FAQ
The following section provides answers to the most frequently asked questions about the field of anti-aging medicine. If you have a question that is not explained below, please contact us and our staff and physicians can provide more information when you schedule a consultation for biomarker evaluation and treatment.
What is included in the Program Maintenance Fee?
Do you accept health insurance?
Will my insurance cover the cost of HRT prescriptions?
Will my insurance cover the cost of laboratory work?
Will my Flex Spending Account cover anti-aging treatment?
Can I obtain medication from a local pharmacy?
How are the hormones administered and how frequently?
What are the hormones made from?
Where are the hormones formulated?
Do you test cortisol levels?
Do you conduct saliva testing?
How long do I need to commit to the program?
What happens if I decide to end treatment? Will my body stop producing hormones on its own?
Will my hormone levels decrease? Will I lose my gains?
Will my testes shrink if I decide to undergo testosterone replacement therapy?
What are the side-effects of treatment?
How will the treatment affect my period?
What if I have already had a hysterectomy?
What is included in the Program Maintenance Fee?
The Program Maintenance Fee is a monthly payment that covers your physician's professional services: $100 for basic hormone replacement therapy (HRT), $120 for human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) therapy or $140 for human growth hormone (HGH) therapy. Fees are due every 28 days for as long as our physician continues to monitor and manage your therapy program, including measuring your blood levels and treating symptoms. To simplify your payments, this fee is billed with your monthly shipments of medicines. It does not correlate with your office visits.
The Program Maintenance Fee covers:
- Follow-up consultations, e-mails, phone calls, physical exams, analysis and review of laboratory tests. During the first year, you will have 3 to 4 consultations with your physician valued at $250 per consultation.
- Management of your treatment program and lab follow-up requirements.
- Continuous Youth Diagnostic™ Testing for arterial compliance, body composition, pulmonary function and skin elasticity.
- Complimentary blood work in our office.
- A convenient Medicool pack you can use to transport medications requiring refrigeration.
- A complimentary consultation with our nutritionist.
Do your physicians accept health insurance?
We do not accept health insurance for payment.
Will my insurance cover the cost of prescriptions?
The majority of health insurance companies will not cover compounded medications. Because of this, our pharmacy partner does not accept health insurance as payment.
Will my insurance cover the cost of laboratory work?
Lab tests are often covered by many health insurance plans. We recommend that you consult your insurance company to confirm whether this applies in your case. Look under the Diagnostic Testing tab on the left to find a list of the lab tests that we perform.
Will my Flex Spending Account cover anti-aging treatment?
Flexible Spending Accounts allow employees to designate pre-tax income to cover health-related costs that are NOT covered by primary health insurance. We recommend consulting your employer or visiting the IRS FSA web site. There are different kinds of FSAs, some of which may be used to cover treatment expenses that are not paid for by your primary health insurance, such as the cost of prescriptions, office visits and co-pays, program fees, vitamins and supplements.
Can I obtain medication from a local pharmacy?
To ensure the highest levels of safety and quality assurance for our patients, we partnered with a single pharmacy for all of our medications. This way, we are better positioned to accurately and safely manage your hormone levels and overall health. Modulating bioidentical hormones is a unique process that is far more complex than prescribing more conventional drugs like Premarin that are virtually identical for patients across the board. In compounded medications, hormone powders are combined with a cream or gel that can be transdermally applied or they can be loaded into capsules.
A number of variables must be considered in developing these medicines, including the cream’s absorption capacity and the size of hormone particles. Your HRT regimen will be customized just for you, based on what we learn from blood tests, your medical history, a physical exam, and any symptoms you may be experiencing from hormone deficiencies. By standardizing our medicines through a single pharmacy - as we do with our diagnostic lab - we know exactly what we are prescribing for our patients. Ultimately, this reduces risk by eliminating variables that could complicate treatment and enables us to better predict your potential response to dosages and make proper adjustments to the dosage based on your symptoms.
How are the hormones administered and how frequently?
Patients self-administer their hormone treatments once or twice daily through a number of different methods. These include transdermal creams for estrogen, progesterone and testosterone; oral capsules for progesterone, DHEA, pregnenolone and melatonin; or subcutaneous injections just beneath the skin for HGH and HCG. The insulin needles are ultra-fine (#31 gauge, 5/16") and are not painful.
What are the hormones made from?
Soy is the source of the bioidentical estradiol, progesterone and testosterone hormones we prescribe. Using these molecules, we can create duplicates of the hormones that are currently in your body. The HCG hormone is a human derivative, while HGH is created through the use of recombinant DNA technology. The hormones are designed to fit the receptors the same way as the hormones in your body.
Where are the hormones formulated?
MedQuest Pharmacy is among an established group of pharmacies in the United States that provide state-of-the-art customized pharmaceutical products. Their methods for compounding medicines combine trusted, time-tested formulation techniques with modern medical knowledge. MedQuest is the go-to pharmacy for conscientious practitioners and health-conscious patients in search of individually tailored dosages and optimal results. MedQuest Pharmacy specializes in hormone replacement and offers supplements such as vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and medical supplies.
MedQuest is the most sought-after compounding pharmacy in the country, due in large part to its fidelity in adhering to the highest standards of quality control. One of the largest in the United States, the pharmacy custom-designs its medications, which it produces in the form and method of administration preferred by the customer. Using only the most advanced and state-of-the-art technology, equipment and sterility devices, MedQuest also employs the top compounding pharmacists and technicians in the nation, who have extensive experience in creating natural, bioidentical compounds for hormone therapies.
As an industry leader, they continue to set the standard of care for producing quality results, consistency and product value. The original pharmaceutical components of their custom formulations - all acquired from U.S. vendors - are of the finest quality and are independently certified for quality assurance. MedQuest only uses top of the line raw ingredient suppliers and thoroughly checks their sources for each and every ingredient. MedQuest compounds must pass three Quality Assurance points before completing the compounding process.
The company employs an efficient, streamlined system for processing orders, which allows the pharmacy to compound and ship their products in a convenient turnaround time of 24 hours. To do this, MedQuest assigns a personal representative to help each customer submit and obtain their prescriptions. In spite of these conveniences and their standards for quality, MedQuest’s prices are still comparable with that of their competitors.
Reflecting their focus on quality, MedQuest Pharmacy is continuously expanding its data bank of physician research, which keeps them on the cusp of the newest breakthroughs in medical, pharmaceutical, fitness, and nutritional research. This data bank is one of their greatest strengths and allows them to provide clients with relevant medical data that is current, reliable, and understandable.
Our Premium AM & PM Packs are created by Medical Horizons, a subsidiary of MedQuest Pharmacy. Medical Horizons maintains full compliance with the FDA’s and Department of Agriculture’s GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) requirements. A robust system of checks and balances during the production process ensures that every product is manufactured to the highest GMP standards. This includes a biological test on the completed product at the end of the process to check for any harmful biomaterial. As clients, we are also permitted to use any of their independent laboratories to verify the individual dosages of the custom formulations. Upon request, Medical Horizons will include in every order a Certificate of Manufacture with Certificates of Analysis for every ingredient in the formula. The company’s Quality Control Team evaluates all of the raw ingredient manufacturers used by Medical Horizons to ensure comprehensive quality for every product.
MedQuest Pharmacy and its subsidiary companies operate out of a state-of-the-art, 40,000-square foot facility and employ a team of professionals who are leaders in their field who genuinely care about their clients. Striving to be the country’s best product and service provider, MedQuest upholds an uncompromising commitment to quality to help their customers live healthier, happier and better quality lives. Their products set the industry standard, which helps explain the business’s unparalleled growth rate.
Do you test cortisol levels?
We draw blood from every new patient and test cortisol levels. Blood samples are taken at our facility between 7AM and 9AM.
Do you do saliva testing?
Saliva testing is useful for measuring highly concentrated hormones such as progesterone, but is not able to measure all hormones with precision. Estradiol, for example, often circulates in extraordinarily minute amounts measured in picograms, which is equivalent to trillionths of a gram. For our patients, saliva samples are not needed - the extensive blood testing we perform for each consultation is sufficient for assessing all necessarily hormones.
How long do I need to commit to the program?
Patients should continue treatment for as long as they wish to enjoy the results or address symptoms of hormonal deficiencies. To help you assess the effects of therapy on your health, we closely monitor certain body systems that decline with age, using a set of advanced biomarkers of aging that we have developed. While most patients stay on the program, some have decided to stop treatment. Should you ever decide to resume treatment, we can re-evaluate your health to understand the benefits they stand to gain from further treatment.
What happens if I decide to end treatment? Will my body stop producing hormones on its own? Will my hormone levels decrease? Will I lose my gains?
Generally speaking, introducing exogenous (external) hormones to your body will decrease the amount of endogenous (internal) hormones produced. But if you stop treatment, the body tends to revert natural hormone production to pre-treatment levels. If your natural production was low to begin with, in most cases your body will go back to producing those same levels after you stop treatment. Likewise, most of the physical changes you experienced under the program will also revert back to pre-treatment conditions over time.
Will my testes shrink on testosterone replacement therapy?
We recommend administering testosterone through transdermal creams and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG). When external testosterone is introduced to the body, the testes will likely reduce its production of testosterone in response to the increased presence, which in turn may cause the testes to shrink slightly. HCG, however, functions to help preserve the size of the testes by emulating a luteinizing hormone that stimulates the testes to produce their own testosterone. HCG is administered every morning using an insulin syringe. HCG and testosterone cream can be prescribed separately or together.
What are the side effects?
Our treatment seeks to restore hormone production to youthful levels. The side effects of this kind of therapy are often minimal and manageable. Some mild side effects may include breast tenderness or swollen joints in the early stages of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. These effects can be managed by reducing the hormone dosage. None of our patients have experienced side effects lasting over the long term.
How will the treatment affect my period?
There is no simple answer to this question. The effects of bioidentical HRT (bHRT) on one’s menstrual cycle depends upon many factors that are unique to each woman. Understanding this point will involve a long discussion about the supporting evidence that exists today. In brief, we believe that while continuing to cycle may have benefits in reducing breast cancer risk, insufficient data exists to require it for all patients, especially patients who don’t have high risk of breast cancer and who are intolerant to the hormone fluctuations.
What if I have already had a hysterectomy?
Bioidentical hormone replacement poses no risks for women who have had a hysterectomy. In fact, replacing testosterone in women who have had hysterectomies is a key, as the ovaries are responsible for producing most of a woman’s testosterone.
