Ker­ry Mon­tano holds a BA in Health and Nu­tri­tion from Queen's Uni­ver­si­ty in Kingston, On­tario, and is al­so a cer­ti­fied health coach and per­son­al train­er.

Her pas­sion has al­ways been help­ing peo­ple adopt health­i­er lifestyles through nu­tri­tion, fit­ness, and well­ness. But it was her own health jour­ney that in­spired her to in­tro­duce hor­mone op­ti­mi­sa­tion ser­vices to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mon­tano re­called that her body be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sev­er­al un­com­fort­able changes. Af­ter con­sult­ing her pri­ma­ry care physi­cian, she was told every­thing was fine.

"I didn't want to ac­cept that be­cause I knew my own body," she ex­plained. "I was for­tu­nate enough to trav­el to the Unit­ed States, where a clin­ic test­ed my hor­mones. That's when I re­alised things were start­ing to change a lit­tle bit. I caught it ear­ly enough, they did a lit­tle tweak­ing, and I felt amaz­ing.

"The prob­lem was that I had to trav­el every 3-4 months for treat­ment. It was very ex­pen­sive and not sus­tain­able. I re­alised there were so many oth­er women in Trinidad feel­ing the way I did and much worse."

De­ter­mined to cre­ate change, Mon­tano reached out to her child­hood friend, Dr Shane Stone, a fam­i­ly prac­tice physi­cian with more than ten years of ex­pe­ri­ence in pri­ma­ry care, pre­ven­tive med­i­cine, sports med­i­cine, hor­mone man­age­ment (in­clud­ing pel­let in­ser­tion), and sex­u­al dys­func­tion.

"I told him, 'There is noth­ing here. Some peo­ple are for­tu­nate to trav­el, but for oth­ers, there is noth­ing.' He agreed to come back home and help me with it," Mon­tano said.

To­geth­er, they launched Lyf Med­ical, a clin­ic ded­i­cat­ed to hor­mone op­ti­mi­sa­tion and HRT (hor­mone re­place­ment ther­a­py) -- three years ago.

Hor­mones are com­plex and pow­er­ful chem­i­cals. If their lev­els are not op­ti­mised, this can cause cer­tain symp­toms that make you feel like you're not in con­trol of your body. Even small im­bal­ances in many hor­mones can cause sig­nif­i­cant changes in the body, some­times lead­ing to con­di­tions that re­quire treat­ment to main­tain health and im­prove qual­i­ty of life.

"It has been so re­ward­ing to see the changes in our pa­tients, both women and men," Mon­tano said.

"When they come back and say, 'I feel amaz­ing,' it makes every­thing worth­while."

Dr Stone shared that up­on re­turn­ing to Trinidad, he re­alised that while there are ex­cel­lent OB/GY­Ns lo­cal­ly, ac­cess to HRT treat­ment op­tions re­mains se­vere­ly lim­it­ed.

"Hor­mone op­ti­mi­sa­tion refers to di­ag­nos­ing and treat­ing hor­mon­al im­bal­ances, which can man­i­fest as fa­tigue, weight-loss re­sis­tance, poor mus­cle build, brain fog, erec­tile dys­func­tion, mood dis­tur­bances, and oth­er qual­i­ty-of-life is­sues," he ex­plained.

"I am li­cenced in Texas, so I can write pre­scrip­tions there, and pa­tients or their friends can bring them down. It's a way to bridge the gap un­til bet­ter ac­cess is avail­able here."

Im­por­tant­ly, he em­pha­sised that Lyf Med­ical's goal is not to re­place ex­ist­ing providers.

"There is no in­ten­tion to take pa­tients away from their OB/GY­Ns. In fact, we en­cour­age pa­tients to con­tin­ue reg­u­lar check­ups, mam­mo­grams, and pap smears," he said. "Health­care should be a team ef­fort, with doc­tors col­lab­o­rat­ing for the best out­comes."

For Mon­tano and Dr Stone, Lyf Med­ical is about more than just med­i­cine; it's about ad­vo­ca­cy, aware­ness, and en­sur­ing ac­cess to treat­ments that can trans­form qual­i­ty of life.

"Women's health is now get­ting the fund­ing it de­serves in many first-world coun­tries," Dr Stone not­ed. "This has been the stan­dard of care for a very long time. The da­ta is out there, and it's im­por­tant not to be­lieve the rhetoric from 20 or 30 years ago. It's just not true any­more.

"For us, it's about chang­ing that nar­ra­tive here and giv­ing women and men the care they de­serve."

When Lyf Med­ical first launched, Mon­tano said it was pro­mot­ed main­ly through Face­book ad­ver­tis­ing.

"It grew ex­po­nen­tial­ly just by word of mouth, so we don't run those ads any­more," she ex­plained.

"There are many peo­ple out there who want to get help, in­clud­ing me. We go in­to a lot of de­tail with our clients, in­clud­ing hor­mon­al tests. We are very thor­ough with con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and safe­ty checks. It's not just a one-and-done thing."

Mon­tano al­so high­light­ed how men have been step­ping up to sup­port their part­ners' care.

"More hus­bands are at­tend­ing vis­its, they're un­der­stand­ing more, and they're re­al­ly, re­al­ly em­pa­thet­ic," she said.

"Some­times a hus­band will come in and say, 'My wife has im­proved; you've saved our re­la­tion­ship,' and that is re­al­ly nice to hear. There is a lot of mis­un­der­stand­ing out there, but we are see­ing peo­ple go back to work who were un­able to work be­fore. That's life-chang­ing."