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Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started.
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Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.
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You what?
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Yeah, Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.
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So there's no.
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No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.
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I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.
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Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy@carvana.com foreign
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welcome to the you are not broken podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Casperson, a board certified urologist, thought leader and conversation starter on midlife living, hormones and sexuality.
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Enjoy the show. Hey everybody.
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Welcome back to the you are not broken podcast.
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Today I have a very special treat.
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There is a book coming out September 16th called the Menopause moment mindset, Hormones and science for optimal longevity.
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And I want you to get it
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because this is basically going to give you all the data so you can make the right decision.
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If hormones are right for you, you can also make the right decision.
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If eating well is right for you, lifting weights is right for you. I talk about supplements in this book and if communicating about this is right for you. So lots of things you can find out if it's right for you. The front cover of the book says, what if everything you've been told about midlife and menopause is wrong? More than likely at least 50 of what you've been told is wrong. It says, for too long women have been fed fear and confusion about hormones, aging, and what it means to navigate midlife. As a result, an entire generation of women is left confused about their own bodies, misled by outdated science, and restricted by myths that benefit no one. So please go order the menopause moment. One for you, one for your sister, one for your daughter, one for your mother. And of course I've got some chapters in there on sex and intimacy because you know who I am.
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And one of those chapters is all
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about genital urinary syndrome of menopause and what the data is showing us at this point. So I cannot wait for this book to be released. Let's make it a New York Times bestseller. I'd say Washington Wall Street Journal bestseller, but apparently they got rid of their bestseller list. So, you know, there's really only a few lists at this point. So buy one for yourself, buy one for your friends, show your support. If this podcast has meant anything to you over the last five and a half years that you've been listening to it for free. Do me a grand gesture and go get the Menopause Moment. And this podcast is special because I am including chapter one for free right now. So I hope you enjoy, share, like, follow and thanks for being here.
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I love you.
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Go celebrate the Menopause Moment. If you want to go over, head to the website. One final thing, head to the website kellycaspersonmd.com There is an events page. We are now up to eight cities for this book tour encompassing September, October and November.
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So we've got off the top of
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my head, we've got Seattle, Bellingham at Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Chicago, Denver, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York City, and Orlando. So come one Kamal, come see me live because you know, you know I'm a good time. All right. Love you. Without further ado, chapter one the menopause moment enjoy.
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Chapter one biopsychosocial is a big, sexy word in 2022, I gave a lecture about female sexuality and better sex at a conference in San Antonio, Texas, in person. Conferences had just started back up after the isolation of COVID 19, and we were giddy to be around strangers with common interests again. After the day's lectures wrapped, I was chatting with a palliative care doctor over dinner when she asked a simple question. I really liked your lecture. When did you do your TED Talk? Internally, I thought to myself, Me? Give a TED Talk? Be so for real. Externally, I found myself saying, when clearly you're a great speaker. You must have done a TED Talk, she replied, apparently not picking up on the bewilderment I'd assumed was written all over my face. I jumped into setting the record straight. I told her I hadn't given a TED Talk or even thought about giving one, then topped things off with a sprinkle of excuses why I couldn't. Even if I wanted to, I hadn't been invited. I didn't know what to talk about. I didn't know how to structure a talk like that. You get the picture. Well, she said reasonably, you just get a coach and decide to do one that night. I googled a coach. She suggested, here's my shameless plug for Cesar Cervantes, and signed up for a free consultation. Things snowballed from there. I went from giving a TED Talk as a never event to working my ass off to make it happen. With Cesar's help, my pitch was accepted at three TEDx sites only a few months later. Ferris Bueller wasn't kidding when he said, life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it. No fear Ferris. I wasn't going to miss a thing. It was clear to me from the moment my pitch was accepted that this opportunity was a gift from the universe, and I wasn't going to settle for anything less than delivering the adult sexual education lesson of my dreams. I wrote and rewrote and rehearsed and revised until I felt confident. The talk checked every box. Evidence based? Check. Shame free? Check. Empowering as hell? Check. On paper it seemed perfect, but I couldn't shake the nagging voice in the back of my mind that kept saying it was good but not great. Sometimes that nagging voice is self doubt that needs to be told to fuck right off. I knew this wasn't one of those times though. To be great, my talk needed something to tie it together. Enter the word biopsychosocial. If hearing that made you roll your eyes, stick with me. I hated the word at first glance too. Humans are complex. We aren't just our physical bodies, psychological makeup, or the way we interact with and exist in society. What makes us, well, us is how all these things come together. We are each a unique charcuterie board of hormones and bones and muscles, thoughts and hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, cultural beliefs and behaviors, actions and experiences. And acknowledging that delicious mix of our biology, psychology and sociology. That's biopsychosocial, baby. After pushing past my initial revulsion at such a long, pretentious sounding word, I transformed my talk into a badass biopsychosocial sex ed lesson. Turns out this was exactly what I needed to push it over the edge. Why Adults Need Sex Ed currently has over a quarter of a million views on the TEDx YouTube channel. And just like our sexual lives are biopsychosocial, midlife is biopsychosocial. Bio is for biology. First, let's define biology, because if you're like me, it's been a while since you sat down in ninth grade biology class. Bio means life and ology means the study of. So biology is the study of living organisms. I would argue we received more knowledge about the life cycle of a tree than than our own bodies growing up. Look, we're all hormonal. Let's take a closer look now at what hormones are and what they do in the body, because we're gonna talk a lot about them in this book. What Is a Hormone? As a review for those of us who haven't studied biology since middle school, let's start by defining what a hormone is. The Broad definition is a chemical made in the endocrine glands that travels in the body to affect change. That is it. That is a frickin hormone. And boy do we have so many opinions and judgments about these miracle messengers. Endocrine glands make hormones that then travel around our body and affect many systems. Endocrine glands include testicles, ovaries, adrenals, pituitary, pineal, thymus, thyroid, pancreas. What do you think of when you think of hormones? Think of hormones and most of us will think of the myths society has perpetuated with an overly broad brush. They make us moody, they're dangerous, they're unbalanced, they could be addictive. This is not entirely true. Their fluctuations may cause moodiness, not the hormones themselves. And short of being dangerous, if you don't have them, you may die. We have over 50 that we have thus far discovered. You didn't know this? Most people don't. Let's name some of insulin, thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, human growth hormone, adrenaline, prolactin, serotonin, cortisol, vitamin D, dhea, dopamine. This is actually a short list. There are many more likely some still undiscovered and even fewer that we have manufactured to be able to replace when our body needs help. My challenge to you, when someone uses a broad brush and says hormones xyz, ask them to clarify what they mean exactly. You will soon discover people's understanding of biology is poor and they often oversimplify to help feeling control over their world or worse, just repeat something someone told them. It is time we learn some more about our amazing bodies. Because knowledge is power and that is how fear doesn't steer the ship. What is a steroid? When you think about answering this question, your brain may offer one of two ideas. Either the bodybuilder who doesn't look natural or a steroid medicine that you take an inhaler for asthma. Well, the bodybuilder is usually abusing anabolic steroids, often banned synthetic, not made in our body substances. And the medicine is a corticosteroid often used to decrease inflammation. These are just two examples of types of steroid and they don't give you the full picture, but certainly cause bias against the word steroid. A steroid simply means the chemical composition of a compound that specifically has four rings of carbon atoms in a standard configuration. Yes, vague and broad. Steroids also include cholesterol, vitamin D and the sex hormones estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. A doctor told me not to take hormones because they're steroids and are dangerous because I will get dependent and need higher and higher doses. Your doctor is taking several leaps here. Yes, many hormones are steroids as we have now explained, but the term steroid just means a four carbon ring chemical structure. And any jump to dangerous and dependent is not because of their chemical makeup. If by dependent you mean your body will use them, depend on them and not have them if you stop, yes, that is true postmenopause by definition because it is a time when your ovaries decrease their hormone production. But that isn't a reason not to take them. In addition, there is no data that says you need higher and higher doses as you age. That is not how they work. Our hormones are a part of us and often we give them no thought except for maybe when the premenstrual uterine cramps and mood changes have us swearing or crying at that time of the month. In reality, hormones help make us who we are and we would be dead without them. What actually happens biologically with menopause? We define menopause as the cessation of menstruation one year after the last period. Technically, but in fact no more periods are a consequence of what the hormones in eggs are doing. A uterus sheds its lining after an estrogen surge, an egg release that doesn't meet a sperm and a subsequent drop in progesterone. So when eggs and hormones cease, no more periods. Our period, which we think is the defining marker of menopause and the official definition of menopause is only the most visual manifestation of what our hormones are doing. But we don't think of midlife as a profound change of hormones, not even doctors. The period is just way more obvious than what is happening hormone wise. And how can we care about hormones when they are invisible to the eye and we don't even know basic anatomy like that women have three holes, what the hell a fallopian tube is, and that the vulva and the vagina are technically different structures. And don't get me started about not knowing where the clitoris is. I'm not blaming you. I'm blaming our education system and our society that keeps us in the dark about our body to rake in profits. How can we know to steer clear of the lavender scented vaginal vulva washes when we don't know that it's normal to smell a little musky sometimes. Shame on our society that tells us nothing should smell and that we don't actually need to clean the vagina. I digress. Point being weird, we can't talk about midlife without talking about hormones. It is a major defining part. For better or worse. Period. Pun intended. Our education is bad. A man asked me recently. My buddy told me that if a woman gets a hysterectomy, she can avoid menopause. Is that true? I did not make that up. Hell no, that's not true. Removing your uterus doesn't prevent a normal natural life event characterized by low hormones menopause. In fact, certain types of hysterectomy can bring on menopause early called surgical menopause. The exact opposite of his buddy's belief. If we don't get educated about our bodies, we remain a mystery that we try to solve because by spending $164 a month on a proprietary blend of herbs and spices that are claimed to help support this time in life. I include more on supplements in chapters 20 and 21, including which ones I think are actually reasonable to take if you choose to Psycho is for Psychology People get so pissed when a doctor says it's all in your head that many doctors know not to say this anymore. The translation of this statement is the workup is normal or we can't find anything wrong. This in your head statement is taken as highly invalidating to the individual who is hearing it. I get it if we translate between doctor speak and human brains, what they mean is that they didn't find any detectable words Western medical disease that is easily treated. We didn't find a cancer, lump, bump, abnormal blood test or fracture to account for your concerns. The ct, mri, ultrasound shows normal anatomy. Basically no one feels good in this scenario. Doctors like to doctor and the things we can't fix we want out of our office. We literally don't have time to be curious and in the time constraints of modern medicine. Hard truth from the early days of Western medicine and way back to the ancient Greeks, people separated the body from the mind and we have kept this false dichotomy even though it no longer serves us. Mental health used to mean helping those with mental illness. I am glad we have updated this definition. Mental health now means the care and concern for our thoughts. A new rebranding is emotional health, which implies it is for everyone, not just for those who may have a western medical diagnosis of a mental illness. Our overall mood A general view of where our emotional health set point is is health. We hit midlife with the gift of starting to understand ourselves and that work coincides with hormone shifts. Low hormone states of midlife have a profound effect on mood, depression and anxiety the overwhelming feeling of I just don't feel like myself is a complex statement and has no equivalent medical diagnosis attached to it, which downplays its importance in the medical world. But I would argue it may be one of the most essential things in midlife to feel like ourselves and feel that we are thriving. In this book we will learn how hormones affect our moods and the psycho part of our biopsychosocial health, and also how the thoughts we choose to think make a difference in our lifespan. By understanding the interplay between hormones, mindset and midlife changes, we can reclaim our sense of self and thrive in this transformative phase of life. Social is for sociology, we are social creatures. Data shows that loneliness is associated with heart disease, dementia, stroke, depression and a shorter lifespan. Man, we thought smoking and sitting were bad. Our social networks often become more meaningful and conversely for some, more sparse in midlife. Often the events in our lives tie us to people. The schools we went to together, the fact that we both had kindergarteners at the same time. But in midlife we are years away from school and often miles away from these people. It can be a time of profound loneliness. It can also be a huge opportunity we get to be intentional. What kind of people do you enjoy being around or reverse engineer it? Who do you not like being around? I like people who are profoundly curious, love, connection, feelings, emotions and personal growth, and are funny as hell. It is often easier to implement lifestyle changes if your social group is doing them too. They say you are a product of your five closest friends. If you want to get in shape, question your relationship with alcohol or be supported in your exploration and using hormones, your social group is quite important for support. Choose wisely in midlife. Our social environment matters way more than we think, tying in biopsychosocial and midlife. All this is to say you are your hormones, but you are not only your hormones. I saw this clearly when I started to deep dive in practicing sexual medicine. I can get your pelvis close to perfect, relieving muscle pain with physical therapy, improving vulva and vaginal tissue and clitoral sensitivity with hormones. But if your head and relationship are not right, what good does a functional pelvis do to your overall sexual health and satisfaction? The same goes with midlife, my friend. You can have a great family and professional life and a consciously aware mindset with a meditation practice psycho. But if your body is suffering because of the chronic effects of fluctuating hormones or low hormones, then you are not fully thriving. The time to suck it up or deal is over. These are the modern times people. We have science. We have good, safe options. Fear is old school and dies where knowledge thrives. We are complex and our lives can't be explained completely in a 90 second Instagram reel or YouTube short. That doesn't make us too overwhelmingly complex to figure out. It makes us human. And as far as options on this planet, there is nothing else I would rather be Buckle up why does Aging well matter? I was reading about a harbor seal at the Portland Aquarium that made the headlines for becoming the second oldest seal ever recorded. The current record holder, Betty, lived 50 years, one month and 14 days. Every day counts when you're vying for a record. Skinny is now 49. In the wild, harbor seals typically live into their late teens. However, good hygiene, treatments for infections and trauma, and consistent food sources allow us to extend the lives of animals we care for in captivity well beyond what's possible in the wild. We are also aging in captivity, and for most of us, this profound midlife shift represents just that, only halfway through a lifespan that could reach 90, 100, or even beyond. But if we don't optimize our biopsychosocial health, we may live longer, but with more disease, frailty and diminished potential unless we realize the control and power we have to make a difference. Living a long life well is often no accident. It takes insight and active participation and a little bit of pure luck. This book will help you understand and cherish your midlife years. We will explore your options for strengthening yourself with your lifestyle and possible consideration of hormone therapy. And we will also discuss the midlife brain and the power of your mindset to help you live your best life. Life intentionally we got this Chapter Takeaways we are complex and that is a wonderful gift. Because of modern medicine, sanitation and shelter from the elements, we are now living years beyond functioning ovaries and aging free of disease takes thoughtful understanding of our bodies and some intentional care. Fear is erased with education. Hey friends, if you love the you're
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Not Broken podcast, please show me your support by liking, subscribing and sharing it with someone you care about. Your support helps more people find this empowering information for courses, clinic info, and all things midlife mastery. Head over to kellycaspersonmd.com and don't forget you can grab your copy of youf Are Not Broken. Stop shooting all over your sex life at Barnes and Noble Amazon or ask your local bookstore to order it for you and a friend.
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While you're there.
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Make sure to pre order my upcoming book, Menopause, Science, Hormones and mindset for optimal longevity. Coming September 16, 2025 Medical Disclaimer the youe Are Not Broken podcast, Instagram and content created by Dr. Kelly Casperson is presented solely for general information, education, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psych therapist, or other qualified professional. This podcast does not diagnose or treat you.
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Users should not disregard or delay in
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obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. And as always, I got you. I got your back and you are not broken. Thanks for listening.