Who We Are Individually, in Our Communities, and Together

[00:00:00] Kelly Engelmann: Wellness is a practice, not just a word. Welcome to the Synergee Podcast, where myself, Kelly Engelmann and Lori Esery shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body.

[00:00:17] Lori Esarey: And most importantly, feed your soul.

[00:00:25] Kelly Engelmann: Hi, I’m Kelly Engelmann. I am the founder of Enhanced Wellness Living in Jackson, Mississippi, and the co-founder of Synergee. But better than that, I get to be the best friend of Lori Esarey.

[00:00:41] Lori Esarey: Yeah! So that is me, yeah. I’m the owner of Total Nutrition and Therapeutics and the co-founder of Synergee. And we’re here today to probably talk about one of, I would say a little uncomfortable, but we’re gonna be uncomfortable together today, really talking about our stories. Who we are individually, who we are in our communities and who we are together. And so we’re gonna do that today. Get uncomfortable with you, our listeners, just sharing with you where we come from and how our stories have impacted our today, ou-our clinics, our practices and our life today.

[00:01:19] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So, how it makes us available really to have, you know, all these years of wisdom that we got from the school of hard knocks and from the formal education that we acquired and how that helps us bring to you, you know, the perspectives that we have on life and wellness. And family and fun. And so I hope that this is enlightening and, and fun for both of us, you know?

[00:01:44] Lori Esarey: Absolutely. I don’t dread tell my story. All of my story’s not beautiful, but God’s made it beautiful. And so I feel blessed to be here.

[00:01:52] So, in an authentic and a transparent way today, probably with a bunch of laughs, maybe a few tears. Um, we’re gonna share that with you. So hang on and get excited about the next several minutes together.

[00:02:04] Kelly Engelmann: Awesome. So, Lori Esery: tell us about yourself! Like where did you grow up? What were you like as a child?

[00:02:12] Lori Esarey: Oh my goodness. Yeah, so I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. I was born to my parents who are together today. They’ve been married 63 years.

[00:02:25] Kelly Engelmann: Woohoo.

[00:02:27] Lori Esarey: Yeah. Taught me some very valuable lessons, but was born there and then moved to Florida. I now live in central Florida, but moved to Florida when I was six years old. Uh, we moved to Florida to actually help my uncle with his retirement center. So, he was the owner of a nursing home, residential living ALF facility. Really just an aging community in Florida, and so we moved here when I was young and I grew up with entrepreneurs.

[00:02:59] You know, my mom and dad were a part of that business. We basically lived all of our breath. We were there, we were there. So, I started working at a young age and I got a chance to work with the aging adult. And so that’s that we’re gonna go back to in a few minutes, but that has really impacted my life in a very, very big way to see what health looked like in the aging adult and what unhealthy looked like.

[00:03:24] Kelly Engelmann: Wow. So, that made an ear- an impression on you really early in your life.

[00:03:28] Lori Esarey: It did.

[00:03:29] Kelly Engelmann: That gave you perspective that really most people don’t get to have.

[00:03:32] Lori Esarey: Right. And at the time I have to say, I didn’t necessarily like that we lived basically at a retirement center, right. Because there was a part of my early years in middle school and early high school that we lived on property.

[00:03:47] Kelly Engelmann: Wow!

[00:03:47] Lori Esarey: We did. So yes, it did frame my view of health and the aging adult. And so yes, a unique opportunity, but that’s where I also, uh, fell in love with and wanted to become a nurse.

[00:04:02] Kelly Engelmann: Sweet.

[00:04:02] Lori Esarey: Right. So I decided to go to nursing school. It was one of those things where there wasn’t an alternative. In other words, I didn’t come outta school thinking I would be this or that. Um, I was gonna be a nurse. However, I really thought that I was going to go in the direction of psychology and working with behavior because it just really, it intrigued me to see how people behaved.

[00:04:27] Kelly Engelmann: Interesting! So that’s what you’re doing today, right? You’re, you’re a nurse and a nurse practitioner, but at the end of the day, you have to say that you dig into behavioral health and behavioral changes quite a lot in your practice that you have today. So, that’s pretty interesting that that’s really was your heart from the very beginning.

[00:04:46] Lori Esarey: And a funny story to that is I headed into school dual enrolled in high school, graduated early, cause. Start school quite early and skipped a grade and was dual enrolled in high school. And in college, one of my first two classes were sociology and psychology. That psychology class. I learned how I didn’t wanna go the route of psychology because I’m an empath and I take on other people’s emotions.

[00:05:10] And so I bailed on that, but you know what? Here I am today, as you just said. I am working in the field, if you will, of psychology or behavior 24/7, basically.

[00:05:22] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely.

[00:05:23] Lori Esarey: So, irony is right. So that’s where I started in. I went to nursing school. I went to, uh, two years of community college and then off to University of South Florida.

[00:05:34] And, um, at University of South Florida, I got the opportunity for, um, much like yourself-interesting how our paths in some respects had similarities, but offered to do the Valor Program Scholarship in which very few people in the nation are chosen. And in the same year, both you and I were offered that in different states- didn’t even know each other.

[00:05:56] Kelly Engelmann: We had no idea. We didn’t know each other or existed. And we were both Fowler awardees. And we got to really participate in a phenomenal mentorship program with the VA medical system between the junior year and senior year of nursing school. So, yes, that was one of the things that we talked about very early in meeting each other of that commonality.

[00:06:15] Lori Esarey: Yes. And so that experience really helped me to see ICU, intensive care, cardiovascular. And I got really intrigued with that type of emergency, thinking on my feet type of medicine. And so from there, I did graduate University of South Florida with my bachelor’s degree. And me, the forever student decided to turn right back around and go to school for my advanced practice, my nurse practitioner.

[00:06:40] And I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do. I was young at the time I was, you know, basically only 21 at graduating high school right around then. I’m aging myself now, but-

[00:06:49] Kelly Engelmann: You mean graduating college or graduating-

[00:06:51] Lori Esarey: Yeah. Gradu-graduating college. Thank you for, for reminding me of that. So, yeah. So at 21 graduating college and didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but knew that I loved school, loved education.

[00:07:02] I loved being at the bedside of patients already because I had had some really great experiences, but I knew I wasn’t done. I, I knew I wasn’t done. So I returned, I applied for the master’s program there at University of South Florida. I was initially turned down because I was too young and didn’t have enough clinical experience. And so I-

[00:07:23] Kelly Engelmann: So yeah, back in the day they required two years of clinical experience before they would allow you into a master’s program for nurse practitioners. So yeah, you tried to get in, you knocked on that door a little early

[00:07:34] Lori Esarey: I did! And so found a loophole, found a loophole that if you took a couple classes and aced them, that you had the ability to apply, and at that point they would typically accept you.

[00:07:43] And so that’s what I did. I went back to school to be a family nurse practitioner, and I’ll never forget my first day of class going around the room and them asking us, what did we wanna do with our nurse practitioner license upon graduation? And I have to be honest, I just, I don’t know. I was in that room with people much older than myself. Right?

[00:08:04] And so I’m the youngest in that group. And what do you wanna do? And all I knew is that I wanted to just do more. That’s all I knew. And so I was told to do the family because that was the most broad and it wasn’t narrowed down. It wasn’t niched down and that I could do that. So I returned to school to do that.

[00:08:20] And through that time period of my nurse practitioner, I not only got pregnant, uh, with my oldest daughter, um, I also was diagnosed with, um, diabetes at the same time.

[00:08:35] Kelly Engelmann: Wow.

[00:08:36] Lori Esarey: And I was a marathon runner and that truly, that period of time in my life was truly, I believe the catalyst for where I sit now because I had already been a nurse. I had already understood how traditional medicine, um, operated and I was not feeling well. And I wasn’t getting answers. It’s “You’re stressed. You have a new baby”. Um, it’s all of those things and really what it was is it was hormone imbalances and not just sex hormones, but glucose and insulin.

[00:09:11] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:09:12] Lori Esarey: So, it opened my eyes at that time to, first of all, um, people who feel bad. Who are not getting answers.

[00:09:23] Kelly Engelmann: So people who feel bad may look good.

[00:09:25] Lori Esarey: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:26] Kelly Engelmann: And as a result of that, they may be told, “Eh, it’s just life. You’re just stressed. Go chill out. You’re gonna be fine”.

[00:09:35] Lori Esarey: Yeah! It’s all of those things that have happened in your life, that’s what it is. When I knew it was something more. Yes. I was sad. No doubt, but I wasn’t depressed. And basically was being diagnosed with depression. When, in fact, in hindsight, what it was was my insulin levels were elevated and insulin just causes a person to feel like you’re carrying a 10 pound ball and chain with you everywhere you go. And I did wanna lay on the couch and I was a marathon runner and I would get up and go mind over matter. I did it.

[00:10:03] Kelly Engelmann: You pushed yourself.

[00:10:04] Lori Esarey: I did. Yeah, absolutely. But at the end of the day, didn’t feel good. And so that really drove me to look deeper, to dig into- and once I graduated with my nurse practitioner degree, I was working in family medicine and I was seeing people just like me.

[00:10:20] Kelly Engelmann: And did you feel like you had enough tools in your toolbox to adequately treat those patients?

[00:10:27] Lori Esarey: Absolutely not. Yeah. And that was a huge disparity between what I wanted to do and what I was capable of doing, you know, I was trained to write prescriptions. I was trained to definitely listen. I mean, nurses listen. So I, I feel like I had more, you know, I had one up on some of my colleagues in the medical field and I was a good listener, but I didn’t know what really was the ticket to really help people feel better and not just get better temporarily, but to truly be better.

[00:10:59] Kelly Engelmann: So what did you do? How did you approach helping yourself resolve the issues that you are struggling with with blood sugar and with mood? And with lack of energy, like, what was your go to during that time? I know running was a go to, right? That was supposed to solve all of your problems. Right?

[00:11:16] Lori Esarey: Well, as mutual runners as people, uh, you know, the two of us that really did turn to running. Right?

[00:11:22] Kelly Engelmann: Mm-hmm. We say most runners are actually running from something.

[00:11:25] Lori Esarey: Yes. We often say that, right? We are, right?

[00:11:28] Kelly Engelmann: That is a clue right there.

[00:11:30] Lori Esarey: And if someone says that’s not true? It is true. ,Yeah. So we were always running. I was always running from something so running. Yes, it was my vice. It was my go, it was my give, it was my get out and do, but the reality was that I, as the forever student, turned to a lot of reading, a lot of books and a lot of trying to figure it out.

[00:11:50] And in my reading got really, really confused, I’ll be honest. Because it was the difference between what we knew about nutrition. Real, real nutrition, which in my opinion, we didn’t know much about, I didn’t know anything about and what I’d been taught. Calories in, calories out.

[00:12:08] Kelly Engelmann: Absolutely.

[00:12:09] Lori Esarey: Right?

[00:12:09] Kelly Engelmann: I read every single Runner’s World that ever hit the shelf up until 2004, probably. Yeah. And, um, yeah, it was all about calories in and calories out and no real talk about micronutrients or nutrient depletion in that role that it has in development of metabolic disturbances, such as blood sugar control.

[00:12:30] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So as I would dig in, um, to that information, I tried everything, you know, I wasn’t necessarily obese, but I was overweight. And so from Weight Watchers to Nutrisystem, to just trying to figure it all out, like what’s gonna make me feel better because you know, what I was being told was just reduce your calories, run more. You’re gonna feel better. This is just because you’re overweight or you’re depressed or you’re- and that wasn’t the case.

[00:12:59] So, it really brought me to this huge epiphany. And I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but it was- I’m not gonna get these answers in a traditional way. I’ve gotta keep digging and I gotta try it. I, I gotta try new things. And so I just really started digging into what does quality food look like? What does nutrition look like? Like, what does that really look like and began to, to take a different approach even with me, no more calories, but really looking at the quality of my food and beginning to make that change. But it was a very, very slow process. Very slow because you just don’t know what you don’t know. You know, I had grown up in an Italian home, you know, we didn’t have one, two course meals. We had meals. We didn’t have-

[00:13:50] Kelly Engelmann: Go mama.

[00:13:51] Lori Esarey: Right? So, we didn’t have one course, two course meals. We had huge meals. We didn’t have meals that were 10 or 15 minutes, you know, in our now traditional or whatever families that were eating on the run. We sat down for meals and the entire time we were sitting, we had large meals.

[00:14:08] We always had dessert and we always had wine with, with our meals. And so I teasingly say, I didn’t just come from a big family. I came from a big family, right? And so food was an emotional thing. Food was: you eat when you’re happy, you eat when you’re sad, you eat when there’s a party, you eat when there’s, you know, a, a death in the fam- like you, you eat, that’s what you do.

[00:14:31] And so you also, there was the clean plate club, you know, I grew up, you didn’t not finish your plate. And if you didn’t, it was saved in the refrigerator for you the next day, you know? So, I had a lot of, of thoughts, ideology, call it what you want. The way that I looked at food and the way that I-

[00:14:47] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. Messages around food and what food was, what the purpose of food was, food was for entertainment. It was for emotional support for bonding, you know, wow.

[00:14:57] Lori Esarey: So, this quest really was not just about learning more about food, but it was learning. Why do I turn to those things? So long story short, I changed my life and. Currently constantly aren’t we changing, um, hit a lot of roadblocks and, um, along the way, but as I began practicing medicine and family practice, I realized over time that although I had tools in my toolbox, as you say, to write prescriptions and to help people identify, in some respect, when they had a disease state, I didn’t have tools in my toolbox to recognize when they were in a state of dysfunction, right? The early stage-

[00:15:39] Kelly Engelmann: before disease starts-

[00:15:40] Lori Esarey: Before disease, 10 to 15 years before. Yeah. And I didn’t have tools in my toolbox that really in a powerful way could help people outside of- and, and prescriptions weren’t the answer for me. So, I practiced in traditional medicine for many years, and in 2006 started my current practice, Total Nutrition and Therapeutics in The Villages, Florida. Central, Florida. You know, the, the- retirement community of, of the world, basically one of the largest retirement communities in the world.

[00:16:09] And I took a big chance and it was against all odds as they say, not to use the, uh, previous movie out there, but against all odds, but it was against a lot of odds. Um, you know, in 2006, You know, you look back to that period of time. Um, not only in my life, but just in that period of time, you know, I worked with a lot of very powerful physicians and they were using things like, um, diet medications, and fat blockers to help people lose weight.

[00:16:40] And in their mind, if they would lose weight, they would be healthy. And what I was discovering is that you can lose weight all day long. I had lost hundreds of pounds up and down, up and down, up and down- down for years. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t more healthy as a result of it. And in fact, I felt worse.

[00:16:58] And so if I was really gonna help a person, it was going to be helping them understand that it’s about body composition and not body weight. And so, I really decided to take a giant leap of faith in 2006 and start my practice. And my practice focuses on truly helping people obtain optimal health and wellbeing, taking a food first approach and meeting them where they’re at.

[00:17:21] My youngest patient has been four months old. My oldest is 90 years old. You can imagine that the way in which I relate to them and my team relates to them is very differently, but the crux and the mission is the same is ultimately we all desire to live well. We want to have a greater health span and not lifespan. We wanna live well. And whether we’re currently retired or we’re in our early years, we want to have a vibrant life. And so, I get the joy to do that now and taking what happened to me and my diagnosis and turn my mess into something beautiful and turn my passion, um, into something that really instills in people, um, how to achieve what I did. And again, I’m learning alongside of them, just as you are. But I’m super excited to have that opportunity.

[00:18:12] Kelly Engelmann: Well, awesome. Thank you for sharing.

[00:18:14] Lori Esarey: Yeah, absolutely. So, we have to talk about you cause this can’t-

[00:18:16] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, now it’s my turn! Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:19] So, I grew up in south Mississippi. Um, my mom and dad divorced when I was seven and I was blessed to have a beautiful grandmother that just, I adored and she adored me and we had many, many good times together. She was my anchor during the time of chaos of that. My. Dad remarried quickly. And I inherited, um, a brother and a sister through marriage as my step siblings. And then ultimately my stepmom and stepdad adopted an additional child. So there were five of us growing up in the home and, uh, it was a little crazy.

[00:18:54] Uh, I feel blessed to be alive today of all the shenanigans that actually went down in the house that here I am. And I’m tough because of it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. So, I will stand by that.

[00:19:07] When I finished high school, I really had zero direction in what I could achieve in my life. I had no vision for what that was gonna look like. I was blessed in high school to go to work for Swenson’s Ice Cream in the mall, and it was owned by an OB-GYN and his wife. And I worked there, waited tables and I could make a hundred bucks on Saturday. Like tips were phenomenal at an ice cream place. Go figure. So, I was banking all this money, had no idea, you know, what my college future looked like financially. And so I was saving religiously. And the OB-GYN asked me to come work in his practice. And I was really, really torn. I was honored because, you know, that seemed like such a grown up job. And, uh, but I knew those tips were not gonna happen in the OB-GYN clinic.

[00:19:59] Lori Esarey: They were not.

[00:20:00] Kelly Engelmann: So, I went to work in the clinic during the week, and then I would still cover some weekends in the ice cream shop. So I could, um, still bank some cash. But, in that time at the clinic, they took me. Under their wing. Um, he took me to the OR so I got to see surgery and C-sections and one of his assistants was actually a surgical tech and she encouraged me after high school to go to a surgical tech program.

[00:20:24] They’re only 12 months long. And after 12 months I could work in the career of medicine and actually make a pretty decent salary. And so when I graduated high school, that’s what I did. I moved up to Jackson, Mississippi, and went to Hinds community college at the time or Hinds Junior College at the time, it’s now Community College. It’s all fancy now, but at the time it was Junior College. And I completed a year at Hinds and went to work for a, um, orthopedic practice in orthopedic surgery, private practice. So, I went to surgery and did total hips and total knees and was all up in the Laminar Flow room and thought I was big and bad and realized that although I was making a living, I was able to support myself financially, um, with the help of a roommate. I was not going to have a life that I really wanted, you know, I wanted more.

[00:21:11] And so I started going back to school at night, taking night classes to do my prerequisitions for nursing. And I realized after about two semesters, that that was gonna take me 29 years to finish. If I went at night and took classes, (laughter)

[00:21:25] Lori Esarey: A long time.

[00:21:25] Kelly Engelmann: So, I had to bite the bullet and go back to school full time. And, um, I did my undergraduate at the University Medical Center here in Jackson, Mississippi, and I graduated top of my class. I got the Valor program that Lori was talking about and that afforded me the opportunity to go into areas of work I had only been in the, OR, and I knew the, or really well, but I got to go into ICU. I got to go into dialysis. I got to go into recovery room and be mentored by these nurses that were truly phenomenal nurses and mentors, and kind of opened my eyes to what the future of nursing could look like for me. Um, and so when I finished nursing school, I had done a scholarship program with the state of Mississippi, where I had to work for the state of Mississippi at the, the state mental hospital for four years to pay back the scholarship that I got to help me through nursing school.

[00:22:17] And so two years into that pay back. I got a letter from University of Southern Mississippi, inviting me to take part in their nurse practitioner program. Um, they had already, already admitted me to the program upon my acceptance of the letter.

[00:22:31] Lori Esarey: That’s pretty phenomenal.

[00:22:32] Kelly Engelmann: And so I always thought I would go back and do a nurse anesthetist because it made sense I was in the OR, I could relate to the OR, it was more comfortable for me. So when I got the letter, I was like, “ah, I don’t really know. I don’t even know what a nurse practitioner is”, right? What is that? I’ve never seen one. I’ve never talked to one. Um, I’m not really sure. And in fact, when friends would ask me, “what are you gonna do when you finish school?” I’m like, “I have no idea”!

[00:22:55] Lori Esarey: So similar stories again, right?

[00:22:58] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. At the time, nurse practitioners were not the thing.

[00:23:00] Lori Esarey: No.

[00:23:00] Kelly Engelmann: And so, in fact, when I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi, I was the first nurse practitioner in the state that was in private practice. Uh, there were a lot of nurse practitioners. I shouldn’t say a lot. There were several nurse practitioners in, um, rural health clinics, federally funded clinics and things like that. But yet at that time, there were none in true private practice. And so I was one of the first in a specialty. There were some in family practice, but I was actually in an OB-GYN practice which was my cup of tea. I absolutely adored it. I worked with a physician who was just phenomenal. He was an excellent surgeon. He had excellent bedside manner. He was a great teacher and really mentored me in those early days of not really knowing what my role should be, what I could do. He really took me by the hand.

[00:23:46] I was able to stay in the OR, so I went back and got an RNFA degree, right? Which helped me, um, be able to be a first assist in surgery and actually get reimbursed for that through insurance payers. So I went with him to all of his cases, did C-sections, um, hysterectomies, all the fun stuff. And, um, I just loved it, but I worked, I worked in that practice for eight years and although I loved it, I loved seeing those babies be born. I loved being part of the family circle. I felt like I was part of many, many families. Um, what I was seeing in my patients is that by the time they hit 50, the wheels were starting to fall off. The check engine light was coming on. Um, despite me telling them to eat less and exercise more, I was a runner. You know, I could speak the running language. I could speak calories in and calories out. The tools in my toolbox were antidepressants, birth control pills and a little Premarin and Prempro. If that didn’t fix all their ails, I really didn’t know what else to do.

[00:24:43] But I was seeing hypertension develop. I was seeing thyroid disease develop. I was seeing osteoporosis develop-

[00:24:49] Lori Esarey: -and I’m sure hair loss and wrinkles and just decline in overall energy.

[00:24:54] Kelly Engelmann: Declining, overall energy. And these were beautiful people and they were living reasonable lives to my knowledge and I just felt like “You know, something’s missing here”. What else could we be doing to help them feel and function better? And I had a, a friend who was an OB-GYN that, um, presented me with this concept of fruits and vegetables in a capsule. Now, I have to be honest. I love my brownies and I love my ice cream. I do not love my broccoli. And at this time it was calories and then calories out. So, there were times when I had ice cream for dinner, all. And I would just get up and run six miles the next morning and felt really, really, really good about it until I was in Washington, DC, minding my business, and I stepped off the curb and developed a stress fracture. A stress fracture! I’m 20 something years old and I look hot and I am a runner and I am invincible and I have a stress fracture? Are you kidding me right now?

[00:25:54] Now, the backstory is I was training for marathons and I had done four in a row. Four marathons in 16 weeks.

[00:26:01] Lori Esarey: Which is insane.

[00:26:01] Kelly Engelmann: And I was eating ice cream for dinner. Hello? That math just doesn’t add up. So, I created a major metabolic disturbance and my bones were struggling.

[00:26:10] And as a result, they broke down, but I was told it was a stress fracture and it was just stress. No one ever bothered to tell me that it was nutritionally based. So my friend, my colleague, OB-GYN introduces me to fruits and vegetables in a capsule. And I thought “Way to go, Jetson food! I can just take these capsules and eat my brownies and ice cream and life is gonna be good!”, right?

[00:26:36] Lori Esarey: Right!

[00:26:37] Kelly Engelmann: But what happened was because I’m a, I am such a nerd and I am a reader and I’m, you know, all of that. I decided to start attending some of the educational conferences around Nutri- around nutrition. And every, every quarter or twice a year, rather they would have these conferences where they would bring in all the top latest researchers on nutrition and present the hard data on nutrition.

[00:27:03] As I, as I started to learn and study, I just became convicted that “Oh, my gosh, what have I done to myself?”, You know? At this point, I’m just turning 30 and I’m starting to see some extra weight, all those drug reps bringing cookies in the afternoon to the clinic. And I, of course ,had that with my Coke in the afternoon.

[00:27:20] Lori Esarey: But don’t worry about it. You’re going home to run.

[00:27:22] Kelly Engelmann: Of course, I’m gonna run again. So it’s fine. But I had created a medal out- a metabolic storm for myself. And once I realized that that’s actually what I was doing, I had no choice, but to start changing and then my appetite for learning and understanding just became more. At the time, the internet wasn’t a thing. There wasn’t information on the internet. To go search these things. I was subject to waiting for the next conference to roll around, to dig in a little bit more or maybe going to the library or getting a book, but it was very fragmented knowledge. It wasn’t complete.

[00:27:54] Lori Esarey: And I love what you said about the appetite and the curiosity, because that really was in a time period in which that wasn’t easily accessible. You had to look, you had to look. You know, deep to really find truth in the area of nutrition.

[00:28:09] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So life, life circumstances brought me back to Jackson, Mississippi in 2004. And I looked around, I had been recruited to work in a pain management clinic, which was not my jam, but I was, my quest was to help them develop an osteoporosis program for their patients on steroids.

[00:28:26] So, osteoporosis prevention was supposed to be my area of expertise. That never really came to fruition in that pain management setting. And I became just more aware that I was in an area where that wasn’t really feeding my soul and there was no other practice that I had a desire to join. There were lots of OB-GYN practices that I adored, but no one was talking about nutrition. No one wanted to talk about nutrition.

[00:28:50] And so I decided… gosh, to step off the cliff and to open my own practice. And my idea was is I would treat women, we would focus on hormone replacement therapy and balance and, you know, throw in a little nutrition to help them out. And in doing that, I got to be mentored by an OB-GYN and in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Eldridge Taylor, I’ll give him a little bit of a shout out and he really opened my eyes to education opportunities. You know, what was out there. He had a mentorship program at the time. He allowed us to come together and present cases via a webcast once a week. So I was able to get mentorship through that.

[00:29:31] And then ultimately I stumbled on, and this is a funny story with my daughter, but we were in, and she was at cosmetology student and we were at an expo and I was at the expo with her just talking to vendors and. He, the vendor was asking me what I did and I was describing what I did. And he said, oh, well, you must know about A4M.

[00:29:51] And I said, a four, what? And he said A4M it’s a national organization for functional medicine, and you should know about this. And so I went home and looked it up and realized this was October. They had a conference in December. And so I signed up for the conference and when I signed up for the conference, I got a call from a representative Hillary and she calls me and she says, “Um, did you know, there’s a certification exam that you can take for functional medicine?” and I had been studying functional medicine through Dr. Taylor and reading everything I could get my hands on. And I was like, “No way, there’s a certification for this? Sign me up!” So, I went in December and sat for boards for, um, the A4M certification and functional medicine, functional and regenerative medicine. I passed my boards, have no idea how in the world- now they did send me reading material. This, you know, three phone book deep set of research articles that I managed to pour through. Right? Yeah. But I managed to, to pass that, um, certification exam and I came home and they called me to tell me I’d passed. And they said, “Would you be interested in doing our fellowship?” And I said, “What is a fellowship? Like I thought that was only for doctors.”and they’re like, “No, we have a fellowship in functional medicine.” And so I was like, yes, I want to know more. I mean, my appetite is whet. I have a practice that’s growing. I really want to have the education to back what I’m doing and what I’m seeing with my practice. I was already seeing results, but I didn’t really understand why I was seeing results. I didn’t have the science behind at the time. And so I went back and got not only my fellowship, but I did a master’s in metabolic and nutritional medicine from the University of South Florida.

[00:31:34] And that is where, my friends, I met Lori!

[00:31:37] Lori Esarey: It is! And prior, I just wanna say going back a little bit, I wanna make sure. And you did a shout out to Dr. Taylor, and I’m so glad that you did that because I think the common theme up to this point for both of us was number one: seeing how traditional medicine and the tools we had in our toolbox wasn’t enough, but number two: the steps and the people that were placed in our lives at the time that we needed them to know what was next.

[00:32:06] Kelly Engelmann: Yes.

[00:32:07] Lori Esarey: You know, I think about some representatives from companies that would come into the internal medicine practice that I was working at, um, and just kind of poking at me for a micronutrient study called Spectracell. And I think about my, um, being at a hotel for a traditional medical conference in Fort Lauderdale and simultaneously in that same hotel, A4M was going on. And this was about eight years prior to me hearing about A4M and I remember going to their, um, outside where they had the books. And I took that back up to my room and I was reading through their stuff more than I was reading through mine!

[00:32:47] Kelly Engelmann: So she’s talking about the program, so each A4M conference, we have like a catalog, right? That outlines all the speakers and the vendors with a lot of descriptive information. So that’s what you picked up was the catalog.

[00:32:57] Lori Esarey: I did! And I was just very intrigued. And so it’s just in hindsight, in the rear view mirror, there are so many people and so many opportunities that afforded us that next step-

[00:33:08] Kelly Engelmann: absolutely.

[00:33:08] Lori Esarey: -That gave us that appetite and that intrigue. And I am so beyond thankful, and it’s not a coincidence, it’s not a coincidence as we’re gonna talk that we met at A4M in Orlando that year, and it’s not a coincidence how we landed there. And that’s just a really cool P-part of both of our stories. So yeah, A4M it was in Orlando at probably one of the worst time periods of my life.

[00:33:33] I had been going through something really difficult on the home front. Um, with marriages not going well. Um, marriage, sorry, marriage not going well. I was this runner. I was in a state of, um, what I now know to have been adrenal fatigue. Um, I was on a search. I was on a search. I had already had my practice and I was already helping people change their nutrition to help them live a more optimal life. But I was missing something really big.

[00:34:04] Yeah.

[00:34:05] Kelly Engelmann: So you had a weight loss practice. That’s really how your, your practice started was you focused on and I should say body composition, you know? We were calling it a weight loss practice, but you were actually measuring body composition at the time.

[00:34:16] Lori Esarey: I sure was.

[00:34:16] Kelly Engelmann: So you were measuring biometrics that most clinics were not measuring when they were dealing with weight loss.

[00:34:22] Lori Esarey: My focus was, if you can reduce or improve your body composition, then you can improve your health period. That was kind of the period at the end of the story, right? But what I was realizing, about 80% of the people I was treating were getting better and they were reaching those goals, but 20% of them weren’t. Yet they were eating, eating better, right? We say, what you eat, what you drink, how you sleep, how you move and how you think.

[00:34:50] Kelly Engelmann: Yes.

[00:34:50] Lori Esarey: And they were doing all of those things better, right?

[00:34:55] Kelly Engelmann: But they weren’t getting better.

[00:34:55] Lori Esarey: They weren’t getting better. So my curious mind took me back to that catalog I had seen years ago and I was in a conversation basically with one of my reps who said, I have a free ticket. Do you wanna go? And a free ticket to me was everything because I didn’t have the cash to pay for these conferences. It was expensive. You know, going to A4M at the time. I mean, I wanna save my ticket just for that one day was close to $500 and, you know, typically it’s all about value, right?

[00:35:26] Kelly Engelmann: Right.

[00:35:26] Lori Esarey: I didn’t know that I valued it just yet. So was it worth spending $500 to go? So when I got a free ticket to go to the national conference in Orlando that year, um, I was super excited, but. Also not only feeling great. I was curious, but I was at a point where I had looked into A4M and to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into.

[00:35:49] It’s so funny how you said, you know, you just called him up and they said, you know, there’s this certification and you-

[00:35:54] Kelly Engelmann: I was so naive. Like, I was just like, “Sign me up! Sign me up!”

[00:35:57] Lori Esarey: Crazily. Me? Personality, it’s: “Oh, no, I need all the details. I need to know what this is going to take.” And I mean, I, again, different personalities here, but we, we got to the same end point, which is beautiful.

[00:36:10] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, I was, was taking, I don’t remember what module I was taking that time that we met. It was, I was two or three modules in to my- to my fellowship program. There’s 10 modules that you take for advanced fellowship and for the master’s program. And I was two or three modules in, I don’t recall exactly what module, but, and I was attending the general conference and she was in general session, which, so we weren’t in class together.

[00:36:32] But Pam Smith. Can I say damn that Pam Smith? (laughs)

[00:36:38] Lori Esarey: (laughs) You’re loud.

[00:36:39] Kelly Engelmann: She would keep that conference hall so cold. I think she was having some hormonal changes. And she was keeping it frigid in there. And so, I hate to be cold. Anybody that knows me, knows I hate to be cold. And so I had found respite outside in the Florida sun sitting on a bench and, um, up walks, Lori. Asked me, you know, could she sit with me on the bench-

[00:37:03] Lori Esarey: -which there’s irony in that too, because I would’ve never gone out of my comfort zone to ask someone to sit down at their table. There was plenty of standing room outside, but that day. I asked to sit down.

[00:37:15] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, yeah. We struck up a conversation and quite honestly, and this is where God works so beautifully because she was curious about A4M she was really wanting to, um, pursue more education. And she was telling me her story at home and the chaos that was going on and the challenges that were were happening and the physical stress that she was under. And I’m a mom, like, I just wanna protect everybody. And so I looked at her and I said, you know, I just don’t think this is the right time for you. This is a lot of work. This is not just coming to class. This is a lot of work. And obviously you have a lot going on. I wish you the best, you know? We exchanged numbers. And a few weeks later…

[00:38:01] Lori Esarey: We’re in Vegas! (laughs)

[00:38:03] Kelly Engelmann: (laughs) We’re in Vegas, yes! A few weeks later. She calls me up. Or texts me, I don’t really remember when you could call or text.

[00:38:09] Lori Esarey: Yeah. And I said, remember that class, do you wanna go, you wanna go to Vegas? And, you know, as I’m, you know, just thinking, um, about what that would look like, like I had a hesitation just to sit down at the dang table with you, and then now it’s “Do you, you know, do you wanna share a room in Vegas?” Had never been in Vegas, which was very interesting as well. Didn’t realize that there was literally just glass separating the bathroom from the general area of- so lots of funny stories in there. We could probably go into that in more detail, maybe somewhere else.

[00:38:40] Kelly Engelmann: Oh, no, no, no, we have to go there now. So I get- I get there first. Thank God, I get there first. And I don’t know who she is, you know, I’m okay with rooming, but I’m pretty modest and like, you know, straight laced and all that and there is only a king size bed. And they have no other rooms, you know, I did ask and I’m thinking, okay, how do I navigate this? Because the bathroom is solid glass and there’s no separation. Like you’re gonna see everything. And there’s a king size bed. And so I called down to the, to the desk again, and I said, um, do you have a cot? I mean, help a girl out. There’s no sofa in here. There’s no sofa bed. Do you have a cot? So they, they actually brought up a pretty nice cot, you know? So she gets in at midnight, I’m in the cot.

[00:39:26] Lori Esarey: (laughs) In the corner of this room-

[00:39:28] Kelly Engelmann: -covered up to my nose with my covers when she walks in and she got there and I was like, “Listen, I hope you’re not a freak. (laughs) I’m not into that. Let’s make the best of this weekend”. Um, but it just started a really, um, fun, adventurous friendship. And it was really fun to be able to do that fellowship program together and not feel like you’re alone or an island and, um, walk through the challenges of getting our coursework completed at record speed.

[00:40:01] Lori Esarey: Yes. And the master’s degree and, and all of that in between, but just simultaneously together. But yes. And orchestrated by God, there is no doubt because, uh, not a chance meeting, but a meeting in which we had similar stories, you know, although you were in functional medicine, started your practice within, um, just around the same year as me. Although your entry point was hormones and, and women’s health, as you just shared. And mine was metabolic disturbances, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, but our purpose was the same in that we wanted to see people’s lives changed in a positive way, using food and nutrition and seeing the valuable benefit, but both having seen that, you know, 20% of our clients were not getting better and we were missing something.

[00:40:47] And what we were missing, come to find out, was the fact that there are metabolic disturbances that wreck the system and even just eating and drinking better alone isn’t enough. That what are those disturbances and how can you dig into those a little bit more and do discovery on that? Through testing biometrics, and really get people on an individualized lifestyle plan and putting them around experts in the field, not just ourselves. Right? Cause we can’t operate as an island, but using other resources in our community and other wellness providers to come alongside of our patients as well in a team approach to help them feel their best.

[00:41:27] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. So in my functional medicine practice in Jackson, Mississippi,I was pretty isolated. I didn’t have reps for companies like lab companies, supplement companies and things like that. I didn’t have access to those people unless I physically went to conference. I would have to go to conference, make those connections. And then hope they remembered who I was. And, and perhaps what I needed, you know, I quickly realized that Lori was such a huge asset to me because she did have those connections. She was in central Florida. A lot of those reps visited her, visited her clinic in person. And she was able to say, “Hey, I have this friend in Mississippi, can you help her out as well?”

[00:42:07] And so we quickly realized that there were, there was a lot of synergy in the way that we helped each other develop our practices.

[00:42:17] Lori Esarey: Keyword.

[00:42:17] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah, keyword: synergy. I remember distinctly a conversation that Lori and I had relatively early on in our education process where she was really struggling with the concept of bringing hormones into her practice. To that point, she had not tiptoed into the hormone world. It was my bread and butter. I loved it.

[00:42:36] Lori Esarey: Sex hormones.

[00:42:37] Kelly Engelmann: Sex hormones, right. And I started describing back to her and painting her the picture that what she was doing with her patients was already balancing their hormones. She was working on drivers of inflammation. She was working on dysregulated blood sugar. She was working on key drivers of inflammation, which at the end of the day is what balances hormones. And it was like a aha moment right there. She was like, are you kidding me? Then adding hormones is like the- adding sex hormones is like the cherry on the top. It’s not the main course. It’s the cherry on the top that really helps people feel and function their best.

[00:43:13] Lori Esarey: So, in working together in community, you know, what the joy of that was is seeing things and seeing potential that we didn’t know that we already had and being willing to integrate and also leveraging our power together, uh, for our buying power too, and buying equipment and buying things like that.

[00:43:32] And so we not only had a passion to treat the people in our local communities, and many of you listening to this have been, um, our clients, which is, uh, is, is amazing. And, and we love you and you have taught us so much. Yes. I mean, you have fed into us in the way we have fed into each other. You’ve taught us so many valuable things.

[00:43:53] So, we have a continued passion to do that, but we also have a passion to take that experience and open up the world, hopefully to this knowledge, by instilling it in other providers of care who maybe they already are starting their functional medicine practices, or maybe not. They’re seeing right now that they’re overwhelmed or overworked or not satisfied in traditional medicine.

[00:44:18] And they’re looking for an opportunity to really practice what we call fun medicine, you know? Functional medicine and do it in a lucrative way.

[00:44:26] Kelly Engelmann: Well, one of the things that we recognized, I think early on in helping other practices in functional medicine was that if you take the same strategies that you had in your conventional practice and apply them to your functional practice, you will burn out.

[00:44:42] Lori Esarey: Absolutely, no doubt.

[00:44:45] Kelly Engelmann: So, in order to really have a practice that can not only sustain the provider and the provider’s team, but ultimately the community and the patients we have to help them, and we have to help each other stay accountable to the self care and the disciplines within the practice that can create that. And that’s really what Synergee’s all about is really pulling our resources together, making sure that we are staying congruent with our message, making sure that we are speaking into each other and into our community in a way that’s going to promote, you know, a level of wellness that we could not achieve on our own.

[00:45:21] Lori Esarey: So Synergee came up. I-, I remember it like it was yesterday. Um, we were eating at one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando, um, Boathouse. Um, we had gone there in the afternoon and we’re having lunch and outside as we were eating, we were drawing on a napkin actually. And we were thinking about what a logo for this idea that we had at the time, not really knowing the name Synergee, but just knowing that we both had last names that started with E and kind of what would that look like? And I remember doodling on a napkin, and I remember keeping that napkin for years. Because Synergee didn’t come alive for several years afterwards, but talks began, began at that moment and continued throughout over the, over the years and now fruition. So Synergee is a company that, uh, both Kelly and I co-founders of it have together.

[00:46:15] And it’s a unique blessing. Um, as you said, um, using years and years and years of just our experiences in care with our patients and thanking in, in a grateful kind of way, for those who mentored us. Who mentored us and giving back and hopefully turning that into mentoring others, both, you know, other patients, as well as, um, our business functional medicine, other providers of care, but just feeding into them, um, encouragement, inspiration, knowledge, education, mind share, just getting together as a group and sharing experiences and cases but it has been a very unique opportunity and I’m so thankful for it.

[00:47:02] Kelly Engelmann: Right there atcha.

[00:47:03] Lori Esarey: Yeah. So, um, that’s really our stories as we like to share them. I don’t know that we got into too many of the things that we don’t like to talk about. At one point you did provoke some tears in me, I will say because there’s, you know, an emotional component, you know, to meeting, but so thankful, so thankful for what we’ve been through, what we’ve shared and what we’re gonna get to share in the future. So hats off to you, you’re a unique friend, individual, and I’m proud to be in business with you.

[00:47:33] Kelly Engelmann: Yeah. And I wanna say thank you to our listeners. You know, we wouldn’t be here without you. You’re our inspiration. We have learned, as Lori mentioned earlier, so much wisdom from the way that you have responded. And sometimes the way you haven’t responded to therapy. And we just appreciate you for, um, walking beside us and allowing us to walk beside you on your wellness journey.

[00:47:54] Lori Esarey: And we hope that you realize that your, your story is unique to you, but your story is what makes you, you. And sharing your story and living out your story, not with guilt or shame, but an appreciation of that story is just such a beautiful thing. So, we really encourage you to, um, not only thank you for your time, but encourage you to keep listening because we look forward to future opportunities in which we can share more to inspire you and encourage you to you.

[00:48:24] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode. You can find more information about Synergee at synergee4life- that’s S-Y-N-E-R-G-E-E, the number four, life.com.

[00:48:35] And then Synergee Connect is our Facebook. And then please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you make sure you get future notifications of episodes.