Project Elivate Podcast Ep. 7: Our Personal Health Journeys

Welcome to project Elivate, where we will discuss all things related to health, hormones, aesthetics, and longevity. The topics discussed are the opinions of Olivia Stivers nurse practitioner. They're not intended to diagnose or treat any of these conditions. If you have any questions or concerns, reach out to your provider or see us at Elivate. 

Let's get to the show. Back to the Project Elivate podcast. This is episode number seven, and today we're just kind of veering off a little bit. Gonna shift and talk about our personal journeys. As far as like, what we do to optimize your health. We did talk about health optimization, what those pillars look like, but more specifically, like, how what we do and how it's impacted us in a positive way. So I'm excited about this one.

I am too. I just think it's nice to kind of not be so professional all the time. It's good to hit everybody with the facts, but I think it's also important to just share, like, our personal journey you're correlating with what you're doing with a person in their life, exactly. So how did you start your day? My day this morning. That's how we always open. Yeah.

Well, I woke up this morning. I'm really excited, because I just I bought a peloton treadmill from, actually, one of our friends, slash patients, and it took me about a month to get this thing going. We moved it, and we couldn't figure out what was wrong like, I changed the switch out. I changed the reset switch out. We unplugged everything 18 million times the other night, I sat there. I was done messing with it. I was like, You know what? I gotta walk away. I'm done. Went up to the house. Chad's in the gym. He texts me, “Treadmills working.” So, yeah, I've been motivated to get out there. It's neat. It has Netflix on it. Like, I can just sit there and warm up and like, yeah. So I was like, I'm excited. I've worked out this morning before I came here. 

So the peloton, do you have buy the programs to do with it? 

No, you don't have to. I chose to because it's got, like, some really cool games and stuff on there. I don't do HIIT obviously, but like, it's got, like, nature walks and, like, I can put my little treadmill at night through, this morning, I was in the mountains in Alaska, so I'm like, if you pay that much for a treadmill, you might as well just go ahead and use it. 

How much is it? 

Like $24 a month. 

Oh, I didn't think. I didn't know that. I thought it was more than that. Okay, that's not bad.

So what'd you do? 

Oh, I just woke up!

But you're going to gym?

Yeah, oh yeah, heck yeah. We're starting like we're dressed for success. For those who can't see me, I am in my pizza planet shirt and my butt scrunch booty legging. It's a leg day. So pray for me that these don't bust like the other ones. We were just talking about that this morning, I was like, adventure so far in the gym, but especially, please, I'm not well endowed. We're trying to grow. But I don't think that's the problem. They're not too tight either. Mama, just in case you're listening, I think it's just like, where the fabric comes together, sets you up for time and opportunity. I was telling her, literally this one morning, I was doing a leg press, and then I just heard like, it was like a ricochet effect. And I just sat there, and I'm just like, What am I going to do? Because I work out at Planet Fitness, and it's predominantly like young teenage boys, and I'm like, either you're gonna get a free peep show, or hopefully she's holding on by some threads that saved my life. A woman walked by, grabbed her, and then I did it another time, like now that one straight up just butt came out. So whoever was walking by, was just surprised. Yeah, but I was doing a squat on the Smith Machine, and it just, I just felt a breeze and I sat down. That was it.

You need to start wearing a long sleeve, t-shirt or something jacket to the gym, around your waist. 

For that very reason. I have now had PTSD twice.

You're not gonna get the third time. What about the other day. Well, no, your adventure to the gym after coming back from the flu, but listen sometimes, the Lord tries to tell you just to be lazy and I believe that’s what that was. 

My headphones broke, internet went out, and my period started. I didn’t have underwear on.

I just texted her, “I'm just going home.” I did finish my work out the next day. Yeah, listen, we made it up for oh gosh, which leads us in today's topic. 

Okay, so tell me about why? Tell me about your fitness journey, or why you got started on this path with fitness, hormones, all these things. Tell me about that. Like, I've never asked to hear your story. I've heard pieces, but I've never heard it. 

Well, it's not, I don't think that it's anything like remarkable.

But it's remarkable for you. Yeah? 

It definitely, yeah. I would say that my health now, like I'm 36 years old, how I feel and my health now is 10 times better than it was even in my 20s. And I'm very proud to say that. And so I guess on the first episode, we talked about how I have always been pretty active. I did sports growing up, I was a gymnast and competitive cheerleader. I had brothers that were in the gym, or a brother that was in the gym, so I kind of got into this, and so I was always active. When I was in my 20s, I started having my kids, so that was a stressful time. I mean, we had three kids, back to back to back. The first one wasn't exactly planned, and that's no secret, but it forced us to grow up, and we got married and got our jobs and things just it was a very hard time, financially, stress, I mean, the stress was just insane. By the time I had my third child, I decided that was when I decided to go into nurse practitioner school, and so again, I didn't really have time. I was either pregnant or breastfeeding for like, five or six years straight. I mean, it was like my body was not my own. We were in spin cycle mode very rarely. I mean, I'm an open book. Trying to have sex was difficult. I mean, trying to really connect with my husband was difficult. My libido was smashed. Yeah, libido was smashed. Busy with the kids we never knew who was going to wake up. I mean, there's a lot of things that impacted that and I have to say, My husband is fantastic, like the cream of the crop. Chad, if you're listening to this, don't get a big head, but it's true. Shameless plug. Yeah, I feel it, but I did feel like, as a wife, I'm like, man, he is handsome. There's nothing wrong with him, but why can't I get myself to a point where I can relax enough to actually enjoy intimacy again? And I was, like, 27/28 years old, and I kept thinking that something was wrong with me, something's wrong, something's wrong. I always contributed it to stress I was, I was working in the hospital at the time too, day shift, night shift, weekends, holidays. I mean, you know, three kids, yeah, all the things I can only imagine how much stress that is. I remained active. I was strength training. Still. I met up with my coach at that time and was like, hey, I want to try body building. Then I threw bodybuilding in on top of that, sure, yeah. So I was like, well, maybe this will be, like, that extra discipline that I need. It was great. I learned how to definitely, and then I learned how to eat and balance my meals through that. But even going through that, by the time I had decided I was done competing again. My libido never came back, and that was the biggest thing for me. I'm like, This is not right. I'm too young for this. Yeah, I started looking into it, and that's when hormone replacement therapy kind of came to that's what tricked me. I was also working. I was a nurse practitioner at this time. I was working in primary care. I also knew that I felt like I was still in this cycle of like, Oh, you have an ill, here's your pill. Ill, here's your pill. And I was treating chronic disease, and I knew that I didn't want to be like that I needed. What did you say the other day? It was like, it wasn't like not enjoying. It's not that I didn't enjoy my job, but it was that it lacked. It's not a pleasurable thing. I'm not excited to constantly be trying to chase my tail with disease. I wanted to get on the other side of it. And hormone replacement therapy wasn't anything new. There was a lot of fear-mongering that went into it, and I was one of those providers at the time that was like, hey, testosterone is bad. It does this. It causes blood clots, it makes people angry, there’s a thing called roid rage, on and on, like, I literally was a contributor to the myths that go around where hormones cause cancer.

I'm glad you're admitting that, though. 

Chad at the time, was like, I think I need testosterone. Well, I told him, I'm like, your testosterone is like 400 I'm like, No, you don't. No, you don't. You're within range. Yeah, you're within range. I hear it all the time, yeah, but it took me finally realizing that, like I'm a nurse practitioner, I can't even get myself better. I'm not really getting much better. What am I doing? On trying to break down that conformation bias that I had developed was hard looking at things from point like there's a better way punch for me. Yeah, it was, but I'm so glad that I got there, because eventually I was like, I'm going to try this myself. And I did, and it's made a huge difference in my energy levels. I'm better. Obviously, I'm a better wife because of intimacy with with Chad has been restored. I think people fail to realize how much intimacy is a critical part of your marriage, having that connection and things like that. 

Yeah, I do. I'm not married personally, but I do hear it in my patients and like, I mean, I'm a woman that tries to have relationships like, I understand, you know, the value of what you're saying too, and I think it's interesting that you it's different  to sit here and read literature, and yes, I think you should always be educated. But when your personal story of success and you have physically felt the difference that it makes, that is what drives that passion for why you're there. 

Yeah, because you have, like, you've even said this to me right, where I wish I could know what it feels like to be, you know, I'm saying in such a severe discombobulation later and things like that with me. And I'm like, I wish that every day for my patients, like, I wish I could take just my heart, my soul, put it in their body, and be like, Yes, I am not perfect. I do not feel absolutely 100% all the time. But let me show you what I felt like, yeah, oh, my god, yeah. And it's like, I would wish that for anyone, yeah. Like, if I could be like, the Lord and just put hands on me, I would like, just let me give you some of this energy. I think that's like, HRT does make a difference. 

And I think that's a misunderstanding, especially when you need it yes, when you truly need it. 

Yeah. And it's not always, want to be clear again, I was strength training. I learned how to eat. I was always tracking my food. I just, it wasn't getting me over that hump, and I couldn't figure it out until I started doing HRT, I've been on pellets. My story is, I've been on pellets. I've never done injections. It's not that, we obviously prescribe injections. I'm not against them at all. I just want the convenience factor, and it works well for me with my life now, in your case, so she started on, on injections.

Yeah, so I actually came to her, thankfully. I was not around anybody prior to that, stigmatized hormones for me, thankfully, and I think that's the Lord. I think the Lord creates our paths and ways. It was not really discussed much, and I had done a clinical rotation for quite a while at a another clinic and that was not their bread and butter, but they dabbled in it. So it just kind of prompted me to do some research on it. I think we talked about this in my podcast. When I was talking about my history. I had gone to see Stephanie Brady. She’s an injector that we have associated and trained with and she was like, you know, she was like, I have a friend of mine, she's starting down this path of like, opening up her own clinic and things like that. And I have been discussing personal things with her too. But the HRT aspect of it. Half of it was I had no libido, birth control, yeah, my entire life. Let’s just be honest, pretty much from the first time I cycled til the time I was a 30-year-old woman, and then I came to her, and I was just like, I'd rather take a nap. I have no desire whatsoever. And am I crazy? Like, that's what I felt like. I had no energy, I had fatigue. And then we did other things as well. We ultimately, I was already eating. I had learned how to eat, I was dieting, I had already lost 100 pounds. I was in the gym. I was building muscle mass. I was feeding appropriately. I was counting macros. I was doing whole grains complex like I was I was shopping the corner of my market. But my hormones were still in disarray, non-existent, pretty much, which was possibly due to a long-term use of birth control, which birth control is not a bioidentical hormone. We are not getting a true hormone. I did not know that. That's where education came in. So we started on injections. I did feel a little better. I think we were optimizing my thyroid, those things in and I do tell this to my patients in any way, shape, or form, I was on testosterone injections, I want to say for a year. Yeah, it was a year. It was for a year. The moment she put that pill, I wrote her, and I was like, I'm a fat kid at heart still, and I do not like to run, but put me in a marathon. Like, that's where I was at. And I even, don't tell her, like my libido greatly improved. We had to go on Amazon. Like, that might be TMI, but let's be honest here. We're all grown adults, and that is something that we hear all the time, is people have no libido. They're not enjoying their partner. They have, they've lost their quality of life, vitality, yeah, I mean, gone, yes, and then, and I think too. And I don't know if it's just me, food for thought, and I am just kind of throwing information out there, because I have Hashimotos, and I have a lot of eczema. I have asthma, have a dog walk by me, I'm unhappy for three days for real, but I tell people, I think I do so well with pellets, because it is bioidentical, versus giving me something synthetic. So each person's relationship with how they respond to those medications is different, but I joke with her all the time. If I'm in a, if I'm in a, if I'm in a retirement home, you better sneak in and shut the door and stab me in the butt with a pellet, because I'm trying to go to my grave with one.

Don't you worry. Yeah, I got you. I'm going down before you. We have got to train Morgan, like Morgan, you got to wiggle this thing, but like, I enjoy my life so much More. I tell people all the time, like I will never stop hormones. No, I will not either. I will not. And it's not like I wasn't doing the appropriate things. Like people always want to say, diet and lifestyle, Yes, oh my god, obviously I can. I mean, there's no surpassing that I could not have gotten to the extent that I was with my mood and my stability and my anger and my rage and all that, had it not been for gym and Fitness and Lifestyle, yeah, but I cannot correct my hormones, or I cannot correct my hormones through diet and exercise alone. And you have two people coming from the very opposite ends of the spectrum, and I think that's what makes this such a powerful podcast, is because you have someone who has been fit their entire life, that was still going through hormonal dysregulation, and then you had someone who was 275 pounds trying to create a whole new life in learning fitness and health. And I did make those changes, but I still was not optimized, right? Big difference. I think that's what that's where this passion and this drive come from when we talk to our patients about the extent of our ability, and there is so much information out there, please do not get me wrong.

Yeah, there's no shortage of information. It's trying to decide which information is correct. Yes, and can through evidence based so how are they looking for, and what should they look at?

So I read a lot PubMed, a whole lot of PubMed, we're giving you homework. Yeah. I mean, pubmed.gov, I probably said this on a previous podcast too, but the best studies are going to be the randomized control trials. You can put a filter on those. You can put it, you know, research in the past years, like pops up. You can also, like, peer review journal to those are bunch of these risk profiles,and they put in their conclusions at the end. So they've taken, like, a massive, mass amount of studies, yeah, and this is the commonality between all of these studies. So it's been proven time and time again. 

Similar to what did you take a resource, a research course? 

Okay, so I did too, and we had to, we have to write the offers. Yeah, you had, actually, you had the opportunity to publish these if you wanted to. But what we did was we went on to these credible sites. Not web MD, no, not Wikipedia, not your, I mean, friendly neighborhood, Spider Man, right?

Legitimate articles and randomized control trials, studies that have been done, and then you write your own paper and your thesis. So anyway, that's where I would say you start if you're trying to do some homework. And listen, I have, I have all kinds of literature. If you, if you really want to know, I'll be glad to go over those with you. There's books I would recommend that you read, and that might be a podcast. Is what would we recommend patients read for the best, for the best based practices or and we're still building our own little library here. We pray to have like a little library of books that we bring together, and we helped only grow that Like honestly, and that's the one thing I wanted to share, too, is like, you guys, listen, I have to do this. I do not have to. I could have stayed a Nurse Practioner in a traditional model. Yeah, I see insurance. You got retirement, the works, but it wasn't fulfilling to me, and I wasn't, I don't feel like I was making a difference. I chose to open a practice in my hometown, risking, you know, people, people slandering their name, patients not getting results. Financially, I'm risking it. This was a huge risk for me, but I saw that the benefits outweigh those risks, that the ability to have an impact, a positive impact, on the lives of those around me drove not I want to say me, I guess it's what sparked this interest and then and then that drew the appropriate people into my team. So I'm not out here, please believe if I didn’t believe in what I did, I certainly wouldn't be doing it. My husband wouldn't be doing it. My mother in law, my mother, my brothers, my best friends, my staff. Like I would definitely, if I thought that what we were doing caused harm, you think that I'm going to put that inside of me and, we try to show people like, literally ourselves, like I would never ask something, and that's something I've said, Come to me, I would never ask anything of anyone, that I would not do to myself, point blank, period. If I can do it, you can do it. We are coming from two different backgrounds too. I'm just a single white female out here living my best life. You know what I'm saying.

But it's just like, there's still, there's still opportunity to be had, and there's still; we are coming from two different walks of life. If we have seen improvement in ourselves, we only want to see that with you. And it's like she said, there's a pill, there's a problem. I learned so quickly. I have been a nurse practitioner in primary care, but I have been a bedside nurse for many years, and it's something like, I dope all the time. I had a patient yesterday, and she was like, I watched your little video where you, like, slung all your supplements in. And she was like, I was just kind of cracking up. And I'm like, I would rather pop a million supplements if it keeps me away from being tied to a Walmart bag that I have to this one makes me sure my heart Don't stop. This will make sure my cholesterol don't get to high. This will make sure that my my toe ain't getting cut off. Like, I mean, who wants to, who wants to be tied to that? And there is over supplementation, that's a whole other concept, but it's just we have a passion for what we do, and that's why we do it. My first priority is to do no harm, right? Like I'm not. Never do I have an intention to cause anybody harm. I do research these things on my own as well. 

She's a very I use Olivia as a resource, and I hope patients understand we're always communicating about our patient thing. We ask people, and then it's like, what am I doing here for somebody. And then as soon as she walked in, she was like, “I feel amazing!” and I was like “Oh, You do?” And that was kind of cool, and this is strictly a dietary patient.

She was here for, like, nutrition counseling, and she was like, “I love how my kids are I have changed my diet. I have done things to supplement with exercise, for taking out processed food.” And like I said, those are the building blocks. And now she's looking into hormone replacement therapy, because she was like, “I feel amazing. What you've done is help me. What can we do to further this along?” So are we giving research, given information, and that's that's kind of the goal I want. I want you, to build a foundation. 

And then exactly, and this, for me, it kind of also ties back into my faith. I just believe, I believe that God wants us to live a life and live it abundantly. I mean, He says that if we're reading the Bible and He's talking about, He is talking about Jesus, and for those that are saved, you know, if we believe that Christ is our Savior, we should be able to we believe in the gospel, we should be able to spread the gospel, but we cannot do that if we ourselves the vessel that God has given us, isn't strong and healthy and vibrant, like who wants to sit there and listen to a financial advisor that's broke. I want to know like you feel what drives you to feel good? Well, you know, I'm grateful for the body that God gave me. I just want to take good care of it. Yeah? Period. It’s the temple. Yeah, to take care of Yeah. I saw a guy the other day. I was sitting in a Bullitt Blends in Shepherdsville. And so that's right next door to Planet Fitness, okay? And I see this guy walk out, and he's, he is a paraplegic, so he, I'm sorry. He rolled out. He rolled out.

He walked out to me, if his wheels, his wheels is his legs, 

I'll save you. I got you.

So he rolls out his car. He gets out, he he opens his trunk, throws the wheelchair, closes. It gets like, crawls into the vehicle and shuts door, and he came out of Planet Fitness. I'm like, Okay, listen, okay, there's no excuse. 

I think I shared, when I saw a semi with weights on the side of the truck. He’s in his truck like, 10/12, hours, but and he's like, I gotta do something. Yes, I already know this man's story. This was just a drive by, but it's very inspiring, and that's what we're here to do, is to inspire just through, I think, when people see us and they see our body, and they hear that, and they see how enjoyable we are, they're just like, I wanted that to be me. Yes, we're right. I mean, for I have my bad days, just like she does, but for the most part, are you a happy person? Oh my gosh, yeah. And I feel so good that I'm so motivated to work on myself that I don't have time, and I don't have time to tear anybody else down. No,

Sure don't. If someone, if you have to demoralize the next person in order to be successful, where's your success? All we can do is educate and stay objective. Stay objective and try to give you the best insight possible. Very much. So our cameraman is a little sick, so if you hear a little sniffle or sneeze, Godspeed that we are back here.

So I guess we've gotten to this segment of our with or without it again, this podcast, well, kind of talked a little bit about peptides before, but we've just mainly the ones that are geared towards, quote, weight loss. How about the ones that help us to put on muscle mass, so that the ones that we love to couple with syllable HRT, and I, personally, like my two favorite are going to be CJC and ipomoralin, which is no longer available, unfortunately. So now we have a whole time called sarcotropin. 

So why did they take it away from us too? Just, just so people understand that we're not just taking it away. It was money. Yeah, yeah, just, it's just money. Yeah, any risk factors associated with it's just perfectly clear, because I don't want that to be misconstrued anymore. 

It was simply finances. Government wants to have some way to monopolize the situation, and they cannot monopolize that, so they objectively too it away, yeah. So that was, that was one of my favorite ones. But then now, we can lean on sarcotropin. And sarcotropin is what we call a medical food but it's essentially peptide, and it's a growth hormone releasing peptide, or growth hormone peptide with a growth hormone releasing peptide together. Take it at night time. Growth Hormone in combination with testosterone helps maintain lean muscle mass, bone density. It also promotes really good sleep, which we obviously talked about is important for our health. So I am with stock open 100%

I mean, I'm already on it too. We are doing it because I'm finishing my CJC. Oh, me too, yeah. So that will be and we talked about that, like together, and I think, yeah, that was just better.

Yeah. So if you have questions, let us know. And I hope this was helpful.