I Choose ... to Advocate for My Health with Dr. Kelly Casperson

Who says testosterone is just for men? In this episode, board certified urologist, Dr. Kelly Casperson blows up myths around hormones, menopause and midlife health. She’s talking libido, longevity and why it’s time to stop being afraid of what our bodies naturally make. Get ready for some science, how to educate the men in your life and aging on your own terms. Dr. Kelly's book, The Menopause Moment is available NOW. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Hi, everyone,
welcome back to I Choose Me, the podcast where we
talk about the choices we make and today how they'll
help us live longer and stronger. Thanks to modern medicine
and technology, we are living decades beyond our ovaries, and

(00:26):
this means we are aging well beyond menopause, which requires
intention and knowledge. My guest, doctor Kelly Casperson, a urologist
and an author, is here to clear up some myths,
talk symptoms and stigma, and show us how choosing ourselves
in this stage of life can mean thriving into our eighties,

(00:49):
nineties and beyond. I'm very glad to have you here. Finally,
thank you for having I've been waiting. I've been waiting
for this moment. Your book is out now, which is
very exciting because everybody needs more information. Yeah, and I've
had a few of your cohorts, your peers, probably some

(01:10):
people that you work with I know, but talking about menopause,
and there's I don't think there's just enough conversation around it.
You can never have to make.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
No, it's like fifty percent of the population of the world,
So like everybody needs to know about this, right, I
mean not a niche or it's like the largest niche ever.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
And it's such a cool time, don't you feel like
because we're on this precipice, like we're over the kind
of over the tip of the mountain.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
The Yeah, like you know, it's like we've crested even
three years ago because I've been doing this now, Like
my podcast and I was not talking about menopause at
the beginning of my podcast is like almost six years old,
and like even three years ago people are like, I
don't know, let's not talk about it. And now everybody's
like I can't get enough of this topic. And so
it's moved so fast it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I've been kind of on the er coaster with it since.
And I was like in perimenopause for sure, right when
it started happening, and I was like, wait, you're explaining
all my symptoms. Now everything's starting to make sense. Oh
I didn't know about perimenopause.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, totally. Oh Bddy thinks there's something magical about like
a period, like oh, you're having periods, You're still fine,
And it's like no, no, no, no, no, that's like the
event that's happening that like ends in the result of
no periods. Yes, right, So it's like a whole the
whole thing. And I think that, you know, the gen
X is really like taking this conversation. And now the
millennials are coming in on the perimenopause conversation. Oh, you're

(02:37):
seeing this like groundful of energy come from these different groups.
Because and the boomers, God bless them, they're pissed because
if they're educated and paying attention, they're in the piss
stage because they're like we were fifty twenty years ago
when this when the iron creat dropped off hormones.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
So wow, I have my daughter called me last night
a geriatric millennial. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I like, e Liza Sleschinger, the comedian who calls it
elder millennial.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
I'm an elder. That's better than Jerry.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's way better.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
But even though when you're pregnant and you have a
pregnancy has a certain age, they call you a geriatric yea.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, it's a direct prostate yea.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
And yeah, geez, well they.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Used to go before genital urinary cinem menopause, which you
can get into, which affects pelvis's postmenopause. In the eighties,
it was called the senile vagina in legitimate medical papers,
senile vagina. So we've come a long way.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
We come a long way. Wow, I wonder where we're
going to be in three more years. Modern medicine and technology,
we're sort of living years now beyond the functioning over
ease in our bodies. So in order to be free
of disease, it takes some intention. From your point of view,

(03:52):
tell me why does aging well matter? Oh?

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Man, Well, I think we're especially going back to like
the gen X and why we're so passionate about this
project is like the gen xers are taking care of
the people who are maybe aging not well. Right, So
we're actually looking and taking care of those people, and
we're like, is there a different way? And we're starting
It's pretty simple to understand, Like you don't just get
there overnight, right, what we do now matters. So I

(04:20):
think we're seeing it done poorly, and we're seeing it
done on a massive scale that we've never seen before.
Like everybody's got the great grandma who lived till ninety,
but like as a society, we're not We've never aged
as a society before on this massive level. So we're like,
you know, when I talked to women in clinic, I'm like,
what do you want to be doing when you're seventy three?
And it gets people thinking of like what you do

(04:42):
right now actually matters for when you can't be I mean,
you can be seventy three and start lifting weights, you
absolutely can, but like bonus if you start now, because
you're like, I just want to maintain this instead of
have to make up for lost time.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
I was just to lunch yesterday actually with a ninety
four year old women, so cool, and her name happens
to feed our Breeden name dropping, but it was, you know,
I just love her so much, and so I got
to catch up with her yesterday and I asked her,
you know, tell me all your sets, and she said,
you know, I worked. I exercise at ninety four. I

(05:17):
don't really want to, but I do just to stay strong.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
She's the most able, bodied, well functioning brain, all the
cylinders roaring.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. And I think it's, you know, a rebrand for
lack of better words of what aging is, because we
put aging with fraility together, like fraility is an option yeah,
aging well is an option and really like breaking those
two things apart to be like I mean, I've I
watch like my cat videos on the internet or like
the eighty four year olds who can like bench press
one hundred pounds right, Like I will watch those like

(05:47):
cat videos and I gotta get on that yours, right,
and like I love it. And so I'm like this
is catching on and fraility is not inevitable, but it's
so pervasive in our society that really is inevitable that
it's like, no, we don't.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
We don't. I love how you frame that frailty. Fraility. Yeah,
fraility is an option.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's an option. We don't we don't want to be frail.
We want to be strong. But aging doesn't always mean fraility. Yeah, yeah,
like the ninety four year olds. So in my clinic,
I alays the people who've been married for fifty years
and the people who are over ninety, Like my whole
career now, I'm always like, tell me your secret, give
me your one secret for the longevity for.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
The marriage, one secret, please, And the.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
One secret of the ninety year olds, they always say,
just keep moving, just keep moving, don't stop moving. Just
keep moving like that's universally the sci Yeah. Yeah. And
the married people usually they say, don't take things so seriously.
Usually the guy will be like she's usually right, right,
it is like you know, I think what that means

(06:49):
is like they've gotten to the point where it's like
they don't argue about everything all the time, like it's
not worth it. Right. So I'm like, those are my
tips from the people who are doing longevity very well.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah, in relationship and otherwise.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Because then the doctor like you see people age every
single day, like twenty times a day, right, And so
it's like, I see, I had a couple come in
they were like forty eight and they're like, well, doc,
if you just tell us like we're too old for
sex now and this is just how it is. And
I'm like, you, guys, I had seventy four year old
in here like two hours ago. They're having sex all

(07:22):
the time. It's the best sex they've ever had. Can't
keep their hands, you can't keep their hands off each other.
Like yes, they need some pharmaceutical assistance, but like they
love what they're doing, right, And these for eight year
olds were like what because they think, like you know,
if you just tell us we're old and this is
all there is.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
And I'm like, no, I know it's such a perception
that it's such a perception. You know, at a certain age,
we just sort of don't have sex anymore. But that's
not true.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
No, it's not.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Although I don't want to picture my mom having sex,
but we don't want to picture.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
That, but we want to excitt now that my kids
want to picture, right, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, I think, well, you know, a society has this
perception of who's allowed to be sexual. Right, so even
there's a societal bias against old people being sexual, like, right,
who's permitted? Right?

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Like I just said, I don't want to see that, right, Yeah,
And it's like, oh no, there's plenty of sex, like
they you know, the sexually transmitted infections are actually quite
common in nursing homes because they're like, we don't worry about.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Pregnancy, right. It's like, but you do have to protect
yourself and you know, be as safe as possible because
you guys are getting it on a lot.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
They're hooking it up.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
I gotta get my mom in one of those places. Okay,
so you have an interesting take on perry and menopause.
Because you are a urologist, So how does your perspective
differ from say, just a dynacologist, yes or yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
So I mean for people who don't know who are listening,
a urologist is a surgeon of the genital urinary system.
So think kidney stones, think prostate, think bladder, think all
gender genitals. That's what we do. And so I'm already
very comfortable with giving men totosterone when they have lotustosterone,
and giving men viagra and helping them out with directions
when they have sexual issues. That's how we're trained. It's

(09:13):
very normal. That's our job, right, And so what became
apparent to me in the female sexual health and the
female hormones is we've got these two groups of people,
different genders. And the guy comes in and he's like, Doc,
I just don't have any energy anymore, and like I
love my wife, but I just don't feel like it.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Check check check.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah. We're like, okay, well, let's you know, let's check
your hormones and here's some viagra and here's some options,
and let's tune it up right. And the woman comes in.
She says the same thing and we're like, well, you know,
you're just getting old, and try a glass of wine,
and like, you know, maybe acupuncture, but no shade to acupuncture.

(09:51):
But it's like they both have legitimate medical issues, but
we treat them very differently. We treat this one like
he's worthy of treatment, and this one we blow off
and we're like, why are you here? This is a
stupid thing to be talking about. You're just getting older, right.
So the magic that I have and why I think
I've been able to kind of move this conversation forward
is I see the gender bias every single day. Gynecologists

(10:14):
only take care of women. They have no idea how
we're taking care of the men. And so I hear
how the guys treated and I see how the women's treated,
and I'm like, would we ever say these things to
a man? And if not, we've got inequality here and
until the medical world is more equal and how we
treat people and what we say is a legitimate health
care concern.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
I got a lot of work to do or deemed
worthy of insurance coverage?

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Yeah, oh totally. I mean you know viagra was became
FD approved in America in nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Wow, Yeah, and that's a long time.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
It's a long time ago. It's one of the best.
It was the best selling blockbuster drug of its time.
No drug has sold more more quickly than viagra. Did okay,
got FD approved it with just six months of safety
day wow? Right, so like pretty fast, this was worthy
of them approving And uh, ninety percent of men are heterosexual, right,
and so we're like, who's taking care of the women

(11:09):
who are supposed to be sleeping with the men that
people like me are giving viagra too?

Speaker 1 (11:14):
And I willse poor women.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
I know, and we know now because we're paying attention
now that if you give a man viagra and you
don't take care of his partner, you're destabilizing that relationships.
You are because he doesn't know how to talk, like
they don't know how to talk about sex, right, because
our sex said stinks in the country.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
But it's like you have to say, like what's your
plan with your superdick? Now? Like where are you going
to go with this?

Speaker 1 (11:39):
You're super dick?

Speaker 2 (11:41):
That's where like we're improving your blood flow? Are we
improving her blood flow?

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Right?

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Is anybody dealing with her genitally 'or a narry cindral menopause,
like does she even want to sleep with you? So
now I mean I'm like such a better urologist now
than I was, because now I man comes in with
this and I say, well, what's your plan? Oh? Well,
you know as for my wife? And I'm like, when'd
you have sex last eight years ago? And I'm like,
did you tell her you're here today? Is somebody says

(12:06):
somebody done a physical examine her? Like does she want
to sleep with you? Right? Because guys are like, I'll
just I just need an erection, And I'm like sex
is so much more than an erection, Like we to
have a bigger conversation about this, yeah, and who's taking
care of her? Right? And So now what I love
in clinic is I see couples, you know, they both
come in and she's we're dealing with her pelvis and

(12:27):
his pelvis and ultimately like their relationship together, and it's
so fun.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, I can see how that would be so fulfilling,
to gratifying, to really help people not just individually but
with their partners, because we like to partner, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, And it's like midlife, I mean, if you if
you can go dark, pretty quick, but like divorces skyrocket
in midlife. And I had had a lawyer come to
one of my retreats last year, which was super divorce
lawyer came to one of my retreats and she's like,
I'm here to learn all about menopause because menopause is
the reason and that people are getting divorced. Wow, She's
like untreated menopause. And she's like, but by the time

(13:04):
they get to the divorce lawyer, it's too late. It's
the end there. You know, she's pulling them out of
the river right with the metaphor, and she's like, we
need to get people treated so much sooner because intimacy
goes away and communication goes away, like all of that
goes away. And so I was like, oh, man, learn
from the divorce.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Lawyers, right, like, yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women, so, which
is a crazy statistic. And if the woman's educated so
like went to college or above, ninety percent of divorces
are initiated by women. Yeah, I believe it's like the
guys don't want to get divorced, right, So it was like,
what's happening, Well, that's.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
A whole other time. That's a whole other podcast, because
I have feelings about it. But I mean it's a fear.
It's like a fear. As a married woman, I can
say that losing my libido, losing interest in having sex
with my husband or my partner is a fear. Yeah,
So how do we as women get past that fear?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
I think it all goes back to education, right, And
I'm saying that from a physician who went to med
school who didn't learn anything about women's sexuality. And so
that was my first book and the reason I got
interested in it is like seven years into my career,
I had a woman come into my office and I
was very bonded with her already, like I already loved her,
I loved her husband. We were working on legitimate, serious

(14:22):
urology issues. And she was crying in my office because
of their sexless marriage, and I handed her the box
of KLEENICX, and I'm like in my head, I was like,
I don't know how to help her. And I was
training because again I was trained by men. Only if
there's only a thousand female eurologists in America, and we
take care of the men, right, women are difficult, will
never figure them out, and don't worry. The gynecologists are

(14:44):
taking care of them. And that's what I was told.
And so when she's crying in my office, these thoughts
are coming back, and I'm like, is it true? Is
it true? We don't know anything about female sexuality? Right?
Is it true? The gynecologists are taking care of female sexuality?
And I just didn't know that, right, So I just
started learning, started going to the conferences. I ran into
a friend of mine there from med school, and I'm like,

(15:04):
she's a gynecologist, and I'm like, why are you here.
You're supposed to know all this already, right, and she's like,
we didn't learn it either. I'm like, okay, so doctors
don't know anything about sex. Yeah, that's what's bad. So
it's so for me to say women need to get educated.
It's like and that's why I wrote the book, That's
why the podcast, because it's like, you actually can't go
to your doctor and be like, tell me everything I
need to know about sex. Like doctor visits are ten

(15:26):
minutes long at best at this point. But it's like
what turns you on? What's what is arousing? What do
you need to get in the mood because Hollywood gives
us a three minute sexual script which doesn't pan out
in real life. No, if that's our education, yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
You start thinking it's supposed to look like I saw
in the movies, like.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, instantaneous so in love. Yes, it is like you're
just like so hot, instantaneous orgasm. It lasts three minutes,
it's it's over when the man orgasms, Like it's a
sexual script on repeat. So we think that's real life,
but it's like, no, real life's actually way messier and
sex can actually be a lot longer, right, Like Hollywood
gives us very short sex.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
They only have so many.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Minutes, mates, I have a commercial break. But yeah, so
we think like that's where we get our education, because
we didn't otherwise get anything more than like disease and
pregnancy prevention plans.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, basics, the basics. A lot of people simply don't
know what harry or meno pause. They don't know the difference,
and it's for so long carried such a stigma, such
a feeling of shame for women who are at the
end of the end of other people's jokes about it.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. Yeah, we've made it a joke.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
It's a joke.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
It's a joke.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
It's funny. It's not funny, you guys.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
It's not funny. If we cut off men's testicles or
they fell off at age fifty one, there would be
a national vaccine and it wouldn't be funny, and they'd
all be on testostero.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yes, there would be like national guard everywhere.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, totally, it's like take care of these dudes. There'd
be like a day off for them. But I think
part of the problem is, like you can't see your ovaries.
You don't know what your ovaries do, or if you do,
you think they make eggs, which they do, but they
also produce hormones. And ovaries only last a certain amount
of time based upon the size of them. So the
size of the ovary is based upon the size of
the mammal. So elephant ovaries are bigger. Human ovaries are smaller,

(17:16):
and they have follicles, which are just basically little parts
that release hormones, and we use those every month, right
to put out an egg and produce hormones, and after
a certain amount of time there's none left. Right, But
we are living so much longer now, So antibiotics alone
have extended human life span by twenty six years per
person in America, Like, we are living so much longer

(17:39):
than we use two naturally. So it's like clean water, sanitation,
excellent food sources, Like we're making it to eighty four.
It's forty years without hormone production, and a lot of
people are like, well, I can't really feel it. Some
people are very symptomatic, but some people aren't. It's like,
you can't feel your bones thinning, you can't feel your
brain changing, you can't feel your arteries stiffening, you can't
feel your labia minora disappearing. Right, It's like all these

(18:02):
things where we're like, oh, you can feel it happening,
but there's many things happening hormonally that you can't feel.
But we'll have dire consequences if you live long enough.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Correct, and we don't know how to treat them right,
because nobody was talking about it.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Nobody was talking about it. And you know the crazy
thing about menopause and replacing hormones is in the nineteen nineties,
forty percent of American women were on hormones. That's what's
so crazy about it. It's like, I'm just trying to
get us back to the hormones. Were the torments were
in the top five top selling drugs in America in
the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yes, I remember a specific one that I was like,
what it was? They made it from equine urine.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, Premar premarin.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
There's it's still out there.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, I'm still there.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
But I was like, I am never going to.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
Eat eat orry pregnant horses. Yeah. Well, like just for
fun medicine history, we isolate the very first hormones from
pregnant humans because they're in a hospital and we can
collect their pe not we not like me, but but
like medical science on human right. Yeah, so first we're
consuming human urine hormones. We've evolved and now we can

(19:15):
you know, modern manufacturing, Like it's the hormone that you're
ovary naturally produces, not taken from an animal given back
to you. So we we have the most safe hormones
now than we've ever had.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Okay, so seeing as every human, like you said, fifty
percent of the population, every female human is going to
experience perry and menopause if they're like even and they live,
that's right, and even if they don't know it, even if.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
They don't know it even if they'd have no you know,
quote unquote feeling that they're going through.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
What are we looking for? Like as far as a symptom.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
So the classic symptom is hot flashes. Yeah, hot flashes,
night sweats parse Parsley. This forty to sixty percent of
women a less well known, but they're starting to study
it more. Is something called not feeling like myself?

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yes, I've heard this phrase.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, and so they're actually starting to publish papers on
it of like how common is it that women don't
feel like themselves? And it's very common. It's like sixty
percent of women don't feel like myself and that's changing
hormones little in society, like judging you for aging, right, congratulations,
you're not dead. We're gonna judge you for aging, Like
it's a crazy it's a crazy world that we live in.
But really, like, do you One of the most satisfying

(20:27):
things that I do as a clinician is when women
come back and they say I feel like myself again,
Like that is the best day for me. And I
put smart women back out doing smart things. That's they're
changing the world. And I'm like, I have the best
job in the world because I make them feel like
themselves and like they want to get things done.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
For a woman who doesn't quote feel like herself, what
does that mean?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, it means I know what it means. It's really hard,
yeah right, Like it's I was just gonna say, the
best way to know what it means is to have
gone through it yourself, because you can't. I can't do
a lab and be like, does Jenny feel like Jenny? Right?
Can I X ray you and see if you if
you're feeling like yourself? Like you can't objectively measure it.
But a woman will come back and she'll be like,
I feel like myself, and I'm like I get it,

(21:13):
Like I know what that means. Like you just have
a knowing of like you know, it's kind of I
mean for people who don't have that experience, and maybe
you could share yours, but it's like when you have
like the really bad flu or something like you feel
we were like, oh okay, I'm back now right, it's
like yeah, kind of that knowing that you're back. I
was off, I'm back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I think for me, it lasted for a long time.
It lasted for years of not feeling like I couldn't
really understand what was happening. I didn't know why am
I feeling more depressed? Why am I having anxiety? Why
am I losing my hair? Why can't I sleep? Why
do I have lower sexual desires? Like so many things?
And I was like, Okay, why can't I remember things?

(21:54):
I need to go see if I have Alzheimer's or
not getting dementia. I did that check, like you go
and you talk to doctors and nobody ever kind of
piece the puzzle together in a way that made sense,
And it also felt so overwhelming, because how can I
possibly follow all these different doctors orders and regimes and

(22:14):
prescriptions like it's it becomes so much.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, well, like when you're sick, it's very hard to
advocate for yourself. Right. It's a lot easier to advocate
for yourself when you're feeling great, but that's not how
you enter the medical system. Usually you're sick and you
can't advocate for yourself, and you're tired and you're feeling crappy.
That's why you want help, But it's hard to advocate
when that's what you're going through. It's very hard.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
It's so true. I like that I'm not feeling myself.
I'm not feeling myself, not.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Feeling Yeah, the abbreviation it was NFLM. Not feeling like myself.
Like the NFLM is actually getting more and more studied.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
My husband would be very excited thinking it's the NFL
with some new team at it. But surprise, any we're
not talking about football. Okay, So let's talk about sex,
libido and all of the things and the lack thereof
what happens why does that happen to you us?

Speaker 2 (23:09):
So sex is incredibly complex, which is why I love
the topic so much. Right, it's biopsychosocial, So it's biology
what's going on in your body?

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Biopsychosocial. That's the word.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Word word, that word, and now I'm like, uh, but
it explains things bio bio psycho, So the bios like
your cells and how well you're functioning, and you know,
what are your hormones doing? And do you have painless sex?
And like all the body parts. And then psychological is
like how are you feeling about your body image and aging?
And like you know, what how is your relationship and

(23:40):
like do you guys even like each other? Right? And
then social is like what does society tell you about,
you know, your attractiveness as a female as you age?
How close are you to the current ideal that's ever
changing on what sexy is? Right, that actually influences women's
desire for sex, How close they are to the ever
changing societal norm of what sexy is? And then society's

(24:00):
rules like if a woman likes sex, what do we
call her? Happy? Might be one word, but a bad
word might be another word. Right, like our judgment of
are you allowed to want sex as a woman without
being judged about it?

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Now you have then? Right, there's so many things I
could say right now totally derogatory that I've heard about that.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
So sex exists within that huge bubble. Right, it's like
not just a functioning body, but also like does society
say it's okay for you to touch yourself? Does society
say that a woman's allowed to pursue sex? Does society
say a woman can have a higher sex drive than
her male partner? Right, it's like all these myths and
biases that we're trying to like when we're swimming in
this right, and most people haven't sat down and been like,

(24:41):
can you journal you know how you feel about being
sexual in our society, Like nobody's thinking about that, but
it affects us, right, Am I doing this right? I've
seen people have sex on in Hollywood movies. Am I
matching up to that? Right? So there's like comparison all
the time that's happening. So that's biopsychosocial. And in perimenopause
and menopause, hormones go down, and estrogen and testosterone because

(25:03):
ovaries make testosterone, influence dopamine and serotonin, which is I
feel good? I want to pursue sex. Sex is rewarding
all of those things. Estrogen and testosterone affect the brain,
also affect blood flow, arousal orgasm. You give a woman testosterone,
her clteral artery has more blood flow to it.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Really yeah, I always forget to take my testosterone. But
like twenty minutes before you came, I was like, I
gotta put this on, And then I thought, am I
even doing this right? I have the clicker kind that
it says give it two clicks and then you have
point five? Is that a good dose?

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Is it points at point five millilaters or mili? Do
we know milligrams? Just for ges? So for everybody listening
I always say clicks is in a dose, clicks is
in amount. So you just need to know how many
mgs you're putting on. That's miligrams.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, let's go into testosterone talk.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So testosterone again, Like I always have to back up
and be like, overies make testosterone because otherwise we are,
like doctor Casperson says, we should take this male hormone.
I'm like, this is a female hormone.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
It doesn't sound right that our ovaries are making testosterone, right,
just me you looking at what you're saying from over here.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Google's like, disosterone is the male hormones. It's for men's wrong.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Men need that. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
I didn't learn it in med school either. Like that's
the trippy thing is, yeah, I did not learn that's
in medical school.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's so frightening.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
We gender it. We gender things. We say men have testosterone,
women have estrogen. Here's the fascinating part. But we'll get
back to the diestosterone. Men have more estrogen in their
bodies than a postman aposal female.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
What do they do with it?

Speaker 2 (26:33):
They have sex with it? So they actually like they
did this study. It's a crazy study because they took
young men and they blocked their testosterone. Like I don't
know how much they paid these people, but I hope
they paid them. So they took these men, blocked their testosterone,
gave them distosterone back, but blocked the conversion of disosterone
to estrogen because that's how that's how bodies were make

(26:53):
distosterone and they converted to so they blocked that. So
now you have a normal distosterone but no estrogen. Male
body sex drive went down.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
They need the estrogen, they need the ESU. We need
the estrogen, We need the estrogen.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, isn't that crazy though? Like so if I have
a couple in, you know, and the woman's kind of
skittish about hormones or whatever, and I look at her
male partner and I'm like, you know, he has more
estrogen in your bot in his body than you have
right now, and it kind of blows their mind to like, WHOA,
I really have no estrogen? Then, yeah, because we don't
think of them as having tons of estrogen, and you don't.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
We don't think about all of our issues, our symptoms,
our aches and pains being about estrogen, right, and the
fact that you know that could be just a major
component of why we're feeling the way we're feeling.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
One of the very common ones is like frozen shoulder,
which they call the fifty one year old shoulder. Yeah right,
And the muscle skeletal syndrome of menopause now, which is
like joint aches and pain. The osteoarthritis goes up with
low hormones, like need for rotator cuff goes up in
any gender with low hormones. So like our muscle skeletal
system uses these hormones to like lubricate and move and

(27:58):
not be painful. The snostrenes actually very good at I
don't say treating pain, but like modulating pain. So like
the stereotype of like it's only for hot flashes or
you know, it's only for these The big stereotype of
testosterone for women is that it's only for libido. And
to me, I'm like, if you say that, then you
don't understand how sex works, right, because libidos a mood

(28:19):
and it's a motivation. Where do those come from? They
come from the brain, right, So it's like testosterone works
in our brain, that's what it does. Like why is
your libido better? Because I feel like myself I actually
have motivation and energy and humans start looking better a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
I'm not lying. You look great right now because I
got I'm loaded up.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right yeah those two hours before podcast?

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Wait, okay, am I supposed to put my testosterone where?
Am I supposed to put it?

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Lateral thighs?

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Outside?

Speaker 2 (28:50):
That are they common? And the reason is this You're
get a side effect of hair growth where the application is.
So for risks, it's like, oh, you don't want hairy wrists,
so it's not an aesthetic that's in right now, But
like lateral fis, you're not gonna notice or you're going
to shave you legs anyways, so either way, okay, so
we will do nerthizer, just more hair follicles there. Right.
Some people in some parts of the nation will tell

(29:13):
women to put systemic and systemic means full body, so
it's supposed to be in your full body, but they'll
tell them to put it on their lavia. Uh. They
can get really high absorption that way because labia has
tons of testosterone receptors. So we tend just to use
regular skin lateral fighs.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Okay, okay, that's very good information.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
And our dosing is one tenth the male dose. One tenth,
So this is small amounts. We're not trying to and
you know that's ssterioto. Will you turn me into a
man if I give you man doses?

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (29:41):
We do that.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
One of the competitive ones know.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
That they take a lot of things, way more things
than testosterone, and.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
They and they work very, very hard, and they work at.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Gonna accidentally get biceps. But that's the myth with testosterone
is like will it give women must It's like not
if you don't eat and not if you don't lift weight.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Are you gonna make me have a hairier face?

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Right? No?

Speaker 1 (30:06):
No, when it's dosed appropriately, dosed appropriately, most people know
one tenth of what a managing tenth have.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Which is usually somewhere around three and five milligrams a day.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
So your point of view is testosterone goes hand in
hand with estrogen.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
But that's not where society is right now. But to me,
I'm like your ovaries make it starts going down after
our twenties, and there's nothing magical again about like your
last period marks the menopause transition. Right, there's nothing magical
about having periods or not with distosterone. Dososterone starts going
down after our twenties, So there's a lot of perimenopausal
women that could benefit with distosterol.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
It's so interesting. And also I was right there thinking,
I don't know about that. That sounds risky for all
the reasons we just talked about. I was very like,
you know, nervous to try it. And I'll say some
honestly days that I don't use it because I'm thinking,
is this something I have to use every day? Is
this something that, like you know, I can use once

(31:05):
in a while. Is it a daily thing?

Speaker 2 (31:07):
It's a daily thing. I mean, ovaries don't take a
day off so oover, just replace my older old right,
I'm don't taking time off, take months off at a
time in perimenopause. Yeah, But I mean the cool thing
is doctors have been giving women to stosterone for eighty years.
Like that's the thing. It's like, I'm not actually I'm
not actually new. I just know the data and I

(31:28):
just know what people have been doing, right, Distosterone's been
around for like eighty years. Have been giving women to
stosterone for eighty years, And we're probably three or four
years away from an FDA approved pharmacologic female dose testosterone.
And when that happens, the conversation is going to change,
right so cause it's just going to validate it so

(31:48):
much more so, there's multiple companies right now going forward.
And when so I went and spoke at the FDA
in July and my talk was to stosterone and I
gave them several requests. But it's like it's gonna be
a game changer. It's just going to normalize it for
people because we've been doing it for a while. And
the women who were on it like if you and
this is what I you know, I say, It's like

(32:08):
women don't come back and say thank you for my libido.
That's the only thing that's better on testostero like that.
They never say it's only libido. It's like this goes
in your brain and it's the biggest thing is motivation.
I just did a follow up with a woman surgical menopause,
which means her ovaries were removed, doctors did not give
her hormones for three years. Her symptoms got so bad

(32:29):
she had to quit her job. And I know she's
not the only one, so I want to tell the
story so otherwise, like yes, so she got up finally
got on estrogen before she found me was like, oh
my god, the sun's back out right, So got back
on estrogen, helped her sleep. All the things came to
me for testostero, and I just did her fall up
a couple of weeks ago, and she it was a
telemed and she's like, let me show you outside my house.

(32:50):
It's she takes me out there and a deck is
being made out there and she's like, this is my
testosterone deck. And I'm like, your testosterone deck. Tell me more.
And she's like, I just have the motivation to get
things done now, Oh I want that. Yeah. So it's
like this pursuit of wanting to get things done that
Like again, it's how do I X ray your level

(33:10):
of motivation? How do I draw blood and say this
is her level of motivation and it's less than what
it used to be, right, So and I say that
to be like in medicine, we love measuring things, we
love being objective. So it's this kind of like it's
not woo wo, but it's kind of this like I'm
telling you testosterones giving you back something that's kind of
hard to measure, So it's like less valid in the

(33:32):
medical world of like I don't know how I measure that.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, but it.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Drives me crazy when people are like disosterones only for libido.
You're like, libido doesn't exist. There isn't like the one
centimeter libido box on the left side of your brain
that like only testosterone goes to. Like, it's not how
brains work, it's the whole thing body, the whole whole body. Yeah, there,
I mean, And there's we have much less data on
testosterone than we do for estrogen.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Well but until soon we'll be well.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Hopefully, yeah, hopefully you're.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
A part of it. Okay, So there's you know, I
think in the early two thousands, there was that whole
situation with telling women they shouldn't be on home hormone replacement.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
There ye, the whr the wh should we talk about that?
People don't know?

Speaker 1 (34:16):
I would like you too.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
So we've been giving women to disosterone and extra hormones
for like eighty years. In the nineteen nineties, forty percent
of American women were on it. It was the top
one of the top five best selling drugs in the nation.
Hormone if you can even call like what your ovary
makes a drug? Right, But I don't have a better word.
So hormones was one of the top ten, top five pharmaceuticals,
And I want to set the stage for people to

(34:37):
be like, we're not talking about something new, We're trying
to get back to where we were because the devastation
was profound. So the cardiologists back in the nineties, they're like,
women who are on hormones seem to have less heart disease.
And they had observational studies and like they had allotted
data to be like women who stay on the hormones,
they're not getting heart disease like the women who aren't.

(35:00):
So they knew something was up with this, and they said,
let's do a randomized spacebo control trial looking at this.
Let's prove it definitively like core of a million dollar study.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
At the time.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Now that would be a billion dollars if we wanted
to do it now. Federal government funded like forty sites
in America, big study, and it was like this big
thing because it was like, oh, it's on women, right,
which is a big deal. But what they did is
they took older women, so not new menopause fifty year olds.
They took older women average age sixty three, and they
put them on oral synthetic medications as we don't use now,

(35:32):
and they stopped it early because they didn't like how
there was some breast cancer in some of the people,
but it never was statistically significant. The crazy thing about
this study is that it's free online right now, like
anybody can pull up and read this whri It's not
like this mystery thing in a history book. It's like, no,
it's free online, like I can pull it up and
read it and it says comes close to statistical significance.

(35:56):
And in the medical research world can't come close and
have it be statistically significant. It's like you're kind of pregnant.
It's like, no, no, you're pregnant, or you're not pregnant. Right,
it's either statistically significant or it's not. And it wasn't.
But back in two thousand and one, in two thousand
and two, there wasn't social media. Medical studies got printed

(36:17):
on paper and got mail deer house a week later,
so the doctors couldn't read it, and they went to
the media first. They wanted a big they wanted it big.
So some of the researchers went to the media and said,
we stop this because of the risks of breast cancer.
Media took it ran with it. Women are now afraid
of something their body naturally makes. One week later, the

(36:38):
doctors get to read the study because it came in
the mailbox and they said it didn't reach statistical significance.
And the doctors who knew knew that this wasn't that
big of a deal. But they didn't have social media platforms,
they didn't have podcasts, they didn't have the news stations. Right,
so about eighty percent of women in this nation got
taken off of their hormones. Subsequently, there's been papers published

(37:01):
saying because of that, because remember lots of people were
on hormones, we took them off, we have more heart disease,
more bone fractures, there's more breast cancer now. And the
crazy thing about the study, to wrap it up for people,
is that the women who are in the estrogen alone
study had actually decreased risk of breast cancer. And that
did not make the news at all. So, I mean,
it's sickening to be like, you guys wanted the attention

(37:24):
and you gave it negative attention. But there's actually some
really good stuff that came out of there, and nobody
knew about it, right because it's good news. Doesn't make
us turn as many heads, that's right, but it's done
profound damage, and it's made women afraid of something their
body naturally makes.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Yeah, that's the hardest part because I talk about hormone
replacement and I share my story and tell people that
I use it, and I get a lot of women saying, oh,
I can't take that, or I have breast cancer in
my family, so I can't.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, that's a very common myth. Yeah, and so it's
and the good I want people to understand, Like everything
I'm saying is like published somewhere and written somewhere. This
isn't like Kelly's opinion on life, right, Like I'm very
well researched in this. But family history is not a
contraindication to hormone therapy, and that's well published. There's twenty

(38:15):
twenty two menopause guidelines. So what happens to your family
doesn't control your ability to be on hormones, and people
don't know that. Yeah. I mean. The other thing that's
crazy about breast cancer, which I'd say is probably one
of the most feared things that women has, is like
most women don't know that alcohol increases the risk of
breast cancer. And that was very interesting for me because

(38:35):
I would see women come in and they're so afraid
of estrogen, and I'm like, how much do you drink
a week? Like, oh, you know, a bottle of weekend
or you know, whatever it might be. And I'm like,
you realize that alcohol has an association with breast cancer
And they're like, I didn't know that. And I'm like,
so here you are afraid of something that doesn't cause
breast cancer and you're unaware of something that is a
known cancer causing agent eight cancers. Actually, yeah, right, So

(38:59):
it's like we're afraid the wrong thing.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
I mean, when you're a smoker, you think, oh, I'll
stop smoking cigarettes and I'll just vape. Sure, yeah yeah,
yeah right, it's like that. That's what the kids are
thinking in these days, not even knowing right what kind
of damage they're doing bodies.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, it's awful.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
That's crazy. Yeah. So when I hear that back then,
I'm like, you need to be listening to the right doctors,
and I give them recommendations listening to the right podcasts
and reading the right books.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah yeah, and because remember like what we're doing, like
the doctors who are sharing. This is we're changing medicine
from the bottom up, right, We're getting the women educated,
and we tell them, we're like, hey, I'm sorry, you're
going to know more than your doctor for a little
bit about this. Like sorry, because after the WHI medical
schools stop teaching this, residencies stop teaching this. We have

(39:44):
two decades of untrained medical clinicians. But nothing motivates a
doctor to learn something. Then like five women came into
my office this week saying, I want to try vaginal estrogen,
I want to try an estrogen patch, blah blah blah.
So we're saying, here's the data, here's how to talk
to doctors, go advocate, because the bottom up is how
it's going to change. It's very similar, I think to
the HIV AIDS ground swell, Like doctors weren't trying new

(40:09):
meds research, wasn't doing anything. The patients and the advocates
went in and said we want to be treated, you
have to do something, and so like that ground swells
like that's what the women are doing now. This is
how we're changing medicine.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, it's such an amazing movement.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, it's crazy, it's so good.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Okay, This brings me to a question that maybe a
lot of women have dealt with. This when you need
to read your books and you got your facts down
and you know things that maybe your doctor doesn't know,
and you go into the doctor's office and you tell
them what you know, and they say, oh, yeah, you
should stop reading so many books.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, well, or you should stop being on the internet.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Oh yeah, don't google it.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Don't don't google it. You should also not listen to podcasts.
According to some people. You know, there was just a
paper study this is the breast cancer survivor population, and
they basically ask the researchers ask the women, where do
you get your health information from? Right, It's social media,
it's podcasts, it's books, because you don't have enough time
to be educated in the doctor's office, Like, that's not

(41:13):
what it's there. If they want you in and out,
they want you in and out. So you know, it's
it's very paradoxical to be like, don't don't get educated,
but we can't do it here. You know, it's like, no, women,
you're not going to turn off social media, right, Like
there's good stuff and there's bad stuff. And I would argue,
like the doctors who know the good stuff. They need
to be on there because lord knows, there's a bunch
of people selling other things on there, right, Like, it's

(41:34):
got to get some sort of truth. So advocating for
yourself is just an absolute, huge scary thing for a
lot of people. Have a chapter in my book on
how to talk to your doctor, right, So my first
tip is, if you have a great relationship already awesome,
you're already ahead of the curve. A lot of women
don't have that relationship with their doctor, right, who's like
willing to be like, hey, we're both getting older together,

(41:56):
let's learn how to do this. Let's what do you know?
I'll see what I know like a part because that's,
at the end of the day, a lovely, amazing thing.
Not everybody has that. So if you don't have that,
one tip is call the receptionist and say, does doctor
Jones deal with perimenopause and menopause, because don't take a
day off of work, pay for parking, get childcare to
go sit, pay for your cope to go sit in there,

(42:19):
and say, hey, I'm learning a lot about perimenopause and
I think I might benefit from an estrogen patch. And
they're like, nope, I don't believe in that. Like, learn
that before you do all those things. Yeah. Right, So
it's like get ahead of it to be like, Okay,
if doctor Jones doesn't do that, do one of their
partners do that? Right? Who's in the clinic that sees
these patients, right, because that's a friendly person. And then

(42:40):
this is the script. I've been reading a lot about
x y Z and I'm experiencing that. Can I try
vaginal estrogen, an estrogen patch, five milligrams of testosterone whatever
it is? So you tell them what you want. I
would like to try x y Z for this reason.
I will schedule a follow up in two to three months,
and we will adjust as need it. Doctors love knowing

(43:01):
how you do. They love knowing they're gonna just as needed.
It's like, I don't want to try something and never
see you again. I hate it when people like don't
come back. Yes, I think you're like, well, how that helped? Yeah,
help that go. So we love that. So it's like
speak our language and kind of give give that. I'm
on your team. I don't want to do anything dangerous either. Right,

(43:21):
Let's see how it works that that moves mountains, and
you know, again, it's a partnership. At the end of
the day. Hormones in America are a prescription. You do
need somebody to help you access them. But find large
doctors want to help women. And if you are winning
on hormones, go back and tell that doctor, like I
am now sleeping. Oh my god, my sex life is

(43:42):
so much better. Oh my god, the brain FOG's better. Like,
tell them why you're better, because they're gonna help the
next woman with that's right, because they see that.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
That's amazing, that's amazing. We talked about cancer risks, and
I remember what you wrote in the book about being
people being afraid of estrogen and something our body naturally produce,
and not being afraid of alcohol, which is the leading
cause of a lot of major diseases.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, they think about ten percent of breast cancer is
alcohol related.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Do you think this is a very like generalization. But
I feel like as an American seeing our foods, the
things we have available to us and the things that
are you know, really sort of laid out for us
as things we should want, like sugary drinks from the
coffee store. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah, I don't want.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
To call them out. But the sugary drinks, the drive
through food, the sodas up to the gulps. You know,
I feel like people are setting us up for being
at least pretty diabetic.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah. Oh, and I mean the amount of sugar. If
you just look at like how much sugar humans consumed
in the eighteen hundreds, I'm not even talking like more
than a hundred years ago. It was like the eighteen
hundreds compared to now, it's insane.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
How much do they eat in eighteen hundreds of curious?

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Very little?

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Well, what are they getting?

Speaker 2 (44:57):
Like they can't have like a cake once a year?

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Somebody made a cake, right, yeay?

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Okay. The other interesting thing about that is sex was
the most amazing thing because there wasn't a lot else
going on, right, Like, sex was great, That's what was
gonna be the highlight of your week. And now we're like,
I got Netflix, I got Hagana's Mint Chip, I've got
any type of bottle of wine that I want. Like
we're getting our dopamine in ways that it's other than sex,

(45:23):
Whereas like even one hundred years ago, you're like there's
nothing else. We don't have electricity, nothing else to do.
Sex seems pretty good. Yeah, but sex is actually work, right,
It's a lot. It's more work, I mean than scrolling
and a pine ice cream. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
You definitely have to exert some energy. You have to
exert energy, which.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
You have to coordinate with another human if you want
another human involved, right, and that they have to get
off their device, right. Like, sex is actually like not
at the top of the dopamine like food chain anymore. Yeah,
unless you prioritize it.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
To me, I remember when exercise was the top of
the dopamine food chain. Yeah, yeah, and everyone was saying,
you have to exercise because that's how you're body releases
the dopamine. Those are chemicals that we need, yea, And Okay,
that don't motivate me to but I just did it
blindly because someone said it. Yeah, no like doctor recommending it,
you know, no one saying that that was gonna help

(46:13):
my hormone balance.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Right yeah. Yeah, So exercise won't make your ovaries not
run out of follicles. I think that's a bit. I
guess there's like the crazy stuff on social media, right,
Like if you just like like stretch your fascia a
certain way, you can prevent metopause. It's like, no, that's
not how it works. But exercise really does help vaso
motor symptoms. It really helps sleep, it really helps glucose metabolism,

(46:35):
like it helps so much in midlife. It's like, don't
just think you can slap on an estrogen patch and
be good, Like you.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Still all things it does for you. Why wouldn't you
do it?

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Oh my god, it is better than any Like exercise
is better than any drug at preventing dementia. Yes, if
they could, it would have a Super Bowl ad for sure.
They'd be like, exercise helps your brain. People who exercise
have better sex.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
No. Now it is is you watch the Suitable commercials
and it's they list all the side effects and they
say them so fast that you're.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Like, wait, what yeah, stay fast for a reason.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Short is the breath, the irritable sundrum, totally cottenance. They'll
tell you all the things that this drug could give you.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
I mean, that's what's so interesting. So the whether I
don't know if you know or not, but they're the
vaginal estrogen has a boxed warning on it that the
FDA put on after the wa try it's still there,
still there. We went to the FDA in July. Still there,
it's low hanging fruit. It's got to come off. Everybody
all the One of the criticisms of us at the FDA,
they're like they agree on too many things because we

(47:37):
all agree the box warning needs to come off of
vaginal estrogen like that is like, you know, if you're
an expert, you agree on that. So it says probable dementia,
probably probable, not possible, No probable probable.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Dementia, very high sakes, very high.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Sakes blood clot liver disease, heart disease. It doesn't cause
any of that. So you've got this inaccurate, super scary
box on vaginal estrogen, which is basically skincare. It's just skincare,
that's all it is. And then you've got alcohol government warning,
which is like don't operate heavy machinery or get pregnant.
And you're like, one of these causes cancer and one
of them doesn't. The labels switched, yeah exactly. You're like,

(48:14):
we're being we're being told to be afraid of the
wrong things. So I did an Instagram thing. I'm like,
here's two government label warning labels. One of these actually
causes cancer. It's the one that doesn't have the label
that says it causes cancer. Well that's confusing, right, Like
it's awful, right, we want to have trust in the
truth of labeling, but don't just don't operate a forklift
and wine's fine.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Oh my gosh. Has there been research around, Like cannabis
not as.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Much, but so THHC and people a lot of women
use CBD or THC gummies for sleep because sleep is
so gets so wrecked when your hormones go down. Right,
So I just started keeping tracks since I opened my
new clinic, but I've gotten three people off of their
CBD THC gummies because what the sleep experts will tell
you is that the thhcs really bad for it makes

(49:01):
you sleep, and it makes you sleepy, but it's not
good deep sleep. It's not restorative sleep. And they're worry
is that your brain's not not getting what it needs
to stay healthy. So hormones are amazing for sleep, right,
And I'm like, every time I get a patient off
of their damn sleep gummies, I'm like, yeah, there's another one.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Because you know, the moms at the carpool lane are like, oh,
just eat this.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Just eat this. Yeah, but like the sleep people are like,
it's not good for your brain.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
I saw something speaking about just things you see on
the internet and you don't know if they're true or not.
I saw something on social about if you don't go
to bed before twelve, and I think there's definitely something here.
But then what's that rhythm? Arkatia rhythm? But if you
don't go to sleep before twelve, you're not getting that deep,
deep sleep that you have to get because it happens early.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
It happens really interesting. I mean it's interesting, like people
so many people are wearing wearables now and so when
they come back, especially if they if we are starting wait,
wearbles like a whoop or an aura ring yep, yeah,
apple wash, anything that's tracking sleep, right, there's a bunch
of things that do. And so now they'll come back
and they'll be like, look at my sleep on hormones,
like they can actually see that they're actually having rem sleep.

(50:07):
And one of the cool side effects of hormones of
people are like, I'm dreaming again, and I'm like, that
means that you're having that restorative sleep and actually hitting
those different sleep levels.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Okay, how can we help men understand? Yes, in a
clear and simple way that also won't make them shut
their ears off when they hear the words perry or menopause,
because the truth is, if you're a man that's listening,
or you know a man that's listening, you need to
let them know that. That would be a huge mistake

(50:43):
to not learn about what the women around us are
experiencing and what they're going through, because you're going to
miss out on a lot eleven totally.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
How do you remember the men to want to get
divorced by lark?

Speaker 1 (50:55):
So hard for me to wrap my head around.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
I know, but that's therapy.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
I think I'm not the right statistic. I'm also in
the other statistic, and I think it's just an age
thing when you're like I was just talking about this
with some women from the Thrive fifty plus UH arena
and we were talking about how we just don't have
the tolerance anymore. Yeah, so it suck for when.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
I don't know if you can swear on your podcast
but it's called something, you know what, then I don't
give up the zero fucks the zero fox. You have
a zero the zero fox. Okay, So this is how
you explain this to men Okay, take your testicles, take
your take your testicles. They're gonna shrivel up and get
small and then they're gonna fall off. And then we're
gonna say, but that's just what happens, and that's just aging. Yeah,

(51:42):
and you're gonna be fun and it's natural. Yeah, But
what happens when your testicles are removed hot flashes, poor sleep,
You can't hold muscle on, your libido, it gets tanked,
You have no energy to do anything. You start getting
more fat in the middle of the belly. The exact
same thing, exact same that happens.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
If you're there, you their balls off, that's what would happen.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Sorry, Yes, that's how you say it, Buntley, Yes.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
Because you know nobody wants to get their balls cut
off that it sounds like a really terrifying.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Suyes, and I think you know, I'm like, if only
our ovaries were on the outside so we can actually
see them, it's smaller, yeah, and so they don't actually die.
They still high, but they just they don't have they
don't have any follicles left that are functional and can
produce them.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Not really, yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
We can't see them, right, So, like I said, it's like,
we love objective things that we can see an X
ray and measure. That's a great way. And so were
all the picture. Men can see their testicles. It's a
nice visual. They're attached, they enjoy, they like theirs and
so it's just like use a body part that they know,
like and trust their testicles and say it says if
your testicles stopped working, and then society said, don't worry, honey,

(52:47):
that's fine.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
But what if they fight that and say that just
a bunch of stuff you heard on that end.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
But that's what it is to be like, that's that's
just science.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
It's science.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
It's gonads reaching the end of their life. And about
twenty percent of men will have low testosterone and low
tustosterone and men is associated with diabetes, depression, Alzheimer's disease,
worse fracture risk, right, same things that happen to our bodies. Right,
and we know when they have lotusosterone, we give them testosterone.
Like it's just it's so linear in that world and

(53:20):
here we're like, are you sick enough? You know, is
this really happening.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
It's very frustrating.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah, it's very frustrating. But by and large to stereotype more,
which we've done a great job of. Men are helpers.
Men like to solve problems, to solve problems, They want
to understand.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
They can general, they want to understand.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
They want to really, yes, they really do. And and
a great way is like I don't know what you're
going through right now, but I know that it's real.
I know that you're suffering, and I will be here
for you as we figured this out together. Like superpower.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
That is superpower. Once you know you have somebody that's
hearing you, validating what you're saying, listening, it makes the
world a difference.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Yeah, And if I could tell me anything about sex,
if they want to sleep with the female in the world,
ninety percent of men are heterosexual. But if you want
to sleep with a woman, she won't want to have
sex if it's painful. A lot of women at pain
with sex and don't even tell their male partner. Yep. Yeah,
But so because a guy's like what's changed, right, Like
why does she want to have sex, It's like, well,
if it's painful, you never want to hate your thumb

(54:25):
with a hammer, right, It'll never desire pain. Her hormones
are changing, which affects desire because desire comes from dopamine
and the brain. That's what the libido is, right, And
so it's like biologically, there's a lot going on, And
was she liking sex in the first place? Did you
prioritize her pleasure? Did you prioritize her orgasm? Because in
the whole realm of like female sexuality, the desire libido

(54:47):
experts will be like talking about how to increase your desire.
And one day, this is like three years ago, on
my podcast, I was interviewing somebody and I'm like, you're
assuming a woman's having good sex in the first place
in this scenario, aren't you a man? And he's like yeah,
And I'm like, Aha, that's the flaw. You're assuming she
had good sex in the first place. You will never desire.

(55:09):
Chef Boyardi in a can you want a five star
Italian restaurant? Right, Like I want to go back to that.
I don't really care about Spaghettio's all that much, right,
So it's like you have to have sex worth desiring
in order to have desire for something like it has
to be rewarding. And so those would be what I
tell men is like just know that about female sexuality.
It can go a long way and being like it's

(55:30):
probably not you bro like her body's changing. Yeah, and
did you prioritize her pleasure in the first place?

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Yeah, it's probably not you bro like that because it's
so true. And once men get educated and women for
that matter, but then we understand the bio bio psycho
psycho social social component, which you talked about so well

(55:56):
in your book. So you're a woman, you go through menopause,
and then there's still life to live.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Hell.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, that's where the longevity. Yeah, the advocating for yourself
really pays off.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
What our practices that we need to be doing right
now that we can do so that that we can
do just moving forward forever.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Yeah, to age, well move Listen to all the ninety
year olds. They're ninety for a reason.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
There is some lucky you have.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Some luck component, but by and large, lifestyle hugely matters.
I think we've kind of been fed this like modern
science and medicine, like we've got a gene for everything,
and you either have the gene or you don't have
a gene. It's like genes are turned on and off
by your environment. A lot of the time. We're not
destined to just be who our parents are, right, So
it's like movement matters, what you put in your mouth matters,

(56:53):
sleeping matters. And you know that's one criticism of like
the people who prescribe hormones and talk about it. It's
like you just want everybody on hormones, Like I want
you to have an amazing life. Hormones are part of it.
I think the other part in midlife and it's going
back to like the zero fuck part. But this is
the like mindset chapter in my book is like what
do you want? Times? Well, this is not forever an

(57:16):
there's the finish line. Think about that, what do you want?
And are you living in integrity with what you want
in this life? Because I think you get to midlife
and god, thank god we call it midlife, Like what
a blessing to call fifty mid Like it's actually like
very optimistic of us to call it that, right and sweet? Yeah,
but it's like are you living your life only serving

(57:37):
other people? Or what are you actually here for? And
the more you drop into your own integrity of like
is this what I want to be doing? Like that's
where the pivot comes. That's where the growth comes, and
that's where this like you know, amazing experience of like
I truly get to become what I want because the
kids are out of diapers now, I finished my school,
I did that career. What do I want to do now?

(58:00):
And it's like that happens very commonly and it can
be very disruptive, but those like those women, they're always
glad they went on that journey. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Always, that's the journey too. I choose me, that's.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
The journey to I choose me.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Absolutely, It's so important and as midlifers definitely go through it. Yeah, yeah,
I love this. Okay, before I let you go, doctor
Kelly Cassperson, you're on a book tour. You're saving the
world from the fear of menopause. What was your last
I choose me moment?

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Oh? I mean probably today because I'm like, okay, I
need to drink a protein shake because I got a
fuel of the body. I got my workout in, got
my hair makeup done, which is super fun to do.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
You look beautiful by life very much.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
It's not just your distosterone like yeah, but it's like,
I mean I'm at the point now like I went
through a surgical training right, Like, I hustled, I worked
very hard. I got to an excellent point in my career,
and then I totally pivoted to like what do I
actually want to do? What do I want my week
to look like? Right? Do I want to help people

(59:09):
one on one? Or do I need I have like
a world to change? Right? And so now like really
for me, it's like is this fun? Is it going
to be fun? Is it gonna align with what I
want to do? So I'd say, now, like this my
life is kind of choosing me at this point. Yes,
like being like I am not doing this because anybody's
telling me to do it, Like it's really like, it's fun.

(59:30):
It lights me up. I love helping people. I love
hearing from women. You know, because of you, my marriage
is stronger than it's ever been. Because of you. I
went to my doctor and got on badginal estrogen because
of you, sex isn't painful anymore, Like, oh my god,
it's the best life ever. So I would say, like
I think I'm I think I'm doing pretty good job.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
You have walk in the walk yeah and talking the
talk yeah. So that's a good alignment. I love it,
thank you, great conversation, thank you, thanks for having me