306: Holly Warner: The Virtual Functional Medicine Practitioner | Bio-identical Hormones and more!

About Holly Warner:

Holly Warner is a Functional Medicine Practitioner and Cannabinoid Therapist who specializes in hormone imbalances, bHRT (bio-identical hormone replacement therapy), thyroid/gut/adrenal health, autoimmune disease, LDN therapy and clinical nutrition based on your own unique genetics.

She understands how lifestyle factors, stress and day to day tasks can alter your digestion, and with it your delicate hormone balance/adrenal health, therefore affecting performance in the workplace and home-life.

As a clinician, Holly’s approach is rooted in science and combined with a modern holistic perspective. She discusses practical ways to take care of your mind and body for both the short and the long-term while optimizing your nutrition for your own individual vitality.

Holly is a dynamic and passionate speaker who is committed to cutting through the media hysteria and providing you with the most up to date health information. She is an award-winning clinical nutritionist who has been honoured for her work in hormones as well as autoimmune therapy while being a patient advocate.

Resources:

HollyWarnerHealth.com

Show Transcript:

Interviewer:
Alright TCP listeners we have an incredible guest today and that is Holly Warner. Holly, how are you doing today?

Holly Waner:
Not too bad. How are you doing?

Interviewer:
I’m doing amazing. This is gonna be fun. I get to speak to chiropractors, best selling authors, oh gosh, coaches, mentors, marketers, and now I get to finally speak to you. I’ve been following you online for probably a year or more, and so you’re a really interesting person. I think you bring a lot to the table. I expect this is gonna be a really fun and unique discussion.

Let’s do this, what I want you to do is just share a little bit about yourself. Who is Holly Warner? What do you do? And then how are you helping people as well?

Holly Waner:
I’m a girl who doesn’t like to be told no. Nobody wants to be told no.

Interviewer:
Ever.

Holly Waner:
But being told no it pisses me off. When I first started doing this I had all of these limitations where you need to get comprehensive thyroid testing. You need to have your hormones balanced, or you need this, you need that. I saw it, but I wasn’t able to do. I thought there was a gap. How do I fill that gap? And then I was hit with my own health issues, and I went, oh my God. Where do you turn to if you don’t know where to turn? That became the driving force for me, was that I don’t want anyone to be told no, and then just be left.

“No, you’re normal. That’s okay. That’s all right. Sleep is optional. You don’t need that. Here’s some medication. Yeah, you’re supposed to feel crazy because all women feel crazy when they get older. Being bitchy is fine.” No, it’s not fine and it’s not okay. None of this is normal, so we fix it.

Interviewer:
This is before we even started I’m like, “How do you like to be referred to?” It’s like, “Functional medicine practitioner.” You specialize, your zone is helping people better understand hormones, but also how their hormones are affecting really their lifestyle.

Holly Waner:
Absolutely.

Interviewer:
So, if I was one of the people who was reaching out to you, and I wanted to get some help, I’m turning 48, but I have no idea. Testosterone will decrease as we get older. Is that what the discussion would be? Like I’d be, “Okay, hey. I wanna see, am I low?” And then you would actually help me if I was. If there was a problem you would actually help me normalize that? Or I guess “normalize” it?

Holly Waner:
So I did my physician’s training, disclaimer: not a doctor, but I did it anyway ’cause, I don’t like being told no!

Listen to [Theo] in that one.

I did that back in 2010 and I learned about [bioidentical hormones]. I really did the research. There’s [Dr. Ruziay], there’s a couple of amazing experts out there, who I trained under, and realized that there are answers. There’s a lot you can fix with lifestyle, with diet, with herbs, with mindset, you can supplementation, you name it. We have all of that. But at the end of the day, when we’re done being of a reproductive age, specifically women but men also, we’re primitive beings.

And our body says, “You’ve served your purpose, it’s time to die. So I’m going to try and start to kill you now.”

“I’m gonna deplete your hormones, and I’m gonna make all these things happen. Your bones are going to brittle, your sleep is not gonna be the same.” Everything starts to kind of spiral because every system is connected. So if we optimize those, we bring them back up, we realize our body says, “Oh we’re still supposed to be reproductive, we’re still young. We have a purpose, let’s keep this person alive.”

Interviewer:
And so now part of what you do is basically you help people all over the world who are struggling with these things where they honestly, they may even feel like they’re freaking losing their mind.

Holly Waner:
Some people do.

Interviewer:
Yeah. It really can be that way right?

Holly Waner:
I had a patient who sent his wife to me and he said, “Listen, she’s batshit crazy,” Can I swear on here?

Interviewer:
Yeah.

Holly Waner:
Hopefully, the audience will be fine.

He said, “My wife is batshit crazy. I’m either gonna cheat on her or I’m gonna leave her. Can you fix her?”

And I laughed and I said, “Okay, send her over.”

So he paid for all the stuff to happen and we did everything. Fast forward like six to eight months, and he goes, “Okay, I can’t keep up now. She’s awesome. She’s happy. No more moodiness. She’s sleeping great. But the sex drive like is too much.”

And I went, “Okay, let’s bump you up now.” So the thing is, that’s the whole truth of “person not the paper” because his testosterone was still, it was not optimal on paper and we had done the bioidentical hormones. But, you see on the paper his blood serum levels, it’s not really accurate, so you can see shitty levels but feel great. So I look at it like, if you feel great and everything’s on point, your not really worried about those levels too, too much, just keep doing what we’re doing.

But if the numbers are off, and you’re feeling off, then we explore, “Okay, what about your [inaudible], what about the precursors? What’s going on with those?”

Interviewer:
Yeah.

Holly Waner:
But they’re never a one off.

Interviewer:
Well and that kind of circles us back on really the question that we love to ask on the podcast, and we ask pretty much everyone who’s on this podcast, words of positivity, affirmation? Or an original quote? Some words that you live by. So why don’t you drop that right now for [docs] so they better understand.

Holly Waner:
Alright, so treat the person not the paper. But also, test don’t guess.

Interviewer:
And why is it important that we test, no guess?

Holly Waner:
Because we can look at something and say, “You’re symptomatic, you’ve got these things going on. It could be this, or it could be that.” And we start doing a treatment protocol, but then we’re supposed to be on protocol, we’re spending all of this money for nothing, and if you did a simple test, it would’ve shown what was actually going on. And you could’ve gone straight for it, and dealt with that aspect. Or it would’ve confirmed that, “No it’s not bad at all”, and then you would’ve known to go in another direction.

Interviewer:
One of the things that we, well we actually have a saying on this podcast, and the saying is that we are all more alike than we are different. I can’t remember who I stole that from, but I stole it from someone. I’ll give the universe credit. And I say that as health practitioners, as chiropractors, as doctors, that we all are more alike than we are different.

And one of the things that really connects us together-building a condo really like literally next to me and hammering away-

Holly Waner:
It’s not that bad.

Interviewer:
So, one of the things that connects us is struggle resistance. Time’s a challenge. So, is there a time where you basically, you ate a shit sandwich and you were like, “Look, this was a massive challenge”, but there was a gift in it for you and now you’re able to take that gift, and you see the lesson, and you apply that to either your business or life today?

Holly Waner:
Yeah, there was a point where I walked away from a very successful career as director of worldwide medical facility, and I just bounced. I’m done. Over it. And I kind of went, “Fuck. Now what?”

I know what I want to do but every time I turned around someone was like, no you can’t do that, you’re not a doctor. Or, no you can’t do that you’re not a nurse practitioner. Or, no you can’t do that you don’t have this credential, that credential, this designation, that designation. And I’ve got a lot of designations. So I was like, are you kidding me right now?

So it was kind of like getting kicked down, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, so I built my entire practice, from scratch, myself. By watching the experts, and learning, and being smart enough to know that I will never know everything. And always seek out those that I feel might know more and learn from them, take those golden nuggets and incorporate them into what I do every day and never stop learning.

Which is what got me to here because those limitations of “You’re not a doctor.”, well I have doctors that work for me.

“You’re not a nurse practitioner.” Well now I have nurse practitioners that work for me.

And so when I can’t write a script, they can. If I can’t order a blood requisition, or a diagnostic, they can. Something needs to be done? I make it happen.

Interviewer:
I love this. For a lot of the listeners right now, they know that I’m known for two things. First of all, the chiropractic philanthropist where we just give value and give back to the profession, to the health professional. The other part of this is I’m also known as the laptop lifestyle matcher. Like helping doctors create online businesses, information products, I don’t know, whatever they wanna do that’s virtual.

So it’s really interesting is that you’ve done a lot of this, I think it’s all of this, through really what we would say is telemedicine. Like you do this in a virtual environment. How did that evolve for you? How did that come about?

Holly Waner:
So I started my practice in California because I had lived there, and made just this amazing group of people. Californians are a brood of their own, right? They’re just, you’re by the water, they’re just so awesome and friendly and happy. Everybody on the west coast was just like, love and avocados.

So I thought, “Okay this is great”, built my practice and then went, “Well, other than email, what do I do?” So I opened my practice here, but still was getting all of this referral stuff. And I thought, well I mean I have to do like Skype sessions with them, but then see people here. And then when other people found out, you know CEO of a company, “I am busy, it is Ottawa, Canada, there was a snow storm. I don’t have time to travel 45 minutes to get to downtown”, you know where my office was, beside a massive law firm, “Pay a gazillion dollars for parking, have my session, and then drive way back” to wherever they had to go.

“Can I also utilize a Skype, or a Zoom, or a Livedo, or whatever?” Which is the telemedicine aspect. Either it’s the phone call or this. What we’re doing right now.

And so, “Well yeah you can do it. Sure.” Which turned into everybody wanting to do it for convenient’s sake, and then me going, “Okay. What are my compliancies around this legally? What do I have to have put in place so that I can operate this way?”

So I follow what the doctors have, because it’s always been a roll down, and trickle down, to us eventually. So I just sort of mimicked that, and it just spiraled into, I’ve got an EMR, and I have live cam, I do my sessions they’re all secure. And now, I’ve shut down my office, I have a home studio. Like I get up and it’s business on the top and sweatpants on the bottom some days.

Interviewer:
That’s right, yeah. I have so many doctors that reach out to me, by the way, that ask that very specific question. “How do I make, I love the idea, but how do I actually make that happen?”

So I think this is just again, one of those unique discussions of like, but here’s someone who actually makes it happen. Because they don’t accept the word “no”.

Holly Waner:
Yeah.

Interviewer:
You made it happen, right?

Holly Waner:
Yeah.

Interviewer:
So the other part of this, is I mean basically, you said the word is like “convenience”. Number one, it’s very convenient for you.

Holly Waner:
Yeah.

Interviewer:
It must be super low overhead because you don’t have your brick and mortar. And it’s super, like your client actually gets what they want to.

Holly Waner:
Mmmhmm.

Interviewer:
Like they get results but they also, they can do it from the convenience of their own home. So, were there any challenges when you say, “Hey, I wanna do this. I wanna help people. My zone is with hormones and hormone balancing.” Where there any challenges that came up for you along the way when you decided to go full telemedicine?

Holly Waner:
Yeah, there was a couple. So getting out of my own head was one of them. You have to realize that people come for your message, they come for your service, they don’t need to smell my coffee breath. It’s not important for what I do. I don’t need to see you face to face, I’m not doing your [idology], I don’t need to look into your eyes, I don’t need to like touch your skin. I need to talk to you. That’s what my role in this is.

And the nurse practitioners that work for me, some of them are strictly phone call. They don’t even have this interaction. So, that portion wasn’t necessary so getting out of my head and realizing that was the biggest step.

Number two, there is the odd person that still has the mentality of, “Yeah but I wanna see you.” It’s almost like they wanna be able to reach out and hug you. And getting past that, I still get that once in awhile, like once every couple months I may get somebody that hesitates and says, “Well, I prefer to find someone who does one on one in person.” And that’s fine. Then I’m not your person and that’s okay. You’ll be back, they always are. But they’re going to go find someone else, they’re not gonna get the result that they thought they were gonna get because they wanted me.

And then they come back and they say, “Okay, so there’s no exception to the rule?” And I’m steadfast in that. I’ll see how it goes. And say, let’s do a little test. And we do this for that 15 minute curtesy call and I say, “How was it? Did we connect? How do you feel?” And most of the time they say, “That wasn’t so bad actually. It’s okay. I like it. It’s a Skype date. Let’s do this.”

So that works. And then of course the compliancy issues where, is it HIPAA compliant, is it this, is it that? And there is software that doesn’t need to break the bank, like Live Care, that you can vigorize and it’s secure, nothing is shared, you don’t have to worry about the conversation, you’re just medical being whatever’s recorded or leaking or whatever the limitations are that they say, “Oh it has to be secure.” It’s all secure. So you’re fine. You’re charting is done with an EMR, which most medical clinics have moved to anyway, it’s all electronic charting now anyway.

Interviewer:
It is. Yeah.

Holly Waner:
And it’s fine. I still have a file cabinet, with a lock. That’s downstairs in another room, in an office downstairs that’s locked, it’s all, again, compliant. So you just have to, baby steps. And you can move away and say like one day a week I’ll still see people. You’ve everybody who absolutely desperately needs to see you to that one day a week, and everyone else is telemedicine. And then you start to wean those people. “Let’s give it a try and see how you feel”, and eventually you’re completely 100% telemedicine and there you go.

Interviewer:
I love this. Because even, I have two young boys, so five and seven years of age, and fortunately for us, they’re very spirited we’ll say. But even working with their, we have a natural path, I guess kind of slash homeopath, but they’re across the country. There are more and more doctors who are doing this. And here’s the beauty of this too. Number one, you don’t have to wait two months usually to get on a Skype call with someone because the convenience of it, but they’re getting the results, they’re actually getting access to experts like yourself, that they may not normally get access to. So I’m gonna encourage strongly that more doctors consider that.

I wanna kind of shift the conversation now to hormones.

So essentially what happens is you offer a 15 minute courtesy call, and then what you do is you do testing, right? Based on if it’s a fit, or if you can help that person, or whatever the testing would be. How does that work then? Do you send them a blood kit? Or do they go get blood drawn where they are? Then you get the results? Like how does that unfold?

Holly Waner:
So how it happens is it depends on where you’re located. So, let’s focus on the Canadian one for just ease of use.

Interviewer:
Sure.

Holly Waner:
We have Ontario, we have OHIP, all of the labs are covered by OHIP so it’s your standard requisition that your doctor would send you. Outside of it, you have two options, I could send you a requisition that’s authorized by a physician, or a NP, in that province, or I can send you what I would like to have tested, and you can bring it to your doctor for them to say, “No”. And then give you back to me. And then have me do step one after all.

So there’s that, which really simplifies things. So a courtesy call, some people don’t even bother with that because they’re familiar with me, they follow me online, they just come straight on board. When I have a hormone balancing package, I always throw the thyroid in there, because I want the big picture. I really, I test for so much, when you go for a blood draw, the technician’s going to be like, “Oh my God. That’s lot of blood”. We test everything because I want all the answers. And I don’t want you to have to go back, and I don’t want it to cost more.

So you have all of that, you have an intake and a session with me. We spend about 45 minutes to an hour, we talk about everything in your intake. I get more details than what you’ve written down, customize your requisition, email it to you, you print it, you go to the lab, whatever’s the most convenient, whether it’s [Dina care] or Life lab, you pick the one that works for you. You go. You have your blood draw, they’re going to fax me the results, they’re gonna fax the nurse practitioner or the doctor the results as well, and then you have your session, which is included in the package, with the ordering practitioner, if a script is needed it’s sent it. We use [Stretina] because they’re the largest and most effective compounding pharmacy in Canada. They’re fantastic. The quality is there. There’s a control so there’s no fillers, it’s really good.

And then they concierge you whatever that was, bioidentical hormones, desiccated thyroid, low dose Naltrexone for autoimmune conditions, any of that. If you need medical cannabinoid therapy, we have that, we facilitate that as well. Genetic testing, that comes in, and that goes to McGill University in Canada, or California for the endo cannabinoid system. We send, wherever it needs to go we send it, and then everything comes back in house and then I send you a treatment plan with all of the supportive protocols, and details, and there’s a lot.

Interviewer:
Wow. That’s very cool. I love it.

So I want our listeners to take away a couple things. First of all, you are offering, I hope you’re offering, the 15 minute courtesy call?

Holly Waner:
Yes, absolutely.

Interviewer:
Beautiful, okay. And I know we’re going to have a lot of doctors listening to this podcast. And doctors need help too. We don’t know what we don’t know. But this is something that I would encourage, if anyone’s feeling a little bit crazy, there’s been a little bit of craziness in our household lately with this stuff. And I know a lot of it comes down to you. I’m 48, Karen’s approaching 50, my wife now. So this is all things that we’ve been asking ourselves, and why I was excited about this conversation today.

Okay, so head to the chiropracticphilanthropist.com We’re gonna have a webpage dedicated to our discussion with Holly Warner today, we’re also gonna have links to the resources she’s providing. Meaning, you can actually link right through to her website, which is hollywarnerhealth.com and set up one of those 15 minute consultations, should you wish.

If you’re listening on your mobile phone, go ahead and expand, open the show notes right now and they’ll be a link, you can connect right away.

Okay, so are you ready? Here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to put you in the TCP time machine. The cheesy machine. You ready?

Holly Waner:
Ready.

Interviewer:
So, we’re gonna take you, I have to figure out where am I sending you back to? Okay, we’re going to take you, we’re going to put you in the TCP time machine, we’re gonna send you back to a younger version of yourself. This will be right after you left that, what was it, the medical …

Holly Waner:
Director.

Interviewer:
As a medical director. You just left. You have all the current life and knowledge and experience that you have today. If you went back to that younger self, what would you say to that younger self?

Holly Waner:
Gosh. You know what, just keep doing it. Oh, and stop pushing back against doing thyroid because you’re gonna end up doing it whether you like it or not and you’re gonna rock at it. So, stop fighting it.

Interviewer:
So even for you, like someone who’s like, does not take no for an answer, like even for you there was a part of you that said, “Hey I don’t know if I can do this.”

Holly Waner:
I thought, maybe I’ll just do health coaching, or maybe I’ll just do nutrition, like the clinical stuff. Or the herbal side of it. I went really fluffy and hocus pocus-y and loved it. And it was fantastic and then I kind of went, “what are you doing? You’ve forgotten this complete other side of what you do.” I got away from the bioidenticals, I got away from everything. I think I would, that two years that I, and I don’t want to say wasted, but just sort of pushed back against the scientific stuff that goes well with what I was doing, I think I would say, “Stop it. Stop it!”

Interviewer:
Go with it.

Holly Waner:
Go with it!

Interviewer:
Listen to the voice and follow it.

Okay, so last thing we like to end these podcasts with, is really just a resource. Something that doctors or our listeners can go and check out. So what is a book, an Audible book, possibly a podcast, or any sort of a resource that you’re like, “Look, everyone needs to go check this out. It’s gonna change their life.”

Holly Waner:
Oh my God. Oh. What is the title of that book that’s either, oh it used to be on my counter. It’s not there anymore. It’s, what was it? Like, How to Give Zero Fucks, or something like that?

Interviewer:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Holly Waner:
You know what I’m talking about?

Interviewer:
There’s a couple Fuck books.

Holly Waner:
Did the sky just fall? Oh my God.

Interviewer:
They’re literally building a condo like right near. And you know here’s the crazy thing, so we’re going to go off on a tangent, they only every start banging around when I start recording podcasts. It’s like they know exactly when I’m hitting record.

Holly Waner:
The rule. It’s the rule.

Interviewer:
There’s a couple Fuck books out there. I know there’s one that’s like, How to Unfuck Yourself, there’s a couple of those books. So here’s what we’ll do, anyone who’s listening, just go to Google and search books.

Holly Waner:
Careful what you type in though.

Interviewer:
Oh, yes. Be careful. Probably not the best advice.

Alright so again, I’m just going to drop the link for our website, which is thechiropracticphilanthropist.com. Again, we’ll have the webpage dedicated to our discussion today. I just want to thank you so much for being on the podcast, this has been a lot of fun. I get to speak to some really cool people. Like I said I had been following you for awhile.

That’s another way to connect with you, if you’re not following Holly on social media, you probably should be because it’s a fun ride.

But I wanna thank you for being–

Holly Waner:
It’s always entertaining in my corner.

Interviewer:
I always think so. Hey, anyone who gets my attention, I mean seriously, if you get my attention and I’m like tune in, then you’re doing a great job.

So yeah, I just wanna thank you for being on the show today, and giving such amazing value.

Holly Waner:
Thank you.