The Dr. Brighten Show

If you’ve ever wondered why you used to be able to hold it all together and now suddenly feel like your brain is working against you, this episode will hit home. In this conversation, Dr. Brighten unpacks the reality of ADHD masking, why so many women go decades without a diagnosis, and how perimenopause ADHD symptoms can make long-standing coping mechanisms stop working almost overnight. This epi...

What if the condition of your skin was saying far more about your health than whether you need a new moisturizer? In this conversation, Dr. Jolene Brighten sits down with microbiologist Kiran Krishan to unpack a provocative idea: that skin barrier dysfunction may be linked not only to dryness, wrinkles, and hyperpigmentation, but also to systemic inflammation, hormone shifts, gut health, and even...

If you’ve been wondering whether Ozempic, semaglutide, tirzepatide, or other GLP-1 medications could help with endometriosis symptoms, chronic pelvic pain, adhesions, fatigue, or endo belly, you are not alone. More and more women with endometriosis are reporting that GLP-1 medications may be helping with symptoms that go far beyond weight loss, from lower inflammation and less pain to improved ene...

If you’ve ever been told to “just go on birth control” for endometriosis, this episode is going to change the way you understand endometriosis and hormones. Hormonal therapy is often the first-line treatment for endometriosis, but not all hormones work the same way and for many women, birth control helps symptoms without ever addressing the underlying disease. In this powerful final panel episode...

Perimenopause doesn’t announce itself the way most women expect. There’s no official start date, no clear signal—just a slow unraveling of things that used to feel easy. Your brain misfires mid-sentence. Your body sends strange, almost unbelievable signals. And somewhere along the way, you’re told, “Your labs are normal.” In fact, many women start searching things like “itchy ears perimenopause,”...

In this powerful surgical roundtable, Dr. Jolene Brighten sits down with four leading endometriosis surgeons to unpack what truly determines success in endometriosis surgery and why so many women are left worse off after procedures that were supposed to help. This is the 3rd episode in our endometriosis panel expert series—be sure to check out the previous episodes for more endometriosis specific...

If you are looking for natural ways to manage endometriosis, the most important thing to understand is this: endometriosis is not just a surgical condition. In this episode, Dr. Jolene Brighten explains why many women continue to experience pelvic pain, fatigue, brain fog, gut issues, and flares even after surgery, and what a more complete support plan can look like. The conversation covers inflam...

This conversation dives deep into endometriosis relief of pain, laparoscopy for endometriosis pain, and the treatment of chronic pelvic pain in females, offering insight into why conventional approaches often fall short. The experts discuss how endometriosis pain can evolve over time, from inflammatory pelvic pain to complex nervous-system-driven chronic pain, and why a comprehensive treatment str...

If you’ve ever wondered “why do I get migraines before my period?” or felt weirdly “allergic” to your own cycle, you’re not imagining things. You may be stuck in the estrogen histamine feedback loop, a biologic back-and-forth where hormones and immune chemistry keep poking each other until symptoms flare. This is the part that makes people feel dismissed: your labs can look “normal” while your bod...

Endometriosis is one of the most misunderstood conditions in women’s health. Millions of women live with severe pain, fatigue, digestive problems, infertility, and systemic inflammation—yet many are told their symptoms are “normal” or dismissed entirely. In this episode of The Dr. Brighten Show, we take a deeper look at what is endometriosis, why it behaves as a whole-body inflammatory disease, an...

If you’ve ever been told that heavy periods, worsening PMS, or debilitating cramps are just part of being a woman, this episode of The Dr. Brighten Show challenges that narrative. In this conversation, Dr. Jolene Brighten breaks down the three most common menstrual problems she sees in clinical practice—heavy bleeding, PMS that keeps getting worse, and severe period pain, and explains why they hap...

I talk to women every week who’ve been told their pain is “just part of being a woman”—even when it’s stealing their school years, careers, relationships, and fertility. This episode is a direct challenge to that narrative. Endometriosis is not simply a pelvic problem or a “hormone issue.” It’s a systemic, neuroinflammatory condition that can drive full-body symptoms, persistent pain, and fertilit...

If you feel like "protein" has become a competitive sport on your social media feed, you are not alone. Between the "What I Eat In A Day" videos and the pressure to carry hard-boiled eggs in your purse, the message is clear: more is better. But for the woman in perimenopause, "more" is not a strategy: it is a recipe for burnout. You do not need to eat like a bodybuilder to save your muscle. You ne...

Let’s talk about the divorce rate in America without the blame games, the “men are trash” hot takes, or the tired advice that sounds good on a mug but falls apart the minute a kid pukes at 2 a.m. Here’s the reality: divorce is common, but it’s not random. Patterns show up again and again—especially in midlife. And if you’re hearing more conversations about menopause and divorce, that’s not because...

When news broke about James Van Der Beek colon cancer, it forced a conversation many people have been avoiding. Colon cancer has long been considered a disease of older adults. But that narrative is outdated. Rates are climbing in younger people. Women are being diagnosed earlier. And far too many are told their symptoms are “just stress,” “just IBS,” or “just hormones.” In this episode, we unpack...

Midlife weight gain is often blamed on a “slowing metabolism.” But the science tells a different story. Between ages 20 and 60, your metabolism barely changes. What does change? Muscle mass. Exercise habits. Hormonal signaling. Cardiovascular risk. And increasingly, the conversation around GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. In this episode, we unpack the real drivers of midlife weight gain, the surpr...

If you’ve ever asked yourself, Why am I so tired when I’m doing everything right? — this episode is for you. From clean eating and HIIT workouts to supplements and sleep tracking, many women are doing “all the things” and still waking up exhausted, crashing mid-afternoon, and lying awake at night unable to wind down. The missing piece may not be discipline, motivation, or another wellness hack — i...

If you’ve noticed a shift in your desire for intimacy in midlife, you’re not alone—and it’s not simply a hormone problem. In this episode of The Dr. Brighten Show, Dr. Jolene Brighten sits down with relationship and intimacy expert Emily Morse for a candid, clinically grounded conversation about why so many women experience changes in connection, closeness, and physical responsiveness during perim...

Testosterone is having a moment—but much of what women are being told about it is incomplete, oversimplified, or outright misleading. If you’ve been told testosterone is only about libido, or that your fatigue, emotional flatness, loss of motivation, or inability to build muscle is just “getting older,” this episode challenges that narrative. In this conversation, Dr. Jolene Brighten breaks down w...

If you’re trying to conceive and wondering how to get pregnant faster, you’re likely being flooded with advice that ranges from tracking ovulation to “just relaxing” or jumping straight to IVF. What’s often missing from these conversations is a deeper understanding of preconception health—the biological groundwork that determines whether conception is easy, delayed, or doesn’t happen at all. In th...

Low energy. Vanishing libido. Brain fog that makes you feel like you’re pushing through mud. Muscle that refuses to build no matter how hard you train. If you’ve ever been told this is “just stress,” “just aging,” or worse—all in your head—this episode is for you. In this powerful, no-fluff conversation, Dr. Jolene Brighten breaks down how to boost testosterone naturally in women by unpacking the...

For generations, women have been told that healthy aging comes down to eating less, doing more cardio, and staying “small.” But in this powerful conversation, Dr. Jolene Brighten and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon challenges that narrative with a biologically grounded truth: muscle is one of the most critical and most neglected determinants of women’s longevity. Strength training for women isn’t about aesthet...

If you’ve ever wondered why your ADHD feels manageable one week and completely unhinged the next—why your medication suddenly feels useless, your focus evaporates, your emotions feel impossible to regulate, and even simple tasks like making dinner feel overwhelming—this episode was made for you. In this episode of The Dr. Brighten Show, Dr. Jolene Brighten breaks down what a major scientific revie...

When your ADHD sex drive doesn’t match what you “think it should,” it’s easy to assume something is wrong with you—or that you’ve fallen out of love. But in this episode, Dr. Jolene Brighten sits down with Leann Borneman to unpack a radically different truth: for many women with ADHD (and many women in perimenopause), the problem often isn’t a lack of desire—it’s a lack of access to desire. If you...

If you feel like your ADHD symptoms exploded in your late 30s or early 40s—your focus vanished, your sleep fell apart, your body started hurting, and your brain felt like it stopped working—you are not imagining it. And you are not failing. This episode explains why perimenopause is worse for women with ADHD, why it often begins years earlier than most doctors recognize, and why ADHD women experie...