BETTER! with Dr. Stephanie Estima | Strength, Body Composition & Perimenopause

If you can touch your thumb to your forearm, your elbows bend backward when you lock them out, or you've spent your life being called "double-jointed" like it's a party trick — this episode is your explainer. Dr. Stephanie walks through what hypermobility actually is, the three-tier spectrum from simple joint laxity to Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder to hEDS, and why the standard fitness advice (m...

What if the guilt you feel for skipping the gym is based on a flawed concept? Biomechanist Katy Bowman challenges the notion that exercise is merely a modern, recent way to meet our body’s movement needs. She introduces her ”movement diet” framework, which includes movement calories (volume), movement macronutrients (walking, carrying, climbing, hand use, big-body work, active rest), and movement...

Falling in love triggers a specific hormonal cascade: oxytocin, dopamine, the whole cocktail that makes you feel like you can't think about anything else. What almost nobody talks about is that losing someone runs that same system in reverse. Mary-Frances O’Connor, director of the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress Lab, discusses how grief can be understood as a hormonal “withdrawal” from the bonding...

If you’ve got a cupboard full of supplements you bought with good intentions but never used, this episode is for you. Cathy Eason, Chief Science Officer at Berkeley Life, talks about nitric oxide, a molecule that affects almost every body system, including blood flow, blood pressure, digestion, energy production, and sexual arousal. She explains why nitric oxide production declines in your 30s and...

For over 30 years, Jim Kwik has coached Hollywood, professional athletes, political leaders, and Harvard University on how to learn faster and think sharper — and in this episode, he tackles the question sitting underneath so much of modern life: what happens to your mind muscle when every cognitive task gets handed off to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini? The good news: your brain, like your muscles, ad...

For decades, women with low bone density were told to take it easy; Professor Belinda Beck's research proved the opposite: high-intensity resistance and impact training safely rebuilds bone, even in women who had been told their bones were too fragile to lift heavy. Belinda covers the full arc of bone health, from how peak bone mass is set in the teenage years, to what actually happens to bone whe...

You did everything they told you. You rested it. You waited. And it still hurts. Here's the part no one explains: rest is often the reason it isn't getting better. Dr. Tom Walters is an orthopedic physical therapist, kinesiology professor, and founder of Rehab Science. Tom has spent over a decade teaching people that their bodies are adaptable, not fragile, and this conversation is a masterclass i...

We've been taught that healing is something you power through. Overcome the fear. Crush the goal. Cut the cord and move on. Danielle LaPorte says that's exactly why so many high-achieving women are still stuck in the same loops they swore they'd released; they were given the wrong instructions. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie (a self-described mechanist who wanted KPIs for her soul) gets Danielle t...

You’re training hard, tracking macros, getting enough protein, and sleeping eight hours a night, yet your body isn’t changing. In this solo episode, Dr. Stephanie explains that your body has been listening all along, but it’s been given the wrong instructions. She also breaks down weight loss and fat loss, explaining that the scale can’t tell you which one is happening. She explains muscle protein...

Is it perimenopause or autoimmunity? The symptoms are similar, and most women don’t ask. Mickey Trescott, founder of the Autoimmune Protocol movement, explains the overlap between hormonal changes and immune dysfunction in midlife. 🎤 EPISODE OVERVIEW: (00:00) Introduction — Is It Perimenopause or Autoimmunity? (01:17) Rapid Fire: Hashimoto's Personality, Worst Doctor Quote & More (05:00) You Eith...

If you've ever judged a workout by how wrecked you felt the next day, this episode is going to reframe everything. Dani Coleman, VP of Training and Head Trainer at Pvolve and Jennifer Aniston's personal trainer since 2021, feels less like a podcast guest and more like a sister from another mister. Dani covers the cardio myth that kept a generation of women on the elliptical for hours, why "toned"...

If you've ever dismissed a sauna as a spa luxury, this episode will change your mind. In this episode, Connie Zack, co-founder of Sunlighten, breaks down how infrared light interacts with the body at the cellular level — and why it's genuinely different from just getting hot. Connie covers all four wavelengths, the SoloCarbon blood pressure trials, why deliberately exposing yourself to heat can ac...

If you've ever felt like your body stopped cooperating in your 40s — the recovery that takes days instead of hours, the muscle that seems to disappear no matter what you do, the fitness advice that just doesn't land anymore — this conversation is your explanation. Dr. Stephanie and Dr. Andy Galpin cover why fast-twitch muscle fiber loss is the real aging problem nobody's talking about, what perime...

You've been training consistently for years. You know your way around a gym. And then, out of nowhere, a shoulder gives out on a weight you've pressed a thousand times. Or your knees start complaining on the stairs. Or your hips talk back on leg day — and nobody can find anything wrong on imaging. This isn't aging. This isn't bad form. This is what happens when one system gets all the attention, a...

If you've tried therapy, medication, journaling, and every mindset tool available — and you're still anxious — this episode is for you. Dr. Russell Kennedy, physician, neuroscientist, and certified trauma therapist, makes the case that anxiety doesn't start in your mind. It starts in your body, as a physiological alarm that's likely been there since childhood. And until you address the alarm direc...

If you’ve been eating less, exercising more, and still experiencing unwanted body changes, this episode is for you. Natalie Jill, a Licensed Master Sports Nutritionist and functional fitness trainer, joins Dr. Stephanie for a peer-to-peer conversation between two women in the fitness industry who have seen the same broken patterns and concluded that the plan most women follow is not suitable for t...

Esther Blum, integrative dietitian and menopause expert, unpacks the estrogen supply chain crisis, leaving women without basic hormone care, while there are 25 erectile dysfunction medications on the market with zero shortages. But the conversation goes deeper: if your gut and liver detox pathways aren't functioning first, HRT may not work the way you're hoping. Esther breaks down the gut-liver-ho...

Dr. Rachel Zoffness is a pain psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of Tell Me Where It Hurts -- and she's here to dismantle the biggest lie medicine has sold us: that pain is a purely biomedical problem requiring a purely biomedical solution. Dr. Rachel unpacks how trauma turns the nervous system into a pain megaphone, why the brain literally gets better at producing pain the longer it practic...

If you have been getting your skincare advice from 60-second reels and 18-year-old influencers, this episode is your reset. Dr. Mamina Turegano is not your average dermatologist. Triple board-certified in dermatology, internal medicine, and dermatopathology, she has spent 16 years in practice connecting what shows up on the surface to what is happening inside the body. Today, she is here to de-inf...

Dr. Stephanie Estima gives a masterclass on the often-overlooked role of lactate in how our bodies work during exercise. She’s redefining lactate as a key metabolic signal that can help us get stronger, age better and think sharper. In this solo episode, Dr. Stephanie gets into how lactate is made, how it fuels our energy and why it’s so important when we push ourselves hard. Dr. Stephanie is a bi...

The single biggest lie women have been told about perimenopause? That it's a gynecological problem. Dr. Heather Hirsch — board-certified internist, Harvard faculty, and founder of one of the first hospital-based menopause clinics in the US — is done with that framing. In this episode, Dr. Hirsch joins Stephanie to dismantle the assumption that perimenopause begins and ends with a reproductive doct...

If you've written creatine off as a supplement for guys at the gym, Dr. Dan Pardi, sleep researcher, neuroscientist, and Chief Health Officer at Qualia Life, will change your mind. Dan has spent decades studying what creatine actually does in the body — and what the research reveals for midlife women is genuinely surprising. It's not about muscle. It's about energy. And energy is foundational to e...

Your gut doesn't lie — and in perimenopause, it's sending distress signals most doctors completely ignore. Nurse practitioner, two-time TEDx speaker, and Everyday Wellness podcast host Cynthia Thurlow joins Dr. Stephanie for a conversation that starts in Morocco (food poisoning, a hospitalization, and a perimenopause wake-up call nobody saw coming) and ends with a clear-eyed framework for supporti...

What if your sexual health was as important as your heart rate? What if understanding your sexuality was the final frontier of truly knowing yourself? In this groundbreaking conversation, Dr. Juliana Hauser—sex therapist, author of A New Position on Sex, and expert in sexual agency—challenges everything we've been taught about sexuality, pleasure, and desire. Dr. Hauser explains why sexual wellnes...

Leslie Kenny was told in her 30s that she had five years to live. Diagnosed simultaneously with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis — and told to give up her dream of having children — she did what true Betties do: she refused the prognosis, threw everything she had at it, and got to work. Now 60 years old, Leslie reports a biological age of 21. She is autoimmune disease-free....