Amanda: When I’m working with clients, I think it’s really important to take a holistic approach. As a coach, I work a lot with mindset, belief systems, helping them understand their feelings and processing them, educating them and even some trauma.

But what about the physical side? That really matters too. So today I have on Holly Henry. She has extensive experience working with the physical side of women’s sexual health. So welcome to the podcast, Holly.

Holly: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Amanda: So can you tell my audience a little bit about you and what you do?

Holly: Absolutely. I am a women’s health nurse practitioner, have been for almost 20 years, worked in gynecology for the bulk of that, doing patient care. Um, and then the last eight, nine years I’ve been in aesthetics where I have really gotten into more regenerative work, more in the women’s sector. I am a trainer/instructor for the doctor that founded and came up and patented the O Shot. Heading out to his place in Alabama next week to further my training on that, as well as I teach and instruct new aesthetic injectors and advanced injectors here in Utah.

Amanda: Awesome. Okay. So tell me a little bit about what you’ve got going on right now and why specifically we’re having you on the podcast this week.

Holly: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I’m venturing out on my own and opening up my own wellness center in Farmington, Utah, and it’s going to be called Lotti Aesthetics and Wellness. 

And if I can, can I tell you a little story about where that name came from? 

Amanda: Yes, absolutely. 

Holly: Okay, perfect. And then I’ll get into it. My daughter’s name is Lotti, and she’s my firstborn, my only daughter, and my very own biological daughter. I do have bonus daughters as well. And she is named after her great grandmother, who was just an amazing, fierce woman who lived unapologetically, and that’s what I love about her.

And so we named Lotti after her, and it just means a lot to me. And actually, in French, it means womanly. 

Amanda: Oh, I love that.

Holly: Yeah, exactly. So, and I just love that I can leave this legacy for her and that it means so much to me.

But it’s combining my two loves. So, combining women’s health, we’re going to be doing hormones, we’re going to be doing vaginal rejuvenation. That also helps with incontinence as well. And then we’ll do the ascetic side too. So it’s basically, you can just come and have a day just for you and get all, all, all fixed up. And, um, yeah, I’m really excited for it to open and we’re going to be opening next month in October.

Amanda: Awesome. Well, so what Holly didn’t say is that she and I are actually building a really collaborative relationship. 

Holly: We are. I didn’t know if I could say that.

Amanda: Yes, we can. We totally can, which is one of the reasons why I’m having you on the podcast because I think it’s, I mean, I love what you’re doing in the realm of women’s sexual health. That’s really important to me too, and dealing with that physical side for women. 

Um, but I love that we’re going to be able to have this collaborative relationship. So for women in the Intermountain West, we want to give them a really holistic experience when it comes to sexual health and wellness. So Holly’s obviously taking the lead on the physical side and I’m going to be supporting a lot of her clients on the mental side. And then I’ll also refer patients to Holly that need a little bit more help and support on the physical side. So I love this relationship we’re building.  

Holly: I do too, because when I was in gynecology, this was the part that was missing for me. I had patients that would come in and complain and I knew what to do to address the physical side, even back then though, it was very limited. But beyond that, there wasn’t anyone for me to refer to, or I just felt like I wasn’t helping them as much as I could.

Amanda: Yes. And I love that I have someone that I can refer to on the physical side because of course that is not my realm of expertise, right? So I love that we’re building this collaborative relationship too. 

So I want you to kind of go through some of the services that you and your team are going to be offering at Lotti Aesthetics and Wellness and how they can benefit them in your sexual wellness journey.

So you talked about hormones, you talked about vaginal rejuvenation, you talked about O-Shot. So tell me more about each of these things.

Holly: Yeah. Okay. So it really kind of depends on, I will be the one that’s doing consults with the women because I have that background and we’ll really get into, um, the physical side of what’s going on. And then I will determine what treatment is best for them as well as, um, just more, yeah, more collaborative approach. 

But depending on what your symptoms are will really drive you towards what treatment is best for you. So it could be anything from like, we were talking about incontinence and back in the day, like most of the incontinence that we could treat was, um, a specific kind, and now it’s kind of opened up where if it’s urge or it’s mixed, then we can really, um, fix all of that or help with all of it. 

And then as well as atrophic tissue with painful intercourse, um, we have noninvasive, I mean, they’re mildly invasive, but non surgical treatment options that really help with making those tissues bounce back and have a little bit more elasticity and they do when you lose that estrogen and that progesterone and you go through menopause, it’s called your tissues is called atrophic tissues and they don’t like to stretch much and they cause a lot of pain and it can cause itching and just irritation as well.

And so these treatments, Morpheus 8V is kind of the latest and greatest in this area. 

Amanda: And that’s what I had, right?

Holly: Yes.That’s what you had. Yeah. And that is, we numb you really good. And we also have Pronox, which is the self administer nitrous oxide. So we keep you very comfortable, but it is a, um, treatment that involves radio frequency and micro needling. And this is done vaginally and externally as well. There’s also a hand piece for face and body too, but um, that’s called something else, but the 8V is specifically for the vaginal tissues and what that’s doing. If you’ve ever had micro needling on your face, it’s similar to that. It brings new college into the area.

It brings new blood supply. For a lack of better terms, it makes it you full again. And it really helps create new lubrication as well, which is an issue, we dry up a little bit after we go through menopause, if not a little bit before. And that can contribute to the pain as well.

And so if you have concerns with lubrication or pain, that’s the treatment of hands down that I would choose and it’s a series of 3 spaced out, you know, every 4 weeks. So you’re done relatively quickly and you don’t have to wait for the last treatment to get results with each one, you’re going to notice a noticeable difference. It just gets better with time and even 2 to 3 months after your last treatment, you’re still seeing benefits that you hadn’t before because of the nature of college genesis, how it produces new collagen and it just attracts all the good things is pretty much creating a little micro injury and that creates or that sends a signal to bring all the good stuff to that tissue. And that’s what we need. 

And none of these treatments are a forever thing. It’s something that you will have to repeat again, possibly most likely in a year. But then as your tissues, depending on how your tissues are responding, some people after their 2nd or 3rd might be able to go a little bit longer. It just kind of depends. Other people who have a severe case of the tissues being atrophic probably will be there to the date in a year after because they will need to do that again. But if your symptoms aren’t as severe, and it’s mainly just an incontinence issue, then we have formaV, or we have Vtone. V ones pretty cool. It’s a treatment that you come in and do and it’s basically just little pulsations. So it’s not painful at all. It’s almost like it’s creating a really strong kegel exercise because for not lack of trying, sometimes we just can’t isolate all the muscles that we need to and not to say don’t do them. It’s doing something still, but this will be like a kegel on steroids.

Amanda: Awesome 

Holly: And that’s really beneficial for people who have some leaking going on and then the formaV is somewhere in between. It’s radio frequency as well. You might not need the full Morpheus, but honestly, a lot of the packages we’re combining and doing is because they are best usually combined together.

And so, and that’s just based off of clinical studies, patient satisfaction, what they have seen. And so we’re packaging a lot of them together versus individually at this point, because that’s just going to give you a better result. So you might be doing 2 of those treatments combined.

Amanda: So I’ve done one MorpheusV already.

Holly: Yeah. We need to get you in for another. 

Amanda: I know we do. We definitely do. But I did like, so I did not find it painful at all. I didn’t even find it uncomfortable. Like it was really totally fine. And then like the recovery was really easy. I didn’t seem to have any problems. So I would highly recommend it.

And I have seen an improvement in lubrication and I’ve seen improvement in how strong my orgasms are. Um, and I’ve even seen an improvement in the, like the little bit of leaking that I did have. So, and that’s just with one treatment. So I would highly recommend it to people. And I mean, I wouldn’t have you on here and like be having this collaboration with you if I, you know, didn’t see results. 

Holly: No, these are, these are clinically based treatments. We didn’t just like, oh, this sounds good. Let’s try that. There is a lot of science and a lot of data behind them. I’m kind of a research nerd and I really like diving into that and we wouldn’t have brought it on if there wasn’t the results to back it up.

But I love how you brought up the sexual aspect because that is another reason a lot of people come in is for sexual dysfunction, whether it’s like, I’ve never been able to orgasm versus now it’s just getting harder and harder, which it does as hormones change. It does. And it’s unfortunate, but there are things that we can do that help with that as well.

So that’s another benefit of these treatments. I wouldn’t say like, if you’ve never had an orgasm, there’s probably multiple things going on and that’s why we are bringing the hormones side of it on. Because without the hormone side, I feel like we just weren’t looking at that full picture. So we are going to bring those on as well, because I think it’s, it’s so our libido and our ability to react is so multifactorial.

So it’s typically not just one thing that’s the issue. 

Amanda: Right. So, I mean, I love that that’s why we’re doing like the mental side, because that can be so much of the issue.

Holly: So much, so much!

Amanda: But then there is this physical side that needs to be looked at. And I love that you’re doing that part. 

Um, tell me a little bit more about the O-shot because I’ve done a little research on it myself, but I would love to hear it from an expert because I get questions about it all the time from clients.

Holly: Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of confusion too of actually what it does. And so I love that question. Um, the O-shot is when we draw your blood. And so we want you to be hydrated. We draw your blood and we spin it down in a centrifuge and it pulls out a component of the blood called fibrin. Some people do plasma PRP or PRF.

It’s just the difference of whether it’s plasma or fibrin. Our machine pulls fibrin that has a little bit more growth factors in it. And once we have that, then, uh, we inject it into 2 specific areas. One below the urethra, right into the vaginal canal. And that is for, it’s going to help with stress urinary incontinence.

And so if you’re exercising or coughing, sneezing, and you’re losing urine, it will help with that. It’s not as great for urge. So if you get the urge, like, Oh my gosh, I got to go. And I leak because I don’t make it to the bathroom. It’s not as helpful for that type of incontinence. So I always like to specify.

And then, um, that will also help, you know, bring essentially it’s what microneedling is doing as well. That PRF is bringing, it’s, um, bringing in all of the growth factors and it’s bringing in all the things to make new collagen. So essentially kind of similar to what the microneedling does. And then we do an injection at the base of the clitoris, and that might sound painful, but I do a little lidocaine block there. I numb you 1st with numbing cream and then I sit and then I do a lidocaine block. So everything should be very comfortable. Most of my patients are like, oh, it’s over like. They’re nervous and then it’s over before they know it because I’m barely putting the bevel of the needle in. And that’s really going to help with, um, response as far as sensation goes.

So that’s more for obviously sexual response. Um, I think it’s really good at increasing the response time and the strength of an orgasm externally through clitoral stimulation versus vaginal. I haven’t had a client who’s never had a vaginal orgasm that has had 1 from it. Right? So I just like to keep everyone’s expectations realistic of what it does.

Most women’s orgasms are coming from external stimuli anyways, but some people that’s not always the case. And so I like to make that clear and then typically, you can really notice the benefits of that pretty early on, but I would say about a night, uh, 10 to 12 months later, you’re probably needing to repeat that again.

So it’s really specific for people that just want a little bit more sexual sensation response and for the stress urinary incontinence, but it’s a great treatment. It’s awesome. And then we also are bringing on growth factors, um, some exosomes, some really cool stuff is in the works of being able to use that within the sexual realm of medicine.

And so, yeah, we’ll have to keep you updated on all that too.

Amanda: I would love to hear more about that. That’ll be so fun. Okay. Is there anything else in that area that you want to talk about before we move on?

Holly: That’s all we are right now providing, but technology is changing all the time and we are going to have like the latest and greatest. If something comes out and it’s been on the market elsewhere and there’s good data and good research, you know, we’ll have it.

Amanda: Awesome. So talk to me a little bit more about hormones, because I think that’s. Like, I can’t even tell you how many times women are like, Oh, I think my hormones are off. And I always think we should check it because I mean, if the physical side is off, like there’s, it doesn’t matter how much mental work we do. It’s not going to work. Right. So we should always check. But I think a lot of times. Women want to blame hormones when it’s not actually hormones.

Holly: It gets so tricky. And especially depending on where you are in your cycle and when we test and where you are in the menopausal spectrum, it gets really tricky.

I mean, when you’re closer to the menopausal spectrum, it gets a little bit easier to kind of dictate and determine what we need to do. But menstruating women, it’s a little bit more challenging. You do have to make sure you’re testing on specific days and, or at least know where, when you’re testing in that cycle, because you can look at those numbers and be like, oh, they’re totally normal.

But depending on where your cycle is, so they do get really tricky, but that’s where it’s nice to find a provider that is very knowledgeable in that and we’ll be able to interpret all of those results and determine what needs to be supplemented or not at that time.

Amanda: Yeah, I mean, hormones are so tricky. They really, really are. And there’s so many different factors to it. And so, um, but I love that you have, um, you have the experience doing this and like, this is one of the services that you’re going to be offering because I think a lot of women are like, yeah, I think my hormones are off and I’m like, well, let’s just check, let’s just check it and see where you’re at and, um, and sometimes they’re off and sometimes they’re not.

Holly: And a good predictor of that is what your cycle is doing, right? 

Amanda: Yes! I know. That’s what I always tell people is like, just because you’re, maybe you’re not in the mood as much as you think you should be or whatever, we have to look at all of the different factors and if you’re not having like other symptoms, then it might not be your hormones, right?

Holly: Right. I know. That’s the hard thing. And I think, um, it’s just one of the tools that we have to determine what is going on, but sometimes I’m even scratching my head. And sometimes it is, we do have to look at our sleep schedule. We have to look dietary. We have to look at what we’re doing during the day or how are we taking care of our relationship, the ways that we’re supposed to, because that all can feed into libido, but yeah, I’ll definitely check those levels and see where your testosterone, your DHEA is, and some of it can definitely be contributing to, but sometimes that’s the frustrating thing, you have to dive deeper. 

Amanda: Yeah, well, and that’s so much of what I do, right? On the mental side. Like, of course, we want to look at the physical side and make sure everything is working the way it should. But then we have to look at the mental side and look at the conditioning and the belief systems and your mindset and your relationship with yourself and your relationship with your spouse and those different things factor into it. And if one of those is off, then it could throw everything else off.

Holly: I love that you said relationship with yourself. That is so important. 

Amanda: Yes. That is so important. That is primary. That is the first thing I address with clients is relationship with self. Because if you don’t have a good relationship with yourself and your sexuality, how are you going to share that openly and with vulnerability?

Holly: I just got chills. I love that. Um, yeah, the physical side is definitely the easiest to rule out. And like, so that’s, of course, you’re going to go towards that. The mental and the other stuff is the hardest part. So, but equally, if not more, if not more, like probably more, way more important to deal with.

Amanda: Well, I want to talk a little bit about the aesthetics point of it too. Because I think, you know, so much of how we feel about ourselves has to do with, you know, how we look and what’s going on on the outside. And so I would love to hear a little bit more about what you’re doing in the aesthetic side of this too. Because we definitely want to work on the mental aspects, but if we can also help ourselves a little bit on the outside, why not?,

Holly: That’s my take on it. I’m like, no shame in the game, but at the same time, no one needs to be doing this. It’s just for fun, but when it turns, fun can turn into, oh my gosh, this is life changing as well too.

Amanda: Yes.

Holly: And I’m not even talking about injections. I’m talking about skincare. I’m talking about anything like even skincare. I mean, our estheticians, they can tell you how many stories that people have told them, their clients that have just come in and been like, I was a totally different person. You’ve changed my confidence and this has enabled me to go out and date again or to apply to that job. Because it’s a hard market out there when you’re competing with younger counterparts and it’s been really beneficial.

I do the injection side of it. I’m a very natural injector though. I don’t like to go overboard. I listen to my clients and I won’t talk them into doing things they don’t want to do. Now I’ll educate people, don’t get me wrong, on the proper way, or where we need to do what we need to do to accomplish their goals, but in no way. I want everyone to feel super comfortable when they sit in my chair and leave just being happy and confident and empowered.

And I think that’s what I see in aesthetics is that side of it. Some people have other opinions, whether it’s vanity or whatnot, but I’ve seen how life changing it can be for women. And again, it’s just little tweaks. It’s not going in and changing how you look because I love how you look. I don’t want to change that. People around you love you for who you are. But if it can make you feel better, then I’m all for it. And so we will offer anything injectable. 

I am an advanced injector and master injector on all things injectable. So there’s nothing I don’t do. And have a really great team with me. You will feel loved and comfortable and safe in the space to talk about things that aren’t always super comfortable to talk about. Who likes to talk about the things we don’t like about ourselves. I mean, women do it all the time. That’s our default. 

Amanda: But we do it in a very like complaining way and like a self loathing way rather than like a very factual way. 

Holly: Yes. And I try to correct that. My clients know that I’ve seen me for years and years. I don’t want them talking bad  about my friend.

Amanda: Yeah. 

Holly: They’re my friend and I don’t want them talking bad about themselves. And so we try and change that narrative up a little bit and just talk about the aging process. But I, um, think it can, it has its place in a woman’s life and it doesn’t have to be a lot. That place can be anything from coming in and doing maintenance Botox every couple months to doing it only twice a year or once a year for an event or something. But there’s no plan. It’s just what you are comfortable with and it’s pretty fun. I love it. It’s my passion aside from women’s health. I absolutely love doing it. 

Amanda: I love that. Okay. So when is Lotti Aesthetics and Wellness going to be open? 

Holly: October 11th is our grand opening and then the next day we’ll be up for business.

Amanda: Yay! And I will be there on Thursdays or every other Thursday, or maybe every Thursday, depending on how things go. But so if you want to, um, come in and do some consultations with Holly and her team, and along with that, come and talk to me, then I would love to see you in the office. 

Holly: Can’t wait.

Amanda: Okay. Thanks so much for being with me today, Holly. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we end today? 

Holly: I think we covered it. Thank you so much!

Amanda: Okay. All right. Thanks everybody for joining us today and we’ll see you next week. Bye bye.