Kelly’s Clinic

04/24/2026

The field was afraid of giving women hormones. Afraid of cancer.
And the one scientist who had spent his career figuring out how to give hormones safely — precisely, locally, without triggering the cancers we feared — they dismissed.
He was the cancer-hormone expert. He invented Combined Androgen Blockade — the first treatment ever shown to prolong life in prostate cancer. He invented Intrarosa — the first intravaginal hormone that reverses vaginal atrophy without any systemic exposure. He understood hormone safety better than anyone alive.
A field terrified of hormone cancer ignored the man who solved hormone cancer.
He published this warning in NAMS's own journal in 2011. The trials he called for were never run. He died January 17, 2019. Nine months later, the same societies signed the paper that said he was right.
That's the story. It isn't finished.
Labrie F. Editorial, Menopause 2011; 18(5):471–473.
🇨🇦

04/24/2026

Dr. Fernand Labrie. Université Laval, Québec. 1937—2019.
A Canadian endocrinologist who founded the world's first molecular endocrinology laboratory in 1969 and authored 1,240+ peer-reviewed papers — the most cited Canadian researcher across all disciplines. Officer of the Order of Canada. Officer of the Ordre national du Québec. Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Izaak Walton Killam laureate.
This was not a fringe voice.
For thirty years, he told the world the field was wrong about postmenopausal androgens. He argued that women after menopause were not just estrogen-deficient — they were androgen-deficient too, and the field was dismissing it. He showed that "normal" serum estradiol couldn't see what was happening at the tissue level. He showed that DHEA — the adrenal precursor — was the source of every s*x hormone a postmenopausal woman uses. He founded a new branch of science to explain it: intracrinology.
He fought NAMS. He fought the Endocrine Society — whose 2014 guideline explicitly recommended AGAINST routine testosterone therapy in women. He fought IMS. He published, argued, and persisted. He alienated himself from major societies because he wouldn't back down. He built Intrarosa to prove the mechanism — Health Canada approved it in 2015.
He died January 17, 2019.
Nine months later, in October 2019, those same societies co-signed a Global Consensus Position Statement formally recommending, for the first time, testosterone therapy for postmenopausal women.
(Davis SR et al. JCEM Oct 2019.)
He didn't live to see them listen.
Canada is proud of him.
Women's health owes him.
The fight isn't finished.
🇨🇦

04/21/2026

A 60-year-old woman. Five prescriptions. 40+ symptoms.

Effexor XR 150 mg. Zopiclone. Trazodone. Daily THC. A failed Ozempic trial. A statin was recommended, but the patient was intolerant no change offered to statin choice

All three ovarian hormones below laboratory detection.

The prescriptions were treating downstream symptoms — on top of an unaddressed hormonal vacuum. Every drug on the list was doing a job her own hormones used to do, and carrying real cost to do it: anticholinergic, sedative, metabolic, dependence, cognitive.

We replaced what was missing: transdermal estradiol, oral micronized progesterone, testosterone gel, local DHEA.

Twelve weeks later: off Trazodone, off Zopiclone, off THC, off Ozempic, statin never needed, Effexor taper begun.

"I feel calmer. My s*x drive is back. I've noticed improvement in so many different ways."

In every postmenopausal woman on psychotropic polypharmacy, the clinical question is the same: is there a hormonal vacuum underneath the medication list?

04/20/2026

Sitting is the new smoking — and the after-work workout doesn't fully undo it.
6+ hours of chair time a day is independently linked to higher cardiovascular risk, insulin resistance, and all-cause mortality — even in regular exercisers. For women in perimenopause and menopause, when insulin sensitivity and bone density are already shifting, it hits harder.
The fix isn't one big workout. It's breaking up the stillness: stand more than you sit, and move every 30–60 minutes.
Which is my excuse for the standing desk and the occasional lunchtime bosu ball wobble. Looks ridiculous. Works anyway.
Your permission slip to get out of your chair. 🪑➡️🕺

04/20/2026

I see this at least once a week now.

A bright 31-year-old woman walks into my clinic, quietly falling apart. Not because she isn't trying. Not because she isn't being seen. But because every specialist is treating one part of her, and nobody is stepping back to look at the whole human being they are asking to keep carrying this.

A cardiac drug that fogs her brain. Recurrent steroid bursts she should never have needed. Metabolic disease no one has named. PCOS sitting in her labs for years. Iron and B12 quietly eroding her cognition. ADHD treated in isolation. A fertility window narrowing in real time.

She has an MRI booked for dementia.

She is 31.

And here is the harder truth: the better drugs exist. Approved. Covered. But getting her onto a biologic — the drug that could actually keep her out of the ER — costs her prescriber hours of forms, letters, criteria checklists, and calls to specialty-access programs. A steroid burst is one prescription pad away. So the system quietly keeps choosing the drug that is harming her. Again. And again. And again.

This is what is keeping me up at night.

The parent who had the most influence on me was the parent who cared for *all* of our children — because our children are our future. That has stayed with me forever. It is why I cannot close this chart and move on.

She is our future. And we are not taking care of her.

Shame on us.

We can, and must, do better.

— Kelly
Kelly's Clinic · Menopause & Hormone Optimization

\

---

04/20/2026

"Our Brains are our asset we will not be equal until we earn equally, and we cannot eat equally while living in a fog "

04/19/2026

Women have been suffering in plain sight for decades.
Losing their sleep. Their bones. Their minds. Their marriages. Sitting across from their doctors and describing — carefully, exhaustedly — exactly what their bodies were doing. And being handed an antidepressant, a pat on the shoulder, and the word "aging."
They were right about what was happening to them. They were right the whole time.
One flawed study in 2002 rewrote a generation of women's medicine, and women paid for it. In bone density. In cognition. In intimacy. In careers cut short and marriages that didn't survive the silence. In minds that were dimmed, and then blamed for dimming.
In women's health, some truths are not advisable to say out loud. Some are not survivable to a career. But a generation of women being dismissed is not survivable either — and they have carried this long enough.
Menopause is not a mood. Hormones are not a luxury. Their pain was never exaggerated. Their decline was not inevitable. Women were never the problem.
My voice is my strength today.
— Kelly

04/18/2026

04/18/2026

Yes ,vanity

But also:
coarse, dry hair that actually hurts your scalp

HRT helped density
Nanoplastia helped texture

Women deserve both function and how they feel in their skin

04/17/2026

Two different lumps. Two different causes. Not the same fix. 🔍
Reaction 1 — Delayed hypersensitivity. Shows up 24–72 hours after injection. Red, warm, itchy, indurated. Your immune system responding to the medication protein. Antihistamines help the itch but won't resolve it. Topical corticosteroid is your first line. Warm compress — not ice.
Reaction 2 — Persistent nodule. Firm, not red, not warm. Builds over weeks. Tissue trauma from injecting the same spot repeatedly. Fix is strict rotation — abdomen, thigh, upper arm, every single week.
Both make a lump. Management is different.
And before every injection — warm your pen. 30 minutes out of the fridge. Cold medication into tissue makes both worse.
Local reaction is not a reason to stop a medication that's working. Know the difference, manage it, keep going.
MounjaroJourney NursePractitioner

04/17/2026

I was put off work.

Fatigue. Brain fog. No sleep.

No one said everything was fine.
But HRT wasn’t offered as a solution.

Because I still had periods.

Less than 10 years ago,
women weren’t openly talking about HRT.
Even in clinical spaces.

But decisions were still being made—quietly.

That’s what stayed with me.

Because what gets adopted quietly
doesn’t always get shared with patients.

And that delay matters.



This version

04/16/2026

Running since age 9. Lifting since 52.
30 years of endurance optimized me for one thing — and it isn't the muscle you'll need most after menopause. I knew the science. At 52 I finally started living it.
At 52 I hired a coach. Then I picked up the weights.
Two years in. Asymmetry to undo, hormones to optimize, movement patterns to relearn. Slow and not always pretty.
But this is what it looks like at 54. Worth every rep.
📍 thank You Pedja!