselves. How do they work? How are they injected?
Speaker 2:Can you talk to us a little bit more about that. Yeah, pellets are the size of a grain of rice, Very tiny. Pure estradiol, pure testosterone. They have a little bit of stearic acid in them. They come from either a soy base or a yam base, anasteric acid in them. They come from either a soy base or a yam base and they are implanted in the hip, for women three to four times a year, for males twice a year.
Speaker 2:It's a very minor procedure. You don't need to take time off from work. It is like going to the dentist when you get a shot of Novocaine. They're implanted. We ask women to stay away from exercising. We don't want to move the hip too much because it'll force them to come back up. For men, they take off seven days. So think of it as a kid licking a lollipop. The heart rate controls the blood in the system as it bypasses the pellet. So the more the heartbeat goes, the blood is moving faster. It's taking off more like a kid licking a lollipop. When the heart is at rest, it doesn't need as much. So the body truly knows what to do with the hormones. It's the only bioidentical product that's available 24-7. When you're sleeping it's still working.
Speaker 1:Now do the injections hurt?
Speaker 2:No, absolutely not. You get a shot of Novocaine? No, and it's used with a special tool called a trocar. They're slipped into the trocar cannula, they're placed under the skin. You get a large bandage over it. You're good as good.
Speaker 1:Now you know people may ask the question why is this better than taking a pill or a cream? What do you say?
Speaker 2:Oh, I've got a lot to say about that, unfortunately. Oh, I've got a lot to say about that, unfortunately. Patches, pills, creams give you a spike and then you come back down With pellets. It rises slowly, gives also have to make sure that it stays on you, not somebody else.
Speaker 1:It is easily transferable.
Speaker 2:If you do patches, you're going to look like you've got the five rings from the Olympics on your body.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's been known that you're going to look for your patch, you're going to shake out your towel and you're going to realize it's over there on your dog's nose. They're going to have a good day, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean, hey, good point, that makes sense. So you get the steady stream, even kill release when you do the pellets, versus using a cream, you know, versus doing a pill or a patch. That makes sense. I get that. That makes total sense and I can understand why people want the pellets instead of a cream or a patch or a pill. Now, how do you know the amount to give? Are you doing blood tests? How are you breaking that down?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and we have everyone do blood work beforehand because Dr T believed in the science of it. All you do blood work, you come into a consultation with the provider. That's been trained and we've trained all of our prior providers to dose conservatively, because that's how dr t was actually in the early 2000s, with the help of a wall street guy who took everything out of his brain, put it into a multi-patented dosing site that's online.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They go in, put in all the parameters, it'll give them a dose. Of course, they also have the ability to change it, because they're sitting there in front of the of the patient. They're hearing additional symptoms that we may not know about. So, pretty pretty simple. And even if we're seeing twins, those twins may not get the same dose.
Speaker 1:That's been known as a fact before. Well, that makes sense, that makes sense. I get that. That makes sense. So is there ever a concern of giving too much, and what do you do if that were to happen?
Speaker 2:Well, as I said, we've trained providers to go conservatively.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And all the females get estrogen and testosterone, because that's how we're built.
Speaker 2:When we were in our 30s, we were making 300 milligrams of testosterone a day. Okay, that's incredible. But for those and there are sadly some who are overdosing in testosterone nine times out of 10, the patient waits it out. Or there is somebody who'll say I need to get these out. And then it involves getting a sonogram trying to find them, locate them. It's a minor procedure of going in and extracting them. That's why it's better to give less and then you can always add in more. In the next couple of weeks we have them go again for blood work four to six weeks out. You can always get in more I love it.
Speaker 1:I mean um. In my practice I I have patients that may suffer some symptoms of low t. I'm talking about men, um, and you know um. I can make prescriptions, you know, injectables or that, like I said, the cream and things like that, but your delivering method, you know. Can you only have to do one injection twice a year if you're a male, as a man? Yeah, you know, and yet they'll get this steady state release. So this is extremely interesting and I think it's going to be very appealing to people, not only in my practice, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and think about it when you're doing the testosterone injection right. Are they doing lab work before each one?
Speaker 1:Oh well, in my practice definitely, in my practice Absolutely. But you know the?
Speaker 2:question is everybody else?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't know, right, I and I't know, and I agree with you on that. I'm very scientific in regards to making sure that I can quantify things as far as numbers and kind of measure things. I think that's very important, specifically in allopathic medicine, but I think that there are a lot of companies out there that don't do that and I'm just amazed. I mean, look, I'm looking at prostate help when it comes to males and testosterone.
Speaker 2:I mean that's the main reason we do the blood work first, because that PSA is going to show up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Men are not known to go to a doctor. I mean let's face it. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1:You're absolutely right. And then, when we talk about the prostate, one of the things we do in my practice is we do prostate MRIs. You know, I'm really big on that, I'm a big believer on that, because you'll have some patients who do not want to do a DRE or digital rectal exam or a manual exam, as some people know it. No, when you think about cancers, prostate cancer is the third leading cancer behind lung, and you know, actually it's the second leading cancer, you know, behind lung cancer. And then it goes lung prostate, then you have colon cancer and then you get in some of the other ones. But my concern here is that I think there are people out there that will prescribe testosterone and won't do any testing, and it's not balanced out.
Speaker 2:And that's scary to me? No, and that it is, and that's what really upsets me a lot. We've saved a lot of men from getting prostate cancer because we've noticed their PSA is too high. So we'll send them out. When they've been cleared by the doctor they can come back in and get testosterone.
Speaker 1:I love how you said that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is truly amazing that-.
Speaker 1:I'm a stickler about that. Yeah, I'm a stickler about that. Doing, you know, making sure that they're a good fit.
Speaker 2:And so are we. And if we feel it's not a good fit, we'll say you know you need to go home and think about this. Come back when you feel comfortable about getting your hormones and you can't spit in a bottle to find out where your hormone levels are. It's strictly a serum because of the FSH.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good point. Yeah, I feel the same way, and not just that. When it comes to concerns in women of breast cancer ovarian, uterine I'm looking at family history, we're doing the mammograms, we're doing breast ultrasounds, we're going through the appropriate process. Again, I'm a stickler there when it comes to preventive health, preventing cancer, anti-cancer, and obviously it sounds like you guys do some of the same things.
Speaker 2:We absolutely do. We want to know the whole story behind what's inside the body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.
Speaker 2:You have to, you have to it's like you can't go and get heart, liver, kidney medicine without doing blood work and having all the right tests done.
Speaker 1:So you're speaking my language. Hormones is the same way. Companies offer, um, you know, uh, hormone replacement, but know nothing about the biochemistry or do any of the um health maintenance exams that are required to keep people safe and healthy. So I love that you do that. I mean that's, that's everything. Um, love that. Um. One of the things I wanted to ask you, though, um is are you seeing side effects? Are there concerns with side effects with pellets, or how do you manage that?
Speaker 2:The only side effects we would see is if you had for a female, if she had, the precursor for cancer. It's going to show up Now to me. If that happened to me, I'd rather know when I was in my 50s or 60s rather than when I hit 80s. And we do have patients up into their 90s. And, as I said, for men, we have found that if you're young and you're, you've got a low testosterone but you still want to have children, this is not for you at all. So we've stopped a lot of men from coming in just to get the testosterone for the virility of it, in just to get the testosterone for the virility of it. No, because then it'll decrease their sperm and they won't be able to assist in helping with that baby.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. I love that you said that. What are some of the symptoms that people are coming to you with? You know they may know nothing about hormone replacement I mean, no, nothing about pellets but you know they're. You know, are they coming and saying that, hey, you know they have depressed mood or they feel anxious or they feel low energy. I mean, what are some of the complaints that you hear?
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, men and women are pretty much the same. We all start, uh, hormones start decreasing, sometimes now in our 30s, because of the diet that's out there and the food that we're eating and the stress in our lives. They're coming in because they can't think clearly anymore. They're coming in because they have no energy to get off the couch. They may not be able to sleep anymore. They've got a low libido. They're seeing bone loss when they've had to do a bone density test. They're seeing irritability, depression, mood swings. For women, the big one, hot flashes and night sweats. Mine were so bad that I was soaking the sheets every night. It was not a good thing.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow. I mean, I'm so intrigued by this conversation. I mean, everything that you're saying just resonates. I think this is awesome for physicians and clinicians that are hearing this podcast. What do you charge to instruct them to be able to do that?
Speaker 2:The fee for physician training can be anywhere from $1,800 if they want to do it online to $2,250 if they want to do it in person. We also have virtual training, which is basically you're sitting there but you're at your own desk, and that's a wonderful way to get trained as well. We also show them how to do the insertion. Now, we used to do a big two-day process of training. Dr T realized wait a minute, I'm taking you away from your practice where you make money, so I'm going to condense this for you. We do it in a one-day training and then we follow it up with different departments in our company of people who train on the dosing site, people who train about the marketing side as well. We have an entire back house we call our marketplace, which is where we've got tons of information. There's well over 1,200 articles now on pellets. We've got videos, educational items. Back there we have companies that we work with and we partnered with that I vetted that we share with our physicians as well.
Speaker 1:I think that's awesome. And at the end of the class are they getting a certificate?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, and then we provide those yearly as well because a lot of patients we've been doing this for so long. We've started the industry. I'm continuing my husband's legacy. We're the gold standard in the industry and people know to look for a Soto Peli office.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. This is so exciting. I mean, I think that you know there's going to be a lot of clinicians, doctors, that hear this, that want to find you and come get trained, and I'm going to ask you to share your handles and that information. At the end, a couple more questions I have for you. I'm wondering you know, when it comes to overall health, specifically your health and you know I talked to you about this behind the scenes, you know I wanted to see if you wouldn't mind sharing some of your tips. You know I have this acronym called MEDS Move, eat, drink, sleep and you know everyone I bring on the podcast. I like to ask them you know how they move, eat, drink, sleep for?
Speaker 1:their health and obviously, here we are. We're talking about pellet therapy and bioidentical hormones, but along with that, what do you do to keep you in optimal health?
Speaker 2:I walk every morning, I stretch.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I eat uh basically a keto diet. I do protein and vegetables, stay away from sugars and carbs. I make sure I get that sleep at night. I also uh take supplements that I know are important for me, and I'm big into the red light therapy.
Speaker 1:Awesome, love it. And now, what about? How do you hydrate? What's, what's? What are your keys on that? Tons of water, yeah.
Speaker 2:Tons of water, yeah, and I have a friend who's a trainer, who's incredible, and he really got me on this path years ago of taking care of my body. How you sit, how you stand, even looking at your cell phone, stop looking down. You put it up in front of you. There's a bunch of little tips and tricks that he has, um, that have really made a difference in my life wow, talk to us a little bit go ahead, go ahead I'm going to share with you. I I'm pushing 70.
Speaker 1:Wow, and yeah, that's what everyone says, and I love saying that because I like to see everybody's face.
Speaker 2:You like this people's reaction. You look great, thank you. People peg me for my 50s, so I'm pretty thrilled about that, and it's all because I take care of myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I do what's important.
Speaker 2:I love what you're saying. There's no shortcuts, and it's really important for me to make sure that my not only my mental, emotional and physical body are good, but my spiritual body and I'm constantly reading spiritual books as well- Now tell us about your sleep.
Speaker 1:All right, and I want to. I want to ask you about your sleep because that's that's the last part of the meds acronym move, eat, drink, sleep. I want to ask you about that. And then I want to ask you about how does pell, can pellet therapy, help with sleep.
Speaker 2:Well, the testosterone is what helps you sleep. You know testosterone and estrogen are great for brain health because the brain has thousands of receptors and it's wonderful for brain function and that's something we're studying now about truly how much. I mean, we know this, but we want to actually see it in action for cognitive and brain health function. So I always go to sleep about the same time. I make it a habit that my body knows I like to read before I go to bed. It kind of slows me down and try to get in at least seven hours a night.
Speaker 1:Love it. That's your number Seven hours. I love it, mine's nine. I need about nine hours, I wish.
Speaker 1:I had nine you know, and then I can go all day. I have all day energy. Now that's awesome, all right. Look, I can go all day. I have all day energy. Now that's, that's awesome, all right, look, I, I, you, I have to have you back on. I mean I love talking to you, you're easy conversation and I've learned so much. I mean, it's so exciting. You know about what you said, I'm going to have to come and come to Arizona and come to the training myself. I thought that was. I think this was very, very informative. People are going to have a lot of questions, and I definitely would like to do a part two with you, because I think there's more that we can talk about. When it comes to pellet therapy, can you tell us where people can find you?
Speaker 2:They can find us. Well, soda Pelli is Italian for under the skin, and unfortunately we don't have SodaPellicom, because that's a rock band in Italy. I'm not sure why. Maybe their music gets under your skin. I couldn't really tell you.
Speaker 1:But it gets under the skin.
Speaker 2:Soda Pelli Therapy. It's S-O-T-T-O-P as in Peter E-L-L-E therapycom and we also have that as hash uh in Instagram and Facebook and I'm catitude with cat.
Speaker 1:Love it my initials are cat. Love it. Well, look, thank you for being on the show. This is awesome. I got to have you back on for a part two cause there's so much more to talk about. Um, you guys download, uh, the concert doc podcast, the Concert Talk Podcast. You know where to find me on Apple, spotify, amazon. You know YouTube. I can't wait to talk with you guys. Again, thank you for watching the show.
