Biohack-it

The Secrets To Aging With Strength and Grace with The Longevity Expert

42 min
Oct 16, 20258 months ago
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Summary

Dr. Vanda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and longevity expert, discusses her book 'Unbreakable' and reveals how women age differently from men due to estrogen decline. She provides evidence-based strategies for women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s to prevent accelerated aging, including strength training, nutrition, and bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

Insights
  • Women live 4-6 years longer than men but suffer longer due to precipitous estrogen decline in perimenopause, causing accelerated aging across brain, heart, bone, and muscle systems
  • The critical decade for women is 35-45 when perimenopause begins; preventive lifestyle interventions during this period are significantly more effective than corrective measures later
  • Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (estradiol, progesterone, testosterone) is supported by current research but remains underutilized due to lingering fear from flawed WHI studies using synthetic hormones
  • Muscle building through resistance training in women's 20s and 30s is foundational for preventing fractures and frailty in later life, yet remains underemphasized in female health guidance
  • Mental resilience, trauma processing, and stress management are critical but often overlooked components of healthy aging that work synergistically with physical and hormonal interventions
Trends
Rising health consciousness among millennials willing to spend 25% of disposable income on preventive health and optimizationShift from reactive healthcare to proactive, personalized longevity medicine with emphasis on prevention in younger demographicsGrowing recognition of sex-based differences in aging biology requiring gender-specific medical approaches and research fundingIncreased demand for bioidentical hormone replacement therapy as women seek alternatives to synthetic hormones and challenge outdated medical narrativesWomen-led health education and credentialed female practitioners gaining prominence as trusted sources in longevity and biohacking spacesIntegration of mental health, trauma processing, and nervous system regulation into comprehensive aging and longevity protocolsEmphasis on strength training and muscle building for women as primary intervention for longevity, shifting away from cardio-only fitness modelsTransparency and third-party testing becoming competitive differentiators in supplement and protein powder markets due to contamination concerns
Topics
Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for perimenopause and menopauseEstrogen deficiency and accelerated female agingMuscle building and resistance training for women's longevityBone density preservation and fracture preventionPerimenopause symptoms and early detection (age 35+)Vaginal atrophy and localized estrogen therapyNutritional supplementation (calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3s)Cardiovascular health and microvascular disease in womenMental resilience and trauma processing in agingChronic inflammation and its role in accelerated agingSex-based differences in aging biology and longevityMicrobiome health and SSRI alternatives for depression in midlife womenCollagen preservation and skin aging preventionThe 13 hallmarks of aging and epigeneticsWomen's health research funding gaps and disparities
Companies
Precision Longevity
Dr. Wright's longevity consulting business where patients seek optimization and peak performance health strategies
People
Dr. Vanda Wright
Orthopedic surgeon, longevity expert, and author of 'Unbreakable' discussing women's health and aging science
Robbie Brinton
Researcher cited for work on estrogen's role in brain health and prevention of brain starvation in perimenopause
Lisa Moscone
Researcher cited for work on estrogen receptors and brain function during perimenopause and menopause
Stacy Sim
Referenced for research on physiological differences between men and women at cellular and stem cell levels
Melinda Gates
Philanthropist who announced $100 million funding for women's health research initiatives
Quotes
"Women are winning the longevity race, meaning we live an average of four to six years longer than men, we are suffering longer, sometimes 20 to 30 years."
Dr. Vanda Wright
"The critical decade is 35 to 45 because if we haven't done any of these practices before, it is time to get our proverbial shit together."
Dr. Vanda Wright
"We robbed entire generations of women for less than one woman in a thousand increase. That is diagnosis. That is not death."
Dr. Vanda WrightDiscussing WHI study breast cancer data
"The only thing that matters to do first is to believe that you are worth the daily investment in your health. Because if you don't believe you're worth it, then nothing else will matter."
Dr. Vanda Wright
"Women need to act like that and take up a little space and ask advocate for yourself."
Dr. Vanda Wright
Full Transcript
Dr. Vanda Wright, I'm so excited to sit down with you. You have your new book that is launched as well, Unbreakable, but you're also a leading expert when it comes to women's health. And we are always trying to dig and educate our community about what women need to know about their body, how they should be aging, and how they should be supporting that aging process. So thank you for coming on the show. It's my real pleasure. So Vanda, what inspired you to write Unbreakable? You know, in my career as an orthopedic surgeon, I have treated, if I added them up one day, roughly 100,000 people. And so sitting across the exam table from that many people, I've developed a real deep empathy for the human condition. And something that I think without that many interactions, you just can't know. You can't read it in a book. You can't read it in a research paper until you feel the heart and soul of people. So as I was progressing in my career, and I went through midlife myself, I realized that although, frankly, women are winning the longevity race, meaning we live an average of four to six years longer than men, we are suffering longer, sometimes 20 to 30 years. And so that leaves us with a despair or the thought that, you know, aging is this inevitable decline from vitality to frailty. But the reality is that's not what my research bears out. That's not what my life experience bears out. And I wanted to write Unbreakable, not only as introducing women who might not know to the new science of aging, but also equipping them with the tools to take control of their health optimization and aging. But as you close the back cover of the book, what I hope, because I also address mental resilience, is that women will feel more hope for the future, that we are not simply victims of the passage of time. Right. When you talk about new science of aging, right? When it comes to women's health, what are we talking about in particular? I think that within the last 20 years, we've become more and more aware of why aging happens anyway, right? The first we started with six hallmarks of aging. And now a few years ago, there are 13 hallmarks of aging, things like mitochondrial inefficiency, the thought of epigenetics and telomere length, stem cell rejuvenation, inflamaging, just to name a few. I think the average person who's concerned with their life and business and whatever else doesn't realize that those metabolic functions, which change with time, are completely normal. What's not normal is just letting them run amok. So the new science of aging, when I say it like that, is all the work that has been done, even to identify how aging happens. And once identified, how we can step in front of those hallmarks, which I call time bombs. And when it comes to, you also mentioned that women live longer, but they suffer longer at the same time. Yes, that's right. So women are 30% more susceptible to autoimmune disease. Why is it that we get sick more than men? Well, I think what we have to understand is the difference between men and women aging, and the factors that play into that. When we're young and our organ functions and our muscle and our tendon and bone and all of our symptoms reach peak capacity in our late 20s, early 30s, even our brain doesn't fully mature until our late 20s, men will then plateau and then have a small 1% decline over time. They're testosterone, which is a primary anabolic driver in both men and women. But if we're talking about men, slowly declines as imperceivably until you reach really upper age. For women, we are not, as Stacy Sim says, just little men. We are not. We are completely physiologically down to the stem cell level different. One of the reasons that is true is although we peak, just like men in our late 20s, early 30s, in terms of organ systems, we plateau for a little while, but then we will begin to experience a precipitous decline in our estrogen. When that happens, because estrogen receptors, they're like little baskets on the surface of cells, are no longer filled with this primary ligand, we age faster. Not only things that women are used to talking about, brain fog, night sweats, hot flashes, but we have changes in our brain, changes in our heart, muscle, bone, which rapidly cause aging in women in a different way. And when it comes to all our listeners, and they might be in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, because that's primarily our audience, what is a piece of advice you'd give each age group about slowing down their aging and being more aware about their signs and symptoms? So in your 20s, when you're doing all the things you do in university or just really growing up and learning who you are, that is not the time to sit around and just grow. That is the time to recognize that your muscles and tendons and brain need active stimulation. So we need to establish a mobility practice, if you will. That's the time to maximize your muscle and your bone. We are still finished developing our brain. It is the time to pack in brain function while you are young and can. Interestingly, from a musculoskeletal perspective, one of the things that older women die of, frankly, at a high rate, are fractures. Yes. We peak out our bone density in our late 20s. So if I were 20 again, I would be jumping around, doing impact exercise. I would be feeding my brain, my bones, and my muscle with a diet that is anti-inflammatory and high in protein. That young, even in your 20s, that's how much it impacts you. Wow. Absolutely. Because we are made to grow it during those times. And so we want to start at the highest level we can when decline starts to happen. I would rather a young woman never accept the mantra that she has to be teeny tiny. She can take up as much space as she wants to take up. And being lean, which means full of muscle, is much more healthy than being skinny, which can infer smallness but fatness. So that's my advice for 20-year-olds. Now's the time, ladies. Let's get on it, right? In our 30s, sometimes women, if they decide to have children, are so busy during that time, or maybe they're building their careers, their health falls to the wayside. I mean, I can completely understand that. I was in medical school in my 30s, all the things. And so in our 30s, it is still a time, if we didn't adopt all these standards in our 20s, to make sure we're eating enough protein, getting enough calcium in our diet to build bone, establishing the standards of not just doing cardio as an exercise group, but if you've never started before, starting to lift weights and build muscle. Because here's what happens. Perimenopause can start as early as 35 in women, where, just to explain the science of why estrogen goes away and why it's so critical and why women and men age differently, is we are born with all the eggs in our ovaries that we will ever have, several million. Over time, those decrease normally with every month that goes by, such that by 35 to 40, we have so few eggs left, that there's not enough estrogen to fuel all the normal functions. So that's when women start not feeling like themselves. Their metabolism becomes different. They start gaining weight, doing the same things they've always done, and how frustrating that can be for people. And frankly, we start losing collagen. We lose 30% of the collagen in our face during this time. So for my 35 to 45-year-olds, I call that the critical decade. Because if we haven't done any of these practices before, it is time to get our proverbial shit together, frankly. It is time. Because what's going to happen as estrogen walks out the door is everything changes. The brain is covered in estrogen receptors. And without estrogen, the work of Robbie Brinton and Lisa Moscone shows that the brain starves. The physical makeup of the brain changes. We lose 20% of our bone density. We'll lose muscle mass. Women develop 30% to 40% more microvascular disease in our heart. So we might not feel it. Some women may say, I feel good. I don't feel like I have any signs of perimenopause. But you don't know what you don't feel because it's happening. And that's because we have so few eggs left until finally we reach the arbitrary day of menopause, which we can talk about. But if you're in this critical decade, that's what Unbreakable is written about. Because if you just sit by and let these things happen, you can course correct in the future, but it's harder. Yeah, of course. I would prefer to prevent my brain from going down a starve and going south, if you will, which doesn't have to happen. I would prefer to prevent heart disease, muscle loss, bone loss. Does that make sense? We can get in front of this, but only if we know. Yeah, the way I look at it is like aging does not define how you do it, but it's how you approach and how you design the process for yourself. And having this information from wonderful practitioners like yourself that can be shared with younger and younger women to get ahead of the problem. Because when I'm 42 now, but when I was in my 20s, we didn't know any of this stuff. Of course not. And having more information educates you to make better decisions. Yes. And I feel like this younger generation is a lot savourier than us. We were out till 5, 6 in the morning. We didn't care. We were eating whatever. I mean, I used to love even eating back in the day Domino's Pizza. I wouldn't touch that now. And I think the younger generation, their 20s would be like, we're not having that. Yeah. You know what? I see that too. I see an elevated health consciousness. You know, about it's almost 15 years ago now, I was doing some research on what millennials wanted. So millennials, the oldest millennials now are 43, 44, right? But 15 years ago, they were in their early 30s. And I said, well, what do you want from your health? And among all the things they expressed to me, part of it was they wanted on their own terms. They want to prevent, they want their healthcare delivered in beautiful settings, not some dark hallway. And this was what was beautiful about this to me, or many of things were beautiful. They told me they were willing to spend 25% of their disposable income to be healthy and get what they want. And that is a very, that's a big paradigm shift. Yeah. And that's a big number. From the baby boomers, or even I'm an X generation, where sometimes it's expected that healthcare is handed to you. Right. So I appreciate this new, almost aggressive pursuit of health. And awareness that this is what they drive towards. That's right. When it comes to supplementation, because that's a big question we always get asked, is there certain supplements that women should be on 20s, again, 20s, 30s, 40s, and what are they, and what is crucial? I'll tell you the short stack that I give to people, and I'll tell you why, because many people come to me, I have a business called Precision Longevity. Many people come to me asking for the very esoteric longevity tested only in animals type things. Yeah. But they come to me with health that is suboptimal. They're just fine. They're not optimized. They're not in peak performance. Because by training, I'm an elite sports doctor. So peak performance is what I do in my surgical career. So if people come to me fine, I am not going to skip all these other optimization layers to get to things that have only been tested in rats. We will get there if we optimize your health, move you into the habits that peak performers use. Okay, fine. What else? We're going to do those things. So at the very optimization level, I'll get to supplements in two seconds. We'll optimize your diet, your movement, all the very basic things. And from a supplement standpoint, I want you to build bones by getting calcium from your food. Okay. And I'm not a nor is the researcher proponent of getting it from pills. My morning coffee is part of a ritual for me. It is from the first sip to the last sip is something I really enjoy. So being able to do that and consume coffee that does not leave me feeling sick, nervous or anxious or rigid is such a true pleasure. And that is why I'm so excited to also bring you life boost coffee. Imagine starting your day every morning with a rich, smooth coffee that is USDA certified because what you guys do not know, coffee tends to carry a lot of mold and most commercial coffees have mold 80% of the time due to how they're manufactured and how they're stored. Life boost is sourced from single origin farms and scientifically tested for over 415 different toxins. Things like mold, mycotoxins, pesticides, herbicides and even heavy metals. It's so gentle, comes in different flavors and different strengths and does not leave you feeling jittery or stressed out after. So you can enjoy your morning cup of coffee without any side effects and have a beautiful start to your day. So therefore I'm so excited we partnered with life boost coffee to bring our biohacket community an incredible offer. Our listeners are getting 10% off their life boost coffee to give it a try and I promise you guys you will not be disappointed. So head to life boost coffee and use the code below and I promise you you will be left with a smile on your face feeling grounded and caffeinated in the right way and let's get back to the show. And what food would you ask them to incorporate in that's highest in calcium? Calcium is very high in dairy products. So raw or pasteurized or doesn't matter? It doesn't matter when it comes to calcium. And if you don't want regular dairy, I am not opposed to nut milks but they have to be fortified. Right? But regular dairy is better and even a cup of yogurt, it has about 300 milligrams. So it doesn't take that long without much food. Salmon with bones, sardines with bones, lots of vegetables like bok choy, prunes high in calcium. So you can add that up over the course of a day. Even some kinds of mushrooms have a lot of calcium. So calcium with it vitamin D to aid the absorption of calcium. Most of us who live or use a lot of, I was going to say north of in the United States, the Mason-Dixon line, so in the north. Or most of us use a lot of sunscreen the way it is. So we don't get enough vitamin D from the sun. But vitamin D not necessarily for bone, right? There's a big mantra that, oh, take vitamin D for your bones. Well, the reality is vitamin D is for calcium absorption. So magnesium, also magnesium is critical. About 300 nezamatic reactions as is omega-3s. So those are really basic things that most people have gaps in. Right. And then there are some studies that show just a good micronutrient general vitamin, because most of our diets are deficient in something even though we try. Yeah, we're really mineral deficient, right? Because our soil is not. And we try so hard, but still. So, and studies have shown that just a good multivitamin can be helpful. You also said something earlier about mental resilience. And you said that's really important when it comes to how women age. Yes. But when we have a decline in estrogen progesterone, and we start entering this perimenopause, going towards menopause, you know, you have brain fog, your hormones all over the place, women can get really irritable. They can. Sometimes you're sitting in your car and crying. You're like, what is going on today? Absolutely. So how would you recommend hormone replacement therapy bio-identical? Let's talk about that. What would you recommend? Yeah. Yes. So I think that every woman is a sentient being and gets to make her own choice, number one. But number two is if I know I can prevent my brain from starving, my heart from having 40% more heart disease, losing 20% of my bone density, losing my muscle, I am going to consider hormone replacement. So there are multiple ways, and I'm just going to run through the list. Yeah. So there is systemic estradiol, which replaces what you make in your ovaries. Right. Historically, with the WHI and before in, you know, in the 20 or 30 years ago, all that was available was conjugated estrogens, synthetic estrogens made from horse urine. Now we have bio-identical, which is bio-identical is really a marketing word, but what it means is the molecule you get is estradiol. It's estradiol, whether it's made in a lab or whether your body makes it, same molecule. We recommend estradiol, bio-identical. And I personally, every, sometimes pills are still good for women, but most women that I am involved in their care, I'm recommending transdermal estradiol. With that, if you have a uterus, you must have micronized progesterone, which is again, the same kind your body makes, there are synthetic progestins, but that is to protect your uterus from overgrowth of the lining. You must have it. Now, even without a uterus, you can take progesterone for a variety of reasons, but so estradiol, progesterone, I, once a woman has adjusted to those two, I love testosterone for women. It is not just for libido. It is critical for a variety of other body functions. There is no FDA approved testosterone in the United States, but Australia has it, the NHS in Great Britain has it. And why do they not have in the US approved for use? Well, there's probably so many reasons. It's recommended for libido only, not for all the other uses. So how we give it to women in the United States is it's either compounded. So the dose for women starts at five milligrams starting in men. Unless you have a deficiency. Well, we start with that and then we test levels because we don't want to overshoot. Unless a woman wants to transition, we don't want to overshoot. And that's why in general, we recommend creams, compounded creams, or using androgel or testamin, which are male formulated testosterone at one tenth the dose. So the starting male dose is 50 milligrams, female starting male dose is five milligrams, and then we test it so that we can get your level up to an acceptable level, but not over. So what that does for me and many of the women I treat, it increases energy levels, it helps with bone and muscle, it does increase libido. But that's not all, right? So every single woman, no matter if they've had breast cancer or any other the history should consider vaginal estrogen, not only for the physical tissue absorption, but also to prevent chronic bladder infections, which kill 30% of women. And why not orally? Why vaginally versus orally? Vaginally works both. It's not one or the other. It's both. Vaginal works locally, right? Without vaginal estrogen, women can resorb their labia menora. So we lose actual tissue in our perineum. So vaginal estrogen prevents that. It helps treat pelvic floor prolapse and incontinence. It helps treat chronic urinary tract infections, which 30% of women can die from that, all from something that is safe for every one. And plus, I'll just say this on your podcast, I'm the orthopod that says this, in perimenopause, when you start developing vaginal atrophy due to loss of localized estrogen, sex will feel like razor blades. And so it is hard to maintain a marriage where there's no understanding that this thing is happening in the woman. She might be embarrassed to tell her husband and then- You know, not feel educated, so they're not confident enough to be like, I think something is going on. Something's going on. I need some help. And so it's not uncommon for the partner to feel rejected, but it's not rejection. It's pain, right? And then finally, the final thing to consider is we lose 30% of our collagen in our face. And so I started years ago, a decade ago, putting estradiol on my face in a local way to prevent the loss of collagen. Because if we really, you know, I'm as vain as the next woman, want to treat the changes of aging, we want to look and feel our best. That's right. Plastic surgery is one way, but we need to recondition our tissues. You need to support yourself. That's right. Support our tissues. And it's so funny you're saying that I interviewed a really famous plastic surgeon on my podcast. He's, you know, kind of neck up. And he said, the women who come in to his practice for a facelift who are on hormone replacement therapy, eating an anti-inflammatory diet and work out actively, are, you know, lifting weights, their recovery and results, the results last longer and their recovery is 10 times better than the women who don't. Because they start with better tissue. At a cellular level, we're starting with rejuvenated tissue and not dried out, aging, non-healing tissue. Isn't that amazing? It's insane. And this is what annoys me so much is that so many women are still so terrified about bioidentical hormones. And I'm like, guys, the research is now clear that what the research that was originally done was unsynthetic and you were fed a lie. Bioidentical hormones are life changing. I agree with you. They're life changing for me and all the women I take care of. And yet the pervasive poisoning that the WHI put upon not only, it was published in the U.S., but it's a worldwide phenomenon. Yeah, of course. It spiraled. It's spiraled, right? And so just for any of your listeners who might not have ever heard the actual data, the WHI has had many wonderful outcomes. However, this one that you and I are talking about, the question in play was to answer questions about heart disease. So they recruited older women. The median age was in the mid to late 60s, not 40, 50-year-old women, number one. Number two, it was synthetic conjugated equine estrogen. So it was not what we use today. Here are the data about breast cancer, which is why the world is terrified of estrogen. In the control group, meaning those women who did not take estrogen on this study, the rate of diagnosis of breast cancer was one in a three in a thousand, sorry, three in one thousand. And I'm not making light of that because my first career was a cancer nurse. I have all people know what it's like to do with people who are struggling with that. Three in a thousand. The study group who received estrogen, the diagnosis rate was 3.8 per thousand. So we robbed entire generations of women for less than one woman in a thousand increase. That is diagnosis. That is not that is not death. Yes. There is no difference in death. So while if you're the point eight, it's a problem. But what about the whole world? Right? I think it's such a crime what we have done to women's health. And that's why I'm so passionate about interviewing women like you who are really advocating to be like this was absolute bullshit. Yeah. You guys have been fed alive. You can decide how you age. You dictate how you treat your bodies. And you decide the vitality that you can have at 30s, 40s, 50s, even 70, 80 years old. Absolutely. It is all about how you take care of yourself. And we still I have friends who ask me like, oh my God, we heard like HRT is bad free. And I'm like, guys, like I'm lucky I'm obviously in this space and I can educate my friends. But a lot of people are still really scared. So we've done, like you said, these multiple generations of disservice. And then we've broken up marriages. We've robbed people of having kids later in life because if you're a proper hormones, you can have kids in your 40s even. And so it's this lack of education. And it's also the lack of funding that women's initiatives have. That's right. You know, received. And I think more research studies need to be funded more books like yourself, you know, have to be written in order to have this mass education now. I agree with all those things. We need to fund the research. The data in the United States is only 1% of all federally funded research are done in women over 40. And it's crazy because we're 50% of the population 50% of the population 90 million women are over 40. So let's put some money. But you know what I'm calling upon? This is a wonderful time to be a woman not for many reasons, but also because we're experiencing the great wealth transfer where whether we make the money inherit the money we are controlling the commerce right now. Well, I have started saying things like, well, you know what, we can't rely on federal funding for research. So let's call upon the successful women who have means to establish funds to do it. You know, Linda Malinda Gates just announced another 100 million dollars to study women's health and that is the kind of taking issues into our own hands. Number one, number two, I think that women are smart and savvy. Why would you stop at no? Because somebody says to you, oh, you're just getting old. Yeah, or why would if your child was sick? And somebody's like, Oh, they're just sick. Let them. Yeah, you would never stop like that. But yet I think sometimes women are just so used to be told and know that we just accept it. Correct. And I reject that. Yeah. Yeah, we solve all the problems and we're much more resilient than men. And I'm not just saying that if you are taking protein powder, you definitely need to hear this. The Clean Label Project tested 160 different proteins from different vendors and brands across the US. And you're going to be shocked at the discovery that they made nearly half of the top selling proteins in the US tested high for lead. And if you're somebody who consumes protein powders daily, this is something you have to be concerned about. And to make matters worse, most brands do not value transparency and will not reveal their test data online. And I want my community like myself to always make an informed choice of what they want to be exposed to and how they consume their daily protein. And that is why I love Puri. I also sat down with the founder and had a full honest, transparent conversation with him about how they source, how they educate their consumer and also what their products offer on the market, which sets them apart. Their Puri PW1 protein tastes absolutely exceptional. And you know, you're not getting the gunk of heavy metals in it to start your morning with. And that is why I absolutely love Puri's PW1 whey protein. And that is how I choose to start my day every morning. Every single batch is third party tested by the clean label project and no product is ever sold unless it passes these tests. And Puri is one of the only brands in the US that has a clean label product certification on their products. And that is only possible because they make all their third party testing completely transparently available to the consumer through a QR code where you can track the exact journey of the batch of product that you're purchasing. So you guys can see for yourself exactly how clean the PW1 that you're consuming in the morning is. Every single serving gives you 21 grams of minimally processed, high quality bioavailable protein. It comes from pasture raised cows, no GMOs, no hormones, no herbicides, no pesticides and definitely no heavy metals. So this means I can start my day with confidence knowing I'm having something super clean to support my skeletal muscle mass. My personal favorite flavor is a berber and vanilla, no artificial flavors and no funky aftertaste. To make sure your daily protein powder is not hiding any nasty chemicals and they're not being open and transparent with you. So if you want something clean, delicious and bioavailable with transparency, get this amazing discount. P-U-O-R-I dot com, purie dot com slash bio hack it. Switch over to purie's PW1 protein and you can thank me later. The other thing that you will see and I read this research paper that said women in their 40s start taking, I think it's 40% more SSRIs. And so they're going to psychiatrists and psychologists and they're like, hey, you're depressed or whatever. Here's an SSRI. These doctors are not trained to look at the deficiencies, the nutrients in these women's bodies and to understand hormonal health. They don't need SSRIs a lot of the time. They need hormone replacement therapy. And because the medical field is so de-shevelled, there's no coherency between the different departments. It's fragmented. A lot of these people are putting women on SSRIs that then damage the microbiome health and SSRIs have their own health issues that come up. All these women sometimes need to support education and hormones. Yes. We're in the same camp. I believe that if we're really looking at root cause, then let's look at the root cause for why women age different from men and it's estrogen deficiency. And if a woman decides that they don't want to go that route, well, just doing transdermal estrogen alone will not solve all your problems. You need to build the lifestyle correct to go with the hormones. Women just need to act like that and take up a little space and ask advocate for yourself. How much just stress because when we look at women in the 30s and 40s, they're building their careers. Now women are having kids later. There's, you know, get having kids at a later age. Sometimes they're not feeling the support at home. How much just stress impact female hormones? Well, you know, chronic inflammation. Inflammation is a normal process. It's supposed to rise and then go away. It does not in normal society. And so the effects of the chronic inflammation, which acts at a cellular level, which can increase aging, affects hormones like that. It can increase the rate of aging. Right. And I want to also talk about trauma for a second. How much just trauma affect your hormones, especially as you age? Well, I love that you asked me that because I've been thinking about my own career and the trauma that I've seen both as a surgeon and a and as a woman. And, you know, I don't know that there are studies that correlate mental trauma with estrogen levels, but psychological stress and toxins is not just in our brain. It's everywhere. I'm going to give you an example. So as a, I have examples throughout my medical career. And I'm sure there are examples for people in non-medical careers, but I have seen terrible things. People die in terrible ways from accidents and disease. And then we just treat those people in the hospital and then I just go home like nothing ever happened. And so as a clinician, we store up all those traumas that now 30 years later, I remember like they're yesterday. And I can only imagine that carrying with me the stress of those events that I have witnessed changes my rate of aging, whether I'm aware of it or not. And I think all of us probably have incidences in our lives that we haven't fully worked out and let go of. So that might be very interesting. I don't know how to do that study, but it would be interesting. So I'm going to share a little personal story with you. So I had a really dysfunctional family life growing up and stuff. And then when I started getting older, I started getting into a lot of healing modalities, I dive into plant medicine, I started getting to longevity, functional medicine, all of it. I started wanting to get really interested. And as I started peeling back the layers and working through regulating my nervous system, working through trauma and releasing it, friends meet me now, who've been friends with me for like, let's say 25 years in the state, you look younger. And as of course, you know, I'm more fat in my face. I've worked on that. I'm taking, I started taking a hormone replacement therapy, but I also have shed layers and I feel lighter. And that for me is slowing down the aging process. You psychologically feel lighter from letting all that go. Right. And then when it comes to stress, I think women are going around having to balance everything. They're like, I need to be a mom. I need to be a wife. And women have additional pressure because we have to look a certain way. We have to act a certain way. We have to, I literally laugh at male podcasters. They can be in the same black t-shirt. No one's going to care. You know what? I am so glad you said that as today at this conference, I'm thinking, what am I going to wear on stage? Then thinking, the guys that just went ahead of me are in a great t-shirt. And they will stay in the gray t-shirt for the next 20 days. Yes. Isn't that interesting the expectations we put on women? Absolutely. Because I am here as you are. Yeah. Because I am really smart. Correct. But there's this other thing that we've, we have to push harder to prove ourselves. And there are data, Casey, I forget her name. She's an entrepreneur. Yeah. She cites this study all the time that women who dress and wear makeup make more money. What's that about? My brain is under here the whole thing. Correct. You've gotten me started on something because. And it bugs me so much. It's the same thing. You see female doctors and MDs. We have to work harder to gain followers online than a male who's not even specialized in that field. But for some reason we are programmed to think men actually know better. And that's why a lot of the longevity space is dominated by bro culture. I am just thinking about it because the women that are here speaking from stage, we are all credentialed with multiple degrees. I have four degrees. Yeah. And 22 years of formal education. Correct. And I've seen a hundred thousand patients and I am on the same stage, bless their hearts, of people with, I don't even know if they have a degree, which doesn't mean that I know more, but I shouldn't have to work so hard. But you have clinical research and it's crazy. I'm going to get kicked off this stage. No, no, no, we're set it out well. No, no, but I will tell you, it just fascinates me, right? Because I experience it as well. You're in business. It must be the same thing. And as a woman, I'm a CEO. I'm a founder of two companies. I am a little bit dominant. They're like, oh, you just have really masculine energy. I was like, you wouldn't say that to a man, would you? I'm just trying to get from point A to point B. Why is it when I say it, I have masculine energy when this is how you operate in business? Well, and is it masculine energy or is this just a woman getting things done? And efficiencies. Maybe this is female energy. And I will encourage the women who are listening to this podcast, before you take advice on your health from a man who is never going to experience perimenopause, never going to go through it, does not know what it, because you can't fully empathize with something you can't experience. Please support the female MDs out there putting out content like Dr. Vonder right, Sarah Gottfried. Go after these women because they are going and living, eating, breathing the space because they're experiencing it, right? And it really boggles me because a lot, you guys have proper certification, you guys have went to school for this, but sometimes male influencers come around and they're on stage with you guys and I'm like, this person's not even certified to talk about this, qualified, sorry. But it really bugs me is because we are trained. Yes, we are trained. No, better. And I'm not saying I'm not a feminist by any means shape or form at all, but I do think when it comes to our health, when how we age, how we take care of ourselves, we have to take, we have to look towards women. We have to, I agree with that there is so much value. I would not understand with the deep empathy had I not hit a wall at 47 and thought I was going to die. I might have been the same as people who were born without ovaries until I experienced it myself. And now it is my goal that millennial women like you, I have four 30 year old daughters and a 17 year old daughter, they will never experience the, the what can be very bad in midlife because you're going to help them. We are going to, by the time they get there, everybody's going to know what perimenopause is. They're going to have made their hormone decision. They're going to know where to get it. They're going to be able to prevent the hitting of the wall that many X generations and all of the baby boomers have suffered. Three tips that you would leave our audience listening with today. Number one, make them unbreakable. Yes. Number one, if you have 30 minutes in your day and only 30 minutes in your day, you are going to learn to lift weights and you're going to not be afraid to progress to lifting heavy to build muscle. Number one, number two, I hope that you're walking a lot, but if we want to recompose our body to lean, not skinny to lean, we're going to take tip number one, we're going to lift, but we're going to add some sprinting. That is amazing for cardiovascular health. And number three, may not sound like a tip, but I think it is the only thing that matters to do first is to believe that you are worth the daily investment in your health. Because if you don't believe you're worth it, then nothing else will matter. That is such a beautiful way to leave our audience because I think so many women don't put themselves first. That's right. And I always say strength is sexy, external strength, mental resilience, emotional strength. You have to advocate for yourself and figure out times and pockets in your day to put yourself first. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Mondra, for coming on my podcast. I always say that science is for everybody, but I want to have practitioners like yourself who I admire and respect, break it down into tools the audience can use and take away. Thank you so much for helping me. Thank you for tuning in to Biohack It. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a short review. It really helps us reach more listeners just like you. Follow us on Instagram at biohack dash it for exclusive content and the latest updates. Remember your health is in your hand and curiosity heals.