Episode #1 - The Beginning of The Happy Hormone Cottage

Lyn Hogrefe, MS Ed, is the founder and executive director of the Happy Hormone Cottage. In this episode Lyn talks through how she started The Happy Hormone Cottage & how the business has grown & thrived for 13 years. 

***Although our HHC has a telemedicine license to easily service clients in Ohio and Florida, we can also work with clients who live out of state as long as they come and visit us in person annually. Our goal in publishing this podcast nationally is for the educational value contained within. Education is key!***

Transcript

Pam: [00:00:00] Joan Rivers said about age, it's the one mountain you can't
overcome. So you might as well embrace it, deal with it, and live your best life
moving forward. So how do we do that? Hello, my name is Pam Gross and
today we are going to talk about how all of us can have a good quality of life as
we get older.
In our younger years, our hormones are in perfect balance and we feel great.
Unfortunately, as we get older, our hormones get out of balance and our quality
of life diminishes. Remember, this doesn't just affect women. Men also
experience life and aging changes. I think all of us desire optimal health, and we
want to age gracefully.
We can keep doing things the same way, or we can take a different path. There
is a new way to approach your concerns, and that's what we are going to talk
[00:01:00] about today. So, let our journey begin. Let's meet Lyn Hogrefe,
founder and executive director of the Happy Hormone Cottage. Welcome,
Lyn. Tell us your story, and what is the Happy Hormone Cottage, and how did
it start?
Lyn: Great. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. The
Happy Hormone Cottage started in 2009. Actually the seed of it began in 2004
when I had a radical hysterectomy. I had a fibroid tumor that I named Bob. And
you know, two pounds is pretty large, right? And um, fibroid tumors are not
cancerous.
They're just annoying as heck and it was in my uterus. I was teaching inner city
sixth grade and bleeding quite heavily, as you can imagine, not a great Fit with
sixth grader . Yeah. Active sixth graders. So anyway, I hung on as long as I
killed till the end of the school year and went in to have surgery, radical
hysterectomy, right before surgery.
My, my wonderful OBGYN, whom I loved, said, "okay, Lyn ovaries in ovaries
out?", and I did not know. Then in 2004, that ovaries are little hormone factories. I
mean, how no [00:02:00] one was talking about it. How, how would I have
known that? But Gilda Radner had just died. You remember? Gilda Radner,  from SNL, she had just died of ovarian cancer.
And they called it the silent killer and I'm Irish. So I either worry or drink and
I prefer to worry, frankly. So I thought, Oh God, take them out, take my ovaries.
I don't want ovarian cancer. So went into surgery, came out of surgery without
my ovaries and hysterectomy. And my husband, Jeff, who at that point was a
pharmacist at a big box store, thought to himself, Oh my God, what has
happened because he saw all of his women coming in every month as a
pharmacist for their hormone drugs.
And they were all kind of, in his words, irritable, and moody, and cranky, and
kind of chubby, and didn't want sex with her husband. And he thought, oh my,
he's nine years younger than me, you can imagine the horror. He, uh, said, oh
my God, not on my watch. So he flew to Houston, Texas to become a
compounding pharmacist.
And I went back to my doctor in eight or ten weeks for my little after surgery
checkup. I sat there with my little 15 minute copay, and Jeff had his lab coat,
Jeff RPH, and Dr. Frank had his lab coat, and he's retired now, [00:03:00] but
Dr. Frank OBGYN, and I sat there listening to like a tennis match, my head
going back and forth, not being a part of the conversation, and at the end of the
15 minutes, Dr.
Frank said to my husband Jeff, Okay, Jeff, your wife, your cause, I'll sign this
prescription for compounded bioidentical hormone therapy for you and we left
on a merry way. So had Jeff not been there to advocate for me, man to man and
profession to profession, I don't think I would have gotten permission to use this
brand newfangled therapy in his opinion or his mind.
Jeff went back to a friend's compounding lab and whipped up my bioidentical
hormone creams from plant based powders and I Began to use these amazing
creams and went back to teaching that fall and I had energy I didn't gain the
requisite 40 pounds after surgery. I still had libido. I had vitality and energy I
mean and I was running circles around all my teacher friends who were in their
mid 30s and I thought oh my god I'm on to something and no one knows about
it.
So I finished teaching in 2007 my 30 years and immersed myself in this world
of hormones and [00:04:00] Decided in 2009, you know what, I'm going to
open a place that women can come and talk about their story and I can educate

them. Because what I've discovered and why we're popular is that hormone
health is not taught in medical school.
Doctors have said to me for 13 years now, Lyn, I've had four hours of hormone
education in medical school. Four hours. And then they might add, I've had
none on nutrition and none on supplements. So if you think about that for a
moment, I feel like with aging women and aging, I identify as beyond age 35,
actually, when you have women who are 35 and beyond, and their beloved
doctors have no real, no knowledge of hormone issues, supplementation and
nutrition, we're kind of a country of disease in aging women.
And so, 2009 happened, and I was talking to women in Centerville, Ohio, and
one of my friends owned a boutique, and she heard me talking, she goes, You
know, I've got this little teeny limestone building out back, I want you to look at
it, you should open up this as an office and talk to women. So we went out
behind her little boutique, and [00:05:00] it was literally a limestone building
built 1800s.
So, in the heart of Centerville, I examined it, and she said, could you work out
of here and talk to women? We examined it. There were squirrels inside. It was
just limestone, really old. We opened the door. There was a little upstairs loft
and found out that he used, Nathan, um, Lincoln used to make coffins out of it
for teeny little people apparently because it wasn't very big, right?
And so we, um, you know, to make a, a building like that with no electricity or
running water into a business, I had to sweet talk the men in city council. Now,
I don't know how city council is where you are, but it was quite interesting. And
I, Bribed him with a lot of brownies and cookies and conversation and got the
building up to code as much as I could and August 21st of 2009 opened up my
little building.
We named it the Happy Hormone Cottage. Why? You're not gonna forget it,
right? It's a name you're gonna hate or love, but you're not gonna forget it.
Smart, huh? We opened up the building and it's, we talked to women and
women showed up and kind of the rest is history. I mean, it just exploded. What
is the Happy Hormone [00:06:00] Cottage?
It's actually a place women can come To be heard and validated, educated and
empowered for their best health naturally in the arena of hormones. And it's just
been an incredible journey. I mean, I didn't have a business plan. I didn't really
care if I made money because I just wanted to talk to women. I come from a
world of smart boards and chalk.

I mean, I had a little laptop and I put in a little light bulb with 15 watts of
power. I had a little teeny air conditioner. There was no running water, no
electricity, no other electricity and no bathroom. So, I mean, we had to spend a
lot of time at Panera right next door. But anyway. Women just found that it
resonated with them, and I feel the niche between what our doctors don't know,
God love them, and the truth.
And in the last 13 years, we've gone from this little teeny limestone cottage that
had squirrels living in it, to an actual viable business and a medical facility. So
then about two years, I moved to a building that did, like this building here, that
did have electricity and running water and restrooms, and I brought in laptops
and computers, and databases and hired really smart people to do all of that.
It's just been amazing. We had the demand [00:07:00] grow so much we had to
open several of the Happy Hormone Cottage locations. And so today we have
our own medical facility and center brick and mortar in Centerville called the
Integrative Hormone Center and Pharmacy with our own on site compounding
lab, our own line of supplements, five nurse practitioners, a medical director,
my husband Jeff who's a compounding pharmacist and functionally medicine
trained.
I mean you couldn't have believed it when I opened and it was just. It was just
unbelievable. And I think I just filled a niche and I just grew organically and
authentically because I just happened to fill a niche. So that's how it started.
And that's my story. And it's just, I wrote a book called own your journey.
There's no one would have ever believed what had, what has happened if I
wouldn't have written it down, you know? So, yeah. One of the things
Pam: you hit on was the fact that it grew so quickly and that there was such a
demand for it. Because if you really think about it, I think most people, if they,
they're given a choice, they want to understand what's happening with their
body and things like that.
And I think you touched upon it when you said that most of our doctors really
haven' had the training [00:08:00] in a lot of this. And so there's not a lot of
discussions and true exploration of what's kind of going on. Like I said, I think
most of us, given the choice, we don't really want to be what I would call pilled
up.
We want to understand what's going on. And it was interesting because you did
say about age 35, because everything I was reading about this, it does seem that

when we hit the age of 35, that things do begin to change and that change in that
quote aging kind of throws us off balance. And I know even for me personally,
that kind of started around that age and you start getting a little more tired and
you really just kind of want to understand.
So I want to backtrack because one of the things that you mentioned was
bioidentical hormone. This is so easy to say bio bioidentical hormone.
Replacement therapy. Explain to me what that is. And then let's talk about why
it's so important. [00:09:00] Because one of the things that I love about your
website and also about your company in general is your motto, get tested, get
treated and then get better.
So kind of walk us through all of
Lyn: that. HRT, if you can kind of visualize the letters HRT in your brain
stands for hormone replacement therapy. Okay. And up until about 2002 when
this big study came out. Doctors would use these drugs masking as hormones
for help women with hot flashes and brain fog and all of their complaints.
Well, in 2002, a study came out that showed that these drugs weren't, weren't
really doing women any favors. They were actually causing some issues like
potentially cancer. So most of the prescriptions for these drugs sort of dried up.
They're still prescribed today if we allow it to happen as women, but most of the
GYNs simply don't use those, they just don't use those, and so then, so women
are just taken off this drug therapy and left to kind of suffer and miserable for, I
mean, maybe your mother would have gone through this, it's been 20 years, but
The horror stories, my mother in law, the horror stories that have just taken off
and all of [00:10:00] a sudden you left that to dry.
It wasn't just my mom.
Pam: It was women in general, because I remember just going to my OB GYN,
who by the way, I absolutely adore. But the truth is, is when I would mention
things or asked him about, you know, the hormone things, quite frankly, he was
rather
Lyn: dismissive of it. Absolutely. And because it has been given a bad rap.
And even still today, interestingly enough, Doctors who aren't in the know
exactly still think of the hormone therapy as that old time school, 2002 and
before therapy. And that simply isn't the truth. And so that gave rise to what we

call bioidentical hormone therapy, which is BHRT, which actually, we make it
in our company lab for the individual women based on really great testing.
OBGYN,
They might just use B H R T, but it's one size fits most, and it may or may not
be based on any kind of testing or blood work. Many times it's just they get a
sample from their drug rep. Maybe they'll give you estradiol or a pill or a gel or
a spray or a [00:11:00] patch. You've heard the estrogen patch. Not a bad
therapy.
It's just often given out without any kind of testing. Maybe a little blood work
where you get a number and it's always one size fits most. So we have taken
that one step further and we actually do a great testing. I can get into this more
later, but we get a 15 page report back on every woman's hormones and cortisol,
and with that information, after an hour appointment or so, the nurse
practitioner and the patient will have a conversation, and we can create a recipe
for each woman to replace hormones that are leaving her body because she's
over 35.
And at 35, what happens, to answer your question, Our ovaries begin to get
older, we become a high risk pregnancy, our ovaries just begin to make less
progesterone, our progesterone receptors in our body begin to deplete slowly,
it's very sneaky. So by the time you're in your early 40s, you wake up one day
and you say, oh my god, I just don't feel like myself, I don't know what's
happened to me.
[00:12:00]
35ish. And now you're, my magic number is 42. I adore 42 year olds. Oh my
God, they're hilarious. I mean, to me, they're, they're just, I can help them so
much. I get so excited to talk with them because that's their age. Then they're
thinking to themselves, Oh my gosh, where did my life go? You know? And so
this is where they go to their doctor and their doctor often will say, I hear it
every day.
Even I heard this this week. I'm sorry, you're just getting older. Can you go
home and walk your dog and get your mind off of it? Or it's just in your head.
There's nothing we can do for you. Or they'll say, well, if you're depressed or
anxious, how about an antidepressant or SSRI like Prozac? And I'm thinking as
I begin to twitch to myself, but you're not Prozac deficient.

It's a hormone imbalance and no one knows about it. What we do is we want to
find and fix the root cause. I'll say it again. We want to find and fix the root
cause. We don't want to drug you. We don't want to give you Ambien for sleep.
We don't want to give you an SSRI because we just want to actually give you
the hormones that you need to help eradicate the [00:13:00] issues and bring
you back to your full joy of life again and a higher quality of life.
Pam: And I'm glad you said that about basically one size doesn't fit all. Right.
Because I think that is kind of, at this point in time, what a lot of doctors think.
The truth is, is that what may work for one person doesn't necessarily work for
another. And that's why I think the analysis is so important because we are all
individuals.
What works for one may not work for the other. So I like the idea that you
mentioned, look, this isn't one size fits all. This is an individualized program.
You come in, you get tested and then you can see what isn't quite working or
what isn't quite in balance. Lyn, one of the things that resonated with me was
when you said That you don't feel quite like yourself because I can speak
personally, that's exactly how I felt.
And in my case, it was in my mid 40s. It was literally you wake up and you look
at yourself and you're like, Oh my God, where did that come from? What is
that? And why don't I feel like my [00:14:00] normal? I don't feel like me right
and I that was why when you said that I was like, oh my god, I could so relate to
that Yeah,
Lyn: I know and you know, I think that when you're in your late 30s, you think
this is gonna I'll feel better tomorrow It's just a phase.
It's just a headache. It's just I have energy today, but it doesn't go away. It
doesn't get better It really does that and so then you waste all these years of your
life hoping and wishing and getting more miserable And if we do nothing about
it Today's the best day you're ever going to have. Yeah. You have to fix it.
So, and if you don't go to, if you go to your doctor and they offer you birth
control, which is apparently the end all be all for all things, non demand to get
to care everything apparently, or you don't want to go on the SSRIs or drugs,
you know, really we're at a loss. So that's why I, I'm so glad that I was able to
kind of be courageous enough to open up a place that had never been heard of
and just talk to women and just authentically hear their story and validate them
and say that you're not crazy.

It's not in your head. There is an issue it's called aging and it's a hormone
imbalance. And here's how we can help you if you so choose There's no
pressure to continue on [00:15:00] with us, but I like educating women. I'm an
educator So letting them know what's happening is a natural normal part of life
And how we can help them repair that because here's the truth if you think back
to 150 years ago think about the show 1880 my one of my favorite shows that I
just finished watching a couple months ago If, at this age, women would be
dead by now.
I mean, they died of childbirth, or pestilence, or starvation, or wild animal
attacks. I mean, think about it. Crossing the Oregon Trail, they didn't live to be
that old, right? And now we're living into our 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. Oh my
God. You've got to have hormones to go the distance, because hormones play a
lot of really important jobs in your body.
Pam: And I'm glad you said that. So I do want to go back for one moment to
the bio, to the actual hormone therapy itself. Sure. Because these are artificial
hormones, but they are similar, right to natural hormones. Um,
Lyn: they're actually hormones that we make from plant based powder. That's
what I was going to get chemically.
They're plant based. They're plant based. They actually mimic each person's
bioidentical hormones in their body. to make [00:16:00] the match so that it's
not, it's not going to be artificial. It's going to be all natural. And it mimics what
your body can automate because you're older than 35. It's not a drug. It's an
actual hormone.
And then what happens if you go to your doctor, everyone's really familiar with
estrogen, but if you use estrogen and you don't. Offset it with progesterone,
estrogen can cause weight gain and a heightened risk of breast cancer and
women who are over 35 already have estrogen dominance and are already
getting kind of chubby and those love handles and why would you want to get
that even more with unopposed estrogen, but that's what our doctors know.
So our line of defense is always progesterone first and then when we're no
longer having a period because of age or surgery, then introduce estrogen and of
course testosterone and we look at other hormones as well and really the
cortisol today. Pam, the cortisol is amazing, what cortisol can wreak havoc in
our body.

So if we don't check the cortisol as well, we can't repair women, and also look
at the thyroid. I want to talk about thyroids. Thyroid is, I always, when I do my
little hormones, when I'm with Lyn over Zoom [00:17:00] sessions, I have this
little teeny toy car, I think it's a Camaro, it's a race car, really pretty blue
Camaro.
And I say, if you've got a thyroid issue, and I hold up my little car, you've got
four flat tires. But doctors only really check one tire when they do blood work,
and it's called the TSH. If you're lucky, you might also have the in blood check
the T4, or the free T4. But actually, in a thyroid, there are 10 different types of
components for thyroid, and we want to check all of them in blood, right?
And then we have a machine at our Mason Happy Hermann Cottage called the
ThyroFlex machine that can titrate dosing and does more. So women who come
to us with a thyroid issue, eight out of 10 do have a thyroid issue, by the way,
statistically, we can actually get them better. We identify all the components,
not just the one flat tire, but we fix all the flat tires, right?
Then we can actually get them back up to full health in the thyroid arena. Here's
where I'm going to introduce a new term, functional medicine. Because
functional medicine, unlike allopathic medicine, we look at the body as a whole.
So we understand like a car engine, that the thyroid and the adrenal [00:18:00]
glands with cortisol and the sex hormones all work together.
They all have to function together. Whereas if you go to allopathic medicine or
standard of care with a thyroid issue, you'll see the thyroid doctor. If you have a
gut issue, you'll see another kind of a doctor for that. If you have kidney issues,
you'll see another doctor and they're all segmented. We want to look at the body
as a whole and repair it, look at it that way under a microscope.
We find that if we can fix in our arena, the thyroid and the adrenal glands with
cortisol and the sex hormones, we can really help women feel their best, right?
Like all kind of works together. We don't want to fragment them out. So it's a
very holistic. It's a holistic approach. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And
Pam: it's interesting because I think what you've also kind of described is the
fact that you're changing kind of the paradigm, I think, for aging, because I
think a lot of people.
When they go to their doctor, it's all about the medications. And this is actually
something that's much more deeper than that. You're actually finding out.
[00:19:00] Right. And we're feeling what's not in balance. Yes. And we're

filling receptors because that's what actually happens as we get older, things get
out of balance.
Lyn: Right? They do. Right. And we refill receptors to regain that balance. So
women always say in my Zoom sessions, they interrupt me. How long will it
take for me to feel better? They squeal and I'm like, hold your, it's okay. It's not
a magic cream. And we like to use, by the way, I want to digress here for one
second.
We like to use hormone creams because it goes right into the hormone receptors
as opposed to an oral medication. That's our preference. And the reason is we
put them in these little plastic containers called HR tickers. They, you do one
click at a time and. Every click measures up to 0. 05 mls of the hormone cream
and then we like for my body based on my testing I need four clicks of my
hormone cream and so I you can do the four clicks But if I am having an extra
ornery evening I can increase it by a click you can adjust dosing is what I'm
saying Right, and then you come back every four weeks six weeks eight weeks
three months, whatever you need to we'll adjust dosing You'll touch base with
our nurse practitioner as [00:20:00] needed and then you only have to test every
other year Although our lovely 42 year olds and people in their 40s going
through perimenopause often want to test every year because their hormones are
changing so quickly and they're just kind of crazed.
So we want to keep up with their changing bodies, but it's not, and it's not an
expensive therapy over time, kind of all evens out, right? We don't want to
break the bank. We want to fix the health. And I
Pam: think that's important. By the way, I loved your analogy about the sports
car. And yeah. The fact that you have four flat tires and the doctor is actually
only looking at one of
Lyn: them.
That's a sixth grade teacher. I mean, the visual piece. Yeah, I think that's great.
Yeah,
Pam: that's great. Yeah. So Lyn, I really appreciate our conversation today
because one of the things that I think women are really, really good at is when
we find someone who is so knowledgeable and quite frankly, very personable.
Which is key a lot of times when we're getting information, but someone like
yourself who has so much information Women are really good. Once we start

kind of understanding what's going on that [00:21:00] we even crave even more
information What's the best way to move forward? Yeah,
Lyn: that's a great question. I think if I were in your situation, I would actually
Go to my, my website, HappyHormoneCollege.
com. They can sign up for a free consultation with my Zoom session online.
And it's called Hormones 101 with Lyn. They can call us at 513 444 6343 and
just ask for an appointment. Get into one of my free group Zoom sessions. We
also have individual. Step one consultations with my patient consultants for 25
that kind of holds women and accountable, right?
Yeah, keep their word and they can move forward that way. My group zoom
sessions really are a great place for women to come Share their stories be heard
and educated and then decide the best path for them I hope it's with me, but
there's no pressure to move forward. Just educating them is what really lights
me up I think if you can teach someone something they learn it can change
behavior And that's what we're all about, is a better quality of life for the long
haul.
So I would say signing up for one of my group Zoom sessions would be a really
great thing to do. It costs you 60 minutes of your time [00:22:00] and doesn't
cost a dime. Yeah. Well, and it'll be a
Pam: worthwhile 60 minutes. Yeah, absolutely.
Lyn: And it's a lot of fun. I do make a couple of jokes here and there and it
seems to be really fun.
And I hold up my little car and I love it. It's really
Pam: fun. Good. Yeah. The other thing is, and I want to tell everyone too, is
that Lyn has a new book. And I know that you have several other books. Yes.
But you have a new book called Lifting Up. It is stories that inspire women. So
absolutely be sure that you know, you go on to the happy hormone cottage.
com and you can find the books. You can find how to contact Lyn. You can
also find the hormone 101 class. The website itself is very informational and
user friendly. And it's very user friendly. I agree with that. My
Lyn: book's on the online store. So yeah, perfect.

Pam: Well, Lyn, I want to thank you. This has been very informational and
very interesting.
And I think all of us want a better quality of life. We are looking for more
energy and vitality and happiness. Yeah. So everyone, please visit the Happy
Hormone Cottage. And the website again is [00:23:00] happyhormonecottage.
com. And start on your path of being the best you. I kind of want to end, I
started with a Joan Rivers quote, so I might as well end with a Joan Rivers
quote.
She once said, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is God's gift,
that's why we call it the present. Thanks Lyn again. Thank you, my pleasure.