The Roby Institute Blog

location: Marietta, GA

Question: i am 43 and i seem to have all the symptoms of hormone imbalance. i have been treated for a few years now for manic depression, but nothing really seems to help. I went to a Dr. recently he drew blood for progesterone, estrogen, thyroid , the results came back normal – low end of normal but normal.

I am irritable all the time, big anxiety problems, depression, hair loss, hair growth around nipples, lots of pubic hair on inner thigh, i recently contacted women to women and ordered their product but i am so impatient and not sure this is the right route to take. i feel very overhwelmed can you help?

Dear Kathleen,

Before anything else, read Dr. Roby´s book, Maybe It Is All In Your Head, and You Aren´t Crazy.which is out on Amazon.com. You can even download it.

I´m sorry that you are having all of these problems. You would be a good poster girl for hormone imbalance, even be having an allergic reaction to one or more of your own hormones, and in answer to your question, yes; we can help you.

Unfortunately, traditional physicians are almost totally ignorant of the role that hormones play in our lives. Quite simply, that everything that happens in your body, is in some way, dependent on hormones. We look at normal range as a bit of a myth, in relation to the health of your hormones. When we do our test panel for hormones, we want the true levels, not whether you are within normal ranges (which to traditional docs,just means “for your age”), what they don´t think about, or tell patients about, is that is that normal can include from 5 to 95, and you certainly, at your age, don´t want the hormonal function of a 95 year old woman, and they´ve already told you that they are in the low range! As long as the patient is anywhere inside that normal range, they refuse to do anything to adjust them.

We think that if you´re going to be in the normal hormonal range, we should give them a boost, and move them up to the higher end of normal, so that they are closer to your true age, and you will feel good again.

I would ask you to go back to the website: www.robyinstitute.com, and read these three sections, in the order given. 1) Hormone Imbalance. Will tell you more than most doctors even know about what is going on inside your body, why it is happening, and how we can help you to make the meaningful changes, to put you back in control of your own inner workings. 2) Food Allergy. How the food we eat and drinks we drink can help you to feel better or worse, and why, how they change from season to season. 3) Airborne Allergy. While we cannot usually know what is in the outside air, or do anything except avoid being in it, we can definitely control the quality of the air that we breathe inside our homes. This section will tell you exactly how to do so, inexpensively, with locally, easily acquired items, and best of all…effectively. You don´t need the beautiful, if non-functional, widgets in the catalogs, we make it easy for you.

Can you come to Texas for testing and treatment? Texas law doesn´t allow our doctors to be diagnosing, treating or prescribing, for any patient that they have not seen in person. You would have to come here for the initial visit, and once a year for retesting, from then on.

We can email a lab slip so that you can have the blood test locally. We usually receive the results in about 10 days. You can give us a call, and someone will discuss your results, and what we see as your best options. We have lots of out of town patients, it´s a day trip, or at most, an overnight trip, by air.

We take most health insurance plans, and if you will call the scheduling ladies at: 800-842-6349, they can check your benefits so that you have a pretty good idea of cost, and can make an informed decision.

The protocol includes a non-med and a medical part, and it is definitely a lifestyle change. Dr. Roby likes for all out of towners to begin to follow the non med part for 30 to 60 days before making the trek here, only to find out that you can´t, or won´t to do the physical part, for one reason or another. If you think that you would really like to come see us, please let me know, and I´ll tell you all about it.

Please feel free to email me at any time, if you have questions or need clarifications on anything. Don´t give up hope, you can feel good again. Thanks for sharing your problems with us…now, let´s get you back to the person you want to be.

Dorothy.Dreux
Roby Institute
Austin TX

location: Anchorage, AK

Question: I am 39 years old. I am currently 60 pounds overweight. This has not always been the case for me. I was an active athletic child, adolescent, young adult, and was not overweight. After having children everything changed for me physically. I suspect changes were happening before this, but I ignored them thinking I was just “getting older” and my body was changing (major hairloss along with joint pain and heart palpatations in my early twenties that lasted about 6 mos., 20 pound weight gain in 2 mos. after ovarian cyst removal surgery in early 30’s, sinus sugery late 20’s)

After having children (first at 33) each time I had all kinds of CRAZY symptoms. I had my third child a year ago (my second one died in utero at 6 and a half mos.), and I am worse off than I have ever been. Symptoms are major fatigue, silent migraines, pain and stiffness in every major joint-worst being the neck and spine, a feeling of being drugged when I wake up in the morning, no men!

Mental clarity, irritability, occasional bilateral pain in upper abdomen …the list goes on. I don’t smoke, don’t drink alcohol, and no longer drink any caffeine (I noticed it dehydrated me and made symptoms worse-even just one soda). I drink only water now. As my day progresses my fatigue does too. Besides the spine I usually feel best in the morning about 30 minutes after getting up. At night I usually hit a point where I HAVE to go to bed. I just can’t “go” anymore. I am also better off if I am up moving around, but with the spine pain, huge lack of energy and feeling “drugged” all day, lately it’s hard to always be up moving. I had temporary vision loss in my left eye in May of 2008.
I have had every major test: MRI, ecocardiagram, halter monitor for a month of heart monitoring, carotid artery sono, and every blood test you can imagine. They have found nothing wrong. The most interesting clue so far is a month ago I took 60 mg of prednisone daily for 6 days followed by a taper to see what would happen.

OH MY GOSH I have NEVER felt so good in my life!!! During the six days of the high dose of prednisone I was super woman. I had mental clarity, motivation, NO joint pain (which has been constant for 15 years). I honestly am saying it is the best I have EVER felt even better than when I was younger, active, and not overweight. There were no negative side effects. It even stabilized my heart rate at 70ish (this surprised the doctors), and it stabilized my blood pressure. I lost 7 pounds within the first five days of the high doses (this also surprised them.) My shoes fit better
because my feet weren’t swollen.

It was a wonderful yet brief relief.

With each taper my symptoms slowly started coming back, and seem to be worse. My heart rate is again hanging out in the mid 80’s or 90’s sometimes it’s even over 100 for no apparent reason. My blood pressure goes up and down with no pattern as well. I am taking nothing right now. Dr.’s are still trying to figure out what’s wrong. They believe me now that it’s “something” because of my positive physical response to prednisone. They’re just scratching their heads now thinking “hmmmm,
what are we treating?” They say since I responded so well to high doses of steroid that it must be inflammatory and possibly auto-immune. I think it’s my hormones. My question is, “Could Prednisone have helped me so much if it was some type of hormonal “issue”? If “yes” then, what did the Prednisone possibly do to make me feel better? I live in Alaska, but am from Dallas, and go home to visit family occasionally (in Big D). I want to come see you all if I am a good candidate. I also plan on reading your book. I just stumbled upon your website on the internet tonight…Divine intervention I think. Help! I want to feel better, so I can be the best mom possible to my children.



First, you read the book, then you immediately make an appointment to see Dr. Roby, and we prefer that patients stay off the prednisone!

My personal feeling is that it is by far, one of the nastiest drugs ever pushed off on the public. I know that it makes you feel goood again, but it can cause so many irreversible side effects, that many of us who see these things, far too often, feel that it is to keep the patient feeling cheerful while the drug is killing him or her. There are many, many newer, better drugs without the prednisone effects.

I´m sorry that you are going through this. You don´t really need to anymore…no one does.

The symptoms that you have described, are pretty classic for hormone imbalanced and allergic people. Most of us fall into that category, although the symptoms may vary somewhat, from person to person, the underlying cause is easy for us to recognize, and pretty easy to fix. I believe that you are correct about your problem being the hormones, but traditional physicians, don´t learn anything about hormones in med school, and we all know that if it isn´t taught in med school, it simply doesn´t exist.

You can read much more about it in the book, and on the website, so I´m going to give you some homework to do. This is all on the website, if you forget it.

Because this is a pretty big lifestyle change for most people, we like to get you started on the non-med part of the protocol for about 30 to 60 days before coming here. Before we have patients come all the way to Texas, and find out that they either can´t, or are just not willng to make the changes that are necessary to make it work. It does get lots easier, as we get into the new habits, but we want to make sure that you can see yourself doing it, and we can, too.

1) MOVEMENT. If we had to pick one thing as the pivotal point, without which we can help you, it has to be movement. Dr. Roby, and all of the rest of us, are expected to do looong, slooow, distance walking for 1 hour in the morning, and 1 hour prior to bedtime. We all have to do it. We all had to work up to it. This is all about your friend and enemy, adrenalin. The book will give you a better explanation than I can here. If you can´t walk, he will ask you to do whatever movement that you are capable of doing, and make a treatment plan based on your particular circumstances.

2) DIET: Low to no carb; sugar is NOT your friend! Low fat foods. We only ask that you restrict your foods for the school days and nights. Sunday night through Friday. On the weekends, eat a lot of the two foods that you´ve missed the most. We repeat this until we find out what foods really do bother you.

3) SPIRITUALITY: Your form of spirituality; not ours. Say your prayers, meditate, practice Pilates, whatever you can do to center yourself, and block out any negativity in your life.

These are three of the methods that we use here, at Roby Institute. The other two are traditional medicine, along with complementary and alternative medicine.

Do this for 30 days, keeping in touch with us so that we can help you along if you need us.

You will feel at least, 50% better, within 30 days. There is hope out here. Don´t give up.

Regards,

Dorothy Dreux
Roby Institute
Austin, Texas

location: Schertz, TX

YourQuestion: To Whom It May Concern:

I am a 28 year-old female that has had a problem with swelling in my
legs and fingers since I was 17 years old. At this point in my life it
has hit an extreme level–I can gain 5-7 pounds of “water” in any given
day.

I’ve gotten blood work done. I’ve found out that my liver, kidneys,
gallbladder and thyroid are all “healthy.” I was diagnosed with Celiac
Disease earlier this year. But staying away from gluten has not solved
the problem. I do notice when I eat a strict gluten-free vegan diet and
sweat the swelling is not as bad BUT it does not go away completely.

I do “PMS” a full-week before I start menstruating. My emotions are
“off the charts” the week before my period and my swelling is even
worse.

I think my bleeding is normal. I bleed a full 7 days. And I’m not a
very heavy bleeder, in my opinion.

The swelling is the worst when I’m,
1) Constipated
2) PMSing/Menstruating
3) Stressed
4) Sit down a lot

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time,
Rhonda



I´m so sorry that you suffer through this every month. There is no longer any reason for you, or anyone else to have to put up with it. The first thing that I´m going to ask that you do, is go back to the website: www.robyinstitute.com, and read these three sections; in the order that I´m giving them to you. You will understand so much after you do. You will want to try to figure out, why your doctor doesn´t know this, and if he does, indeed, know, why he isn´t sharing it with you and his other patients.

1) Hormone Imbalance. This will explain what is really going on inside of your body, why it is happening, and how we can help you get control of your life, and keep it that way. It is not a disease called celiac, it is a constellation of the symptoms of food allergy. We know that you have a hormone imbalance, just from the symptoms that you´ve given us.

2) Food Allergy. This section will explain about how the things that you eat and drink, can make your symptoms better or worse. Usually worse, if there is too much stress in yout life, if there are things in the air that you are reacting allergically to; there is a reason that this is known as the allergy capital of the world. You will be able to understand about the constellations of symptoms, which some doctors, and/or national associations, give names to, and make them into diseases.

3) Airborne Allergy. This is a good section to tie it all together. We can´t do much about the air that we are forced to breathe outside, but we can certainly use some easily accessible, inexpensive, and incredibly effective control mechanisms that we can use to make and keep our homes as clean as a lab. Right in your shopping center.

Once you have finished reading all of this, you will probably have more questions. Or need some clarifications. Just email me and I´ll walk through this with you. Hormones and allergies are so closely interrelated, that it is difficult to decide where one ends, and the other begins. We find that we get quicker and better results by treating both at the same time.

The second thing that I´m going to suggest, is that you make an appointment with us, now. We have offices in Austin and San Antonio.The phone number to call is: 800-842-6349. The scheduling ladies can email a lab slip, so that you can have the blood test done before you come in for the appointment. You can call the office in ten days or so, and someone will discuss the test results, and what we see as the best options.

We take almost all medical insurance, including M´Care/M´Caid and military, but no one has ever been turned away from our offices, for lack of money.

We are so confident that we can help you, our policy is a ´´satisfaction guarantee“. If we haven´t made you feel significantly better before you leave our office, the visit is at no charge, if you do decide that you would like to try the treatment, and after 6 months, or a year, you decide that you haven´t acheived your goal, all you have to do is ask, and any money that you have paid us will be refunded.

Don´t wait, don´t suffer any more. Let´s get you in here, and get you well.

Dorothy Dreux
Roby Institute
Austin, Texas
dorothy.dreux@gmail.com