Hormones 411

Sharmyn McGraw speaks-up and speaks-out. With her charismatic flair and articulate delivery, she shows the audience how the power of a determined woman can help change lives. As a professional speaker, she cleverly tailors her message to fit each audience. She takes the taboo topic of hormones and empowers new thinking that can help improve everyone’s quality of healthcare.

 

Sharmyn knows firsthand how a hormonal imbalance can turn your life upside down. She has a gift for touching the emotions of the audience through her passionate and humorous storytelling. Her story speaks about the barriers that kept her searching for seven years for an answer to an insidious illness that nearly took her life, and the importance of persistence which led her to a correct diagnosis for Cushing’s disease, a life-threatening hormonal imbalance caused by a pituitary brain tumor. She engages her audience while she reveals the importance of education and public awareness about the critical role hormones play in our quality of life. 
 
Sharing Her Adventure
In 1993 at the age of 31, Sharmyn went from a socially-acceptable dress size two and full of life to an obese size 22 and barely able to function in just one year. Despite the years of dedication to maintain a shapely muscular body, she suddenly had no control over the rapid weight gain. Her hours of personal fitness training and a healthy diet did nothing to stop the pounds from piling on. Sharmyn gained as much as eleven pounds in four days, 85 pounds in six months and 100 pounds in a year. Soon the weight gain was the least of her health problems; her hair fell out by the handfuls, her stomach stuck out like she was pregnant with twins, emotionally she felt like a misfit, and much more.
 
For seven horrific years Sharmyn searched the medical community for help, but over and over doctors told her there was nothing medically wrong with her…..nothing some good old dieting and exercise couldn’t fix.
 
In spite of the many years of challenges within our healthcare system, Sharmyn ultimately diagnosed herself via the Internet and was fortunate to find a team of experts at UCLA Medical Center who confirmed her diagnosis. On April 14, 2000 Dr. Daniel Kelly, a world-renowned pituitary neurosurgeon—her angel - successfully removed the tumor and literally gave Sharmyn her life back.

 

Blazing The Hormonal Trail

We are all at one time or another faced with life’s challenges, but some people are unfortunately confronted with debilitating life-altering situations. How we choose to deal with these situations will certainly determine the outcome of our future. 

Coping with the effects of Cushing’s after surgery wasn’t easy for Sharmyn, but she learned quickly that there wasn’t any medical magic that would help her recover any faster than keeping herself focused on helping others. 
 
Sharmyn often collaborates with nationally-recognized neuroendocrine experts, sharing the speaker’s platform while educating patients and doctors about neuroendocrine hormonal disorders and their impact on our health as a nation. Sharmyn facilitates the largest pituitary patient support group in the country, and when she shared her story for the American Medical Association’s media conference in New York, the media went crazy, and the coverage was outstanding. So much so, that Vivian Pinn, M.D. of the National Institute of Women’s Health personally asked Sharmyn to speak at the Family Hormonal Health Symposium held at the NIH. 
 
Sharmyn’s personal rewards come from the countless people that contact her to let her know that, because of her efforts in raising public awareness about misunderstood and often improperly diagnosed hormonal disorders, she helped give them their life back. 
 

Sharmyn helps her audience envision a higher quality of life by approaching life challenges as an adventure, and inspiring new strategies to motivate change in our healthcare system.