Orange County Music Icons

It is amazing how OCPS has changed in the past year! A year ago, I was the only physician working in the practice, but during this past year, we have added plastic surgeons Drs. John Compoginis and Deborah Ekstrom, and an extremely talented nutritionist, Dr. Staci Compoginis, to our fold. We were all very pleased with our Soirée Thursday evening.

The audience especially enjoyed a presentation on weight control by Dr. Staci Compoginis, focusing on the HCG diet. Dr. Deborah Ekstrom presented some new procedures she will be adding to OCPS and I wound it up with an overview of the procedures we currently offer at OCPS. Audience members were appreciative of the many gifts which were raffled. A good time was had by all.

As a thank you to our staff for the extra work they put in to prepare this Soirée, we took them out to the Ranch Restaurant and Saloon in Anaheim Friday evening. I must confess this was the first time I had visited the Ranch but it won’t be my last. And I would encourage you to check it out as well if you have any love of country music.

The Ranch is an upscale fine dining (yes, they serve grass-fed steak) and country music establishment. The Saloon provides an intimate setting for musical performances by local and national country artists. 4 dance instructors teach basic and advanced two-step line dancing – I was amazed by how many people here in Orange County were very proficient at line dancing!

The Ranch and Coach House with office staff this weekend

Saturday evening, we visited the Coach House, an iconic music and dinner venue in San Juan Capistrano. The Coach House opened in 1980 as a country music venue but has morphed into hosting artists from all genres of music. I have been to this venue numerous times over the years and have seen great acts like Ted Nugent, Thompson Square and Eddie Money in this intimate setting. Other top acts over the years have included Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, BB King, Bonnie Rait, Pat Benatar, Tom Jones, Miles Davis and Billy Squier. As well as established names, this venue has hosted numerous aspiring artists and international touring acts.

It has also hosted numerous top-notch tribute bands, some of which we have seen include The Desperados (i.e. The Eagles), Stones vs Beatles, and this past Saturday, tributes to Neil Diamond and Linda Ronstadt. There truly is not a bad seat in the building but the best tables, the ones right up against the stage, go on a first purchased basis – the trick to great seats like we had Saturday night is to buy them when shows are first announced. So, if you want seats to the Linda Ronstadt show during the first week of October, buy them now!

For many years, we have offered our patients bioidentical hormone replacement therapy via the pelleting process, by the company, BioTe®. Our BioTe® rep was at our Soirée to answer questions and was offering free copies of BioTe® founder, Dr. Gary Donovitz’s books, “Age Healthier, Live Happier” and “Testosterone Matters…..More”. If you missed them, both are available on Amazon and are worth a read.

As we age, hormone levels drop in both males and females, leading to decreased cognition, poor sleep, less strength, a drop in libido and a host of other “normal” parts of aging. For those of you over the age of 40, a check of your hormone levels will probably get a response from your family physician, gynecologist or urologist that your levels “are normal for your age”. I started bioidentical hormone replacement therapy about ten years ago because I did not want to be “normal for my age” – I desired the vitality and body functions I had before I was 40 years old. And I can vouch that this pelleting does work in every way that it is advertised.

Let me describe the pelleting process to you in the simplest terms. You will begin with a consultation at which we will discuss your symptoms and goals. We will encourage you to read the information we provide to you and it would be great if you would also read Dr. Donovitz’s books. Next, we order a few pages of laboratory tests. These test results will vary from person to person at any given age and are vital to a personalize, custom treatment program. The lab results are entered into the BioTe® dosing site, and the computer program will spit out the recommendations to optimize your health. This will include optimizing not only your testosterone and estradiol levels but also your thyroid hormones, Vitamin B12 levels and Vitamin D levels. The program will give us a custom readout of how many milligrams of testosterone or estradiol you will require to optimize your hormone levels.

Worth a read

These pellets are inserted (usually just above the center of the buttocks but some patients, particularly those who have had a tummy tuck, prefer to have them in the abdominal wall) in a simple office procedure. About a month later, another set of lab results are obtained to verify that hormone levels have been optimized. Very rarely, additional hormones will be required (“boosting”) but once we know what your optimal dosage is, that amount of hormone will be administered at subsequent pelleting treatments.

These dosages will be continued for a year, at which time another set of labs is drawn to verify that your needs have not changed. The pellets administered to males are larger and re-pelleting is necessary, on average, about every five months; the smaller female pellets require re-pelleting every 3-4 months. An oral estrogen blocker, DIM, is taken by male and female patients, in males to minimize the conversion of testosterone to estrogen, and in females, promotes healthy estrogen balance. We all hope to live longer. This simple and predictable process allows you to live better as you live longer.

For CA, please call 949-888-9700 or visit www.orangecountyplasticsurgery.com
Or for MA location, call 508-755-4825 or visit www.salisburyps.com

You can write to
Dr. John Compoginis at Contact Us Form
Dr. Staci Compoginis at Contact Us Form
Dr. Deborah Ekstrom at mds@salisburyps.com
or Dr. Juris Bunkis at Contact Us Form