I Choose...More of Dr. Mary Claire Haver

OB-GYN and author of The New Menopause Dr. Mary Claire Haver is back by popular demand! Jennie is talking with the menopause educator about how finding social media popularity later in life has affected her both positively and negatively.

Plus, Jennie's getting to the bottom of what "frozen shoulder" is all about and how menopause looks for women who suffer from PCOS.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hi, everyone,
welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
the choices we make and where they lead us. My
guest today is back for more. You listeners. Absolutely loved
her the last time we had her on the podcast,

(00:24):
and I always love talking to her. She is a
wealth of information and I am so excited to chat
with her some more today. She's a board certified o
bg yan and a New York Times best selling author
of The New Menopause. Please welcome doctor Mary Claire Haver
back to the podcast. Hi, doctor Mary Claire. I'm so
glad you're here. You are our very first in studio guest.

(00:49):
This is really exciting for me because we had this
little studio built and I'm so glad that you are
here to break it in.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
So excited to be here and couldn't make I Choose
Me event. I know fires and rescheduling, and when they
said she would love to have you come in live
to do the podcast, I was like, absolutely, Oh good.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm so glad because yeah, you were very missed at
the live event. We had to make do without you, though.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
But hopefully we heard it was fantastic. We did.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
We had a great time, and I think we reached
a lot of women, so that's all that mattered. But yeah,
we're here, and you just saw my husband moving the
car for us out of the bar shot. So you
were asking what he does, and I told you he's
in the restaurant business, and you said, you're in the
You came.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
My family, So I grew up in a large restaurant family.
My parents had their own but my mother is a
landry and in the South, Like if your listener's like,
wait a minute, there's this whole Landry's restaurant chain that
is huge and kind of got bought out, you know,
by a big, bigger conglomerate, but the name's still there.
So like, my grandfather's name is on all these restaurants

(01:53):
and it's really kind of cool. But I just grew up.
My first job was peeling shrimp stuff in crabs, and
then I was graduated to being a hostess, and I
learned how to wait tables and I became a bartender.
That is super fun.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
All through college, you did all that, and my husband
would love talking to you, because.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, I mean, I know we're speaking and out the
late hours, the you know, employee drama, all the things.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, I'm learning about all that, especially the employee drama.
But it does affect the family. It's all in kind
of business, kind of like what you're doing now, Hi,
it's your life you have your life has changed dramatically. Yeah, yeah,
what did you always want to be a doctor?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
No? I wanted to be a movie star, so I
thought Vallerina, you know, little girl stuff. And I had
an older brother. I have four older brothers, but one
of my older brothers like really kind of lived his
life through me. He was gay, and he was at
a time in the seventies when you couldn't really express yourself,
so he would. I was his muse. He would dress
me up, he would oh in fake draws, he would

(02:55):
video me. It was the funnest brother to have growing up,
like I always wanted and a gay brother. Geza my
cheerleader tryouts. You can't imagine how immaculate the choreography was,
like my prom outfits, my hair and my makeup everything,
And so he really kind of expressed himself in ways
through me. And we're ten years apart, so that was amazing.

(03:17):
What a special bond growing up yeah, he did pass away,
so like part of my journey, part of my story
is his life and death, you know, kind of mixed
in with my own menopause and.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
What made you want to become a doctor.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
So I, you know, went to college, not really sure
what I wanted to do. And my mom and dad
had moved to Florida to try to open a restaurant
there and it wasn't going well. So my mom kind
of sat me down and said, we don't want you
to go to college. You need to stay and work
and help the family. And I said no, and I
ran away from home and I moved in with my grandmother. Yeah,

(03:52):
that's enrolled myself in college.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
It sounds so traumatic when you say I ran away
from home.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
But you ran back to Louisian. Okay. So I had,
you know, borrowed money to get a plane to get
I had my stuff in a paper bag. It all
worked out, but like I was like a rebel. I
didn't have luggage. So I put some clothes in like
a grocery bag paper bag, like the old brown bags,
and like took it on the plane on my lap flew.
My cousin picked me up, and I just kind of

(04:18):
hung out, started working waiting tables, and then enrolled in college.
It was five dollars enrollment fee. My tuition was a
couple hundred bucks, you know, for the local community college.
And off I went. And then, you know, we made
made up with my parents and everything was fine. They
moved back home, and you know, we got through that.
But when I was an undergrad, I started taking a

(04:39):
bunch of science classes, like for fun. Like I was
not a great student. I didn't apply myself in high school.
I was a cheerleader. I was super fun at night,
you know. And then I get to college and my
parents imminent bankruptcy kind of shook. I was shook, you know,
and I was realizing, you know, I have a choice here,
and let me see what happens if I actually study.
Turns out I was a great student.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Turns out you're a pretty smart lady.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah. So I took a few science classes just to
feel it out, and I fell in love with geology.
So I have an undergraduate degree in geology. I worked
as a geologist for a couple of years. That's how
I met my husband, who was oil and gas. And
then in the middle of the work, I was like
I don't want to do this forever, Like what else
can I do with a science degree? And I thought

(05:21):
about nursing, and I thought about med school, and I thought, well,
let me just take the mcap and see what happens.
And I literally like triped my way into medical school.
And so I started med school at twenty six and
finished at thirty. My husband I got married in the process,
and then I did my residency in Obgoyn at the
University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which is pretty

(05:43):
much the area where we've settled since nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Wow, what a great story. I love the paper bag party.
That's really an exciting part for me. I can't imagine
you're so brave to do that.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
I just knew, you know, I've always been driven. I've
always you know, the one characteristic people would use to
describe me who know me, is driven. And I it's
if my husband jokes, you'll never get to the top
of your mountain. You're always going to find something else
to do, something else to climb, some other passion project,
you know, And it's like, I really, you know, I
went through menopause. I was beginning to empty nest like

(06:18):
all of these things. My brother died. All of these
things kind of happened at once to really allow me
to rethink my future. Give me time and space now
that my kids would launch successfully to figure out what
I wanted and where I wanted to go. I mean,
I thought I'd just be a really happy basic obgun,
nothing wrong with it. I did it well for twenty years, teaching,

(06:39):
residence medical, you know, forever until I retired. But that
is not what life had in store for me.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
I love that, and it wasn't until you were empty nesting.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well that I had. Yeah, you know, like the kids
when things took off from me on TikTok. Catherine was
home from college for COVID and Maddie was homeschooling, so
like that's kind of you know, where we were. I
had an eighteen year old and a fifteen year old
and so you know, they didn't need me all the time.
We were home, and I was just getting really creative
on social media and trying to teach. And that's when
things kind of really took off.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
What made you want to do that though? What made
you want to pick up your phone and start recording?

Speaker 2 (07:14):
And my own experience with menopause and realizing that there
was a huge gap in my own education and knowledge,
in the poor information and poor care I had given
to patients in menopause for most of my career. I mean, honestly,
I was a terrible menopause doctor for most of my
career until I sadly went through it myself. And if

(07:35):
any of my former patients are listening, I'm sorry, but
it really took my experience and realizing this is not okay.
You know, I thought hormone therapy was dangerous. I thought
all the things you know that had been taught to me,
and no one in my continuing medical education had put
forth some of the newer information. How the WHI studies

(07:57):
happened walked back the safety and efficacy and hormone therapy
was really really you know, our understanding had totally changed,
and that you know, for most women, the benefits far
outweigh the risks. And I you know, in twenty years
of postgraduate education, no one had put that in front
of me in a medical research article. And I'm like,
this is not okay. Yeah, And I thought, well, I'm

(08:17):
just one person. I started with zero followers, right, No
one knew who I was. I was just random obigen
from Texas, you know, from an island off the shore
of Texas, and it just grew on its own, completely organically.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
That's so amazing, like, because it is hard to start
from zero, you.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Know, I think we all did you know now a
lot of people don't you buy followers or whatever. But yeah,
and of course I have dopamin receptors like everyone else.
When you see people responding and liking and sharing and
things that kind of go viral, you're like, oh, you know,
let me do more of this. You do more education,
let me ask more questions, and let me get curious.

(08:56):
You know, when ten thousand women on social media send
you a d or comment about their frozen shoulder and menopause,
I don't immediately dismiss them. What is that?

Speaker 1 (09:05):
I'm sorry, we're gonna just jump right now. I got curious,
what is that frozen shoulder connection?

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Because I my gosh, do I have.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
An injured shoulder from just something I did lifting weights
and working out? Or do I have frozen shoulder? Is
that part of menopause a symptimes?

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, so there is something we now know. This is
a newer finding called musculo skeletal syndrome of menopause. And
my dear friend, doctor Vonda Wright with copdic surgeon wrote
that paper and now it is an accepted, you know,
medical diagnosis. But what it is is there are estrogen
receptors everywhere in our body and our brains and our bones,

(09:41):
and our muscles, and our gut and our kidney and
our lungs and our heart and our skin, you know,
in our jener urinary system. But what she really honed
in on was specifically in the muscles, tendons and bones.
What are we seeing and what we were diagnosing for
a lot of women as fibromyalgia, you know, frozen shoulders
definitely related. And there were two researchers out of Duke University,

(10:02):
one in obgen and one no if I had the
lord correct orthpedic surgeon and obgen and I think they
were having lunch in the cafeteria and talking about all
these women with frozen shoulder could there be a relation
to menopause. They're all the same age, you know, all
in that age group. And they looked at they just
pulled all the charts and said, holy crap. Yeah, women
a HRT don't get it as much. They have shorter
courses of frozen shoulder and they do better on the

(10:24):
long term. So that kind of led to you know,
no one in orthopedics would publish it. Why they said, no, no, no, no,
can't be related. Well, there's anything in orthopedics is related
to menopause. Come on, And that's why didn't they want
to share that, because they just you know, forever women's
health outside of reproduction has been marginalized and made secondary,

(10:48):
and so that would take a whole group well ninety eight,
if I have the numbers right, less than ten percent
of orthpedic surgeons are female. That's one. That's one of
the problems right, right, And when your whole career has
been built around menopause should have nothing to do with this,
it's really hard to accept maybe we were wrong and
maybe we got this wrong, and so the menopause journals

(11:09):
published it, but it's out there. It's pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
That's the thing about having a female doctor. For me,
I've always been drawn to having a female doctor. And
it sort of ties into what you were saying about
you didn't even really know how to help your patients
until you had gone through it. So when I see
a male doctor, I'm like, you have no idea how
I feel in this body of a female. And so
I can imagine that when you had that sort of

(11:33):
awakening as you were experiencing perimenopause and menopause like you,
it must have been so eye opening for.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
You, I mean, ie opening when I got curious about
my own symptoms and started digging in the literature and
was actually finding studies to support what I was going
through and how it could be related, because it just
didn't make sense. And then there was like the rage
and shame, shame because we weren't coaching women appropriately, we
weren't reckoning this. You know, I was brought up, brought

(12:02):
up in the medical system. I say brought up as
a child, but I mean, you know, in my medical
education there was this underlying current of bias that it's
all in her head, that women tend to somaticize psychological issues,
not men.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
That's not true, and why why do they?

Speaker 2 (12:22):
It's historical, you know, because you know, if you look
at eleanor Clihorn, unwell woman, if you read that excellent
book for your follower, and another one is Elizabeth Coman
just wrote it's all on her head. And they both
of them go through the historical perspective, one from a
you know, social scientists perspective, the other from a physician perspective,
but basically comes to the same conclusion. This bias has
been built historically into the system where outside of your

(12:46):
uterus and what it can do for making baby babies
and a few diseases and needing to be surgically removed
way too often than it probably should. Men are women
are small men? So all of the focus was on men.
The studies were done on men by men, and we're
just going to assume, which you know, wasn't that unreasonable?

(13:07):
Why would the women are small men? Right? They just
have breast and uteruses. Well, now we know biologically makes
me completely different. But it took women going into medicine,
women going into the labs, women stepping back and saying, hey, no,
actually we're not small men. We disease differently. I mean,

(13:28):
Elizabeth Commen points out for and I learned this in
school in cardiovascular disease. Okay, when a woman has a
heart attack, the way she presents is called a typical
chest pain. Even though we're fifty one percent of the population.
Here's why men tend to have larger vessel disease. It's
called the little maker right for the heart attack, it's
the bigger vessels coming right out of the order that

(13:50):
don't dive in to feed the heart muscle. Right, That's
where the plaques and the clouds happen. Right. However, for women,
we have more microvascular diffuse disease deeper down when the
vessels start splitting off. So the way we present with
a heart attack is fatigue, abdominal pain, shortness of breath
instead of the classic symptoms of how a man tends

(14:12):
to have a heart attack, you know, grabbing their chest,
radiating up their neck, down their arm. You know, that's very,
very classic. But it's only classic for men, not women.
And so at the end of the day, when we
talk about, you know, the gender health gap, when a
woman walks into the ED emergency department with signs of
a heart attack, she is fifty percent more likely to die.

(14:35):
She is much more likely to be misdiagnosed with anxiety.
And this is not this is not laid at the
feet of one particular physician. These are most docs are
good people who went to school and did all this
training and paid all this money to go help people.
But this is built into the training program and this
is where the work needs to be done.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
You know. I feel like when they say to a
woman who is showing signs of a heart attack, it's
anxiety that gives you a sense of oh, it's just
in my head. I'm imagined she believes it. She believes it,
and maybe he she the doctor, is saying that because
he they want to settle her, reassure her that everything's okay,

(15:15):
you know, you know that kind of She's more like
they feel like.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Anxiety met than pain, medicine or appropriate treatment for her
for her heart.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
So wild, you know, we just did the I Choose
Me Live and we had a wonderful cardiologist there, doctor Kittlesen,
and she really brought some eye opening messages to the audience,
so much that one of our attendees went home later
that night and was feeling a little off and she said,

(15:45):
maybe it was just over stimulation from the event and
such a big day. And she said, you know what,
I'm going to listen to my gut on this. After
all I heard today about listening to my body and
questioning anything between my nose and my navel feeling anything
in this area. So she took herself to the emergency
room and she was suffering from a minor heart attack.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, and she would.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Have normally ignored it. And then it's just I feel uneasier, weird, servous,
you know.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
Part of it is also sociological. Women are taught to
accept pain and not listen to their bodies and not
know themselves better. And there is a certain subset, especially
in the menopause space. And this is what I've discovered,
and I think this is changing. But kind of a
lot of the people who kind of controlled the narrative

(16:32):
around menopause really didn't feel like women were capable of
making decisions for themselves what they When you look at
how you know, it's like I'm the expert. Listen to
me instead of tell me how you're feeling. What are
your goals? You know, It's like you can't possibly listen
to a set of facts and information and make a

(16:55):
decision for yourself. I need to tell you what to
do and how to do it. And this is the
only right way. And I refuse to believe that. I
think women are fucking amazing. Yeah, and I think women.
I tell you, women, when armed with good information, make
good decisions for themselves and their families. And a lot
of the way that we've constructed around women's health and

(17:16):
women's health after reproduction ins is not allowing for that.
It's like, here's a guideline. You must follow the guideline
to the t. Therefore, we cannot step outside of the
guideline if it's not working for you, because this is
the only way that is not working for the vast
majority of women, right.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
And so often deferring to people outside of ourselves, like
whether it is a doctor or whether it's our spouse.
So your body better than anybody, and you know when
something's wrong, and a woman's intuition is rarely wrong.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
That's what I've learned.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's true. It's so powerful. It's a little scary. Yeah,
you were saying before about fibromyalgia. I think we might
have talked about this private, and you gave me doctor
Von to write, You gave me her information. I haven't
called her yet, but I need to because I just

(18:06):
have body pain that I shouldn't be having. You know,
I'm very active. I feel better in my physically that
I ever have, but my body hurts.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
So there's a and I'm writing The New Perimenopause right now,
and there's a chapter in the book where we talk
about things that are commonly diagnosed in women, and it's
one of those Well, if nothing else, we're just gonna
call it fibromyalgia. If nothing else, we're gonna call it
inter social systeinism. If nothing else, we're gonna call it
adrenal fatigue, or you know, this kind of laundry list

(18:38):
of very vague diagnoses. And what we're saying on our
end is this is probably how menopause is showing up
in her body.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
It's wild because there's so many ways it can show up. Yeah, forever.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
So when you look at the you know, there's a
beautiful paper that looked at the G coupled deestrogen receptors
throughout the human body, right, and they e up the brain,
the heart, the end, the thelium which is the blood fussels, right,
the lining of the blood vessels, the bones, the muscles,
the kidney, the we know breston uterus. Everybody knows this
where estrogen works, but it's everywhere. And you when you

(19:13):
go to these subspecialty papers and like that's when I
wrote new penopause. I was like, Okay, I would go
to PubMed and I would type in menopause and heart
and just see what was out there. You know, menopause
and bones. You know, we have a lot of information osteoporosis,
but you know, menopause and joint pain, menopause and dry skin,

(19:33):
menopause and dry eyes. And I was like, WHOA, people
are actually doing this research all over the world and
they're making all these conclusions, and they're they're checking the
status of dry eye, dry mouth, dry vagina from pre
perry and postmenopausal women and tracking them across the transition.
And I'm like, no one's talking about these women are

(19:53):
suffering in silence. No one's helping them. They're just blowing
them off. They're getting gas lit. They're said, this is
just you know, a we're all aging, we all know this, right,
but menopause accelerates the aging process across a multiple organ system.
That sucks, and it's not fair. No so. And there
are definitely the ways that we can intervene. Pharmacology, lifestyle changes,

(20:14):
nutrition supplements, all of it. You know, the whole toolkit
is important.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Why why why? After I know, giving it life to people.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
I mean, it just seems such and it's the perfect
chase where prevention. You know, I grew up the medical
system is band aid medicine. Right, something breaks, we know
how to fix it. You know, you have fibroids, I
know how to fix that. You have heavy periods, I
know how to fix that. But we get such little
training and teaching around prevention, around nutrition, around what the
right movement for that patient would be, how to individualize

(20:46):
treatment care. And that's where I think the money, the work,
the research has to has to focus. And it's not
happening yet.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
And it's not happening in our school systems, that's for sure.
They teach, you know, in health class about puberty and yeah,
oh when you're going to be able to have a baby,
and how you can get pregnant, all the things, But
never once was anyone ever mentioning menopause, perimenopause, what happened?

Speaker 2 (21:09):
They're not even words used in like no, no, no, in
a in a classroom. They're like taboo, which is a
normal physiologic part of life.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Why teachings have never heard of it?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, no, it's it's huge.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Do you think there will come a time when when
they're teaching about menopause in health class.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
So I hope, so we have a very I mean,
I just hope they're going to teach about it in
medical school.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
That'd be a good start.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
So when I was in med school, I had one
lecture on menopause in a four year curriculum. One lecture,
one lecture in four years in four years. Wow. And
then when I did my ob gyn residency, which I'm
super proud of, and I learned amazing stuff. I mean,
I am a boss in a labor room, you know,
I got it.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
I wish you delivered the baby.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
I am such a good laborist, Like I am the funnest,
most wonderful, and I got all the skills, you know,
and I like this handmode. I'm a great surgeon. Yeah
that was my children, just stosia, you know. But where
I now realize this huge gap was in menopause care.
So I did. We did reproductive into chronology. So you

(22:12):
have obstetrics, right, getting pregnant, staying pregnant, postpartum. That's more
than fifty percent of our training, which is important. Right.
We need to be able to bring life into the
world safely all the things, take care of the emergencies,
shepherd the healthy pregnancies, you know, and then then gynecology
is everything else. So in gynecology now the the little
box that's left for gynecology, we have oncology, so uterine cancer,

(22:35):
vulvar cancer, vaginal cancer, all the gnecologic cancers. We do
a little bit of breast, you know, pediatric gnecology, all
the pediatric things that could happen, how the special treatment
you know, you know, we do reproductive and ine chronology,
getting people pregnant and all the kind of intocrine disorders
that can happen through childhood and women. And then menopause
is just this little, tiny, tiny sliver. So I got

(22:57):
six hours six one hour lectures my second ear for residency.
We had no clinics devoted to menopause, you know, and
if we saw a menopausal patient, you know, we did
our best to take care of for her, but we
weren't really weren't given a big tool kit on how
to help her if she had severe hot flashes. When
I was training, we offered her hormone therapy. At the time,
when I went through most of my training, about forty

(23:19):
percent of women ended up on hormone therapy postmenopause, and
it was recommended by the American Academy of Physicians, but
it was like all women should consider this, right. And
my very last year is when the bomb dropped from
the Women's Health Initiative and everyone was terrified. Everyone jumped
and I you know, jump ship threw the prescriptions away,
terrified that we're going to give people breast cancer and

(23:40):
that just wasn't true. And the same megaphone that's it
was like viral before viral. Right. It was the number
one medical news story of two thousand and two. It
was on the cover of every newspaper. They had a
press conference, it was on TV. Nancy Snyderman on Good
Morning America said I would never put a woman on it,
you know, and she with what was presented to her,
I can see the reasoning. That's the way I felt too.

(24:01):
But then as all of that got walked back, no
one talked about it. No one to this day in
the American College of Obi, jan who I love and
I'm super proud to be a part of, has not
changed the menopause hormon therapy guideline since twenty fourteen. It
is twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Five is that going to change.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
I don't know. They kind of have their hands full
right now with all the reproductive stuff going on. You know,
the American Board is who we get recertified every year,
and I have to say we had six men out
of one hundred and twelve for the first time. We
usually have one maybe a year. We had six menopause
like serious menopause related articles and I did a jig
a dance of joy. But they're elective. You don't have

(24:41):
to read them, those particular ones, you know. So it's
getting better. There's about twenty or maybe thirty percent of
residencies now that offer an elective menopause course. But it
is elective. So what I'm demanding. So doctor Jennifer Wiswilf,
who's an NYU attorney and she's a professor at in
WYU Law. She and I co author the Citizen's Guide

(25:04):
in Menopause Advocacy. So we have six policies that we're
trying to get enacted, and we teach people how to
write your congressman. I still believe in democracy, despite what
the world is thinking right now about the US, but
I still believe that we have power and our votes count.
And so teaching women. These are six policy things, and
one is mandatory menopause education for all clinicians.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Amen, Okay, I'm at school.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Every person who's going to touch a woman needs to
know about menopause and how it affects. And every orthopedic
surgeon needs to know, and every urologist and ever. You know,
this is big. This is the last third of our life.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
This sounds like a no brainer. It's so horrifying.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
Policy change the other one, Yeah, take the black box warning.
Have you picked up vaginal estrogen yet? And you should?
You open up the packet and it's like you're going
to die. It's not true, Anthony.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Those letters, so I don't know that. I've already loved
that vision.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Not to mention the.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Eyesight is that part that's not related?

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
I was hoping I could blame everything, sadly know. Okay,
So that's two.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, oh yeah, we have six, So I'm on the spot.
I'm sorry, Oh, black box warning, more education funding funding,
So in twenty twenty three, and who knows what's going
to happen with NIH funding. Things are changing rapidly right now.
But let's goh, historically, in twenty twenty three of a
forty three billion dollar budget, ten to fifteen billion went
to women's health. Most of that was reproduction, right, and

(26:31):
a little bit to ovarian uterine cancer. Important stuff. We're
half the population, Okay, menopause got one five million, fifteen
out of forty three billion dollars. That's point oh three percent.
Point oh three percent. So right, now, you go to PubMed,
which is the clearinghouse of medical journal articles where I
go to look for stuff, important stuff. Right, I type

(26:53):
in the word pregnancy, so that means every time pregnancy
is mentioned in an article, we got about one point
one million articles. We are just ripe juicy with obstetric information,
even though we have terrible obstetrical outcomes in the US
compared to other industrialised country. But that's another conversation. Ye.
Then I type in the word menopause. We have ninety
eight thousand, more than ten to one. So that's brain power,

(27:17):
funding expertise, people who give a shit. I type in
the word perimenopause six thousand, eight hundred. Okay, that is
why I'm so excited that you're writing the new Perimenopause,
because that is an audience that really needs So I'm
running off of those six thousand, eight hundreds compared to

(27:38):
the sixty eight thousand. I had to write the new Menopause.
That's like, it's a lot of gray area. It's a
lot of you know, me talking to the menopause. What
are you doing here? I mean, we're just a think
tank at this point. What are you doing? What are
you doing? It's worldwide, so it's it's a really cool
collaboration of these incredibly bold, brave, smart clinicians who are
fighting for women after you know, all women, but really

(28:00):
after reproduction. It's really our focus.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
You talked about the new administration and how that everything
is changing so rapidly. Is that going to affect the funding.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I'm not sure. I know, NIH budgets are being cut
and certain terms are being limited, you know, they're kind
of being flagged for review, so anything, you know. I
saw the list and sadly, you know, for us, anything
that contained the word woman or female or gender. And
what shocked me is it didn't like male wasn't on there.
I'm like, okay, if we're going to be equal, we're
just gonna it's all humans. We're just a human and

(28:38):
not male female. But it was only women. But I'm
praying and hopeful that clear Heads will realize you know,
as the studies come through, it gets flagged, they'll have
another set of eyes looking at and say, oh, this
was a menopause thing. This is not you know, whatever
they're trying to limit. So but again what's exciting is
if we can't use ANIH, there are big private funding sources.

(29:01):
We have other sources of funding, right And for example,
Lisa Mosconi, who wrote The Menopause Brain, just got a
fifty million dollar grant from Welcome Leap And it's all
like she doesn't have to public like you know, the
way the machine of how publications are done and nih
funding and how much the university takes. She doesn't have

(29:22):
to worry about any of that. All she has to
do is solve a problem. And it's how much is
menopause related to Alzheimer's disease. So when my patients come
to me, they want to put out the menopause fire,
they want to become functional again. And that's actually easy
for me to help them with. Okay, we get them
back to where they're like I got this, I can

(29:42):
handle my stress, I got my family, you know, I
got it, I'm back in my job, I'm doing whatever.
Then we talk about the next thirty years and the
diseases that are plaguing her elders. We talk about heart disease,
we talk about dementia, We talk about astroporosis, fracture and frailty,
and where menopause fits into all all that, and what
are the habits, the lifestyle changes we're going to do

(30:03):
to decrease that risk. So's I'm so excited that, you know,
doctor Mosconi was able to step out of the traditional
nih you know, and find this beautiful funding and it
is so outcome driven and not publish this paper, you know,
Da Da da publisher parish. You know, we've set up
this kind of crazy system and how we generate research
in this country, good and bad, you know. And so

(30:24):
for her it's really freeing to step out of the
system and just be evidence focused, right and outcome focused.
And she's doing it in three years.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
And so when you think of fifteen million dollars, she
was fighting for a piece of that fifteen million dollar
pie in twenty twenty three, and they just gave her
fifty million dollars for herself. That's pretty to make this
happen and she's hiring researcher. I mean, it is like
amazing and she's going to solve this in three years.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
All right, that is exciting because yeah, I mean now
being in menopause no longer in perimenopause, I want to
know what's next is when I'm done with menopause, what happens?
Or when am I done with menopause?

Speaker 2 (31:01):
So postmenopaus is forever. So we've not been able to
figure out how to resuscitate the overrease, right, and so
you living without the natural production of vestrodyl and progesterone
is the rest of your life, right, So your bones
are always going to be affected, your general urinary system
is always going to be affected, your skin's always going
to be affected. You know, all of these things are
still happening. Hormone therapy can attenuate a lot of that.

(31:23):
But we're still aging and we're accepting that.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
We know we're getting older. But what we're trying to
do is slow down the acceleration that you know, for
in premenopausal women enjoy better health than men. Typically, we
have better mental health. In general, we have better heart health,
but all of that goes to SHDT across the menopause transition.
And what we're learning now is by supporting women's hormones
through the transition and post we can slow some of

(31:47):
that down and give her back resilience. But you know,
when you watch the Wellness Bros. And the let's get
in the sauna and let's do the ice bath, I'm
like the wellness Bros. Any conversation about a female and
her health and longevity that doesn't include menopause is a mistake.
You know, you can't wellness your way out of menopause,

(32:09):
and so you can make your body more resilient to
certain things, and you definitely can broad dog menopause. You
don't have to be on hormone therapy. That doesn't but
it makes a lot life harder. Yeah, it can be
a lot harder.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
What I mean, why would they? I'm I really want
to talk more about you, Claire, but I'm still so
fascinated by all the menopause discoveries and the research. What
so I'm not ever going to be out of menopause
or I'm going to go into what's called post menopause.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
So your postmenopause menopause like is one day, one year
your final mistial period. That is the medical definition of menopause.
But here's my joke. What if it's leapier. Do you
have to go three hundred and sixty six days? What
if you've had a hysterectomy, What if you've had an
inblation for marine A? You do you don't have periods?
What if you don't? What if you have pcos like,
do you not get to be menopausal because you didn't
hit the year? I mean, it's so random and arbitrary.

(32:55):
It is ovary in failure. This is what menopause is.
So you have before the overars fail and after the
ovaries fail, and then you know, our age twice as
fast as any other organ in our body. And it's
just reality, and we don't know how to slow it down.
We could speed it up. If you smoke, if you
have radiation, if you have dominal surgery, if you have
a C section, if yes, direct me. You know, we
tend to chip off some of the life of the ovaries.

(33:18):
But we know that if you don't do those things,
and you eat a healthier diet and you exercise regularly,
you can stretch as much as the genetic capability of
your ovaries that you have. And that's like what the
New perimenopause is about, is like setting these women up
for success, right.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Right, setting them up for success. I think that's so important.
And it's for my daughters, yes, and for my daughters
who never heard the word menopause.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
My daughters, God bless them, they know a lot. It's
just their vocabulary now.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
I think my daughters too, and my husband too, Like
it's it's not a word that it's like anymore, and
it's not taboo. No, we talk about it and I
blame everything on it. Yeah, And every time you know,
my body hurts, I don't. I'm not afraid to stand
up and say, oh, my body's aching today. And I
feel like I have justification for those and it's not

(34:10):
in my head right now, and I'm not just being complaining.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Well, what I love about the New menopause is so
many women have reached out and said, you've validated what
I'm going through and how much quartersol did we lower
just by doing that, just by explaining what's happening, taking
the mystery and the shame and the you know, the
confusion out of it, being like, oh this makes sense, Okay,
it still sucks, but you know, for a lot of women.

(34:35):
But like, I get it, I get what's going on.
Let's let's figure out, you know, let me go find
a partner in this and let me change my diet,
let me fix my nutrition, and you'll do whatever I
need to do. But like, just knowing that they're armed
with information, they're making great decisions for themselves, and they're
ending up. I mean, females live longer than men. We
win guys, you know, the longevity race, but we're not

(34:56):
having good health space. Right. Women are ending up in
twenty five percent of their life span being in poorer
health than their male twin would.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Be because our bodies are made differently, are because we work.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
So much harder well, the emotional labor. You know, there's
a lot of factors keying into this. My sister is
the de facto eldest daughter in town with my mother
who's aging, and she is also a nurse, so she
is managing the bulk of my mother's care. I'm out
of town right and I'm flying around doing interviews and

(35:28):
my sister is there doing the work, and I'm wondering
how much of her life we're chipping away at because
of the stress the day to day. My mother is
dementia and broke a hip, and you know, managing all
these decisions, and that is the plight of most women.
And you know, the eldest daughter ends up in a
lot of families being the caretaker. So how much is that,

(35:49):
you know? But what I want your listeners to understand
is I'm super happy. I am literally living my best life.
You know, I'm a fully menopausal woman. I have better boundaries.
You know, I did all the things. I got therapy,
I learned how to journal, I learned how to take
time for me, choose me. I put my own oxygen

(36:10):
mask on first, prioritize my needs, my wants, and I
wasn't you know, I don't feel selfish about it anymore?
Did you? At first? Oh? Absolutely, I'd always put everyone before.
That was my role, that was my job. I put
my patients before, you know, my children, the niece, and
my husband his career. And then finally I was like, no,
I can't keep going like this and be menopausal with

(36:33):
horrible symptoms and not sleeping and you know, this crazy
weight gain. And I would you know, had I not
completely like thrown out the rule book and started from
scratch and figured it out and taught everybody. As I
was going along the way, everything I was learning, I
wouldn't be here today. Yeah, and I am in a
great spot. I am so looking forward to the next
thirty years.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
I love that message because, yeah, I feel healthier than
I've ever felt. Okay, I have so many questions. At
my recent I Choose Me Live summit, I was talking
to Sasha Petersa who suffers from PCOS. What is the
deal with menopause and PCOS?

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Oh, that is such a tough one because, you know,
forever in medicine we have used menstrual cycles to kind
of gauge where you are in menopause, because for most
women the cycles become somewhat irregular, and it's any kind
of a regular two mitsu two, you know, but towards
the end you start skipping periods. Women with PCOS don't
have who untreated don't have regular periods in general, and

(37:31):
so they have no man today. Know, and so a
lot of late perimenopause looks almost exactly on a biochemical
basis without the you know, like PCOS, our insular resistance increases,
you know, you start developing visceral and body fat. You
almost become like a mini PCOS patient on your way
into full menopause. So it can be really and I
have a blog about it, and I have a little

(37:53):
checklists like PCOS and then menopause and like where things
line up and then where you can tell the difference.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Oh God, you have post recently and it had some
crazy ass chart about your hormone fluctuation.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
The zone of chaos.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
I was blown away at that. I'm going to put
that up for our listeners to see the visual of
the graph that was just all over the spaghetti and
then it flatlined.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
And then it flat lines. So in premenopause, most women
have seen the monthly hormone curved looks like an EKG. Right,
you have a astra starts out low and then it
surges in ovulation. Then it kind of like tapers off,
and then progesterone after ovulation goes up, and that's when
our temperature goes up. Like anybody's been through a fertility
treatment or natural family planning, you know, we all kind
of get that, and all all clinicians know this by heart,

(38:39):
so that that is a monthly EKG for a healthy woman.
You know, day twelve, she's doing this, Day eighteen, she's
doing that, And it repeats over and over and over
again beautifully, unless she's pregnant or going through something really stressful,
or you know, we're suppressing with birth control pills. In perimenopause, now,
the reason why we ovulate is not the ovaries, it's
the brain. It starts in the brain, the hypothalmus gland

(39:03):
in our brain, it's constantly sensing for estrogen, looking for it.
When it gets low, it sends a kickstart signal to
the pituitary gland, saying, dude, tell the ovary to get
to work. We need an egg, we need some messrogen.
We've got to get this level back up. And over's
like got it, boss, and pumps out something called LH
and FSH to the ovary. That jump starts ovulation, and

(39:24):
then the whole thing starts over again, and that is
just predictable month after month. In perimenopause, we reach a
critical egg thresh hold level. We're born with all of
our eggs. Menopause is the end of your eggs no more.
We exhaust the supply. So for everyone and it's a
different threshold, but whenever your preset threshold is that you
have two million eggs left, whatever it is, a million,

(39:46):
ten thousand, The signal coming from the brain stops working.
There are not enough follicles to recruit. So the brain
is like, where's my estrogen? And the petuitiary is like,
I sent the signal and we wouldn't respond as being
you know, the door is shut. We're not here in
the knock at the door. And the brain is like,

(40:06):
f this, and so it starts pounding the ovary with
higher and higher levels of FSH, which is why FSH
levels rise in perimenopause to force the ovulation, and that
creates a hormonal zone of chaos. We end up in
these wild fluctuations of estradle much higher than you ever
had in your premenopausal years, and they crash and you're

(40:27):
and they're very unpredictable when the surges happen, and then
progesterone never kind of gets as high as it used.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
To in your premenopausal years, and then what happens when
it's flat.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
And then when you run out of eggs, no estrogen,
no estradyle, no progesterone, and f sagenlite to stay elevated.
And it's just.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
That doesn't sound good. The flat lining does not sound like.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
What I want. Fortunately, with we can replace what's missing
in a very bioidentical way with inexpensive FDA approved ups
for most women, and they work great, and women feel
a lot better, and their bones are stronger, and their
general urine every system is healthier, and their skin is
more resilient, and their brains are more resilient. The best

(41:13):
treatment in perimenopause for new onset depression or anxiety is
not an SSRI. It is hormone.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
That's what they give you. Though. Yeah, we're getting there, okay,
So I'm on all the hormones like you because you
told me you were on the trifecta.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
So yeah, I gotta give me some of that trifecta.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Feel amazing?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
How do you feel amazing? Right?

Speaker 1 (41:34):
What happens if I forget the patch? Because you have
to do it every twice a week.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Twice a week, So that happens to me. Actually, we
were looking at my team over there. I was like,
what day is it? What day is it? Yeah, I'm
great when I'm at home because I have all my
little triggers. But I was like, oh, it's Wednesday. You
lose track, you lose track. You know, the patches give
you a little bit of grace. You know, they should
be changed every three to four days. If you go five,
nothing bad, it's going to happen. And one time I
really forgot and it took a whole week before I

(41:59):
started having hot flashes again.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Oh they came back right away.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, progesterone. I do not forget, because this girl likes
to sleep and without the progesterone.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
I think that was the initial reason when I started
HRT was that I was losing sleep. And for me,
that was a deal breaker. I can't function without sleeping.
Everything in me hurts, my brain doesn't work. I'm not
pleasant to be around.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. Yeah, that's the first thing. Like I lown in
on with my patients is like, we've got to get
you sleeping. And it's not going to be a sedative.
You know, long term sedative use, long term benadrual use,
long term melotonin use is fraught with cognitive disorders down
the line. Short term you're sure you go to a
different time zone, somebody you know you have an acute response, Yeah,

(42:42):
of course, no problem. But like using that dependently to
go to sleep every night is not healthy. What about trasodone.
Trasodone has an addictive potential. And so what the studies
are showing is that long term use of sleep aids
are not good for cognition long term, some of us
in the menopause, the world think is it's not the
maybe the medication as much as not sleeping. Right that

(43:07):
women who don't sleep, well, that's when you recharge your brain.
And if you're having disrupted, not deep and you're not
getting all the phases of sleep. Now that I wear
an ORR ring, it's charging. I wear a ring to
track my sleep because I have to protect my sleep
with my life because my mother has Alzheimer's and I
am doing all the things working on alcohol. But you know,
all the things that I can to try to decrease

(43:28):
that risk for myself so I don't burden my children.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
So what are the greatest risks for Alzheimer's? Do you
think alcohol?

Speaker 2 (43:35):
You mentioned, Yeah, Lisa Mosconi wrote a beautiful book about it.
There's like fourteen and we just had a live But
you know, smoking, insulin resistance, diabetes, sedentary lifestyle, you know
all the things that lead to heart disease and diabetes
and stroke, are all kind of in that list poor
dietary choices, things that will decrease your risk social connection.

(43:57):
You know, Mama, when my dad died, I mean, bless
her hearts, lost three kids and her husband, you know,
and I think i'd let myself up in my house too.
She just kind of shut the world out and started
drinking a lot more. I think she was self medicating.
And so I'm certain this it hastened her journey to Alzheimer's.
And I can't blame her for that. And I'm just
trying to have compassion for her to birthday today, say

(44:19):
a birthday. She had a good day yesterday, so I
was able to have a reasonable conversation with her. I'm sure,
happy birthday. And but you know, just frankly, I'm like, Okay,
you know, what habits did mom have that I should
really work it avoiding and let's get some therapy and
let's get these things on the front end so that
when the terrible things happened, I don't isolate and shut

(44:41):
everyone out of the world, you know, and just go
into a kind of a dark place.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
It's so easy to do, you brain fogs. Happened.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
It happened. My name is menopause nice to me?

Speaker 1 (44:56):
It's the best I did QBC Live on airs. Middle
my sentence, I'll be like, oh, yeah, no, idea what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
So I just kind of yeah, they're fine. I love you.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
They don't know, they don't know. You talk so much
about menopause. You educate so many women. You devote your
life to delivering the messages that change people's lives. And
so often we're getting these messages from left and right,
and it's all of our social media and there's so
many things, and it's very overwhelming. What would you say

(45:32):
to the person me who is overwhelmed by all the information?

Speaker 2 (45:37):
You know, find a source you trust. It's like walking
into Barnes and Noble back in the day when we
did that, right, And you see all the magazines, right,
and they're shiny, and which one do I want? And
they all have these beautiful things on the cover. They
have these catchphrases and these lines, and you're just like, oh,
which one do I read? And believe you have to
sample and then you have to look at credentials really

(46:00):
is one thing, and you know, where's the information coming
from and what do they have to gain? Right? Are
they trying to dissuade you from a certain thing to
get you to buy their product. Right, that's a little
bit of a red flag. Are they, you know, truly
looking out for your best health and behavior? Are they
calling them you know, are they using a credential but not?

(46:22):
You know, really you should have whatever your m d
d o. You know what, if you're calling yourself a
clinician online, you really should in the in your bio
have clearly your credentials listed. And when that's kind of
sketchy when I see people who have that stuff and
just listen to the message. You're an intelligent woman. You

(46:43):
know what is resonating with you for me? Right? What
is resonating for you? And does that make sense to you?
And does that make you feel better? Go for it?
That's good information then.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, I mean it's very hard to jump into what
we talk about all in about changing our lives to
assure us that we're not going to go down the
same road as our parents who might not be healthy,
and it is daunting.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
But like, stick to the basics first, right, you see
all the micro stuff like the sauna and I have
a red light, so full disclosure. But you know, the
red light in the sauna. But you know, if you're
not sleeping eight hour Like, there's some basic stuff, low
inflammatory nutrition, eating pro pattern, right, and I know you're
doing that, but like, look at your food, look at
the basics your food. How are you moving your body?

(47:28):
We need to be weightlifting, We need to be we're
doing a resistance training. Otherwise your muscles are deteriorating in
front of you. And this is an age related thing
that's accelerated with menopause. It doesn't have to happen, but
it takes work. Are you getting enough protein? And we
were joking off camera, you know, it's our full time
job to find protein sources. I wish it was in
a pill that we could tolerate. Can you invent a

(47:49):
protein healthy I just can't take one. It's just a
bigger you know, to get that many amato acids. It's
hard to like get this.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I'll take more than one if you just make that
for me.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
I'm like, one of my teammates is doing perfect demino,
so I have to look into that. Yeah, yee. So
you know, I think now that focus is on protein
and the benefits of making sure and I'm not talking
people are like, oh, I was talking to one of
the other podcasts this week about high protein. I go,
I don't know what that is. I'm just trying to
get enough for me. Yeah, you know, it was more
than I was used to getting. So this is now

(48:20):
a job for me is to figure out how to
work this end of my life in a reasonable fashion. Right.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
It's it's not easy, but it is doable. Yeah, if
we start focusing on the right things, and we start
focusing on choosing ourselves and taking better care of ourselves,
because at the end of the day, everyone's going to
be off doing their own thing and we're going to
be sitting there.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
I want my kids to feel like they have to
stop their lives and take to come in. Yeah ten
to me, No, you know, I want them to flourish
and fly. And the last couple of weeks, gather around
and you know, like my dad, my dad had a
beautiful death. We all kind of realized that about a
month out. You know, we started making plans to come in.
We were all there the last couple of weeks and

(49:00):
sang songs and told stories and he slipped into unconsciousness
the last couple of days and we were all there
and it was it was beautiful.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
That's all you can ask, you know.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
And I'm like, the women in my family are in
nursing homes for years with like falling and you know,
with anxiety and all these things, and I'm like, God,
this is not a beautiful death. And so many women
in our lives are being denied that, you know, from
not being set up for success to age.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well, this is all about setting us up for success,
about longevity. I love that, you know, I know your
life changed so much recently, Like we started initially talking
about how's that affected you on a personal note and
affected your family. Because fame comes fast and hard sometimes
I talked.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
A little bit about it, and you've dealt with it
for a very long time. But you know, not everyone
is happy with what I say and do, and I
definitely have, you know, for me, having been the straight
A student, top of my class, the top producer at
my hospital. You know, I was always used to being
the it girl, the star, the you know everyone.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Because you have that drive you have that you want
to achieved.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
I wanted to. I was a number one people pleaser
and one of the hardest things for me. But making
this shift and choosing social media as a platform to
educate and realizing that I'm a good science communicator. You
are the criticism and the people and the people who
doubt what my motivations are and where I'm coming from.
And that is a path I've never dreamed about navigating.

(50:36):
And it is a every day having to take a
deep breath and go back to my therapist who says,
what do you know is true? What do you know
is true about you? And I'm like, I want to
change the world. I don't want I want for our
daughters to be able to navigate menopause without a care

(50:57):
in the world that it is not a major trend
into where she feels lost and she's hurting and she's
you know, it's the number one time for a woman
to commit suicide forty percent of cares by some mental
health disorder. Divorce rate skyrocket for I feel good reasons.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
We feel so like just laws.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
You know, like that book, there's a reason why it
resonates with so many people, And I'm like, if I can,
just in the littlest way change that narrative, then the
haters are worth it, because I know what's true, and
I know me so it's it's good and bad. It's
been a lot of life lessons to be learned. But
I'm here and I'm not stopping.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
I know we talked earlier, I think a few months
ago when you were kind of struggling with a hit
of wall. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
I took a break, It's okay, deep breath, gathered my
family around me, and said, what do I want? What
do I want to do? When were they?

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Did they boost you up to the totally?

Speaker 2 (51:53):
I have the world's greatest friends and team and family
and my kids. My kids are probably my daughter to
med school. So she's like trying to act like it's
not a big deal kind of you know, and she's
going through her own journey. She's assured me she's not
going into oubiju an you know, she's thinking maybe psychiatry
or in Tonal Madison. We'll see, you know. She hasn't
even done her real rotations yet. My youngest is doing

(52:15):
PR and marketing and mass calm. So I've taken her
to events, I've brought her to New York. She's done internships.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
And is that the one I met at Hello Sunshine?

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Yeah? Yeah, so that was Maddie, And so you know,
they're they're proud, they're a little like, whoa, what just happened?

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Yeah, but why are these people coming up to my Yeah?

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Like, you know, one time we were out celebrating my
niece's birthday in New Orleans, and you know, I get
recognized now and we're just like in the corner and
like we're dancing the girls. It was my sister and
my two daughters and her daughter and like the boyfriends
and stuff, and this woman comes up so sweet and
was like, oh my god. And my younger daughter like

(52:54):
kind of rolled her eyes a little and was like, oh,
here we go, you know, and the woman, thank god
didn't see. And I was gracious and we took a
picture and she went about her way. And the next
morning I got up and I looked at my daughter
and I said, I get it. You did not ask
for this, and I'm so sorry, I said, but this
is our life right now, and I don't think it's
going to be stopping anytime soon. Can you handle it?

(53:14):
She says, yeah, Mom? And I was like, we need
to learn to be gracious. That woman was brave enough
to come up to me, and she didn't want to
interrupt our party, but she felt it was important enough
for her to share whatever she wanted to share with me,
and I did want to disrupt the party, but you know, this,
this is our life, and you know, just us having
that communication, she was like, Okay, I don't know how
you manage it with your kids for so many years,

(53:36):
but you know, this is new and it's like been
in the last couple of years since COVID really and
we could travel since COVID. So but people are so
gracious and kind.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Every airpoor bathroom, they just want to they come up
and share and share connect. Yeah, and that can be scary,
but once you embrace it and you see the effect
that you're having on so many people, and then you
in return feel how that pushes you forward, it propels
you to continue doing it.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
There's so much love there, there's so much much food
that I just I'm embracing it. So but you know,
I had to talk to my daughter and be like,
don't worrialize in public. I know it's okay.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
I always try to like kind of remove the photograph
taking from my kids so they're not like just standing
there like, yeah, mom, exactly. How about like on a
personal level, in your marriage, I know you said before
you spend a lot of time supporting your husband.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Has been the coolest thing. I married a rock star
and I didn't realize it. Like I mean, he's a
great like world's greatest father, provider, all the things, check
the boxes, you know. But as this has grown, he
retired from his oil and gas, Like he reached the
rule of ninety. If you've ever had anybody in a
corporate world, you know they have this age and years

(54:50):
of service where they get full retirement benefits. And like
he had been kind of quietly helping out in the business,
like we have our supplement line and it's it's done
really well. And so I was getting frustrated with contracts
and negotiations, and you know, he has an MBA and
he's an engineer, and so he kind of started putting
a toe in the water and meeting with contractors and
doing stuff and just making my life so much easier.

(55:11):
And so as his retirement age was getting closer last year,
I said, you know, you're doing so much. Now I'm
going to have to hire. You know, we keep growing.
We grew three hundred percent in one year. I'm gonna
have I here's someone and pay them your chevron salary
to do what you're doing now, And he was like, oh,
since you put it that way, I said, you can
come work for free, you know. But we work from home.

(55:34):
I have a clinic, but you know, I'm in clinic
to day's a week, but the days I'll work from
home when I'm doing like the business end or researching
or writing the book. We're in like separate areas of
the house. But I can hear him on calls and
I'm like, oh, he's so hot to him to his thing,
you know. And we are closer now than we've ever been.
You know, a lot of couples really can't work together,
and I thought that would be us. I'm sequestered in

(55:54):
another room because we're both on calls, but we're just
doing this together and we're building it together. Oh.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
I love that, and I've always wanted that.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
I and I. You know, this was an accident that
the way it all happened, but it is a skill
set I didn't realize he had. And we are absolutely
hand in hand to bring this together. And he's so supportive.
Like I get lost in the sauce right and all
of a sudden, I'll look down and he's put a
plate of food in front of me. You know when
forever I was the cook. You know, I come from

(56:26):
a restaurant family. And he's like, well, he says, I
just want to eat, so and you're so busy you
don't really you stop eating. Yeah, and so he's like,
if I want to eat, I need cook. So he's
taken over since you know he's working from home, like
semi retired. He says, he's working for a startup. You know,
it's our family business.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
So it's that woman business. By the way, I just
ordered yesterday for the first time your supplements. I ordered
the fiber that you cannot wait because I need more fiber.
We all need more fiber in addition to our proteins.
So once you come out with the protein pill, let
me know. And I got what else? Did I get?

Speaker 2 (56:59):
The creating that one? Okay, we just have a few.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Yeah, it's not overwhelming your supplement.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
These are nutritional things that women tend to not get
in there. Pause and my patients were coming in with
all this stuff with fillers and additives, and I was like, yeah, yeah,
you know it is. That's another really crowded space where
it's hard to see and I was like, can I
look into you know, my business partner and I let's
suck and do it, Like, like, what would it take

(57:26):
for me to build a high quality, tested, you know,
ethically sourced, right, you know, good, high quality vitamin D
product because my patients were not getting enough vitamin D
and I'm scared of some of the stuff they're bringing in.
Let's try it. You know, we self funded. I have
no VC I have no bankers, I have nothing like
my husband. I funded this whole thing out of our
own bank account. And you know it's just this beautiful

(57:47):
like Mam and pop thing that we've done. But we
did it our way and it's tested high quality. You know,
you're listeners. They don't want to buy for me. It's fun.
All of my information is free. I will never have
it behind a pan.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
There's so much information.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
We have a website that's sock and pack full of really,
so you can live your best life. And you know
you choose to support me. Thank you from the bottom
of my heart. But we're okay.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Yeah, you know, I just want you to be your healthiest,
happiest self, right, I mean that's I can feel like
if I'm going to buy a supplement, I want to
buy it from you. I don't. I'm not associated with you.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
I know whatever. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not hanging her
to say this.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
I've even bought my own products, like you know what
I mean. Like I think, I feel like you know
what I need because you've been through it and you've
just spent See.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Where the gaps are for most women, and I'm like,
get a little tracker. They're free. Track what you're eating,
see where your gaps are. You know, see if you
can get it up from food. But if you can't,
I'm here for you.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
I'm not that good at tracking. That sounds like a
lot of work.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Really, you know, if they've got a good basic diet,
they only need a track for a couple of weeks
to just kind of see where they're at. It's like
like getting blood work once a year. You want to
see where you're at. You know you're probably doing okay,
but and then you were like, oh gosh, I'm not
getting enough magnesium. I need to work on that. Oh
my gosh, I'm only getting tan grims of barbers, which
is what most women are getting. We need twenty five
to thirty five you know, this is a big gaps

(59:05):
that we have.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
How do I know if I'm getting enough magnesium? Is
that like is it my food that I'm getting there?

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Or so we get a lot of magnesium from food.
But so like vitamin D is fat soluble, so like
you can check a vitamin D level and it gives
you an idea of what her stores are. Magnesium is
tough because it's stored in like bone and you know,
it's stored in the side of tissues, so we don't
have like a good gauge. And it's an electrolyte, so
you pee it out all the time. So it's hard
to get a one time blood test and be like, oh,

(59:32):
I'm low and magnesium. So I really like to use
the nutritional intake of magnesium to see where you're at,
to see if you need a supplement.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Okay, yeah, so that's the tracking. I got to get
better about that maybe. And you know what the thing
is for me second, experimenting on my phone more so
if it's a digital thing, I'm not gonna do it.
But here's what I could do. I could write it
down and have somebody else track it for me, put
it in the little Yeah, that's gonna work for me.
I have just had an epiphany. I'm going to track myself.
You guys do it with me. Track, let's track.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
We have little tracking challenges with our followers.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Yeah, you do. You have some great challenges and just
so much great information.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Thank you. It's a labor of love. It's so much fun.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
As a friend. I care about you, like we don't
go back that far, but I instantly cared about you
when I met you in the elevator at Q fifty,
and I feel like I'm in safe hands. I turn
to you for you know, like my body here, it's
what can I do? And you send me a doctor
and I trust your supplements. So I just want to
thank you for all. I really appreciate that you do
just for your own ambition, but for your own love

(01:00:34):
of helping and educating women. Yeah, because we have to
do that as women. We have to when we go
through something, we need to pass that information down.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
And you have to be CEO of your own health care.
If your listeners nothing else. You have to advocate for yourself.
You have to do the hustle to keep those bones
and muscles strong. You have to keep your brain strong.
You know, like, these are non negotiables if you want
to age well, and so you know what, any little
part I can to give you the tools to do

(01:01:02):
that better and easier. That just makes me so happy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
I always said, people ask me over the years, like
what do you do?

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
What you know?

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
What are you doing? What are you working on? And
my answer has always been I've been so confused about
how to answer that because I do so much, but
and I can't really narrow it down to one thing.
So I always ended up saying, I'm the CEO of me,
and I think every woman should adopt that title as
the CEO of that of herself. Yeah, I'm the CEO
of me, I'm the c but ironically I am the

(01:01:31):
CEO of me.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Yeah, brands I love, but it's just so wild that
that can be your full time focus, you know what
I mean? And it's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
I love you know. When I watch you on QVC,
it was just super fun for me. You know, when
you're talking about your line and why you built it
and how it's for every woman. I love that it's
you know, every shape, every size, and you know I
have a body scater of my office for my patients
and so I'm able to tell her you have that
you have muscle, you know, like like, look at this
glorious amount of muscle, and the fact that you have

(01:02:02):
is just curves and they're gorgeous and we're gonna dress
them up and show them off. And they're just crying
because they've been told that they were obese or something
their whole life.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
And I'm like, yeah, once you think you're obese, you
feel like you don't have any muscle anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
No. I mean, and you know, weight and BMI are
now kicked out right. We're not using them as measures
of risk of chronic health anymore. We're using things like
body scanners and abdominal circumference. I mean, like we're getting
strides there. Yeah. In in cardiovascular health though, yeah, cardiometabolic health,
we're not doing weight and BMIM anymore. We are working

(01:02:34):
that out. We're using the abdominous circumference or the waste
to ratio plus So b CD is now defined by
the waste to ratio or abdominous cir comforts plus one
like cardiometabolis ricks factor like hypertension, insulin resistance, diabetes, et cetera.
That now is what ob CD is defined by which
is pretty powerful. It's going to take a minute for
like the rest of the world to catch up and

(01:02:56):
all practitioners, but that is definitely something that's moving in
the right direct.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
How are you holding up? Are you tired at all
from all this?

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
You know, I'm doing seven podcasts in a special and
a primetime special, but like, I have the greatest team
with me, and we are eating super healthy and getting
our workouts and what kind of and it's a giving
you know. I'm just giving and giving and giving, and
that's my favorite thing to do. And I know that

(01:03:25):
I'm speaking to a microphone, but we're going to reach
millions of people with all these conversations and give them
tools and make them feel better about themselves and give
them motivation to live their best lives.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
So that is what feels better.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Yeah, I fly home, go to a Mardi Gral ball
the next night, okay, yeah, and then the next day
we fly to Australia or another event. Oh, I'm speaking
at the Opera House, which is like Buckett whoa. Yeah,
there's a menopause event at the Sydney Opera House.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
That's so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
So we're doing that. We sold out the opera house
in like three days. And then the next day we're
doing a medical conference for clinicians, and I'm doing some
other you know, work stuff, book stuff around that, and
then my husband and I are going to take a
week and just travel nice. Yeah I've never been.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Oh that's your I guess I haven'ty that. It's always
been on my list. Yeah, okay, So you're doing so much,
You're so amazing. You're on the run and you're always
thinking of how to help other people.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
We're running around with a way to vest on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Wait, first of all, the way to vest you told
me before. You're working on that with QBC.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
How's that? Is there anything? We're still in talks okay, waiting,
we're in talks so with like a subsidiary. But yeah,
we're getting there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
I just bought a little trampoline. How do you feel
about that?

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
So great studies looking at bouncing and jumping and bone density,
so anything that stimulates the muscular skill little units rebounders
are showing to have improvement. Just be careful if you're incontinent,
you know you yeah that out, so go with an
empty bladder. But there's you know, reasonable studies that look

(01:04:57):
at you know, box jumping and bouncing to stimulate the
muscle skeletal unit for bondicity. Now people like it for
the pelvic floor. You know, there's other things that it has.
You know, it's good cardio, it's fun. So yeah, I'm
a fan.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
I have another question about the weight tovest. Okay, I
have fake hips. Anytime I carry a bag, a backpack,
something that adds weight onto my load, my hips don't
feel good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Okay. So the nice thing about the weight of vest,
so you want to start low. So the benefits for
bone density seemed to start for most women that This
was women who were in assisted living, so they were older, frail,
they already had osteoporosis. We think it's preventive, but no
one's done that. We're getting there to that study. But
the weight to vest. The thing about the vest versus

(01:05:40):
a backpack is that the weight is equally distributed from
the back and so you get this just on the
axial skeleton, so you have it down the spine and
the hips. Now your hips are bionic, it's so, you know.
And so I would start lighter than that ten percent.
I would go with an eight pound to start Okay,
you know, and then go from there see how you
do get stronger. The recommendation for osterrobosa starts at ten

(01:06:04):
percent of ideal body weight. That might be too heavy
for someone to start with or not conditioned or you
already have. You know, you don't want to hurt your hips.
Get the eight pounder. Okay, cry it out, see how
you feel, and then when you're strong enough, move up.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Next time I talk to you, I'm going to be
wearing my weighted best on my rebounder. Yeah, everything's going
to be different.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Drinking your protein, taking your protein, my proteins.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Oh my god. Okay, with everything that's going on, Mary Claire,
what was your last I choose me moment? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Probably this morning. You know, let them, let them, let them,
Just learning to take the negative out, focus on the
positive in the world every day and just keep know
what is true about myself that I am here for
a mission, I'm here for a purpose. God put me here,

(01:06:53):
and this was not an accident, and that whatever my
skill set is as a science communicator, as an EmPATH,
as someone who truly cares about the health of women
and the health that is being brought forth to the children,
I brought into this world. I need to keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
That's what you gotta do. I'm here for you. Keep going.
I love you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
I love you too,