A nurse for 25 years, with over two decades in emergency medicine, and a more recent addition as a nurse practitioner, Allie Edwards, owner of Renova Medical Aesthetics, is passionate about helping others.
“I thrive in organized chaos,” Allie exclaims. “I love it!”
Her success in emergency medicine showcases just that, but the administrative burnout proved to be too much. When aesthetics entered her life, followed by training, she opened her own practice, thinking it would be a good side job.
“I opened my own space,” Allie explains. “An 88 sq ft room in the back of a hair salon and just thinking that I would do this on the side, and it quickly turned into much more than that.”
Despite being overly busy, Allie found a passion for helping people through aesthetics and wanted to create something bigger than herself. Finding a team that was as passionate as she was turned out to be just the thing.
“I wanted to create an environment that I didn’t necessarily get in the hospital,” Allie points out. “Somewhere I could thrive and be a better version of what I was like in the medical field.”
With her own place in Castle Rock, a team of eight, and a new buildout for a Plum Creek location, Allie has found her stride.
“For a long time, there was aesthetics and skin,” Allie comments. “So we have two pillars, so to speak, and we brought on this new pillar of hormone and wellness.”
After seeing patients consistently and getting feedback on how tired they were and whether a skin aesthetic would help, Allie knew there was more to uncover to help people.
“Essentially, we’re putting a band-aid on something when the root cause was that they’re tired,” Allie explains. “We started looking more into that. We have hormones our whole entire life, and they’re all over the place, especially in women. We have it from the time we hit puberty to pregnancy and then perimenopause and then after.”
Despite significant mental and physical changes when it came to hormones, Allie’s frustration was with lab results that came back in the normal range, but the symptoms were still there. Wanting to understand more about the problems men and women faced as they aged, she discovered that normal wasn’t optimal.
“We’ve learned normal range is not optimal,” Allie says. “We are not living in an optimal range, and in order to function optimally, just having normal is not going to cut it. I feel like that for so long women have been gaslighted, they're told 'Why are you feeling like that. Everything is normal.' The implication is we should just suck it up and it’s fine.”
She continues, “I think slowly the medical field is moving toward helping people feel optimal, but I feel like it spans a lifetime of figuring out that like, ‘Oh yeah, it says that your vitamin D is in the normal range,’ but in order to have some energy, your vitamin D actually needs to be above 'normal'.”
That’s why Allie has introduced this new pillar of hormone and wellness to her repertoire. Her talented team creates a safe space where people can understand what is changing in their bodies and how to fix it long term. When labwork is ordered, sitting down with Allie or another nurse practitioner ensures that they review every item to understand the symptoms and their causes.
“Looking at the whole picture and matching the symptoms to the data, I feel like it not only makes the patient feel seen, but enables us to figure out the root cause of a lot of these things.”
A large portion of Allie’s clients are perimenopausal and menopausal women trying to understand their symptoms as hormone levels change. However, men go through similar experiences, and there is an uptick in support to help them navigate the aging process.
“We have men going through it, too, as they age,” Allie explains. “They realize they are more tired and they don’t have as much energy as they used to. While their issue is mostly testosterone-based, there could be so many other things involved in it, too.”
In addition to wellness, Allie’s team offers injectables like Botox, skin repair like micro-needling, and they help people age the way they want. She stands by medical-grade products like Retin-A or tretinoin, vitamin C, and sunblock.
“Retin-A is probably my desert island skincare that I would take with me,” Allie laughs. “If there’s one thing that’s going to help you age gracefully, and help you look like you longer, it’s retinol because it increases cellular turnover.”
In the end, Allie wants people to feel better about themselves.
“My goal is to get you to the point where you don’t have to see me as often,” Allie says. “To get to a point where you feel like you again. I think that has been the most rewarding in the last six and a half years, watching people grow with me.”
“My goal is to get you to the point where you don’t have to see me as often,” Allie says. “To get to a point where you feel like you again."
“Looking at the whole picture and matching the symptoms to the data, I feel like it not only makes the patient feel seen, but enables us to figure out the root cause.”