On Health for Women

Let’s talk about abortion pills. This week, I am joined by the partnerships and engagement manager at Plan C, Imani Wilson-Shabazz. Imani is a beacon of light in the reproductive health and sexuality awareness space who, through education and empowerment, is transforming family planning systems and institutions. On today's episode, we hear all about Imani’s sex-positive upbringing and how her nint...

This week, I hop on the mic solo to fill you in on everything you need to know about the Pap test, HPV, and pelvic exams. I cover why we can finally say bye bye to routine annual pelvic exams (insert cheer here!) and how often a Pap test and HPV screening should be done. I also answer all of your burning questions about the HPV vaccine, overcoming testing fears, negative test results, and cervical...

It’s not just you. You're not crazy. You're not a bad mom. You're not alone. These are words and deep beliefs that resonate through and form the backbone of today’s guests, Catherine Birndorf, MD, and Paige Bellenbaum, LMSW. Catherine and Paige are dedicated to changing the perinatal mental health terrain, and they do it through The Motherhood Center, a place of radical acceptance, nurturance, and...

We're living in a time when collective solutions and open dialogue are needed more than ever, but the rise of call-out and cancel-culture has left many important conversations silent. This week, I welcome the absolutely iconic feminist and activist, Loretta J. Ross. Loretta is flipping the script with her newly coined term, "Call-In Culture," and on today’s episode, we learn exactly what that term...

This week we are diving deep into fertility awareness, body autonomy, and cycle tracking with the author of The Fifth Vital Sign, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. With forms of contraception at risk of becoming harder to access in a post-Roe world, now more than ever we need options that allow us to be in sync with our cycles and decide exactly when we would like to have children, if at all. Lisa shares her...

Even before the pandemic, we were facing a cultural epidemic. It goes by a lot of different names—anxiety, depression, overwhelm, burnout. Chances are you’ve felt it before. Currently, as a collective, we are experiencing a feeling of global overwhelm and exhaustion and find ourselves in a constant state of survival mode. This has its own name—crisis fatigue. On today’s solo episode, I share how c...

Did you know researchers estimate that nearly two thirds of those living with Alzheimer’s in the United States are women? This week, I am joined by the Mona Lisa of Neuroscience, bestselling author, and one of the most influential scientists of our time, Dr. Lisa Mosconi. Lisa is blowing the lid off of female brain health with her groundbreaking research on cognitive enhancement and Alzheimer's pr...

The new medicine for women is here—I’m back with a new season full of taboo-busting conversations about all things women’s health. As a woman in her wisdom years, I’m bringing together the four decades of work I’ve done as a midwife, herbalist, and MD, to share tools, knowledge, ideas, and insights with you all.     Today’s episode could not have come at a more pressing time in history with the re...

Welcome to the new medicine for women! From the stuff your mother never told you, to the stuff your doctor never learned, On Health is what happens when a midwife + a Yale trained MD shares about all things women’s health. From periods to menopause, sex to reproductive health politics, motherhood to mental health, join me for taboo-busting conversations that demystify and destigmatize our bodies,...

There are so many options available for contraception, and so much conflicting information about what’s safe, that it can be overwhelming to choose. Add to that, if you’re here on my website, there’s a good chance you’re someone who wants to keep things as close to natural - and as safe for your wonderful body - as possible. Perhaps you’ve also heard about some negative press about the Pill online...

The connection between my love of quiet introspective time and my highly chatty nature is that I love to learn, gather information, make sense of it, digest it, and then share it with you, my course students, my patient, and anyone who will listen, in useful and understandable ways. That is, I’m a deeply curious maker who also loves to share. Getting to create a podcast is especially fun because i...

While there’s a clear relationship between diet, nutrition, and PCOS, most doctors aren’t talking about it enough, or at all with patients, beyond women with PCOS being told all too often, and sometimes in a shaming, blaming way, to just “lose the weight” – as if that were the only answer – and as if it were just that simple to do! In this episode I’m going to show you how you can use food to take...

Jonathan Fields believes that we’re all born with an “imprint” for the work that makes us come alive - that sparks us. This "Sparketype®” is a DNA-level driver of work that lets you know when you’re doing what you’re here to do. Join me for this rich conversation with my 'brother from another mother" as we dive deep into work, passion, alignment, and his brand-new book - Sparked - to explore insig...

In this episode you are going to meet an unusual and wonderful couple, Tallene and Sirak Hacatoryan. 10 years ago, at age 18, Tallene was diagnosed with PCOS. After being put on birth control and having her PCOS symptoms take over her life, she started focusing on diet & lifestyle to reverse her symptoms.. Scared and confused, without much information or guidance from her practitioner, and uns...

Join my conversation with Dr. Robin Berzin as we talk about our experience working in the integrative space for women’s care, the root causes of these conditions, how our medical system has failed us, and what we are each doing to and what we are each seeing in support of women regaining control over their hormonal and overall health. Robin is the founder and CEO of Parsley Health, a holistic medi...

For many, the advent of a COVID-19 vaccine was a welcome relief allowing for greater social connection and a return to life as we knew it - or sort of. For many, the advent of vaccinations was incredibly confusing. Now, with Delta, the cards seemed to be shuffled differently. the playing field has shifted, and there's a lot of uncertainty again. More choices often means exhausting internal decisio...

So many of us only start to get to know our cycles when we’re looking to get pregnant. But the truth is, tracking and getting to know our cycles is one of the most critical and powerful forms of ‘me-search’ you can practice – at any age: those looking for natural contraceptive, those looking to learn how to use their cycle as a key indicator of their health, and, for those women who are anywhere o...

Uterine fibroids (‘fibroids’) are solid, well-defined, non-cancerous growths of muscle tissue in the uterus. They’re highly prevalent in the US, where a woman’s lifetime risk of developing them is estimated to be as high as 75% (the often cited 20% to 50% is likely a significantly underestimated range) by age 50, and as high as an 80% lifetime risk for Black women. Given their remarkably high inci...

I started tracking my menstrual cycles 40 years ago. It was 1981, I was 15 years old, not yet sexually active, but curious about my body and already on the path to studying midwifery. Tracking my cycles taught me how my innate hormonal blueprint shows up in my life – my moods, food preferences, energy, sleep, creativity, and so much more – month in and month out, so much so that its patterns allow...

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a condition that causes millions of Americans to suffer with intestinal cramping, bloating, gas, constipation and/or diarrhea. And it affects women twice as often as men. Some of my patients have had such significant problems that they are anxious about social events, and what should be normal activities like going grocery shopping or having to travel any mor...

Dealing with PCOS is no small matter. Symptoms like acne, hirsutism (hair growth in unwanted places like your chin, breasts, or lower belly), weight gain, alopecia (hair loss), irregular or skipped periods, and possibly even fertility problems are challenging — both physically and emotionally. Unfortunately, most women tell me that they received nothing more than a brochure from their doctor and p...

As many of you know, for the past 4 years I’ve been writing a new book. It's called Hormone Intelligence and I wanted to share with you an interview about my book, with talk show host, actor and filmmaker, Ricki Lake, and documentary producer, Abby Epstein, who created The Business of Being Born, and the forthcoming Business of Birth Control.

Menstrual cycles. We have about 400 of them in our lifetime. Yet most of us know so little about how this amazing process really works, and why they’re so important to pay attention to and know how to interpret. It’s led most of us to grow up pretty much in the dark about a fact of life that if you have a uterus, you’re going to experience for 35 to 40 or so years of your life. That right there's...

Throughout history, the menstrual cycle has been shrouded in magic and mystery. In some ancient cultures, menstrual blood was imbued with magical powers, and menstruating women considered to have the ability to even see the future. In the middle-ages, a major religious and with it, cultural shift occurred. Menstruation and menstruating women were no longer treated with reverence. Menstruation was...

Pregnancy is already a time of heightened concern and sense of responsibility – after all, we know that what we do has an impact on our own health – and our baby’s development, growth, and health. Certainly, for women around the globe, COVID-19 has added multiple new layers of concern, worry, and questions on so many aspects of healthcare and mothering: whether it’s safe to get pregnant during thi...