Plant Medicine for Menopause: What Science and Ancient Healing Say Actually Works

Summary

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unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver

Plant Medicine for Menopause: What Science and Ancient Healing Say Actually Works

Guest: Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz
Date: April 14, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode explores the intersection of modern medicine, ancient healing, and the evolving conversation around menopause care for women. Dr. Mary Claire Haver and Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (OBGYN, integrative and Ayurvedic medicine expert) discuss the failures of conventional women’s healthcare, the rise of integrative approaches (especially plant medicine), and the urgent need for systemic change. They dive deep into personal stories, evidence-based tools, and practical advice for women in perimenopause and menopause.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Broken Healthcare System and Women's Midlife Care

• Systemic Issues:
  • Medicine is structured for efficiency, corporate profit, and procedures—not for human connection, patient stories, or nuanced female needs.
    • “This system is not set up for people to experience each other and for your doctor to experience you. We just don't even have time.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [00:00]
  • Women in midlife are forced into narrow care models; clinicians suffer ‘moral injury’ when unable to deliver patient-centered care.
    • "It's failing women who need care that is nuanced, layered, and deeply human. And it's failing clinicians who are increasingly trapped in rushed visits…” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver [02:00]
  • The current care metric (RVUs, insurance reimbursements) undervalues time and deep care, privileging procedures over relationships.
• Personal Experiences:
  • Doctors recount moral and ethical dilemmas, with memorable stories about patient desperation and the agony of being forced to turn people away for lack of insurance. [24:58]
  • Both hosts share the profound relief and satisfaction found in leaving traditional systems and moving to patient-focused, membership or fee-for-service models.
    • “For the first time in my career...I had a whole hour to spend with a patient and really get to know her...I never felt that good consistently.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver [31:11]
    • “That word fracture really resonates...my stress level was so high. Just like, running from room to room or knowing, like, oh my God, I'm running over because she's crying and I can't, she needs me. I cannot walk out right now.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [31:33]

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2. Redefining Healthspan for Women

• Healthspan vs. Lifespan:
  • Both physicians advocate for “healthspan”—not just years alive, but years lived with vibrancy and vitality.
    • "Being alive but not thriving? No thank you. The idea of healthspan is unlocking that vitality...the inflection points we have—it’s not over." – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [04:50]
  • Menopause and perimenopause care is central to women extending healthspan, not just preventing disease.
  • The medical system often reduces women’s identities to a diagnosis (e.g., breast cancer), ignoring holistic well-being and joy.
    • “The only thing that exists is the breast cancer diagnosis. This is a human being.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [08:42]

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3. Perimenopause & Menopause: The Lost Decade

• The Knowledge Gap:
  • Perimenopause remains poorly understood—even among clinicians. The decade leading up to the final period is “like a very prolonged puberty”—full of unpredictability, loss of resilience, and often misdiagnosis.
    • “If I were to characterize it… it’s a loss of resilience on all levels… emotional, spiritual, psychological, physical.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [10:34]
  • The system often responds by prescribing multiple medications (polypharmacy) for insomnia, mood, pain, rather than recognizing the root hormone-driven changes.
  • Women must often self-advocate and seek out multiple clinicians since “they are ahead of the medical community on this.” [11:55]
• Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Perimenopause Overlap:
  • More women over 40 are having children—creating a convergence of postpartum struggle and perimenopausal symptoms, often missed by both patients and doctors.
    • "One of the reasons it’s true [being tired after 40 having kids] is they’re in perimenopause and nobody knows it." – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [14:58]
• Lack of Research:
  • There’s a dearth of academic recognition or research on the intersection of perimenopause and postpartum vulnerabilities, even as it becomes more common. [16:18]

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4. Moral Injury, Burnout, and Why Doctors Are Leaving

• Definitions:
  • Burnout is exhaustion and cynicism; Moral injury is the pain of being forced to make choices that conflict with ethical duties.
    • "Moral injury is... the choices you're being asked to make are in conflict with your own ethical and moral guidelines." – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [47:22]
• Impact:
  • Physician suicide rates are highest of any profession, particularly for women. Leaving traditional practice is a solution for many.
  • Vision: supportive, collaborative models that give time, bandwidth, and true patient-physician partnership (examples: membership models like Monarch, fee for service).

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5. Integrative Medicine & The Return to Plant-based Healing

• What is Integrative Medicine?
  • Combines conventional science-based medicine with holistic, indigenous, and plant-based wisdom; acknowledges emotional, spiritual, and community health.
    • "Integrative medicine takes the science and modern medicine and convention and evidence and combines it with ancient." – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [55:02]
• Ancient Wisdom and Women’s Health:
  • Suzanne is trained in Ayurvedic medicine, noting its longstanding tradition, connection to cycles, nature, and community.
  • Significant pushback against anything outside standardized “Western” care traces back to the 1910 Flexner Report, which marginalized homeopathy, women's, Black, and community-based medicine and radically altered medical training. [59:03]
    • “It became doctor as technician, patient as pathology... we started isolating parts and pieces instead of looking at the whole person.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [60:11]

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6. Evidence-based Plant Medicine for Menopausal Symptoms

• Herbs and Botanicals with Emerging or Established Evidence:
  • Chasteberry (Vitex): Increases progesterone secretion, especially helpful during perimenopause for mood and some physical symptoms.
    • “I love chasteberry… it works in helping to increase the amount of progesterone…in perimenopause it works really well…” [57:28]
  • Siberian/Russian Rhubarb: Acts as a SERM, helpful for hot flashes.
  • Black Cohosh: Non-hormonal aid for symptoms, unfairly maligned over rare case reports of liver toxicity.
    • “Tylenol [acetaminophen] is the number one liver toxin!” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver [58:35]
• Cautions:
  • Plant medicine is not risk-free. Use high-quality, third-party tested supplements; beware online misinformation and underqualified influencers.
  • “If you're looking at the supplement world…make sure that it is third party tested, that what you think is in it is in it.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [66:10]

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7. Responsible Integration of Science and Tradition

• Bridging the Gap:
  • There’s robust ethnobotanical and bench research on herbs; many pharmaceuticals are plant-derived.
    • “Over 30% of our pharmaceuticals today are plant derived… we borrowed them from whatever people were living in that area.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [63:07]
  • Reconnection to community, intuition, self-advocacy, and curiosity are vital for healing and thriving in midlife.
  • Both/and, not either/or: socialized/national health models combined with opportunities for private care can drive improvement and more options.
    • “Why are we either-or-ing everything? Why is everything so binary? It's very important that we have more than one way to do this.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [44:16]
• Guarding against misinformation:
  • Check credentials. Authority must be earned through training and experience, not just online popularity.
    • “Just because somebody says they're an authority does not mean they're an authority.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [68:44]

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8. Key Takeaways and Hope for Listeners

• Women are not powerless: History is full of women healers, often working under the radar but with great effect.
• Collaboration is essential: Supporting each other and respecting even different viewpoints leads to stronger communities and better solutions.
• There is possibility: “It’s over when you decide it’s over.” – Inspiration from Dr. Gilberg-Lenz’s 89-year-old father publishing a book.
• Advocate for yourself: Learn to ask questions, seek community, and take part in your own healing journey.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “This is not who I am. This is happening to me.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (on coping with cancer diagnosis, MRI mantra) [09:20]
• “Women live longer than men… and in much poorer health.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [05:04]
• “[Perimenopause is] a loss of resilience on all levels.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [10:34]
• “It's not a pill for every ill…everybody does not need to be medicated.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [16:47]
• “Healthcare costs have increased because of the cost of administrating healthcare.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver [36:47]
• “Insurance is there for…to keep us from going bankrupt if something catastrophic happens.” – Dr. Mary Claire Haver [39:07]
• “If we all united, then we would all recognize where the problem really is. And it’s not who’s delivering healthcare and who’s receiving it, it’s how the healthcare is getting delivered and who’s controlling that.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [45:53]
• “When you're open to your authentic self… you draw the right friends…new opportunities… That's vitality, that’s healthspan.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [07:23]
• “Plant medicine is really where medicine comes from.” – Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz [62:47]

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• The time and reimbursement crisis in women’s care: [00:00–03:05], [20:48–24:55]
• Healthspan vs. Lifespan and breast cancer identity: [04:29–09:43]
• What women and clinicians miss about perimenopause: [10:03–13:23]
• The invisible crossover: perimenopause and postpartum: [13:23–16:18]
• Personal stories of burnout, moral injury, and leaving traditional practice: [24:55–34:36]
• Integrative and plant medicine for menopause: [54:45–59:56], [62:47–67:38]
• The legacy of the Flexner Report and erasure of traditional healing: [59:03–62:47]
• Practical advice on choosing supplements, sourcing info: [65:10–68:55]
• Empowering women & concluding hope: [70:11–71:44]

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Flow and Tone

The episode is candid, passionate, and deeply human; both physicians are open about the personal toll of medical practice, the failures of the system, and their growth into more holistic, creative, and patient-led care. The conversation is supportive, empowering, and at times philosophical, with a balance of rigor (“I’m an authority. Okay?” [68:41]) and warmth (“we have to lift each other up”). Listeners leave with a sense of community, actionable info, and hope.

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How to Connect

• Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz: @askdrsusanne (socials), thedoctorsuzanne.com, gilbergl.monarchmd.com
• Dr. Mary Claire Haver: @doctormaryclaire (Instagram), thepauselife.com, and her new book "The New Perimenopause" now available.

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If you haven’t listened, this summary provides a deep, practical, and inspiring roadmap to the episode’s key content on healing, menopause, plant medicine, and the future of women’s healthcare.

Transcript

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

This system is not set up for people to experience each other and for your doctor to experience you. We just don't even have time, so we don't get reimbursed by insurance for the amount of time that we're spending reading about this, thinking about you, calling you back, reviewing your lab, sitting and hearing your story. We get paid for how many people we saw that day. That does not lend itself to dealing with these kinds of issues and talking about stuff and recognizing patterns. Yeah, it just doesn't.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

The views and opinions expressed on Unpause are those of the talent and guests

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

related materials are intended to be a substitute or for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

One of the things I've learned after years in medicine and talking to women in midlife is this. The system doesn't give them the time, space or respect to be truly known. And yet the problem is often framed as that women just don't know their bodies. My guest today deeply understands this. Dr. Suzanne Gilberg Lenz has spent her career in caring for women across every life stage, but especially in midlife, where complexity is the rule, not the exception. She's a clinician, an educator, an integrative medicine expert, and now the Chief clinical Officer of Monarch, a membership based healthcare practice designed to restore something modern medicine has almost completely stripped away time, relationship and trust between women and their clinicians. This conversation is important because the current healthcare system is failing on two fronts at once. It's failing women who need care that is nuanced, layered and deeply human.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

And it's failing clinicians who are increasingly

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

trapped in rushed visits, administrative burden, and productivity metrics that reward procedures over listening. The only groups consistently benefiting from this system are insurance companies and large corporations. Meanwhile, physicians experience what we now call moral injury, the distress of knowing how to care for patients but being structurally prevented from doing so. And the patients are paying the price. I'm so excited that Suzanne is here and we can talk about the hard questions about what good healthcare really looks like and who we are willing to fight for. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to Unpaused, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

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[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So Suzanne, welcome to Unpaused.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Thank you for having me.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We can we talk a lot about healthspan on this podcast and on God on social media. I don't know if we're being fed the same stuff, I'm sure, but it is through a very male lens.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, the whole biohacking and it's exhausting.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

But how do you define healthspan for women?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Well, I mean, I'm gonna say something that I know you know and I'm sure you've talked about many times on the podcast. I love the word healthspan as opposed to lifespan, for obvious reasons, because being alive but not doing well and not thriving.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

No thank you.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

No, I think we all know how we nobody wants that. And we know that women live much longer than men and in much poorer health. So this idea of health span is unlocking that vitality, unlocking the opportunities, the inflection points that we have. And they are numerous. It's not like it's ever over, by the way. It's not like you missed the boat at 70. It would be better if you're working on it at 20.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Look, I saw an influencer the other day who's got probably a Ph.D. i think it was a Ph.D. and she was talking about osteoporosis. She's like kind of coming down on, on the osteoporosis movement and all the talk about it. Because you've reached your maximum bone density at 30, you need to be talking to 25 year olds. She's not wrong.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Right. But that doesn't mean that we never know 100%. So listen, I even look and I'm a person who's been, you know, a fitness person my whole life, but I'm at risk for osteoporosis for a number of reasons. I'm a small person. I had breast cancer, whatever, blah, blah, all the different things. And, and this is a good example. I doubled down in the last year on really getting to the heavy weights and like, not just talking the talk, but walking the walk. I've been on hormones now for, I don't know, like almost two years.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Okay, wait. You know, people's heads just exploded.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, because. Well, they don't. We didn't talk because I'm a breast cancer survivor who's on.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You know, I forget that about you from time to time because it's not my whole personality.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

When you're in the thick of it,

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

it's your whole personality. But go back to that. Cause I think we have several previvor survivors and people in the world of having to deal with the potential or having had breast cancer or pre cancer cells and all the things. Because you rarely talk about it.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I mean, I do sometimes, but I mean, I don't know, I don't focus on it a lot. I mean, that's a whole story in and of itself. But when you talk about healthspan, that's a great example. So I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 47. And of course it was devastating and traumatizing and all sorts of things, and it changed my life forever. Now, in the end, I am grateful for it because it forced me to really look at like, who I was and how I wanted to live. But you could take that diagnosis and say, okay, your lifespan is particularly. It may be shortened. So what is going to be my health span? How do I want to live my life? It's not just like taking hormones and lifting weights and whatever biohacking thing we're talking about for women, because I think you and I are on the same page. But that dealing and managing our menopause appropriately, which is something that we have to decide for ourselves in consultation, is 100% gonna impact your health span. And I'm not saying I didn't have those moments. I did. But it's also joy. It's also curiosity. It's also what do I have in front of me right now? How do I wanna live right now? And how does that set me up for so many other opportunities? Because when you are open to yourself, this is where I get really into the philosophy of st. When you're open to you, your authentic self and who you want to be and you're expressing that, wow, you draw the right friends, you draw different opportunities, you see your world differently. It's. That's, to me, that's vitality, that's health span.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

What I see is that women, the medical system is set up to force this breast cancer diagnosis or potential breast cancer diagnosis to be their whole personality.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, yes. Because it's all about what you can no longer do.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You can or cannot. Because there's a potential that one cell may become and the whole rest of their body, their lives, their happiness, their fulfillment, their sex life is ignored.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

The only thing that exists is the breast cancer diagnosis. This is a human being. And I will say that some of it's just my personality. I'm an optimist. Some of it is what I had done to work on healing myself. I had been doing yoga and meditation for, I don't know, about 10 years before my diagnosis. And I will never forget going into the mri. I had the biopsy that I had, you know, breast cancer. Now I had to go into the MRI and see, like, where else is it? What is going on? And I got into that MRI machine and it is so overwhelming.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

You're literally surrounded and knowing like, okay, my fate is right. And I said, no, your mantra to get through this very uncomfortable experiences. This is not who I am. This is happening to me. That's literally what I just. That's what popped into my brain. And that's what I did. And I did that for 45 effing minutes in that machine.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Oh my God, if anybody's had an mri, that's what it sounds like.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Not fun. And that's what I said to myself. I said, you know what? You're not going to wallow in self pity. You get some, some time to be sad. And I was freaked out. My kids were so freaked out. Oh my God. And I said, no, you're not going to adopt this as who you are. That was my decision.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah. You've talked about perimenopause.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yes, I have.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Before it was like even a word that the Internet knew how to say. I feel like. And I'd love to hear your opinion that perimenopause is Kind of where menopause was three years ago.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I agree. People are starting to really understand, like it's not about that final menstrual period only. It's about the decade that you spend leading to that that people don't realize.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Like, what do you think women should be doing during that decade?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Well, first of all, we have to be talking about it more so that younger women and younger men, they have women in their lives, understand the experience. It's like a very prolonged puberty and it can be quite discombobulating and very disconcerting. And people feel not like themselves. We know, we talk about this when I talk to patients and I teach about it. If I were to characterize it in one term, I'd say it's a loss of resilience on all levels. Exactly. Emotional, spiritual, psychological, physical. It's really rough. So if we don't prepare ourselves and our patients and our colleagues for this experience, people are going to be searching for a solution that may not fit what the actual issue is. And I'm not calling it a problem on purpose, I'm not saying it's not problematic, but let's also. Can we reframe this? This is physiology. So if we understand it as an expected shift in physiology and we treat it as such, we have more appropriate opportunities to intervene in a more precision manner. What is your personal history? What are your goals? What's your family history? What are your risk factors? What are your data points? We have to kind of combine the art and the science of medicine in here. And women are gonna have to advocate for themselves because they're ahead of the medical community on this. They just are. We know this because you and I have been seeing these people for a very long time who are now on polypharmacy, antidepressants.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Polypharmacy for our listeners, is on multiple medications. So it is not unusual to have a woman in perimenopause who's been given sleeping pills for her insomnia, she's been giving anti anxiety meds, she's been giving antidepressants, she's on something for her fibromyalgia,

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

something for her irritable, her fibromyalgia, which I'm going to go ahead and say is just perimenopause.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. Yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

All sorts of weird random diagnoses which may or may not be accurate. It's also a time where because of this loss of resilience, we see things that are big risks that get Uncovered, if we're looking. So again, it is on. Unfortunately, it's on us as women to understand enough to ask the right questions and to also understand that we might be. I'm going to use an old analogy. If you go to the hardware store looking for milk, you can keep going back to the hardware store and you are never going to find milk there. So you might be going to a clinician who just does not understand it does not, because they weren't taught for whatever reason. And it's gonna have to be time to move on.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah. So you were practicing obstetrics until very recently. So there's something we get a ton of questions on.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yes.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And I just read the statistic last year that women now over 40, more women over 40 are having babies than under 20. That was the first time in history we've seen that switch. And so talk to me now. I stopped doing OB. I was doing emergency care only since 2018, so I stopped my full OB practice in 2018. So almost 10 years ago, when I was aging along with my patients, I was starting to see it, but I didn't know enough about perimenopause to recognize it. So many questions about the shift from postpartum directly into perimenopause. What does that look like? And women are like, heads are exploding right now listening to this.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Well, I will say that I feel like I owe an apology to many of my patients. Sweet girl. Same. Because I didn't really get it myself. And here I was, like, doing OB for a long time. I really had entered into the menopause space quite early through my, actually my breast cancer experience. I was seeing all these young breast cancer survivors and they were going through menopause early. That's actually how I started in menopause. So now I, you know, I'm in Los Angeles. A lot of women have babies over 40. I had a lot of women in perimenopause getting pregnant and having young children. And we were telling them, like, look, you're 42 with a 2 year old. You know, of course you're tired.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah, it's just so much harder.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I mean, which is true. But like, one of the reasons it's true is they're in perimenopause and nobody knows it. So I owe an apology. But I think that once I started realizing, like, oh, wait a second, this is something more than that. Why is nobody talking about this? This is enormously important because it's affecting not only people's fertility, but it's affecting their postpartum experience. So they're having a much more difficult time with sleep disruption, with mood disorders. I mean, we know that a pregnant.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

They're sleeping through the night, but mama isn't.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Exactly. Yeah. And like all this anx and is it really postpartum anxiety or is it really perimenopausal PMDD that's showing up, you know, severe mood disorders? All these things that we know that are happening in the perimenopausal population. It's like on steroids if you've just had a baby. And it's really this confluence of a lot of unpredictable hormonal fluctuations. Right. You're going from this really high level, really steady state of estrogen and progesterone and it is just dropping precipitously postpartum. And it's plummeted you into an era you're not even going to be going back to regular cycling necessarily anyways. So you're about to experience for years high highs, low lows, and you just. You feel like a truck hit you. I mean, these are women that really deserve our attention.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah. And I. There's almost no papers on it. I rarely see it in the academic literature.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

No, I haven't. I haven't really seen it.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You know, I see it on social. Because again, women are around the social water cooler and finally talking about it. Oh, my God, that was me. But I think, you know, we owe that. Owe women thousands of years of research. But they are particularly because they're becoming more and more common now. We're not preparing them for this.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

No. And this is people's lived experiences.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

They're so vulnerable.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, very much so. And again, this is a really big opportunity to understand, like to support them through it so that they understand the impact that this could have on the rest of their life and on their health rather than. Again, I don't want to sound anti medicine. I use medicine, I prescribe medicine. But it is not. There's not. This is like a. Not a pill for every ill situation. Like, everybody does not need to be medicated. They need to be supported or they need to understand what the medicine is for and why we're using it rather than just like, I have seven minutes to see you and I don't have time to unpack this. Which, as you know, I have a lot of compassion for our colleagues that are living in that system.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah, we lived in it, you know, for many decades.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, many decades. But, you know, if you don't have the time and there's no literature on it and it's not being pushed in the guidelines. It doesn't exist.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

It doesn't exist. We don't have time to make it exist.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

No

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the Wright Brothers oh my God.

[Podcast Host Lloyd Lochridge]

Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Many of you know I've spent my career pushing for better medical standards for women. Midi Health is on that same mission, delivering the kind of care women have always deserved. For too long, women have been told to just deal with perimenopause and menopause symptoms. Your labs are normal. This is just a part of aging. Eat less, work out more. That approach failed us, and it's exactly why both My work and Mitti's exist. Midlife and menopause aren't the beginning of the end. They're a critical window of opportunity. But education is only half the battle. Women need access to clinicians who actually understand the science of female aging. That's the gap MITI was built to close. MITI is focused on health span, not just lifespan. That means looking at your metabolic health, bone density, cardiovascular risk and cognitive function. It's the kind of proactive, evidence based care I've always believed women deserve. And it's exactly what MITI delivers. And here's what matters most. Women in all 50 states can access this care covered by insurance with clinicians trained in the latest menopause and longevity science. Because your zip code should never determine your access to quality menopause care. Book your virtual Visit [e-mail] that's joinmidi.com.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Why is time. Why has it become such a critical and endangered resource, especially for women and women's health care?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

You know, if you look at the systems under which we are trained, the systems in which we work, we're navigating something that really isn't set up for humans. It's set up for shareholders, it's set up for reimbursement structures, it's set up for workflows. Not necessarily for the excellent connected practice of clinical medicine that requires that we talk to each other, that we as clinicians have the bandwidth to listen and then to apply our knowledge if we are being forced to work for RVUs.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And what's an RVU?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It's a relative value unit. Okay, even just that, it sounds like you're working in a factory.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

That is how our time is valued. It is called a relative value unit and it is decided by a room full of crusty, dusty, mostly male, mostly surgeons who decide the relative value of our work. Relative value of your work is.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

So the work of the mind is not reimbursed?

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

No, only the work of the hands.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, and look, I'm a surgeon and I did a lot of procedures and I mean, I did them for the right reason, believe me. I wasn't making enough money to be doing surgery on you just to make. Trust me, I was losing money in the office. That's a whole other thing. So the system is. It's not a whole other thing. It's related. This system is not set up for people to experience each other and for your doctor to experience you. We just don't even have time. So we don't get reimbursed. By insurance. For the amount of time that we're spending reading about this, thinking about you, calling you back, reviewing your labs, sitting and hearing your story. We get paid for how many people we saw that day. That does not lend itself to dealing with these kinds of issues and talking about stuff and recognizing patterns, you know.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It just doesn't.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And also, when you even look at procedures. Procedures. If you look at equivalent procedures done

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

on women, women versus men, versus the

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

equivalent procedure done on men, because we have, especially in urology, right. We have autologous body parts. So the clitoris is the equivalent to the head of the penis. So if you look at these procedures, men are reimbursed like three to five times higher for the equivalent procedure. I remember learning, because, you know, when you work for a corporation, they are controlled by this model of as many patients that you can see in the clinical setting and do as many procedures as you can. And that's where the money is made. They are a slave to the same system. The same reimbursement system.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And it is, it's heartbreaking. So nine months of care for ob, Right. Dozens of. Over a dozen visits usually. And then God forbid she has some condition that needs to bring her in ultrasounds, you know, and then delivery, which might take five minutes, might take 50 hours, you know, and you have two patients and you might. Yeah, you're responsible for two patients or

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

maybe three or four, depending on how many there are in there.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And when you look at what the reimbursement rates for, it's insanity versus you break your leg and you go to orthopedic surgeon and they put a pin in it and you know, which is a complicated procedure and you know. Yeah, but the, the reimbursement is like 10 to 1.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

But tell me you don't care about women's lives. You know, it's like, wow. Yeah, I did it as long as I did because I loved doing it. I loved my patients so much. And then I just got tired and

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

old and I did, I really had a. You know, we're going to talk about this some more, but I had a moral crisis when I was like deciding to leave the traditional reimbursement system because that's what I was brought up in. But actually at the very beginning of like medical school, it wasn't that bad. And in residency we operated under a charity system.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Uh huh. Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So we took everybody.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yes.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We saw everyone in the state would just write checks. Right. That stopped by the time I became faculty and we were turning people away Who? We could cure their disease, we could cure their cancer. They were having stage one endometrial, turning them away because they didn't have insurance and couldn't find coverage from their county or whatever. And I wanted to die as faculty signing off on that chart.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

But the hospital was like, unless it's an emergency. Yeah, yeah, we're not going to do it.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And Suzanne, that's not why we signed up to take care of human beings.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We sacrificed like had she had her

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

cancer five years ago, she would have done it.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We would have done it and not thought twice about it, you know, at a teaching institution.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, I had a similar. I mean, I think we trained at the same time. I had a very similar experience because I started at a county hospital in medical school. So literally all comers and I mean it was wild and I learned a ton. I'm so grateful to those patients. And then I went to Cedars Sinai Medical center, which is, sure it's hospitals of sars, but. But also at the time we took all comers, I mean, obviously through the emergency room. It's a federal violation not to accept anybody, but it was not an emergency. But we took everybody and we had a. One of the reasons it was such a great training program is that we had an enormous number of patients who were either indigent or were coming in through like emergency medical. And that all shifted.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Especially we had. This pregnancy is different. We could get anything covered in pregnancy. But I'm talking about like the gyna, gynecologic stuff.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It all shifted and that was very scary and sad. It was horrible.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So horrible.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So When I was 25 weeks pregnant, I was a second year resident and all my girlfriends had had their babies or were about to deliver and I was walking around, my brother in law and his wife had come to visit and we're in Galveston and it's, you

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

know, old streets, cobblestones.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And I'm walking in these cute little wedges, like trying to be cute at 25 weeks. And I twist my ankles stepping up on a curb and I kind of stumbled back. My brother in law caught me like basket caught touch under the arms. And I remembered this like stabbing pain in my foot, like this sharp like so I couldn't walk on it, I couldn't bear weight. They bring me home, of course. We call our friend, the orthopedic surgeon resident. He comes over, he's like, yeah, it's probably broken, you need to go to the er. Okay. I'm in a ton of pain and I Can feel my tummy getting tight.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And we go to the edge and they all freak out. Cause I'm pregnant. And ortho comes and they're like, oh, she's pregnant. You know, like, they get the monitor. I'm contracting. Okay. Of course. And they're like, are you in pain? And I was too scared to tell anyone how much I was hurting because I thought they would label me as a drug seeker or whiny.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Whoa. Just because. Do you think that was because of your own experiences as a resident and how people treated women coming in with pain?

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And, like we were taught, you need to minimize your symptoms.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Wow.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah, I was. I had a bone in my foot that had snapped in two. The pain was so severe. I was in preterm labor.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, my God.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And I was too scared to admit it because I was worried I would get labeled as a drug seeker.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

But that's also like medical training, too. I mean, I think, you know, as we get further into our careers, I don't know, I've just gotten more. I was always introspective, but I'm very introspective now. I have more time to do it. And I think about this stuff that we subjected ourselves to. Cause I didn't realize, like, we were that parallel. Cause I was pregnant. My whole residence also. And sucked it up so hard because I didn't want people to feel like she got pregnant and she got lazy and she didn't carry her weight. And we're taking more call because she got pregnant, you know, and whatever. And I was like, oh, my God. I was a pregnant intern at night. You would have to cover the whole house, right? The whole hospital. So I had four pagers on my. I don't even know how I had my. How my scrubs weren't falling off staying up. You look like a clown. Right? The scrubs are tied up here. I had the Gyne Onc pager. I had the emergency room. I had labor and delivery. I had the floor. And we had those old. Remember those humongous, huge ultrasound machines?

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And we were like, I'm pushing them, and I'm pushing it down the hall. And I'm like, oh, my God. Sciatica. And I mean, I'm. What the hell? No normal pregnant woman would do this. And nobody else who worked with a pregnant woman would let her do it. They were fine. I was. The Internet. She's doing her job. I mean, I would never have complained. It's so crazy.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

It's so crazy.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It's so not normal. Yeah. I don't know. And then, you know, then you come out, and of course you're like, if you're an empathic person, your response would be like, I would never subject anybody else to that. But people are people. And they're like, I did it. Why can't she do it?

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And that's how they treat their patients and their colleagues. It's not good.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I worry.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

No.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

What do you see when a woman finally feels. And I've experienced this in my clinic, certainly I had wonderful moments under the old system.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah. Of course, you know. Of course.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I just, you know, it was getting so bad at the end. The moral injury, the administrative burden, you know, the paperwork, the fighting with insurance companies, more people being hired to tell me what to do at the hospital I was at and just not feeling like this was the best medicine I could practice. And then leaving that system and going into building a new system, I didn't know how to open a medical practice. I'd always been employed my whole life. I showed up with my stethoscope, and they gave me a room and a stack of charts.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Right, right.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And I went to work.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Right.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And so I literally, like, got the Idiot's Guide to Opening a Medical Practice. Like. Like, I didn't know the rules. Like, do we just. Do we charge taxes? Like, how do you. How do you incorporate and do all this stuff? But we decided to do fee for service and that. That work.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Us.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

But, like, for the first time in my career, other than sitting bedside with someone in labor, right. When I was on my own time and just visiting with a patient, I had a whole hour to spend with a patient and really get to know her and really understand her goals, her needs, her wants. And I just. Within the first month of practice, I just realized I never felt that good consistently.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You know, not everybody had a happy outcome. A lot of survivors would come to me because they had nowhere to go. And I, you know, couldn't fix everyone's exact problem, but I could give them the gift of time and give them the gift of my. My heart and not feel so fractured and having to choose my family over my work. And it was just unbelievably magical. Like, what's that been like for you?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, my God. Exactly what you're saying. I mean, that word fracture really resonates with. With me because my stress level was so high. Like, I'm thinking about it now, and it gives me a little bit of chest pain. Just like, running from room to room or knowing, like, oh my God, I'm running over because she's crying and I can't, she needs me. I cannot walk out right now. I can't be like, you know, or your hands on the door and you know, there's three rooms full. And now that's when the real question emerges and you're just like, oh my God. What? No, I can't. I don't feel that at all anymore. But it's really interesting because I remember initially when I started, so I left a 20 plus year career in a very large prestige practice here in Beverly Hills where we had very high volume and did everything and prided ourselves on doing everything. And it just, for me, I just, it wasn't, it wasn't me. It wasn't what I needed to do or what I wanted to do. I wanted to spend the time and I was always running late. And even when I started the new practice, I remember being nervous, like, oh my God. I mean, how am I gonna, how are we gonna fill 45 minutes? Oh my God. It's like so not hard. It's so not hard. You just sit back, you sit back and listen and you get all the information you need and more. You get to really engage. I really knew my patients, I think pretty well, considering. And I had patients for decades who stayed with me and children I delivered, who then became my patients. You know, multi generation families. I was connecting, but I was doing it at a big, actually a really huge cost to myself. Yeah, me too, because I was giving, giving, giving, and I had no time to like relax and think. And also I felt like so pressured that I'm gonna make a mistake, I'm gonna harm somebody unintentionally. Cause I don't have enough time. It was just, I was so insane. Looking back on it, I don't know how I did it as long as I did. But I will say I was initially nervous. Like, how can I do this? A year in, I just completed my first year of my practice. It has just been enormously gratifying. And I can't tell you, you know, the end of the year, I had a lot of patients come in with a lot of gratitude telling me how I changed their lives. Because I had more time to thoughtfully order those labs and pick up on things that I wouldn't have had time to address. I was taught very old school, don't do labs that you can't act on results with. So even if I knew what the path forward would be, I really, when somebody would say to me, hey, can I Just do my blood test here. I'd be like cringing because I thought, oh my God. Because this is going to be more stuff I'm going to have to address, honestly. And again, I just didn't have the time. I have all the time in the world. They get on the body composition. I do their labs. I do a deeper dive into Lipid Pro. I mean, just by adding lipo, a lpob apob. I cannot tell you between that and body composition. Looking at their fat, their visceral fat and their muscle, it is a game changer.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

It's a game changer in helping someone plan the next 30 years of their life.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Because I think people knew me here in LA as like, you know, she does menopause, she wrote this book, she's, you know, on social media, whatever. But it's not really just the hormones. I mean, sure it's the hormones, yeah. But it is not. It's that this is the moment in time. Whether you're, and I'm thinking about specific people, whether you're 47 or you're 69, whatever moment in time, you come to me, there is something that we can do for you. And I'm seeing massive results. These are women who are really, really high functioning, successful, sophisticated people. And they were running all over town, getting no help. Couldn't figure it out. All they needed was that being able to sit, tell their story, we can unwind it. That's also when some of the secrets come out, things that they never told anybody, that they had a history of abuse, that they have a substance problem, that they are trying to work on, their eating, that they have all this stuff that has big health consequences, mental health and physical health consequences that they're not telling people. Because you're not gonna walk in and say, hey, I have a history of eating disorder and I'm really worried about my bone density.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Right.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Who says that? They don't? But you know what, you spend a couple hours with people, they feel safe.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah. To open up to you.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

You can do the real work.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Do you think that the way we deliver healthcare in this country for most patients is broken?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, it's just not human. It's not human scale, it's not human size, it's not human for any of the humans. You and I are humans.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

How would you fix it?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I mean, I'd blow it up. That's what I do. I think we need help because it's

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

been insidious and we've lived through the change, right?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, yeah, We've watched it We've been, I think, in a slow mo. Implosion, I think the most.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And Dr. Mike had put this graph up. Super popular medical educator on social media. He's a family medicine doc, and he put the graph up that I've seen multiple times. When you look at physician payment over time, which has grown under the cost of living.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Right.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And then you look at administrative cost. It's insane. And literally it is like a skyrocket that has gone. Like we basically. Healthcare costs have increased because of the cost of administrating healthcare. Not.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And our outcomes are not clinicians who are delivering the healthcare. And the outcomes are.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I mean, in obese and obese, specifically maternal mortality. We've lost ground. Yes.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We've lost ground.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

In so many areas. And I've watched it reshape the way medicine is practiced, which is really scary to me.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Tell me, tell me, like, what are your impressions about how they've been. It's been research.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Well, one that we used to take care of curable cancers. We used to take care of these things for all the patients who walked in. But really being so hamstrung by the time constraints. So like this administrator breathing down your neck, not only to see 30, 40 patients in one day.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

But to get all five stars for every patient.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Exactly. Right.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So our patient.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And then they tell us what we can and can't do was getting deemed to take care of these patients.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And then the patient is frustrated because insurance won't cover. You know, they're all coming in on multiple different insurance plans and there was no method for a long time. There's a better one now of me being have any idea of what their insurance is going to cover.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Right.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You know, and then if you look at the rate of prior authorizations and how that has skyrocketed, I mean, it is a racket built to destroy patients and their clinicians trying to take care

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

of it a hundred percent.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah. I mean, they don't want to spend the money that you invested.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So who's making money in healthcare right now?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

The insurance companies. The insurance. I mean, the hospitals are losing money hand over fist too, by the way. Yes.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You're getting a lot of misconception about that.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah. I mean, people are getting these crazy, crazy bills and like their Tylenol is $80 whatever. But that's because the hospital cannot bear under the weight of the insurance system either. So the pharmacy benefit managers, which are essentially owned by the insurance companies, which are setting the rates and telling you whether or not this medication will be covered. This is like a freaking cartel, man. It's a cartel. And I think the other thing is when people call it a health care, that's not healthcare. It's health insurance. I mean, it's there for. God forbid you end up with a heart attack or a cancer diagnosis or a car accident. You need to be insured.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I believe my need to be insured. Are fully aware that our health insurance is to keep us from going bankrupt if something catastrophic happens. I don't know if our listeners understand.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I do not think they do.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical. Is medical bills.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

The number one cause of this does not exist in Europe. It's just, it does not exist in Canada. This is not existing moral injury.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And then we're involved in this, then it's wrong.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

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[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Okay, so I have a 25 year old who is on my insurance for another 9 out of 2, not counting because we are. And I mean, I'm spending almost $2,000 a month on the premium. That doesn't mean that it's paying for anything that I need or she needs. I had a fabulous experience this year where I ended up having to get whatever. I had to get a biopsy on my other breast and everything's okay, but I was $3,000 out of pocket and I'm paying my premiums and this was a recommend. I wasn't doing some experimental procedure. It was like, hey, we saw something abnormal, we need a biopsy. No, I gotta pay for that. You got your deductible, you got all these things. It's insane. So how do I think it needs to be fixed? I think that needs to go away. I think there needs to be a level playing field. I think there needs to be national healthcare for people. Will it all be fabulous? Maybe not, but it'll be something. It's better than people not being able to afford, not qualifying for state or federal insurance. So then they're not taking care of their chronic diseases, they're developing chronic diseases, they don't have any access. And now they're showing up to the emergency room for their chronic diseases disease management. And it's costing them their lives, it's costing them their finances and it's costing us a lot of money because someone walks in having that stroke, we're going to treat them. So now it's costing a ton more money than if we just would have treated them. And there are going to be people like in other countries where there's national healthcare who have the means to invest in their health and is it fair? It's the way it is. And they will seek doctors like you and I and have a different experience. And I think there's a trickle down. One of the things that I say to my patients, you know, cause I called you a lot about this. It was a very, very hard decision for me to make ethically and morally to leave the system behind as well for the exact same reasons.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And so when we talk about alternatives to insurance, there's a lot of pushback.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

From people who believe in socialized medicine or that healthcare should be a right and not something. How do you respond to that?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I think they're right. I think it is a right and I think it shouldn't be a privilege. I think people who have the privilege to afford the care that they want to access should have that right as well. And these are people often that are influential and that can also have big impacts out in the world in the ways that they are, including in policy. But the reality is why are we either oring everything? Why is everything so binary? It's very important that we have more than one way to do this. And I do think that it is a right. But the other thing is that people don't understand how you and I got here. Right. I self funded my medical education.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Same.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

My debt was probably half a million in premium just in my loans. So you can't ask doctors to sacrifice a decade or more of their life plus their financial future and then come out and not be cared for. It's not a human system. I don't think any of us are saying like, I didn't go into medicine to get rich. Okay, Hello. Friends of mine who wanted to get rich already did that like a long time ago. Yeah, that's not why I'm here. I didn't work 80 hours a week while I was pregnant because all I care about is money. And I feel like if people understood what it took for us to become physicians and then to stay physicians, they would understand that we're on the same side. And this is also, this polarization is coming from forces that want us to stay divided because if we all united, then we would all recognize where the problem really is. And it's not who's delivering healthcare and who's receiving it, it's how the healthcare is getting delivered and who's controlling that. It's a complex situation. I do think it's solvable and I think right now we're in an interesting time because people are thinking more creatively. People are thinking in a more positively disruptive way. And I do think that social media has brought patients and clinicians together in a very powerful way.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah. I am a member of Several physician groups online. And it just seems to me that a lot are leaving traditional medicine. Wanting to leave traditional medicine or can't leave because they're tied down by loans or contracts and whatever. What do you say to them?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Well, I mean, we are looking at, I think, a deficit of something like 86,000 physicians in the United States in the next, like, 10 years. That's a huge problem. Who's delivering care. Right. And we've been talking endlessly about how the system is really injuring the patients and the clinicians. So of course they're leaving. They can't take it anymore. And there's this sort of conversation that you brought up, actually, about burnout versus moral injury. And they are different. Burnout is physical and emotional exhaustion. And it sort of centers the problem on the person experiencing it. People will kind of depersonalize, get kind of like, you often see, like, a lot of negativity, skepticism, cynicism. Moral injury is the choices you're being asked to make are in conflict with your own ethical and moral. Moral guidelines.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And that is really injurious. That's ptsd.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We were kind of taught and we knew to expect the exhaustion.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

That is what you signed up for, you know, and at some point in your career, you start pivoting and shifting and whatever. But, like, people are leaving the system.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

They're leaving. They're leaving because they can't take it anymore. Yes, that's exactly right.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

They cannot resolve the conflict in their head. And it's killing them.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah. And we don't. And it is killing them. Because physicians have actually the highest suicide rate of any profession. We're sensitive people.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And females live longer than males.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Unless you're a female physician.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Unless you're a female physician.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It's no joke. This is some serious stuff. That advantage. So. Right. And we're not here whining and complaining. I'm not laughing. Stating the fact. Well. Cause it's gallows New Year. That's how you get through it. But I mean, we're just stating the facts. So it's like, if we want to have excellent healthcare, excellent provision of medical care, which is what all of us deserve, then we need to start supporting our clinicians in a real way and offering opportunities for them to practice the best medicine. If people want to get great medicine, they have to expect it. And they have to expect that the people who are delivering it are being treated well. I mean, this is a whole podcast in itself, unionization and all these other things. My response was to pull out of the system and say, you know what? I can't do this anymore, but I don't want to leave medicine. And with the help of a startup that I was a part of, you know, I was advising and consulting for years in industry and so this is Monarch. Yeah, so this is Monarch. Yeah.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

And let me get this right. You are the chief clinical officer.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

What does that mean?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It means that I'm in charge of the clinicians. Right. Basically, I help to shape who we want to bring into the company and I'll explain what we do. I also help support these doctors in practicing in the way that they want to practice. The company itself is operational support. So we support independent practitioners. The physicians own their own practice. We come in as operational support. All the things that doctors are not good at, running a business, like you said, we don't know how to start a business. The legal, the insurance things, the back office, the marketing, the billing, all that stuff. So we come in and we do that and you get to practice medicine the way you want. It's membership model. So that also actually takes a lot of pressure off because people pay for the year and they're getting their care, and now every visit isn't being billed. You're not like, do I call her? Because I'm gonna have to pay. And I'm not thinking, like, do I fill my day with 25 patients or I'm not going to be able to pay my rent and my staff. It just removes all of those barriers. And what you get is time and you get bandwidth and you get creativity. So as chief Clinical officer, I'm helping to shape who's joining us, and I'm also helping shape the clinical protocols. We don't have, like a Monarch way, but we are really excited to be like, we're working on a sleep module, we're working on a cardiovascular health module. So if you are practicing in an environment where you have great clinicians and referrals and people that you're, you know, working with already, terrific. But if you don't, here's what we have to offer you. It's really powerful medicine. We're allowing people to do great medicine because we're doing that structure and that foundation. So for me, it's been super exciting. And also. Listen, Mary Claire, I've been all over the country this year talking to doctors like me, hearing their stories, and it's been hard. It's been gratifying because I think that whether or not they decide they want to do this kind of medicine, they see that there is some hope there is a way forward for them. But it was rough to be all over. I mean, the east coast, the south, the Midwest, it's everywhere where doctors are like, I'm done, I'm peacing out or I can't afford. I have to keep doing this. I have all these bills to pay. I'm stuck and I'm miserable. I mean, that is terrible. And that is not a person who's gonna be able to provide great care to anybody. So. So having an option for them has been very, very, it's been fun actually, and reignited my passion for medicine.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Now it's time for the MIDI Pause. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, host of the podcast Unpaused, bringing you a word from Midi Health. Today, we're gonna take a pause and discuss heart disease. Did you know that heart disease is the number one killer of women responsible for one in three deaths? And here's what many women don't know. Up to 80% of your cardiovascular risk is shaped by your lifestyle. When estrogen declines during menopause, its protective

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

effect on your cardiovascular system. Go with it.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Cholesterol rises, blood pressure climbs and visceral fat increases. Your heart needs more support now, not less. Heart health can have a significant impact on women, especially during menopause. The same hormonal shifts that trigger hot flashes and brain fog can hurt your cardiovascular health. But treatment could make you feel better. That's why MidiHealth is dedicated to changing the way menopause is treated with a personalized approach to each women's specific needs. Women come to MIDI Health to address the symptoms of menopause. They see and feel every day. They partner with you to find a treatment, whether that's HRT or a non hormonal solution that will relieve your symptoms and make heart healthier habits easier to put in place. I personally have found that these five habits can make a real difference. Number one, don't ignore your hot flashes. They're not just uncomfortable. Frequent untreated vasomotor symptoms are a signal that your cardiovascular system is under stress. Take them seriously. Talk to your clinician. Number two, move your body. A sedentary lifestyle is a major risk factor for heart disease. Aim for 150 minutes of cardio per week plus two to three strength training sessions. Even daily walks add up fast. Number three, eat for your heart. Colorful whole foods, enough protein and fiber, healthy fats like omega 3s and cut the ultra processed foods. Studies link them directly to higher cardiovascular risk. Number four, if you smoke, please stop. Smoking is the Single most modifiable risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Number five. Have the HRT conversation. Women who start hormone therapy within the first 10 years of menopause or before the age of 60 show lower cardiovascular risk and lower risk of death from any cause. The science is clear. You deserve to know your options. It may not be right for everyone, but every woman deserves the conversation. And MITI Health is setting a new standard for healthcare. As the nation's fastest growing women's telehealth company, Mihdi provides accessible insurance coverage services. Building on its leadership in perimenopause and menopause, MITI fills the critical health gaps women face at every age and life stage. If you want a clinician in your corner who understands what your body and your brain need right now, that's exactly what MIDI is built for. Go to joinmitty.com join midi.com and connect with one of their clinicians today.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Integrative medicine. Yes, what is that? Because so many people don't know what that is.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I mean, integrative medicine is really integrating more traditional, holistic indigenous systems.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You have special training?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, I'm trained in Ayurvedic medicine, which is the medicine of India, the ancient medicine. I mean, it's probably one of the oldest medicines recorded on the planet. There are textbooks on surgery and on anatomy from, you know, depending on how you date them, two to five thousand years ago. So it's pretty interesting. It came out of spiritual practice like most indigenous medicine, right? It's rooted in the land, in the plants, in the seasons, in what was available there, in something bigger than ourselves. Came out of Hinduism. Chinese medicine developed around the same time. And so I just out of my own curiosity, started studying that after I finished residency. And I think it's because there was something missing. I was like, all this technical stuff is magical. You know, I can do surgery and people can be in the ICU and all these things. And I can, you know, do a C section if I have to. But something was not quite there and I was seeking, I think, some deeper meaning. And I found that the more holistic traditional medicines used everything they talked about community and spiritual and plants, which are medicine and procedures if you need to do it. It was fascinating to me. So I did it initially out of my own curiosity and I sort of fill some sort of gap that I thought I had. But then people started hearing like, oh, you know, she's open minded, she'll use herb. I wasn't practicing Ayurveda. I was more open to things. So Integrative medicine takes the of science and modern medicine and convention and evidence and combines it with ancient. Because this idea that conventional medicine like booped onto the scene magically, like that's ridiculous. It's, you know, the great, great, great, great, great grandchild of all these traditional medicines.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And it's been really satisfying for me and interesting to me.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Do you feel like this model, your new model allows you to like integrate integrative practices more into.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Definitely.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

How are the patients responding? Do they think you're too woo woo or too.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

No, I mean, I don, you know, listen, you meet people where they are, so I'm not like throwing herbs and meditation at everybody.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I like saw you speak multiple times before I knew you did any of this other stuff.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Because I'm like a regular degular doctor with like this other interest. I weave it in. It helps me understand where that person's coming from. For a long time, especially when it came to perimenopause and menopause, people came to me because they didn't feel like I was going to force a prescription on them. And so I do have specifically around that I have a lot of interesting herbs that I use that have decent evidence to support their use.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Okay, tell us, is everyone.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yes, I was curious. Of course I will. I love chaste berry, which is also called Vitex. That's the Latin name. And one of the ways that it works is probably in helping to increase the amount of progesterone that is secreted from your own body in the second half of the cycle. So in perimenopause it works really well because we see a loss of progesterone secretion in the egg as it's aging. And that's where we see a lot of the physical symptoms, a lot of the mood symptoms. Disruptions. Yeah, exactly. So that's a big one. And it can help especially with mood. Sometimes some of the physical symptoms like breast tenderness, sometimes sleep, that's a great one. And that's safe for everybody. Things like Russian rhubarb, Siberian rhubarb, acts possibly like a selective estrogen receptor modulator and can be quite helpful for hot flashes. I think we know black cohosh, which, which got a bad name. It is not hormonal, but there were a couple of case reports of liver toxicity. And so now all of a sudden, black cohosh. No. If you don't have high quality medicine, whether it's pharma or plants, number one

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

liver toxicin is acetaminophen.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Exactly.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Tylenol.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

That's exactly right. But there is a long history in this country of marginalizing anything that is not standard of care. And who is setting the standards?

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Just did. This is so fascinating. A sub stack. So Dr. Suzanne has a substack, I have a substack which I'm obsessed with talking about.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

You know, what's the report?

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Oh my God. I think it's worth it for our listeners. I think they'd be fascinated.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It hurts my heart so much to talk about it because it's so. I knew about it and I think I even had mentioned it in my first book. I'm working on another book on plant medicine. Yes. But when I looked into it even more deeply, I was like, Whoa. So in 1910, the very early formation of the American Medical association was supported by Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, for better or worse. To look at like, hey, can we clean up medicine? Cause it's a little bit of the wild west out there.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So I think that there were intentions

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

were good, intentions were good. But you know, now in retrospect it's like, but were they. Because there was also a big push to, from the early, you know, developing pharmaceutical industry to sort of standardize things. Not necessarily bad, but you know what's going on. And I want to make sure no one thinks I'm like a crazy anti pharma, because I'm not. No, no, no, of course not.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Okay, so alcohol, you prescribe more?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, I do, I prescribe. I just sent a Z pack to our friend last night. Anyways, I. So they hired Abraham Flexner who was an educator and he went all across the country looking at all the medical schools.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

What did medical schools look like back then?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Well, they looked like everything. So a lot of them actually integrated. A lot of them taught homeopathy, a lot of them taught natural medicine, a lot of them taught women. It turned out there were all these part time medical schools that women went to. It's not true that women weren't going into medicine, but they were doing things. They were having babies, they were taking care of families. They couldn't just up and you know, if you weren't rich, you couldn't just go to Harvard. And also if you weren't a white Anglo Saxon male, you were definitely not going to Harvard. So anybody who is ethnic of any sort was not getting into these schools. And there were seven black medical colleges at the time. They shut down all but two of the black medical colleges. They shut down like 80 or 90% of the part time for profit colleges, which is where women went and, you know, they got rid any homeopathy, natural medicine, all was marginalized. This. This is bad. This is dangerous. It became doctor as technician, patient as pathology. Look, there were things about that that were very modern and progressive for the time, but it was exclusionary to the point of really damaging, I think, damaging the way we delivered healthcare and the way we looked at humans. We started isolating parts and pieces of bodies instead of looking at the whole person. And the cool thing that I have found, and I knew this from my study of Ayurvedic medicine, was that it turns out all indigenous medicines were communal. So there are these ideas, for instance, that if you are sick, your family is sick, your community is sick. So we need to work together to help you heal. You have to take responsibility, and you have to do certain things different. But we are a whole. Doesn't that sound like something we might want to look at again? One of the biggest problems I'm seeing now is isolation. We know the Surgeon General has told us that isolation and loneliness are more dangerous to your health than smoking cigarettes. I think we got a bad taste of it during the shutdown and the pandemic. But it's deeper than that. We can't even talk to each other if we don't have the exact same opinion. What is that? This is not humans. We're tribal. So I'm a little Pollyannaish, I guess, but I don't think we have to all, like, throw out our scripts and roll around in the dirt. Okay. I'm not telling you to do any of those things. If you want to go for it, it might, but I think we need to be a little more expansive and a lot more curious and humble. That, to me, is what medicine is. Is my toolkit big and wide. Yes.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So your new book is planned.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah, it's called Plant Medicine, and it's a little bit of a play on things, because I know that for people who are in the know, plant medicine sounds like psychedelics. And that's very interesting for people right now. But plant medicine is really where medicine comes from. Plants. Plants. Over 30% of our pharmaceuticals today are plant derived, and they did not. Again, some genus in a lab.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

100% derived.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Exactly. And we borrowed them from whatever people were living in that area. Okay. This is not new. So the book is about both the use of botanical medicine and how we can use it today and what the actual evidence to support that use is, but also the history of medicine and the history of humans with medicine and how we interact with nature in Order to heal ourselves. And that is an inclination that we've always had. And it's super fascinating. I'm having the best time working on it and I so excited to share it with the world.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You should read it.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Everybody should read it. I mean, anybody who's interested in healing themselves, this is not just for women. This is for everybody. I mean, there'll be some recipes in there for things. I brought you some things today that I made, but also people who are interested in the history of medicine or the history of, like, how humans interact with each other. It's the book that I've always wanted to write.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Well, what does it look like when science and ancient practices coexist? I don't think they're exclusive. Right?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Of course not. But people make assumptions. And I think if you understand that Flexner thing, you understand where some of our biases come from. Like, we didn't get trained learning about Flexner at all, or like, never heard of him.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I read your substance, right?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

So there's a lot of biases that are built into to the way we as clinicians are trained. And I think that's a big opportunity to widen the lens here and look at like, well, wait, what is medicine? What is the art and the practice of medicine? And this idea that there's no science to support the use of herbs is untrue. There's a ton of ethnobotanical research, There's a ton of bench research, you know, so not necessarily in humans, but we know how rosemary works, right? We know that rosemary, most of your cooking herbs are medicinal because they have very specific chemical components that, for instance, are immune boosting or are literally anti infective. They work against microbes, they're antimicrobial. So, you know, we know that honey does that too. There's science to this. I'm not making this up.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

How would a woman integrate this into her life responsibly?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Well, so a couple of things. First of all, because most of you aren't gonna go out and make your own medicine. Although if you grow oregano, for instance, it's very easy to infuse it into oil. I mean, I'll tell you how to do it right now. Clean it off, make sure there's no pesticides on it, dry it, put it into a jar, like maybe an eight ounce jar of really high quality olive oil or some oil that you like, let it soak, close it, sit it in the sun in a sunny window for two weeks, strain it. Now you have oregano oil. You can Put that on a burn, on a cut. You can put a couple of drops in your mouth to help fight off a cold. Anybody can go to the market today and do this. Most of you are not gonna make all your own medicines. So if you're looking at the supplement world, it is regulated. It is not regulated to the same level as the FDA and pharma. There's something called dshea. Okay? It's not perfect. It's something you have to be very careful when you're purchasing online or in a store. You need to make sure that that is third party tested, that what you think is in it is in it.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

How would they know it's third party tested?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

There's usually a label on there. And if online, you can just put. Usually there'll be a search engine in their own website. Just put in third party. If you can't find it, if you're looking for a long time, forget it. It's not there. Or it shouldn't be that hard.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

It should be prominent.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Right. Because any brand that has integrity wants you to know that somebody else is coming in. Scientists are coming in and testing it and saying, yes, this is the strength. Yes, it's unadulterated. No, there are no lead or mercury and contaminants. Exactly. A lot of stuff is coming from other countries and. And it's not so clean. So that is my number one piece of advice. And I think working with somebody who really knows what they're talking about. Because I think if you're gonna start treating yourself and now you're gonna go to your physician and they're gonna be like, what are you doing through all that out? I mean, that's not helpful. I will say, just from the ayurvedic perspective, we don't treat the same way. Like, oh, you have this problem. Here is the solution. It's much more nuanced than that. So we're gonna leave that to the side for a minute. But there's. There are plenty of things that we can reach for that can be helpful to us on a daily basis. And I think the practice of it helps us reconnect again to our human history, to ourselves, to some kind of intuition. And I think that's really healthy. Because when we're outsourcing, we started talking about how to advocate for ourselves. When we're outsourcing our entire being and all of our health, that's actually where we get into trouble.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I think you're right.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

We gotta own it a little bit.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

It's so confusing. There's so much.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It's very confusing.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Misinformation, disinformation. You know, people trying to profit.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Yeah. And people also who really think that they know and they don't have the chops. I have been in medicine for. I graduated my residency 26 years ago. I have been practicing medicine for 26 years. I had four years of residency, four years of medical school, four years of life, and four years of college before that. Okay. I have studied ayurveda for almost 20 years. I'm an authority. Okay. I think there are people out there who are super interesting, creative, brilliant thinkers, and they don't have the chops. So I think that they should say they have an opinion, say they're thinking about something, share their ideas, collaborate with people who have worked. I don't. I studied with people who studied this ancient technology for years and decades and had generational transmission of this information, which is what we did in medical school too.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Right.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

And I still am learning. I don't know anything. So we have to be a little bit careful about where we're getting our information from. And just because somebody says they're an authority does not mean they're an authority.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

I know. I always, like if you can't clearly see someone, if they're representing themselves as a doctor. Like, I see this all the time on social. And you'll see Dr. X. Right?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Right.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

But there's no credentials after their name. Doctor of what?

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Doctor.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You know, and I always tell people, take that with a grain of salt. Most of us will put our credentials out.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Exactly.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

So you know where this person is.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

That's exactly right. You know, these kinds of conversations bring me hope. I think, you know, working on this book has given me a lot of hope also because I see that humans have always struggled and we've always had challenges, but when we come together, we come up with solutions. I gotta shout out my dad for being 89 and publishing a book. That gives me a lot of hope. Like, you know, it's interesting because I. Early in this kind of menopause conversation, I talked a lot about shifting the narrative and reminding people that menopause and beyond is a significant part of your life. And it can be the best part of your life if you have the right resources. To look at my parent, who just keeps going and, like, decided he should write a book at 89, says everything like, it's over when you decide it's over. That gives me hope. I'm here now.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

What do you want women to feel after listening to this conversation? What are Your big takeaways for them.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I want them to feel like they have a chance. I do want them to stop adopting that narrative of victimhood that there's nothing that they can do and that it's all like, we're being oppressed. I mean, we are. We are actively being oppressed. Okay? But that doesn't mean that we can't exist in some very specific way. We always have. When I look at the history of women and the history of medicine and the history of witches, you know, seriously, like, female healers, midwives existed always. And they always were a little bit under the radar, and they were super powerful. I learned that some of the only women that were allowed to travel around the countryside in, you know, like, the Middle Ages were midwives and healers. They could go independently. These ladies were. They were very smart. They were going around, and they were not just going around and taking care of health. They were going around and they were talking to people. They were listening to people. They were empowering women in the way that they were capable of doing. So. We can do things, but we have to work together and support each other. We have to lift each other up. We don't have to be slapping each other down. That doesn't help.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Yeah, that I think, is core, at least in our field, you know, at this level is. Is really collaboration, you know, respecting each other's strengths, really respecting differences, really. If someone is thinking different than you, listen to her and try to understand why. You know, it's usually you'll learn something from that conversation.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

It's an opportunity.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Thank you so much for coming on pod.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

Thanks for having me.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

We love you so much.

[Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz]

I love you more.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

You can find Dr. Gilbert Lenz on most social platforms at askdrsusanne or through her website at thedoctorsanne.com or at www.gillberg.monarchmd.com. you can find full episodes of Unpaused on YouTube at Dr. Maryclair. I would love to hear from you about this topic and anything else that's on your mind. You can find me on Instagram @Doctor Maryclair and get honest and accurate information on health, fitness, and navigating [e-mail] My new book, the New Perimenopause, is available on Amazon. If you're loving this podcast, I have an important request. Please take a moment to follow Unpaused on your favorite podcast. Following and listening is what pushes this information to more women who need it. So if this podcast has helped you feel seen, understood, or supported, hit follow right now so you never miss an episode. Thank you for being here with me.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

Let's keep going.

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

Unpaused Unpaused is presented by Odyssey in conjunction with pod people. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Claire Hannah. The views and opinions expressed on Unpause

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

are those of the talent and guests

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This episode was sponsored by MIDI Health, the first virtual clinic created for women by women for the treatment of menopause. Don't let anyone tell you menopause is something you have to suffer through alone. Mitti can help. Visit joinmitty.com to learn more. Perimenopause is not early menopause. It is its own distinct biological phase and it has been largely ignored. My new book, the New Perimenopause, is about the seven to 10 years before periods stop a transition that is anything but. Gentlemen, hormones fluctuate wildly, and for many women this is when anxiety, brain fog, sleep disruption, weight changes, mood shifts, joint

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

pain, and that unsettling feeling of I

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

don't feel like myself anymore begin long before anyone says the word menopause. Perimenopause often starts quietly. It shows up in the brain first, then the body, then everywhere else, and all too often women are told nothing is wrong. I wrote the New Perimenopause because you deserve answers before things spiral, you deserve care before burnout, and you deserve a clear roadmap for a transition that medicine

[Dr. Mary Claire Haver]

has ignored for far too long.

[Podcast Host / Announcer]

The New Perimenopause is now available everywhere. Books are sold, learn more and order your [e-mail].