Loading summary
Transcript225 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Foreign. Welcome to the you Are Not Broken podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Casperson, a
- [00:09]
board certified urologist, thought leader, and conversation
- [00:13]
starter on midlife living, hormones, and sexuality. Enjoy the show.
- [00:18]
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the youe're Not Broken podcast. Today we're asking the question, what if frailty is optional? Something that I know a lot of people do not think about. So I have my good friend, Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Double Board Certified orthopedic surgeon, old boys club extraordinaire. You broke into it decades ago and you're still going strong. Welcome to the youe're Not Broken podcast.
- [00:39]
Dr. Vonda Wright
So thrilled to be with you again.
- [00:41]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yay, dude. Vonda and I met years ago in the era of doctors on social media, and we've walked. I mean, you have been doing this way longer than me, my dear, but
- [00:53]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I think the first time I spent any digital time with you during COVID Covid. During COVID I did this virtual thing and all of us were just tiptoeing into this space. Maybe you were there a long time, but I had just read Estrogen Matters and it changed my life. Like, I've got to talk about this. So. And then you, you said, I don't know who you are, but okay, I'll come.
- [01:17]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I was just happy to have any doctor because I was still, like, early in the social media. I was like, am I going to get kicked out of this doctor club? There were no doctor podcasters. Well, there were doctor podcasters, but there were no urology doctor podcasters.
- [01:29]
Dr. Vonda Wright
They were like university podcasts. Very straight. Very. Not that this is not straight, but you know what I mean.
- [01:38]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
This is not a straight podcast.
- [01:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
No, I know.
- [01:41]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
So what percentage of current orthopedic surgeons are female?
- [01:46]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Less than 6%. When I trained, there were 3%. 6% currently. Now, I think a couple years ago, there were 17% in the internship class. So that was a huge spike. I don't know if that persisted the next year because we were all counting that year, but needless to say, somebody's thrown out there. It's going to take 100 years to reach critical mass that you stop saying female surgeon. So about 33%. Yeah, we stopped having to make these distinctions all the time. Yeah.
- [02:20]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Sweet. So what made you read Estrogen Manners
- [02:23]
Dr. Vonda Wright
during COVID I can't decide how I found it, but perimenopause hit me like a brick house. Right? So I went straight from. And I say straight, not quite straight, but postpartum into probably perimenopause, because I Had a baby at 40. And then by the time I.
- [02:41]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
There's a thing. It's not published, but I like, I've talked to reproductive endocrinologists about this, guidance about this, and I'm like, there's a thing about the body's final last. Here's enough to have a baby, and I'm done.
- [02:52]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I read that.
- [02:53]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
You. You read it? Is it a published paper?
- [02:56]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I can't remember where I read it, but I'm like, why, after an entire life of having, being coupled and not having a baby, did I manage to squeeze one out? I talk about this all the time. I was such an athlete. I never had regular periods. I was one of these amenorrheic people my whole life, until finally my body got it together. I squeezed out one egg. I had a healthy baby, thank goodness, at 40, and then breastfed for a year. And then I don't think I ever felt like myself again until Even before, at 47, I thought my world was going to end. About 45, I knew so little about what was going on. And I'm an aging researcher. I mean, I'm a musculoskeletal aging researcher. You would think I would have known, but for the first time in my life. Kelly, do you. Dr. Casperson. I began having regular periods, and they were heavy like a river. And they might be 30 something one time, 28 the other time. But I thought to myself, oh, my God, at this time in my life, 45, 46, I am finally a woman. Because I was in perimenopause and in hormonal chaos, and my periods were haywire, but I was actually having them. And heavy like all the other girls I had ever talked to at school. I didn't realize that that was going on, but I learned very quickly because they were quickly accompanied by all the things, everything people experience. Hot flashes, nights with brain fog. And I dealt with that. But then when I started having heart palpitations in the middle of the night and panic attacks, and I thought I was dying. And because I don't do that, I'm a pretty level person. I can handle stress in the or, right? So I call my cardiology friend, and I'm like, ricky, Ricky, you have got to figure this out for me, because my people die of heart disease. So he puts me on a stress test. Heart's fine, Von. Nothing's wrong with you. And then my mind is the best part of me. It's a steel trap. I can remember a word on page. It's just the way my Mind works, and I couldn't remember nouns. I'm like, give me that thing. Give me that thing that I need to grab the thing in the or. And everybody's waiting for me to call in an Athson, because there's many things that can grab the thing. And I finally then was complaining about this one day to a nurse friend of mine. We were sitting. I lived in Atlanta at the time. We were sitting on her back porch in 197 degree weather. I don't know what we thought we were doing in a barbecue. Two menopausal women. And he's like, you know, a bunch of us girls, call this doctor in Chicago and he'll give you hormones. Yeah. So we're calling the secret doctor in Chicago. We're living in Georgia because we can't. She couldn't find a doctor. So the nurses had gotten together and found this guy in Chicago. And I'm like, I don't know. I better figure out if those are safe. Because I had heard of the bullshit data. And so somehow I found Estrogen matters. And I was on the way back home from a wedding, a long drive. I listened to it eight hours straight. I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Whoa, I need some of these now. So I listened to it again, and then I'm an underliner. And I bought the hard copy and I underlined it. And then I called the secret doctor in Chicago. I called secret doctor. He compounded a bunch of hormones for me because that's the best I could do at the time. But that's kind of the basis of my story. And.
- [06:37]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
No, it's. I mean, it's totally validating, number one, for any perimenopausal person. Because even what. Even though you're doing, like, longevity older people research, you're probably thinking, like, we all did. Menopause is age 70, not age 45. And also super validating to anybody who has the experience, which is way common of like, I had a baby and then it was perimenopause. Like, it's the final push that I think is very poorly documented, but I think it's a thing. I think the OPHI is like, here you go. By the way, I've met your child. It was manifest destiny that that person needed to exist on the planet. Freaking cool kid. After I met your kid, I was like, If I get 80% of that coolness for my kids, I'm doing a very, very good job.
- [07:21]
Dr. Vonda Wright
You know what? I have full faith in your daughters. I Do I've only heard of them, not met them yet. Yes.
- [07:28]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah, not yet, but so I mean, I think the other thing is like dude, you are an academic, trained, went to med school, orthopedic surgeon. It's not like you're not involved in what's happening in updates in medicine. And you had to go through like the freaking underground pathway to a doctor in Chicago to compound you a secret formulation. Like if that was your challenge with your connectedness and you're like in the medical system, everybody else is effed.
- [07:57]
Dr. Vonda Wright
They are and they still are. Because I sometimes live in this bubble where I believe that people have heard until I have my Tuesday afternoon clinic and the 46 year old woman is living this devastated life and I say, have you ever thought about maybe you're impairing menopause? And she's never heard of it.
- [08:18]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
A natural thing that occurs to 50% of the humans nobody has heard of,
- [08:22]
Dr. Vonda Wright
they might have heard of menopause. Never thought about it. But definitely not perimenopause until I tell them. And you know, we go down and I. You're probably not sleeping well. And I just guess that what she's experiencing and three and a half seconds later, she's crying.
- [08:37]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I was just gonna say. And then she cries, and then she cries.
- [08:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
And I, I mean number one, cause
- [08:41]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
she's got crazy hormones, but number two, somebody actually understands what she's going through. And she thinks she was crazy.
- [08:48]
Dr. Vonda Wright
She thought what the. I don't know what's going on. And so just when I think we're doing a great job and you and I just sat before the FDA, we say this to each other all the time. 80 million women over 40. There's so much work to do.
- [09:05]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
So much work to do. I know we were talking about that Today we're like 80 million women over the age of 41 million physicians to get educated. And not everybody's on Instagram. So it's like finding the. We gotta find the people that aren't on Instagram and don't listen to podcasts. And that's why we write books, because people also read books who don't happen to be on Instagram. So let's jump into your book first before we go to the papers. Why write a book about bones and fragility and tell us what we don't know, but we need to hear.
- [09:35]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah. So unbreakable, which is the name of the book. Which is best.
- [09:39]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Best name ever.
- [09:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Great. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. Right. It's what I. It's part of what I do. Unbreakable is about bones. It has a lot about bones. And I do want to talk about bones, because they're totally misunderstood. So you and I are going to help people really understand the miracle of bones. Unbreakable. The book actually is my answer to two things. It's the first, in my opinion, longevity book from the point of view of a woman. Because there's plenty of longevity books from the point of view of the bros, and bless their hearts, it's not that theirs is wrong, but they probably did not consider the role of estrogen on the. What I call the time bombs of aging, the hallmarks of aging, and the fact that there is natural aging and then there's post estrogen walking out the door, aging. And it's not the same thing.
- [10:34]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
It's an accelerated state of aging.
- [10:36]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It is. It is.
- [10:37]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I mean, with how much you and I, you know, and. And people like us know now, it's insane that anybody actually questions the importance of hormones at this point. But we're, like, in it. But it's like when you look at the graphs of, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the mother Nature, Father time ticking along, boom. Menopause, it starts going fast for people who don't replace their hormones.
- [11:02]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Exactly. And so I am so sad that it took me between 47 and I think I finally went on hormones at 50 to figure it out, because I lost three good years, or maybe I would have started at 45 had I known. Right. So I encourage that decision really early on these years. But Unbreakable covers longevity from the point of view of women. The book is full of stories of me, my patients, people who have gone through this and what they did about it. So it's that point of view, the longevity from the female point of view, the science of it. It's also a what to do now. Right. So now that we're here, I think there are a lot of fabulous books about menopause. You wrote one, you wrote another one coming out soon. And I know your second one extends beyond that, but I wanted to pick up because enough people were understanding what was happening in menopause. Now what do I do? So really, the second whole part of this book is just what I do. I mean, I'm still a practicing surgeon. I have this business called precision longevity where people come and help me make. Have me make plans for them based on data, because my office is in this gorgeous metabolic lab place, and I have all these toys. I do testing. So I'm like, here's how you do it, because this is how I do it for people. But it has a couple surprising things. And then I will hop back to bone. We have to be mentally resilient to get through this. And so a chapter in the beginning talks about values and goal setting and perspective and setting yourself up to be able to take action. And then towards the end of the book, we talk about what is the next level of mental resilience. And during COVID because I had more time and because I read the data that female doctors kill themselves more than men, and of the doctors that kill themselves, male orthopods kill themselves, I thought, holy cow, I've got to figure out how to build resilience in my peers. So I became trained in this system of how to build hardiness. And so we talk about that in the book, about how do we step into feeling in control? How do we make a commitment to ourselves? And how do we see the difficulties as challenges, not as oppression. So it's this mindset to go forward that I address. But I think that naming the book Unbreakable is like a double meaning, right? We're unbreakable and all these things. But because I'm a bone doctor, and here's what people believe about bones is that if they think about them at all, they think about them in terms of, oh, my gorgeous bone structure. Look at these cheekbones, which I really don't have, but. Or look at my clavicles under this dress or something, right? Or, oh, my delicate wrists, my bones. They think about them like that. They think about them in terms of.
- [14:07]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
They're like hangers to hang clothes on. Yeah.
- [14:10]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, you know what? They're just structural. Well, without bones, muscles, just heaping mass of quivering metabolic tissue. It's got. It's not attractive, right? Bones make muscle attractive. Or they think about them when they break. Those are the only three things people think about with bones. But the reality is, bones are dynamically remodeling, meaning every 10 years, you get a new set of bones. We build, we take, we build, we take.
- [14:37]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
That's trippy.
- [14:38]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It's amazing. And they're endocrine organs. They are master communicators, secreting hormones like osteocalcin that communicate with the whole body. And that makes sense to me because if we are intelligently designed, then if I want to communicate with a whole body, I'm going to do it through a system that's from the top of my head to the bottom of my pinky toe, because that's the pathway. Why should I create a different pathway. So it's amazing. And nobody knows that about bone.
- [15:13]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
The amount of people who think osteoporosis or osteopenia is a fixed state that's immutable and permanent. Like I thought that did you.
- [15:24]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Because you're a neurologist. There's no.
- [15:26]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I went to medical school.
- [15:27]
Dr. Vonda Wright
There's no.
- [15:27]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Urology. Has one bone. It's not good when it breaks.
- [15:33]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah, yeah, I've heard you talk about that. Actually.
- [15:38]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I've told this story on the podcast before, but I've done one co surgery with an orthopedic surgeon. It's kind of infamous in our town for people who know. So while ago now, somebody put a motorcycle coil around their penis and then left it there for a week or two. What? Yeah. And so like I called the fire department, I called the Level 1 Trauma Center. A cancer guy was on call that was worthless. And so I called ortho in because they have the diamond tip drill bits which we needed to get the automotive grade steel coil from around this guy's penis. And so I'm like squirting water on it to like keep it cool to help protect.
- [16:17]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Did you put a malleable retractor underneath
- [16:20]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
to seal the penis? It was too swollen. It was too swollen. But we were able. I was able to get like, what's the vaseline gauze enough like under there to help protect it. And we ran out of diamond tip drill bits. Like, patient lost a follow up is the short answer. Short answer. But it's an infamous. The only orthourology combo case.
- [16:42]
Dr. Vonda Wright
That orthopod went to the academy meeting and he was sitting in the lobby of the hotel with 30 surgeons around him telling this story. And then those 30 surgeons went back to their cities. This story is pro. I can't believe I haven't heard it before I met you. I mean, these ortho boys I love.
- [17:03]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Oh yeah, that's my friend Kelly up in the. Up there.
- [17:06]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I love them, but they would been telling this story, Kelly.
- [17:09]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
It's pretty crazy long. The long story short is don't make love to an automotive grade motorcycle coil
- [17:15]
Dr. Vonda Wright
and then be too embarrassed to come
- [17:16]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
in and then leave it on for two to three weeks afterwards.
- [17:20]
Dr. Vonda Wright
But you know what? I've often thought about writing a different kind of book to tell all the weird medical stories that we never process while we're doing them.
- [17:29]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Like, if only we would like write them down and remember them in our states of trauma. Okay, so what percentage you know this data? If you. If you don't. Nobody does. What percentage of osteoporosis can be reversed if you work at it?
- [17:45]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I don't think that study has ever been done because people ignore bones. Ignore them.
- [17:50]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
We don't even know if I get diagnosed with osteoporosis today and I say I'm going to start eating right, exercising, jumping, get. I'll get on the hormones or what percentage of people like me will have reversed that in a year?
- [18:02]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, maybe. I just don't know it. I don't think it exists. We know we can reverse osteopenia, but osteo. Frank, osteoporosis minus 2.5 is a long haul and you're not doing it here.
- [18:16]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I've seen people do it though now. Like, I was working out. I was working out at a Marriott hotel gym. There's this woman there. This is like a month ago. They're recording my audiobook and she's like, Dr. Castron, blah, blah, blah. Thank you. She fell skiing, broke something, then got diagnosed with osteoporosis. Changed her diet, started working out, got on the hormones. She's reversed her osteoporosis everywhere except for one bone.
- [18:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I would be so surprised if somebody has done that study.
- [18:43]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
You would think the physical therapists have done that study. Physical therapists who are listening, tell me, because what do you tell a person, somebody comes into your office, they've got osteoporosis.
- [18:54]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I'll give you these data. So of all the things we know, that replacing estrogen, because here's what estrogen does to bone. So in bone, we have osteocytes that are pulling bone out. They're making an acidic environment which leeches out all the minerals your body needs to live. Osteoblasts are building the bone back. This is a dynamic balance when you have your estrogen, because estrogen helps control the osteoclast, which is a wild child. It's going to keep eating like Pac man controls it. So it's homeostasis. Without estrogen, we are out of balance. We're breaking down more than we're building. Yeah. So without estrogen, menopause, hormone therapy, or hormone optimization, we're never going to stop that imbalance. So if we want to rebuild the most, we consider that to the tune of 3 to 7% increase in bone density over about two years. That is if you put hormones on, you layer on top of that. Let's add some weight training. There's a big range of lifting. Lifting heavy the lift more. Study shows that even women With Frank, osteoporosis can lift heavy, meaning five reps, five sets. That was their protocol, I believe, under supervision without cracking up and being injured.
- [20:19]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Meaning by the end of five reps, five sets, you're toasted.
- [20:23]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah. Five is to failure. Meaning. And we can define that. So lifting heavy means lower reps, higher weights, such that the fourth rep is hard. You're just pushing that bench press up. The fifth rep you can get it, but you're not doing six. Because if you're pushing that up, you're going to fail and one slide is going to slip off. Right. So that's what heavy means. And it's a situation you work up to.
- [20:48]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
So it's to near failure.
- [20:50]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It's to near failure. You don't have to drop the weights off. But you can't do six reps. If your goal is four, you can't do six. You can gain. The data has a wide range, but according to Osteoporosis International, you can gain about 8.4% bone density back from lifting weights. So if you've got 7%, that's good. About 8% from weight training and then the other things, Right. If we believe in collagen, 1 to 2% a year from adding a collagen, a weighted vest, not great studies. 1 to 3% if you believe the very small studies and weight bearing exercise, 1 to 3%. So if you want the optimal bone building and I didn't even talk about nutrition, you need.
- [21:35]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Oh yeah, I was going to say protein and vitamin D. Vitamin D, magnesium,
- [21:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
little bitty minerals that you. Micronutrients, you can build back a substantial amount, percentage of bone density. But it really takes all things, not just one.
- [21:55]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah, don't do one and see how you do and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I mean, I think this is the argument against can we take hormones if we're not symptomatic? Because the big push after the WHI was symptomatic only. And it's like. And you said this at the fda, talk is this is estrogen is FDA approved for the prevention of osteoporosis.
- [22:15]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It sure is. And if we know from other data that I quoted that for optimal effect in your 70s, you need to take it for about 10 years. You can't just start it at 65. We should be starting this so you have this long run up of estrogen to prevent fracture. I frequently quippy, tongue in cheek, say everybody can argue about everything when it comes to hormones, but you can't argue with my data, not my personal Data, but the bone data, you can't argue with it. It's pretty clear, right?
- [22:47]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Going back to you suffering in perimenopause. Ten years from now we're going to be treating perimenopause. I don't want to say aggressively, but like just knowing what it is and educating women. Because your biggest rate of bone loss is the two years before your period ends. And you don't know when your period's going to end.
- [23:05]
Dr. Vonda Wright
And you don't feel it.
- [23:07]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
You don't and you can't feel it.
- [23:09]
Dr. Vonda Wright
You can't feel your bones disintegrating.
- [23:11]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
You cannot remind people, for those in the back, how awful is a hip fracture?
- [23:17]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh my God, people. Number one, it's excruciating, excruciating pain you've never felt before. Because the femur, I usually have a femur sitting around my office. I'm surprised. I don't. It is the biggest friggin bone. It is not unlike my forearm. It's 40 millimeters across. Right. It's got a thick cortex, which is the tree bark. It hurts when it breaks, it makes a sound, there's a big pop. And then as the bone edges rub
- [23:45]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
together, the urologist makes a face like she never has before.
- [23:48]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, oh, I know. I'm so sorry. And then you wait till the orthopod to pull it out to length. That's no fun. But here's the deal. The minute pop, the minute you hear the pop, you break your femur. You have a 30% chance of dying from the complications. So if you're weak, if you're not coming in a specimen of physical fitness, you're more frail. Yeah, you're more frail. And you may already come in with chronic UTIs. You pointed out the other day to me, that's probably why they fell down. They got dizzy from their chronic UTIs,
- [24:23]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
they're rushing to the bathroom from their urinary urgency.
- [24:26]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah. So the minute you pop your femur, 30% chance of dying. Here's a bigger number. 50% of the time you will not return to pre fall function, which means your family is going to be faced with the decision whether you get full time help, which is more expensive than anybody can do, whether you move in with your children, which most people say, I don't want to be a bother to my children, or you move into a nursing home. I mean, those are no choices. In my opinion, prevention is the best
- [24:57]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
medicine in this scenario.
- [24:59]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It is. And data show that the addition of HRT can decrease the incidence of fractures by 30 to 50%. The WHI itself said 33%. So this is no joke. Prevention here. It's probably the clearest example of prevention we have.
- [25:16]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
The WHI data is fascinating because that's in women who did not have a diagnosis of osteoporosis and it decreased bone fracture. I thought it was 50%, but yeah, that's in people who didn't have a diagnosis of amazing osteoporosis.
- [25:30]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Well, and that's the other thing. Right. We get diagnosed with osteoporosis. Maybe when you fracture. Not all hospitals have a hip fracture protocol where you go get a DEXA scan, blah blah blah, or you turn 65 and. And finally someone will order it for you. So we don't even diagnose this most of the time.
- [25:51]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah. I think this is interesting. In America, estrogen is not FDA approved for the treatment of osteoporosis. And that'll be people's argument. I can't go on hormones because I already have osteoporosis. But it is government approved for treatment of osteoporosis in the UK and in other countries.
- [26:07]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah, we're just behind.
- [26:09]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Right. And there is data in giving hormones to people with osteoporosis that it does improve bone density. Plus my other argument is like just because you have osteoporosis in your left hip, you don't have it in your radius yet. Like protect that bone. Right. Like osteoporosis doesn't mean all 206 bones are bad. No.
- [26:29]
Dr. Vonda Wright
And the ones we really care about is our lumbar and thoracic lumbar spine. Hips and thoracic spine mainly. Right. Because those are the devastating ones that take your life.
- [26:39]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Well, I don't want to break my radius either.
- [26:41]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Well, no you don't.
- [26:42]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Personal preference.
- [26:43]
Dr. Vonda Wright
That's supreme and hassle for you. But it's not a deadly challenge.
- [26:48]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
But fair enough. It won't. It will. A radius fracture won't kill me. I remember my grandma though, she had bilateral wrist fractures because she fell on the stairs.
- [26:55]
Dr. Vonda Wright
And then what do you do? You can't take care of yourself for three months.
- [26:58]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Can't take care.
- [26:59]
You can't wipe your butt.
- [27:00]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Right. You cannot. It's demoralizing from a fracture.
- [27:04]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Totally. Let's talk about musculoskeletal syndrome and menopause.
- [27:07]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Let's do it. So it's the anniversary. The 30th of July is the anniversary of this fake.
- [27:13]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Do a big. Do a big social media push up.
- [27:15]
Dr. Vonda Wright
But too I will.
- [27:17]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I Bet you will.
- [27:18]
Dr. Vonda Wright
That paper has been downloaded more than 400,000 times.
- [27:22]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
400,000 downloads for that paper.
- [27:25]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I'm gonna put it in context for your people. Nope. I looked it up because I'm a little competitive. When my medical student called me and he's like, this paper has been downloaded more than any paper in the history of the journal. Like, no open.
- [27:39]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
So it's open access. Anybody can read it, it's free online.
- [27:42]
Dr. Vonda Wright
The money to make it open access, $5,000. Meaning it's not buying a pave. Well, because it was important. Right. And I'll get to the paper. But the best papers in the best journals, British medical journal, Lancet, JAMA, are downloaded 10,000 times to put it in context. And 50% of all research is only read by the Author since submitted.
- [28:04]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
50% of published research is only read by the author who submits it.
- [28:09]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah, according to the Internet, yes. So that puts this in context. So when I finally recognized what was going on, which was not as ancient history, I would have wanted to be, and women who come to my office, it's been many years now, but it's not been 20 years, it's not been 10 years. I noticed the same pattern. They were complaining that their arms didn't move, they had frozen shoulder, their total body hurt, and they may or may not have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I'm like, why is every 45 year old woman suddenly being diagn diagnosed with fibromyalgia? Why do women after 50 have so much more arthritis than men after 50, when before 50 men have more. I already knew about osteoporosis. I already knew about the loss of muscle. Why do our stem cells go down? All these things. And I started just being the curious person I am and looking everything up. We have known about the osteoporosis of menopause for 30 years. It's been described in the literature. But we have known about frozen shoulder forever. And the sentinel paper on it was written in 2011. And the conclusion said, this seems to happen in midlife women. We should evaluate the correlative factors, blah, blah, blah. I mean, like, figure it out, people. And everybody's lost their estrogen. And so I started going down the road. I'm like, oh my God. Estrogen receptors, alpha and beta are on every musculoskeletal tissue. So why would we think when estrogen walks out the door, that all the musculoskeletal tissue wouldn't be affected by the starvation of this critical hormone that keeps the whole Thing healthy. And then a few months before, six months before, Rachel Rubin and her group had written the paper, the Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause. And that nomenclature had caught on. And so it sparked to me. I'm like, if I create a nomenclature so women can go talk to their doctors and not have to say, my shoulder hurts, my body hurts, my back hurts, my knee hurts, which is going to make a bunch of orthopods a little crazy, but they have a.
- [30:16]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
No, all these things hurt. There's nothing to operate on.
- [30:19]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Right.
- [30:20]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Sorry.
- [30:20]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Nothing's wrong with you. And you know what? 41% of the time when radiology is done, there isn't a structural damage because it's a hormonal problem. We did it to give a nomenclature, to increase communication, to help women know they were not crazy, because that's what they say to me, doc, I think I'm falling apart. I don't know what happened. One day I'm fine, the next minute, everything hurts. I think I'm falling apart. But you know what? I think I'm going crazy because I've been told nothing's wrong with me, but I couldn't take it anymore. And then they stop and say, but you know what? I have a really high pain tolerance. As if they're begging me to believe them. They're begging me to believe them and not blow them off like they've been blown off. So that's why we wrote that paper. And the fact that it's been downloaded more than 400,000 times does not mean that I wrote God's gift to papers. What it means, although it's a good paper, what it means is the need is so great, Kelly. The need is so great out there. Yeah.
- [31:24]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
The needs incredibly huge. Like, you know, we just quote the numbers, and it's just like, silence is like if 80 million women over the age of 40, they've all got. Am I saying 206 bones? That's right.
- [31:34]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Two and six. Two hundred and six, yes.
- [31:36]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Two hundred and six. There hasn't. They haven't discovered a new bone since I graduated from medical school. Pluto's not a planet anymore, so there might be a new bone. I gotta check in every once in a while. Women who take hormones have less osteoarthritis. Women who take hormones have less frozen shoulder.
- [31:52]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yes, they do.
- [31:53]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
And we. I've read a crazy paper a while ago that about 50% of women diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in midlife is a false positive. They don't actually have Rheumatoid arthritis. It's an over diagnosis of something they don't have.
- [32:06]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It's like fibromyalgia. They come in at total body pain. The first thing people think of is polymyalgia rheumatica. They draw all these rheumatic labs and
- [32:17]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
they all come back borderline.
- [32:19]
Dr. Vonda Wright
They're borderline or negative. And then while we got to fit you in somewhere, let's make you seronegative rheumatoid or something.
- [32:26]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Rheumatoid.
- [32:27]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I'm not saying that that is not a real diagnosis. Rheumatology is built on this. But I'm saying that can we be a little bit more curious and consider that maybe some of this pain is due to estrogen start deprivation and start a woman on life saving hormone therapy, Bone saving, I should say pain saving. It infers a 30 to 40% decrease in all cause mortality. But from the musculoskeletal system. Can we try that? Before we put you on methotrexate, we'll
- [33:00]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
talk about risk benefits of medications. Right. People are so like air quote freaked out about hormones and I'm like, oh yeah, like methotrexate is benign and let alone the osteoporosis medications.
- [33:11]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, right, right.
- [33:12]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Like what do the orthopedic surgeons say? Like right now it's like you can't. They don't recommend being on them for more than five to seven years because of the risk of atypical femur fracture.
- [33:23]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Because the category, the bisphosphonates, for instance. So remember how bones work. They break down and they build. It's dynamic. We never have too much or too little, hopefully, because it's dynamic. The bisphosphonates prevent the remodeling. So you keep building bone because what matters is not only amount of bone, but quality of bone. So when you have a femur, when you're looking at a femur fracture or a femur, you're listening, it looks like a little cane, a hook, like a pistol. You can see the stress lines in the femur because our bodies lay down bone along the lines of stress. Because every step you take, believe it or not, you're bending the bone a little bit. That's just the way bones are. You think they're hard, but they actually give. And so it's that give ability, if you will, it's the ability to take the stress that really matters for fracture.
- [34:21]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
So the bisphosphonates will prevent bone breakdown, but you get a stiffer bone from it.
- [34:28]
Dr. Vonda Wright
You get a Stiffer bone. So ultrasound like you had one. I had one. We had a REM scan. Right. To look at the quality of our bone, which tells us the bendability.
- [34:38]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah. This was in Australia when we were over there and I got my hip and my spine ultrasounded and he's like. Is showing a light bone, like a less dense bone, but it's a very strong bone. And then I came over to America and I got a DEXA scan where all it shows is density. And I got diagnosed with osteopenia.
- [34:57]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yes.
- [34:58]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Which my understanding is it's kind of a made up term because they had to put something between normal and osteoporosis.
- [35:03]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah. It's minus one standard deviation below the curve.
- [35:07]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Many people with osteopenia still have very strong bone. It's just not as dense. So dexas aren't perfect. And like, you know, Dr. Abram blooming said if you. The best way to evaluate strength of a bone is to put it in a vice and break it and see at which force it breaks. But that's a bad idea.
- [35:24]
Dr. Vonda Wright
We do it in the lab. We have a robot that does that. And then what are we going to do with you?
- [35:29]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Put you in a vice. No, thank you. Hey, do you think I'm going to put you on the spot? Do you think we have enough data yet for you to do a second musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause paper but have it be focused on testosterone?
- [35:41]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Well, we got a good paper today that we're excited about. I haven't seen enough papers to say, I mean I've seen five or six. I don't know that we have 40 papers on musculoskeletal. Not that you need 40, but you need more than five or six.
- [35:56]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah, I mean I think so. Testosterone works on the osteoblasts so it helps build. And new paper just out today, looking at this was a retrospective chart analysis. But it was people who've been prescribed charts though. Yeah. Of like a million people in each. Half a million in each group. So it's decently big. Anybody who'd had testosterone for at least three months versus people who had no testosterone, male and female women had a 50% decrease risk of hip fracture in the testosterone group. And I think more and more and going along with your book of like this is frailty prevention and there's no age cutoff, not that there's any age cutoff for any hormone at this point. Age is. Age is a made up place. A thing to tell you if you can vote or not and if you can get Medicare or not. But it does it. Yeah, that's a good. Yeah, but like, but biologically, like, no, we're, we are, we're all on different clocks. Right. But testosterone doesn't have the age risk, fear. I would say that traditional estradiol does. That's a whole nother podcast. But it's like looking at frailty. I mean, there's a paper, looking at the JAMA paper that just came out. This is another. I'm like literally going to write this testosterone muscle skeletal syndrome on paper with you. So JAMA article that just came out, 2025, looking at testosterone versus placebo post hip fracture. It was a negative study. If you only read the abstract, what their end was was how far you can walk in a six minute walk test. Oh, so it was regular rehab and testosterone versus regular rehab and placebo after a hip fracture in women. And they didn't walk any farther in six minutes than the women on placebo. So negative study by what they picked as their endpoint. But any testosterone expert will tell you testosterone doesn't always make you walk farther in a certain amount of times. Not where testosterone shines. Testosterone shines in core strength and lean body mass. So if you look further down the paper, women on Testosterone had a 50% less likely chance of needing a walker or a cane at six months.
- [37:57]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yes, yes.
- [37:58]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Which is important, incredibly important. That's in dep. That's independence. And the theory being testosterone increases core strength and that's why you can hold yourself upright without a cane or a walker. And that's been shown before, like with MRI studies where they actually MRI people's core strength on testosterone. So to me, I'm like, we're collecting testosterone data by fits and starts. We do not have what we have with estrogen.
- [38:23]
Dr. Vonda Wright
There's no organized series of studies. But this going back to the one that just came out today, my first reaction was, oh, well, they, it was only three months and they didn't, I don't know if they were checking testosterone levels. How do we know those women were even therapeutic, Blah, blah, blah. But then when you get to the end and it's 50% decrease, like who cares because they, they prevent a fracture anyway. I mean, not who cares, we didn't test levels. But it kind of negates my argument that if it hadn't been found to be significant, I could have said, well, maybe they didn't bring their levels up. May it was only three months. Nothing happens in three months. But the fact that something did with a minimum of three months. That's very interesting.
- [39:09]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Super interesting. Yeah. I gotta dig into it more. But what we know with testosterone is serum levels don't always correlate to testosterone receptors and tissue penetration.
- [39:19]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Right.
- [39:19]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Like to me, I'm like, even if somebody was to argue it wasn't a good paper because we didn't check serum levels, then you can argue serum levels don't accurately represent end tissue organ.
- [39:30]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah.
- [39:30]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Testosterone concentration.
- [39:32]
Dr. Vonda Wright
You know what I just thought, I have a group of people who come to me just for menopause. And in those women, I always draw their testosterone because I'm going to supplement it if it, if it's low. But I don't commonly draw that in women with musculoskeletal syndrome and menopause. I think it might be because I know their estrogen's gone. So, you know, I, I don't make judgments based on that, but maybe I should because when men look at me being so. So when men come into my clinic and they have multiple joint pain and their tendons are all popping and I very commonly say, we're going to check your testosterone. And they'll sometimes say, oh, but you know what, I had that done and it's normal. To which I say, just because it falls within the normal, 350 is low for a man. Right. So I explained to these men, well, it may be normal range, but you may have been 1,000 when you were 30 and you're 300 now. So in my own clinic, I readily test testosterone. Maybe I'm going to start doing that for women.
- [40:40]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Testosterone is important because testosterone modulates pain. You know, we know women have less pain when they get testosterone supplemented. And so I'm like, that also fits into the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause and your experience of it is it, it's, I mean, testosterone is anti inflammatory also and it helps modulate pain and make things less painful.
- [41:00]
Dr. Vonda Wright
So let me ask you this. So if an 86 year old came in and heard all these podcasts, I liberally give my mother vaginal estrogen, right. I don't care what age she is. Now I'm thinking, you know, she's out there walking around our pool with her little six pound weights trying to stay strong. She's doing everything she hears me say because she was very frail, she almost died of heart problems. So she's come back from that. I'm now sitting here thinking, there's no age limit. Why haven't I offered this woman some testosterone cream? Am I going to damage my 86 year old mother? What are your thoughts? Because you know more about testosterone than me.
- [41:38]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
No, I mean I've put any aged human on testosterone. Who wants it? I mean testosterone in women is still pretty woo. Right? Like once we get an fda, when we get an FDA approved female dose testosterone, it will explode this conversation. So we're just having this conversation early.
- [41:55]
Right.
- [41:55]
But when we get an FDA approved dose for testosterone, is it going to have an age limit on it? No.
- [42:00]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah. For everybody.
- [42:01]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah. Unlikely. Right? It'll be, it'll hopefully be for hypogonadism. I think the amount of frail people in this country compared to the amount of data we have on frail people is embarrassing. Like they're forgotten and we don't give a shit. Probably because we've forgotten them and we don't give a shit.
- [42:17]
Dr. Vonda Wright
They're old. It's not sexy.
- [42:19]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
They're costing society billions of dollars in care. Shouldn't we care about getting them as functional as we can?
- [42:26]
Dr. Vonda Wright
When you're a 30 year old hotshot researcher wanting to change the world, it's hard. I mean I could be totally wrong. 30 year old hotshot researcher out there.
- [42:37]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
But you know, are you speaking about your former self?
- [42:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
No.
- [42:41]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Or your current medical student?
- [42:44]
Dr. Vonda Wright
I'm the aging researcher, remember? But I did study master's athletes, so maybe it's me. I didn't study frail people, I studied prime masters athletes. They just happen to be chronologically over 40.
- [42:57]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah. I think it's very interesting looking at the data which again there's minuscule data which is shocking on testosterone for joint repair, rotator cuff tears. There's very compelling mice data. But like testosterone helps these joints recover. And I know people who've done high dose testosterone for shoulder injuries. I'm not advocating this, this is not medical advice.
- [43:24]
Dr. Vonda Wright
It's off label.
- [43:26]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
But this is off label. Yeah, but the fact that we're not researching that and like people are, they, they get put out of a job for shoulder injuries. Why are we not looking at this? It's insane to me.
- [43:38]
Dr. Vonda Wright
You know, for orthopedic surgeons to pick up this mantle, the first questions that will have to be answered is those that affect surgery. Because I mean my research was not that interesting to my peers because I was not changing surgical technique. My hip research was, my nanoscope research is. But my aging research never was. So to answer these questions in the orthopedic literature, it'll have to be as related to total joint replacement, either recovery or implant stability. That's how I make the argument to young surgeons, they should be interested in estrogen. Like, do you like operating on bones that are like butter? Do you like your, your perfectly placed gorgeous X ray implants failing and falling out or breaking the bone around them? But that's okay. We'll start with the surgical thing.
- [44:31]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Even like the sports med docs though,
- [44:33]
Dr. Vonda Wright
like the, the non surgical sports docs would. That would be great.
- [44:36]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
The non operative, like, why are we looking at testosterone? For joint rehab for sure. Let's go a little, let's go a little more woo since we're going there. Peptides. Peptides are hot right now.
- [44:46]
Dr. Vonda Wright
They are.
- [44:46]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
What's a peptide and why is it super hot in longevity and ortho and joint?
- [44:52]
Dr. Vonda Wright
So peptides are just a series of amino acids that form a compound. Your body makes peptides. GLP1's a peptide, GLP1's a peptide. So our body makes them. But what's hot right now are, besides GLP1 are not necessarily what our body makes, but those that we think that can somehow augment processes. Like the one I'm asked for the most is BPC157, which in rat and murine models has great effects on wound healing and recovery. And so with those kind of data, it becomes very big in performance arenas. Like with athletes and the influencers. Right? Athletes are influencers. So one guy tells another guy who tells the parents of these young athletes that want to emulate and suddenly it's a thing. So I don't think we know enough. Certainly enough. Not enough for me to every day hand them out. So this is my approach. People come to me for precision, longevity and they want to start with the woo woo. Like peptides and all these things.
- [45:59]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah, Hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
- [46:02]
Dr. Vonda Wright
All the things that could eventually be additive on two conditions, number one. Three conditions, number one. You have totally optimized your health. Because people come into me wanting to start with longevity. Woo woo. Because they've read it or they've seen somebody, but their health is just fine. It's not optimized. Their labs are not okay. They don't have a regular program. And so my approach is you come to me with okay health. We're going to spend all the time it takes to develop the standards and optimize your health. Once you pass that threshold and everything's perfect, well then I'm going to layer on the things that I do for my pro athletes that I've treated my whole life, which is a different kind of labs. It's a very fine, detailed I mean, the pro athletes. When I was in Pittsburgh, I ran this building where the hockey team was. They had everything taken care of them nutritionally, from the moment they woke up to the minute they went to bed. Everything. Right. So then we'll slip into the performance things. Only when someone's in peak performance. My approach is to do the woo woo things. That's condition number one or two. But the third condition is you have to be willing to accept research influenced or evidence influenced, not evidence based. Right. Allopathic medicine, osteopathic medicine, traditional medicine is evidence based. We're going to do the studies before we make a decision. The reality is, even in current medical practice, we do a lot of off label. We use drugs for not what they're approved for. Just commonly in longevity and certainly in biohacking, the whole community is willing to accept evidence influenced, meaning we don't have the data. We have it in rats. It could work. We don't know. We really don't know safety data, but we're convinced enough. And so, I mean, everybody can choose.
- [48:06]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I think it's important to say, because I think people talk about that without saying that. And people are like, well, it's on, it's on this X, Y and Z podcast. This must be what everybody's doing now. And then you go on the websites and the websites are like for research and animal purposes only. Yes, that's the like ethical website. It probably should say that on all the websites that are selling things that actually have not been tested on humans.
- [48:29]
Dr. Vonda Wright
So even in the longevity world, I'm going to encourage people, if you're interested in that, to know who's treating you because almost anybody can hang a shingle. There are people out there who have a bachelor's degree in something and have decided that they're longevity experts and maybe they have become that. I doubt it, but maybe they've become that. But with no formal medical education, and on the other hand of that, there are doctors, allopathic and osteopathic doctors like you and me, so with real medical degrees, who are board certified in their fields, who have decided to go down a pathway of offering these evidence influence pathways, but to a doctor, There's a group of us called the longevity docs. I know a lot of them. I just had a series of them on my podcast. I have this conversation and they are all very clear with their patients. This is evidence influenced. And they all approach it like I do because I go over this with them. How do you approach it? Blah, blah, blah, optimization, performance, then we'll get into the less proven things, but they all have the conversation with their patients. This is the best data we have. From mice, from little worms. These are the best data we have.
- [49:50]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
From petri dish to human in one
- [49:52]
Dr. Vonda Wright
step, not to bedside, and then the person gets to decide. But it's always clearly delineated.
- [50:00]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah.
- [50:00]
I mean, I think so much of this is just the human's desire for shortcuts and the human's desire to, like, have quick fixes. If you dial in diet, sleep and exercise and no alcohol and hormones, you're close to being there. It's profound what that looks like after a year.
- [50:18]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Well. And when I say crazy on stage things like, I went from menopause misery to midlife mastery, it's not because I tried some peptide. It's because I did the things that you just said, and it took about a year. Right. To reverse.
- [50:36]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I remember when I started, I really started on a workout program, and I was so pissed at three months that, like, I wasn't noticing anything, but I'd finally, like, I was just so. It was like when I started working out consistently after my kids, and I was like, God, for three months straight waking up to do this, nothing, nothing. And then at six months, you're like, oh, hi.
- [50:55]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah.
- [50:56]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Oh, hi. Right. It's like you do have to keep showing up, and people simply don't have the patience for it.
- [51:02]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Yeah, it's hard.
- [51:03]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Well, I really appreciate you talking about peptides because I think people are very curious about them and they don't realize how untested they are and how incredibly effective the simple, boring crap is. Yep.
- [51:15]
Dr. Vonda Wright
There's no magic pill. Sorry, guys.
- [51:17]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
There's no magic pill. Tell me about your second annual event in Orlando, Florida, in November.
- [51:23]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Gosh.
- [51:24]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
So tickets are on sale now. People are get the book unbreakable and buy a ticket at the same time.
- [51:29]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Those are the action items Right now.
- [51:31]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
These are the two action items.
- [51:32]
Yeah.
- [51:32]
Dr. Vonda Wright
And then come to the women's health conversations in Orlando. It's the second year in Orlando.
- [51:39]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
That's right. This is not your second year of doing events. It's a second year in Orlando in
- [51:43]
Dr. Vonda Wright
2012, with the knowledge that women make 80% of all the health care decisions in this country. And. And yet I find women don't understand their power in changing the health of themselves and who they love. So I started this. And this November 14th and 15th, Dr. Casperson, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, all the people that we love, that you see us on the Internet with, are coming to teach Women. And I've partnered with Disney this year. It's on Disney property. Our VIP is going to have fireworks on the lagoon. But most importantly, people like you, amazing master educators, people like me are breaking down the science and delivering it in digestible ways, because I believe that when a woman is educated, she's going to make the right decision.
- [52:38]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah, I always say that. You sold out last year, so you're going to sell it this year.
- [52:42]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Listen, we sold out really quickly, and we're already selling quickly. So if you want a ticket, you better get it, because I can't.
- [52:50]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Do you have to be a woman to be at this conference?
- [52:52]
Dr. Vonda Wright
No, no. Anybody that knows a woman can come to this conference. In fact. Oh, this is new data, right? Or data you and I talk about, but not here yet. I mean, what is the percentage of midlife divorces that can be attributed to the menolescence changes? And I think. I think men need to know this.
- [53:13]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Yeah, we don't have great data, but at least 50%. Some divorce lawyers tell me 100%. So it depends upon who you talk to. It's not good. Yeah, I mean, I'm totally like, this is. I'm too. I'm tooting your audience slash my own horn. But when I got on stage at your first Orlando event in 2024, they gave me a standing ovation.
- [53:33]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Before you open your mouth.
- [53:34]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Before I open my mouth.
- [53:38]
Dr. Vonda Wright
They love some Kelly Casperson. So listen, I was floored.
- [53:43]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I'm like, I will come back and speak for Rhonda anytime. That's a warm audience.
- [53:48]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Wasn't it? High energy. Like, everybody all day was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. And it is.
- [53:54]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
All I heard about that whole day was because of you. I got on testosterone. And A, I got a new relationship. B, I can get off the floor with my grandkids. See, I've started businesses all day long. I got to hear those stories.
- [54:05]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Isn't that refreshing?
- [54:07]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
It's awesome. I mean, I know we're not yelling into the ether, but what we do is profoundly important. You, my friend, Dr. Vonda Wright, are a thought leader, a pioneer, an advocate, tireless. And I'm very happy that you're my friend.
- [54:25]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, I couldn't be happier about it.
- [54:27]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
And you recorded the audiobook for Unbreakable. So for audiobook lovers. Yeah. That's also going to be available.
- [54:34]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Eight hours.
- [54:36]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
Eight hours. I know. It's a marathon. I've done it twice.
- [54:40]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Book release date, August 26th.
- [54:42]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
It's in August 26th. So pre order now.
- [54:45]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Pre order now. Yep. Get your book, come to the Women's Health Conversations and see us both on stage together.
- [54:52]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
The Orlando airport's a good airport.
- [54:54]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, it's easy.
- [54:55]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
It's so for that, Alaska Airlines flies there.
- [54:58]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Oh, easy for you.
- [55:00]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
I know. It's wonderful. All right, my friend, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. This is an excellent conversation. We talked about some things that we have not talked about before on this podcast, so thank you for this opportunity.
- [55:11]
Dr. Vonda Wright
Good. I'll see you soon.
- [55:12]
Dr. Kelly Casperson
My friend, thank you for listening to this week's episode of youf Are Not Broken. If you want to dig deeper with me, sign up for my Adult Sex Education Masterclass where you learn adult things like communication skills, anatomy lessons and desire types, and how to talk to your doctor about sexual health concerns. If you want the Adult Sex Education Masterclass for free, join my monthly membership for more in depth exclusive content, more time with yours truly. A private podcast, coaching and educational empowerment and you can watch my interviews live and get them immediately without advertising. Head over to www.kellycaspersonmd.com for the membership and Adult Sex Ed Masterclass members. Get the Masterclass for free. This podcast is presented solely for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. I am a doctor, but not your doctor in this format and all of my platforms and guests, including on this podcast are not giving individual medical advice or practicing medicine. See in Consult with your own care team for your individual needs and concerns. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the care and advice of a physician, therapist or other qualified professional. This podcast does not constitute the practice of medicine, in case you were curious about that and no doctor patient relationship is formed. But I still love you. Using the information on this podcast or any of my platforms is at your own risk. Until next time, remember, you are not broken.