For many women, the years after a hysterectomy or the onset of menopause bring a slow erosion of the things that make daily life feel like life — steady sleep, an even mood, energy, focus. One North Florida Women’s Care patient knows that erosion well. At 71, she’s still working four days a week, still at the gym four mornings a week before her shift, and still, in her words, learning something every day.
But getting here took time.
Before Things Got Better
Her struggles started after a hysterectomy. The first attempts at relief didn’t work. Pharmaceutical hormone preparations, she says, left her feeling worse rather than better. She then tried sublingual hormone therapy — drops taken morning and evening — and found they did little for her. Before coming to Dr. Clements, she’d also worked with another provider, an experience she describes as poorly managed, with her testosterone levels running far too high.
The symptoms she lived with during those years are ones countless women will recognize: depression, anxiety, and sleep that simply wouldn’t come. She cycled through prescription sleep aids before finding something that helped. “Just general life,” as she puts it, had become hard.
A Different Approach
For about two years now, she’s been on BioTE hormone pellet therapy under Dr. Clements’ care. What drew her to pellets specifically was research — she describes reading extensively, asking questions, and talking with friends and salon clients who’d had their own positive experiences before deciding to try them herself.
The change, in her telling, has been significant. Her sleep improved. Her mood steadied. She talks about it with humor and relief — the version of herself she’d lost, she says, simply wasn’t who she wanted to be. She’s even brought a friend along to the practice, someone whose own family had noticed how much the lack of hormone support had affected her.
Staying Active is Part of the Formula
One point she returns to again and again: hormones alone aren’t the whole story. She’s clear that her results come paired with consistent exercise and attention to her health. She’s recently started incorporating weight training alongside the machines and elliptical, inspired by a friend on hormone therapy who’d seen real changes from working out with light free weights. “A little bit goes a long way,” she says — you don’t have to lift heavy to benefit.
As a hairstylist of 46 years and a former cosmetology instructor of 28, she’s spent her career watching her clients age alongside her. Seeing some of them give up on staying active and engaged is part of what motivates her to keep moving. She doesn’t want that for herself.
On Skepticism and Access
She’s well aware that hormone replacement therapy carries a complicated reputation, and she’s become something of an advocate among the women in her life. Her approach is to share her own experience and encourage others to talk with a qualified provider, get regular bloodwork, and stay on top of routine screenings like mammograms — care she feels too many women skip.
It’s worth noting here that hormone therapy is an individual medical decision. Benefits, risks, and suitability vary from person to person, and the right answer depends on a person’s own health history and a conversation with their provider. The regulatory and scientific landscape around hormone therapy has continued to evolve, and what’s appropriate for one patient may not be for another.
Her closing thought wasn’t about herself at all. It was about reaching women in rural communities — she drove in from Perry, Florida — who may not have easy access to this kind of care or information. Her concern is for the women who, as she sees it, stop having conversations, stop getting out, and slowly close themselves off. Staying curious and connected, she says, is its own kind of medicine: “You’re green and growing, or ripe and rotten.”
For her, BioTE has been one piece of staying green and growing. The rest, she’d be the first to tell you, is showing up — at the gym, at work, and for the people around her.
Every patient’s experience is unique. If you’re considering hormone therapy, schedule a consultation with a provider at North Florida Women’s Care by clicking on the “Schedule Now” button at the top of the page (or you can click here).
