How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Dr. Jen Gunter - Patriarchy, periods and penile failure

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

TW: infant loss and birth trauma Dr Jen Gunter is an obstetrician-gynaecologist, pain medicine physician and bestselling author. She’s most well-known to many of us as Twitter’s resident OB-GYN, the woman who took on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop with claims of medical misinformation and one of the fiercest advocates for women’s health the world over. She had premature triplet boys in 2003 and tragically, one of her sons died at birth. To this day, Dr Gunter says her two boys ‘keep me so honest it hurts’. We discuss everything from first periods, failed marriages, failure to exercise to a failure to say no - sound familiar?! As always, I’d LOVE to hear about your failures. Every week, my guest and I choose a selection to read out and answer on our special subscription offering, Failing with Friends. We’ll endeavour to give you advice, wisdom, some laughs and much, much more. Have something to share of your own? I'd love to hear from you! Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Manager: Lily Hambly Studio and Mix Engineer: Josh Gibbs Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Carly Maile Head of Marketing: Kieran Lancini How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, author and broadcaster Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast where we flip the traditional interview format on its head, celebrating failure rather than success. Because what we learn from the former is often far more important than anything that comes from the latter. It's how we respond to failure that defines our character and helps us grow.

Every episode, I ask a very special guest to discuss three failures and how they emerged on the other side to be the person we see today. Just before we get to my chat with Dr. Jen Gunter, please do join me after this episode on Failing With Friends, my subscriber series where we continue our conversation and take a look at your failures or questions with my fabulous guest. This week, Jen and I go through correspondence regarding misplaced feelings of guilt, uncertainty over whether to have children, and how to know whether to confess to your partner that you failed your driving test. And I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch,

follow the link in the podcast notes. Get Failing With Friends episodes every week and all episodes of How To Fail ad free. Just visit the How To Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial. Or you can visit howtofailpod.com if you're not an Apple user. Dr. Jen Gunter is an obstetrician-gynecologist, a pain medicine physician, and a best-selling author. She's most well-known to many of us as Twitter's resident OBGYN, the woman who took on Gwyneth Paltrow's goop with claims of medical misinformation and one of the fiercest advocates for women's health the world over. Her books, including The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Bible, are instant bestsellers, and her latest, entitled

simply Blood, The Science, Medicine and Mythology of Menstruation, is an all-in-one revolutionary guide that promises to change the way we think about, talk about and don't talk about our bodies and our well-being. Dr Gunter was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. She graduated from medical school at just 23. us 23, but it wasn't until she had premature triplet boys in 2003 that she started thinking about the impact of dubious science. In the neonatal intensive care unit, Dr Gunter found it difficult to separate facts from fiction and emotion, despite her own medical training. Her experiences formed the basis of her first book, The Preemie Primer. Tragically, one of her sons died at birth. Her two surviving sons were on oxygen for a year

and required multiple surgeries. To this day, Dr Gunter says her two boys, day, Dr. Gunter says her two boys keep me so honest it hurts. Dr. Jen Gunter, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you for having me. I wanted to end on that because honesty is clearly something that is so viscerally important to you. Why is that? Well, you need the facts to make any kind of decision, right? Whether it's what to buy at the grocery store, does that contain what it claims? From your partner to decide, is that the person you really want to be with? About medical decisions, if you don't have accurate information, you're going to make choices that you maybe wouldn't have made. And I just think it's the basis for everything I think if you're if you can be honest about something you can work things out

if you can't be honest and you know every effort you try to fix something is almost certainly going to fail because you never had the correct information and how do your sons keep you honest oh well you know they just don't, no one in our house lets anyone get away with editing. And, you know, it's about, oh, we don't care you were on some TV show or whatever, you know, what are we having for dinner? And, you know, don't think too much of yourself. And I'm like, really, you think you're that important? Why haven't you unloaded the dishwasher? You know, we're just, you know, we have a really openness between the three of us and always told them I would never lie to them. And that's, that's the only thing they've ever gotten in trouble with me for would

be lying to me. I was like, you break a vase and I didn't tell you not to touch it. That's okay. If I told you not to touch it and you broke it and then you didn't tell me you touched it, then you're going to get in trouble. It was really, it's just, just be honest, tell me what happened. It's so interesting to me that you are someone who has revolutionized women's conceptions of themselves in so many ways, and that this clearly is part of your life's purpose. And I, for one, I'm so grateful for it. And you're the mother of sons. And I wonder how that tallies. Are you very conscious of raising men who are far more aware than any previous generation of men have been about what's going on with women and our bodies? You know, I don't think I had any sort of, like, plan, you know, to sort of do that. I think it just kind of came out of just being honest and being, you know, to sort of do that. I think it just kind of came out of just being honest and

being, you know, I'm writing my books, I'm doing my work, and there's things sitting out there, there's vagina puppets, there's boxes of tampons, there's things. And so they just grew up around that, like, oh, like, it's no, like, it's no big deal. You know, I'm writing an article for the New York Times and talking about my vagina, and they're seeing that headline in the newspaper, an article for the New York Times and talking about my vagina and they're seeing that headline in the newspaper, you know, my name associated with that. So I just, I think it was just, well, this is the house they grew up in, so they didn't know any different. And I think it's really important not to have secrets. And so they just didn't view any of this as anything weird or different. It's no stranger to say the word vulva than to say the word elbow. And once I was wearing this very, very short dress and I made a joke and I said, oh, this

is really vagina skimming. And one of my sons said, no, mom, you mean vulva skimming. Oh, amazing. Oh, you are doing good work. I should really have started off by saying how sorry I am for the loss of your son. And I wonder if I could take you back to that moment when you were a trained doctor, but you were also a parent under immense emotional pressure and the tension between those two states and how that led you to do what you do now? Yeah. So, you know, I have a very complicated obstetrical situation, which, you know,

of course, like obstetricians, you get to have like the most complicated thing, I suppose. So I delivered my first son who died, he was 22 and a half weeks, and then managed to stay pregnant for another three and a half weeks. So then my other two boys were born at 26 weeks and I got an infection. That's why I had to be delivered. And they were in the intensive care unit. And I also had sepsis at the same time. So it wasn't a really good time.

But what happened was, you know, so you have these two children who are, you know, on ventilators. They're very ill. And then on top of it, Oliver was diagnosed, he had a complex heart defect and needed to have heart searches, all this complex stuff going on. And you have all these questions and people don't have answers. And so then you start looking things up online and you start thinking, okay, well, nobody's got an answer for me, so I'm going to go look somewhere else. And I realized that there was this real, I would say, disconnect between how the doctors talked to you, but the information that you needed. And it was pretty obvious to me that being a physician made it a lot easier because you get to know all the other parents in the intensive care unit kind of at the

same time, you know, the sort of the class coming up at the same time. And I would see their interactions with the healthcare field and I would say, okay, wow, they were having so much more trouble than I was. So then that made me appreciate, oh my God, like what if I didn't have this? I'm finding it hard and I'm a doctor. So then what is it like for people who have none, that aren't even speaking the same language? I was sort of, you know, equate it with at least I went into the neonatal intensive care unit speaking the language. But imagine you're in this, the most high stress situation you can be in, you don't even speak the language, right? So it's just that extra layer of complexity.

And then when you graduate and you take your kids home, you know, I had two kids on oxygen, they had all these health problems. And there'd be like questions like, well, how do I feed my kid? What if they get stuff up the nose? What, like, how do I manage all this? And I just found like medicine was really unprepared for the, what I would call the real life questions. You know, like, how do I live with this? And then I found myself on blogs and sites and, you know, I made decisions about formula I wish I hadn't made based on stuff I read online. And, you know, if the doctors had just told me to like, you know, we don't have an answer,

that might have actually been even more helpful to just admit they didn't know, as opposed to kind of, you know, stringing me along, maybe it was this, maybe it was that. So, yeah, I have a lot of empathy for people who end up looking, you know, who end up, because you're in this sort of data void or information void. And so you end up online. Thank you so much for sharing that. You attack the language and the culture of shame that exists around quote unquote women's health issues. How much do you think the terminology is as a result of patriarchal conditioning. How much is it as a result of men being in the position of power and treating women and telling them that they're the failures? Oh, 100%. I mean, there's no like 99.99. I mean, all of the language of medicine was created by

men, you know, all of the language of medicine. And we've just now even starting to say, well, hey, maybe we shouldn't be naming body parts after like the dudes who claim they discovered them. They weren't theirs to discover. They were there all along. They were just the first to name them. And if women had been in medicine, maybe there would be some things named after women. So yeah, a hundred percent. You know, erectile dysfunction, boy, that's a lovely euphemism for penile failure, isn't it? Yes, exactly. You know, so women get premature ovarian failure, right? When they stop ovulating earlier than expected. What an awful term to say, or premature menopause, but ovarian failure. Well, then why aren't we calling it penile failure? So when you look at the sort of the pejorative language, it's almost 100% directed at women's bodies.

And even the word pedendum, which is an older term used to describe the area between the vulva and the rectum, the Latin root is pedere, which is to shame. And men have a pedendal nerve too, but that language is never usually used to describe their body part. And so there's so much misogyny just baked into the terminology. You write in Blood about this culture of shame and the fact that there's this sense that our blood is somehow toxic or dirty or must be got rid of. Where did that start? Yeah. So I think it's one of these really interesting cultural phenomenons. So first of all, the origin of Western medicine,

sort of Hellenic medicine, Greek medicine, viewed menstruation as a sign of women's inferiority, right? So men, of course, were in perfect balance. They could manage their humors, but women couldn't manage their humors and they were overly moist, every cell of their body. And the overflow of fluid was menstruation, right? So it basically is a sign of your shoddy plumbing. So they didn't say that for ejaculation though, I'm guessing. No, I'm hazarding a guess. That's virility, of course. Yes. You know, that's the seed of life, you know,

of course. And so, so this idea that, that, that menstruation then was polluting because it's this overflow of toxins, right, that your body can't handle, these harmful things. And so that sort of became baked into how everything was thought of. It was these harmful, disgusting impurities that needed to come out. So, of course, and that's why when women became menopausal, they were obviously, that's why your body's falling apart because all those toxins that you couldn't get rid of before were building up. And of course, you don't want to ever stop to think, well, hey, if that's also toxic and polluting, how exactly does an embryo grow in there? Like, how exactly does it grow in a toxic, polluted environment? And that's in many religions, right? So menstruating women are dirty, they're unclean. In some religions and cultures, women can't go to temple if they're menstruating. They can't prepare food if They're unclean. In some religions and cultures, women can't go to temple

if they're menstruating. They can't prepare food if they're menstruating. They have to ritually bathe after menstruating to be clean for their husbands. And so it's quite a cross-cultural belief in many patriarchal societies. And I would say that essentially every religion is patriarchal, right? I found it a completely riveting read and it is a book that tells you everything you need to know. How deliberate was that decision that you were really going to pack this book full of every single fact as well as brilliant personal anecdotes, which we'll get onto. But it felt to me quite a revolutionary act in a way. One of the things I hear most often from women is, why didn't I know that? And I was like, right.

Oh, you're going to know it. We're going to know it all. I'm going to give it all to you. And my publisher probably had hoped it was going to be a little bit shorter, but I just feel that women have been so shortchanged with information about their body. And I really wanted them to have it all. I mean, obviously, it could have been longer. It could have been 700 pages, but at some point, you have to end a book and people have to read it. And they have to be able to hold it all. I mean, obviously it could have been longer. It could have been 700 pages, but at some point you have to end a book and people have to read it and they have to be able to hold it up. So I really wanted people to have the information to put what was happening to their

body in context, because you can't dissect the information you hear online, for example, about contraception, unless you actually know how your hormones work, right? And you can't actually understand how your hormones work unless you actually know what a hormone is, right? So all of those things I kept finding, okay, well, we need to pull the thread and where can we start at the beginning to sort of build everybody up to the point where then they're able to digest all this information. I thought there was a fascinating bit. It actually reminded me of Naomi Klein's book Doppelganger, where she talks about the diagonal connection between the far right and the far out. And you draw this comparison with purity, modern purity culture, which gets involved in the whole goopishness of our society.

I have to tell you, Jen, I had my vagina steamed, but I tell you why. Because I was commissioned by a Sunday newspaper to live life as Gwyneth Paltrow for a week. And I did not enjoy having my vagina steamed at all. It made not a bit of difference. I just felt a bit clammy down there. But tell us a bit about that symbiosis. Yeah. So it's really fascinating. You know, if you look at the Instagram profile of somebody who's ultra crunchy and ultra natural, and you look at the Instagram profile of somebody who's ultra crunchy and ultra natural. And you look at the Instagram profile of someone who's like a Jesus loving mama, you know, sort of the right and the left, their profiles, their pictures, everything are almost indistinguishable. And if you think about medicine in the 1700s and before, medicine and religion were essentially the same. And it

was all about the quest for purity, getting closer to God, closer to the balanced state. You're balancing your humors. There was so much religion intertwined with it. And when germ theory was discovered, when the scientific method was discovered, when things sort of started to peel off, you're left with this sort of the purity know, the purity aspect of things, which appeals to us because it's sort of, you know, been baked into us for centuries, right? You know, getting closer to God, closer to nature. You know, nature is as much part of purity culture and sort of the ultra-left as it is the ultra-right. And it's, you know, whether it's

return to nature, return to Jesus, return to how God wanted you is all very similar. The language is very interchangeable. And whether it's to be pure for the quest for religion or pure for the quest of I'm the crunchiest purist on the left, they're very, very similar. And when you look at these, you know, accounts online, they're often promoting the same kind of supplements, the same type of beliefs. And it's really fascinating to see that intersection. How do you feel about Gwyneth Paltrow now? I don't like to punch down. Mic drop. Okay.

Before we get onto your first failure, I want to talk about our first periods because I've never had that conversation before on this podcast. And reading about your experience made me think that we really should. So tell us about your first period. Yeah. I mean, I was, I think I went to the bathroom and I saw blood and I was like, okay, that's must be a game on game going. And I, you know, I'd been prepared a little bit cause I'd read Judy Blume. Me too. Yes. And I think that was about all I'd known. Maybe I'd read something in, I'm sure you have the same thing over here, like teen magazines, like Tiger Beat or something like that would be the one, you know, and I might

have read a little bit about it there. And so I'd gone out and I'd bought menstrual products and I had them, I had some pads because my mother was not someone who I would have ever spoken about menstruation with at all. And she was a very difficult person and very, very judging and very, when the whole rely tampon thing and toxic shock syndrome came out, the only words I think she ever spoke to me about menstruation were really, you're not using those things, are you? You know, that was basically it. That was like the extent of the knowledge. So I was pretty prepared, but what I wasn't prepared for was the amount of bleeding that soon followed or the diarrhea that I was going to have or, you know,

or the severe cramps. Because that menstrual experience that I had read about was just that it was going to happen, not anything practical about it. And so I didn't know what was happening was abnormal. My mother never thought I stayed home from school a couple of days a month because the cramps were so bad. And my dad gave me codeine, which probably wasn't a good idea because he had a little habit. And so that's how I was for years until I got into medical school and actually got the information to learn that what was happening to me actually probably wasn't normal or wasn't in the spectrum of the expected experience.

Wow. You recount this story about going to buy those pads, those Kotex pads, and how big they were. And it really reminded me of those decades too. They were huge. They were monstrous. I mean, I had a box the size of a suitcase, like a carry-on suitcase in my closet. Each individual pad was, because I had to get the ones for heavy flow, each individual pad was like a Kleenex box size. I mean, you could literally, you know, it was uncomfortable to sit and riding a bike was uncomfortable and they were so big. And now I look at absorbent technology today and I think,

oh, that's such, I imagine if I just had pads with wings. I also remember, so my first period also came about where I didn't know really very much and it was so painful and I'm very lucky that I have a sister who's four years older than me and she gave me and I remember vividly Panadol painkillers that really helped but I was also really shocked by the colour of the blood it was brown I expected it to be red all of this stuff there was this culture of ignorance I really struggled with tampons I didn't know how to apply them. I didn't know how to insert them. It was really, it felt scary and confusing and unmooring for a really long time. At the same time as at school, my period, our periods, they were described as the curse. That's what we called them.

Yeah. Well, so that's what I heard it called too. And so when I was soaking my bed, I was like, oh, well, I guess that's why they call it the curse, right? Like you wouldn't think that there was something abnormal if everybody describes everything you hear about menstruation in terms of being awful, terrible. And I'm not saying it's a pleasant experience at all for people. experience at all for people, but if it's only described in these massively catastrophic terms, then when you're really experiencing something catastrophic, you don't know then to say, you know, if everybody was like, oh, periods are super pleasant and they last two days, then you might be like, wait a minute, my experience is different than that. You know, so that's, you know, that's what happens when people don't have knowledge.

I think it was Katna Moran who once said, there's so much blood that we see on screen as a result of male violence, and there's never any menstrual blood. Even to the extent that when they are advertising those Kotex pads, I remember they used to have the sort of before and after bits on the screen where they would pour a lovely little bit of blue liquid on one of them and it would be absorbed, as if the mere sight of blood was shameful. Yeah. No, I mean, I can't remember growing up seeing a teen movie where menstruation was even mentioned. There might have been an eye roll about somebody being grumpy or something, right? Oh, maybe she's on her period, like something negative from that way, but never anything like practical, nobody buying pads at the grocery store, nothing like that.

Before we get onto your first failures, I just want to cite this astonishing statistic that it wasn't until 1993 that it became a requirement to include women in government-funded medical studies in America. That's something I learned from your book. 1993. Yeah, I was already graduated from medical school. So part of that comes from lazy patriarchal, not wanting to study other physiology that changes. And some of it was also a massive reaction to thalidomide. So when the US escaped thalidomide because of one person at the FDA who had an issue and didn't think it was safe enough and so required there be a delay and they were fortunate to escape that. So then what happened, everybody was terrified to include any woman in a study because what if it was the next thalidomide? Now, obviously, there's ways to study things that you can be certain, but it was the easy

way out for pharmaceutical companies. Oh, we're just not going to bother to study women. They don't have to worry about it. And it's like, well, okay, but at some point, women might actually need these drugs. So then what? So it was just sort of the easy way out. If you look at it from a pharmaceutical company standpoint, okay, then they don't have to worry about lawsuits.

They don't have to worry about having many more people in studies. And so it's a very capitalistic sort of decision, right? We're going to study the easiest to study population, which would be, you know, people who don't have periods. And because this happened, we didn't have all this basic science research that we would need to have. So, you know, we don't know if medications for high blood pressure might be different for women versus men. We don't know. What about cancer treatments? What about if you give vaccines at the first part of the menstrual cycle versus the middle of the menstrual cycle? Would there be a different immune response?

Like, there's so many unanswered questions because of that. So, again, it was in 1993 when if you're going to use government money for research, then you have to include women. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit.

Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Your first failure is, and I've been there too, sis, marrying the wrong person. Brackets getting caught up on the marriage train. So tell us what happened.

I just thought, well, I guess this is what I do. You get married. And I had, you know, I had really didn't think the person was right for me, but squash those voices. Cause you know, I was getting on to be my mid thirties and I thought, oh my gosh, well, this has got to be the person, I guess. So I convinced myself and talked myself into it and ignored the alarm bells that were going to put them on snooze. I knew on the day I was getting married that I was making the wrong decision,

but I just felt like I didn't have any choice at that point but to go through with it. And I think that that's not an uncommon experience. You get so caught up in the idea that you're nothing without a man. That's a very, very ingrained belief in our society. I think it's gradually changing. And then once you start planning a wedding, it's so difficult to reverse that. And then you just kind of get, you know, you get to think, okay, well, things will be better after, things will be better after. But, you know, men are like shoes.

The fit is never better when you get home from the store, right? That needs to be on a t-shirt. I completely relate. I think you knew yourself better than I did on your wedding day and that you knew you were making a mistake, but you quelled those doubts. Did you quell them partly because you felt shame at having to admit that you might have got this wrong? Or was it more embarrassment? What was going on? Why did you go through with it?

Well, I think I didn't really allow myself the time or space to think about it. Every time those little thoughts came up, I'd be like, no, no, no, it'll just get better. It'll get better. Of course, things never get better, especially if you don't talk about that they don't get better. So I think it was that. And I think it was also once you've sent the invitations out, once you've done, it would be embarrassing to reverse course. Of course, it shouldn't be. You should have friends who would say, oh my God, that is the most amazing thing, that you were strong enough to do that. I recently had a friend whose brother backed out of a wedding at the last minute, very last minute. And, you know, the family was very supportive. And I don't know any of the backstory.

I don't know if they'd had concerns or not. But, you know, better to realize now than, you know, than five years down the road, I wouldn't have had any support from my family if I'd backed out. I would have been told that I was being silly because he looked so good on paper. What kind of life plan did you develop for yourself up to that point? And where was it coming from? Where was your idea coming from of what you should, quote unquote, be doing by a certain age?

Well, I think I felt the weight of societal expectations like many women do that, okay, well, I've done my career, I've graduated, I'm a doctor. I guess the next step is I'm supposed to get married. Because again, if you're not married, people look at you like there's something wrong with you. And I took in that same toxicity from the environment as so many women do. And instead of saying, well, if you want to have a kid, why do you need to have a man? Why can't you just go out and buy some sperm? I never even really gave myself space to think about that, even though I would have counseled women in the office that way. Oh, you want to get pregnant? You don't have a partner?

Here, let me refer you to our infertility specialist and you can go get some donor sperm. Like I would have told people that in the office and here I was, you know, not even considering that as an option. I don't even know why because it would have been, oh, too hard. How would I do it by myself? Oh, my parents. Thinking about everybody else instead of thinking about me. How long were you married for? Nine years. And was the relationship a failure? Or was it more the, what I mean by that is like, was it a difficult relationship? Or do you perceive the failure to be the fact that you had gone through with a decision that you knew deep down was wrong for you? You know, he was a good person, just not my good person

I think that's really the best way to phrase it. He would have been a really good friend to have, but was not my romantic partner for sure. You know, we were very similarly aligned in some ways and not in others. And that just, you know, I wasn't getting the fulfillment out of the relationship that I really, you know, needed. And I felt like I was alone. You know, the worst feeling in the world, I think, is to be with someone who's supposed to be the love of your life and you feel alone. I could not agree more. It's the loneliest feeling. It is the worst. You're sitting there thinking, I would be happier being alone,

because this is terrible to have somebody sitting on the couch, you know, and he wasn't very supportive of my writing career because, you know, it took time away and, you know, I'm like already working full-time as a doctor and trying to be a writer and do these other things. And it was kind of like all an inconvenience. There wasn't an equal division of labor with the children. I was carrying the brunt of the emotional labor in the household, as many women do. It's fascinating even in studies where in heterosexual couples, where there's children and the man does hourly the same amount of hours a week as the wife, he's more likely to do the fun stuff. So she's more likely to change the diapers and clean the dirty. And so there's almost always this unequal division of labor. And that was really wearing on me, too, because I was also working longer hours and providing

the bulk of the financial support. And I'm like, wait a minute. I'm working all day. And then I'm the person who has to take the kids to the grocery store. I've got to navigate twins at the grocery store. I've got to take the kids to swimming lessons. And I've got to do all this. And I'm like, wait a minute. Wouldn't it just be better if I did all this by myself? Because then

at least I wouldn't feel alone. It's a very difficult and big decision to end a marriage, particularly when you have children. How difficult was it for you and how did you do it? Well, I just, I finally decided that one, this is the only life you've got. I think that was really the biggest thing was, you know, this is the only life you've got. And do you want to be 80 thinking you can't believe you did this? And my mother was a very bitter person, like the most bitter person you'd ever have met. I don't think she had wanted to marry my dad, but you know, the different things were

different in the 1950s. And I think she resented it her whole life and became incredibly bitter. And I started to feel myself getting bitter. And I did not want to be bitter. That was like, to me, because that would make me feel like her. And so that was just, okay, you're starting to feel bitter. This is the red, you've been ignoring all to feel bitter. This is the red, you've been ignoring all the warning signs. This is the ship is sinking alarm. And so it was that feeling of bitterness that I was starting to get that I was like, okay, that's it. You're done. You got to get divorced. How old are your boys? They must've been about seven or eight. And so they

were actually, I think the first kids in their class to have a divorced parent. And so that was really hard. And then of course, as the years went by, more and more parents started to, you know, so then all the parents would come ask me, so how did you do it? And, you know, sometimes it's like, well, I just decided I couldn't live like this anymore. I had to pay alimony. I had to pay child support. I know. Yeah. But I had freedom. So it was hard, but it was the right thing. Absolutely. And I never had that feeling of being alone again like that.

Good for you. That's so strong. I also thought, what would you say to your kids if they were in an unhappy, miserable marriage? Would you say, suck it up? You'd say, no, let me help. Let me call you a lawyer. Let me pack the bag. And so I didn't want to model that same dysfunctional relationship that my parents had modeled for me. And that

became like really important. I really didn't want to repeat that cycle. What do you think that marriage and its failure taught you and more specifically taught you about how you approach your work? I think it taught me that you've really got to listen to your inner voice. Like you really have to. Again, if something feels not right, it's not right. And you need to sort of pay attention to that. I think it's really, really important that we're aware of how societal expectations impact us in ways that we don't necessarily understand this sort of like heteronormative sort of model that we're all forced to go through. And, you know, it made me think, okay, you know, I'm a straight white woman. So think about then people who are outside of that experience, how much greater the weight of this sort of narrow view that society has on people. You know, it made me think about that differently, I think, as well.

And when I have people, sometimes I'll have younger medical students or residents or people in earlier stages of their career, I'll hear them sort of, well, I think he's okay. I think we're going to get married. I'll be like, wait a minute. Think is not the right thing. And let me tell you from experience, it would have been cheaper for me to buy sperm. It would have been cheaper because at the time, when I was thinking back, well, I want to have kids, but oh, how expensive and hard will that be to do on yourself? If I think about all the money I paid in alimony and child support, I could easily have paid for a nanny. Do you think that inner voice that you mentioned, do you think that's another thing that women

specifically have been taught or conditioned to ignore by a culture that doesn't want them to listen because it's a very powerful force? Yeah, I mean, I think anything that takes you away from this patriarchal narrative is squashed. So I suppose if your inner voice is along that narrative, then maybe you don't feel it differently. But I think that, yeah, I think that when a woman has an idea that is different from societal expectations or wants to speak up, and you can see it in the office, you see it in your personal life, there's clearly something wrong with you. You know, when a man has an opinion, well, you know, it's brilliant, right? So I think it's kind of a reflection of that. It's that same thing just on a personal level that we all think, oh, maybe I'm wrong, as opposed to maybe I'm right. What if we brought up all people to believe that the default isn't maybe I'm wrong. Well,

the default is maybe I'm right. You know, what if we all grew up thinking that? Mind blowing. Did you remarry? I call him my husband. We're not actually married, but we, you know, we, we're going to be soon, but yeah, but it doesn't, you know, it's so strange when you're with the right person, none of that matters. Like it's sort of, you know, having to prove to the world that, you know, it's so strange when you're with the right person. None of that matters. Like it's sort of, you know, having to prove to the world that, you know, that I'm married with a wedding or like none of that matters. It's because you just know. And I'm like, oh, I wish I had known that this is how it was supposed to feel.

I don't ever feel alone, you know, with my partner. I don't ever feel. And, you know, we just started calling ourselves married because it was easier than... Because when you say like when you're 56, what am I going to say? It's like my boyfriend. It just doesn't sound right. And also we have a level of emotional commitment that I feel is worthy of that. And not that I feel you need to because we're not married, but we like to say we are because we feel we are and I think and I think it's cooler to feel that way than to have to like publicly state it I don't know I totally agree I now feel like you

safe and a part of a team in my relationship and I think part of that is also because he and I are both very grateful that we've got this second opportunity and we know how easily it can go awry. And so we take care of it. Yeah, I think, you know, relationships take maintenance. They take love and care and attention. And it also, I think, takes, you know, I'm certainly not a relationship expert, but, you know, once you've had a relationship that doesn't work and if you're able to sort of, you know, then you have one that does and you can see that comparison and you're like, oh, yeah, wow. Like just the difference of being with the right person for you and the person who, you know, cares for you as much as you care for them. And it's so obvious. And you feel like I could tell him anything before

I'd be like, oh, can I say that? Should I not say that? It's that freedom to be completely yourself with somebody. And I just want everybody to have that feeling because otherwise there isn't really a point, I think, having had both experiences. Your second failure is believing that you were bad at exercise. When did that belief start? Oh, I mean, in elementary school, we had to do these awful things in Canada growing up called participation. And yeah, I know. And there were these fitness guidelines set out by the government in the 1970s that you needed to be able to do how many push-ups, how many pull-ups, how many sprints,

all these things. And I'd never done any exercise. I played the flute. I went to choir. I was a studious kid. And you had to do this test once a year. And of course, I could never do the pull-ups or any of those things. And then you got a medal based on that. And you got a gold, silver, or bronze, or nothing. And you had to go to the whole assembly, the whole school. And they would call up the kids to get the gold, call up the kids to get the silver, then call up the kids to get the bronze, and then nothing for everybody else. And so, yeah, I was always in the group that got nothing.

The message was pretty clear. You're very bad at this. And there was never any like, this is really bad to single out people who don't either have a natural ability. I didn't go to soccer camp. I went to band camp. So I didn't have those skills. If that had been done for musical ability, then it would have been different, but that wasn't what was prized. And how long did it last for this belief that you hated exercise and therefore you weren't going to do it? Oh, for a long time. I found very creative ways in high school to get out of gym class. I'm very creative. You know, I mean, I rode my bike in the summer and I swam, but not in-

You had to get those Kotex pads on your bike. Exactly. And in medical school, you're studying full time, you're resident, you're so busy. And so all of a sudden I found myself, you know, like 29, 30, and I, you know, never really done any exercise at all. I mean, and then in my early 30s, I got into running. I actually ran a marathon. Why? Is this post-divorce? No, this was how I actually got involved with my husband was, you know, I decided I was going to start running, and that's kind of how we met through a running thing. So we were training together, and he was very supportive of me doing a marathon and very helpful for that way. And so, again, that's something to take the focus off your relationship if you're working on something that's not at all. And then I had the kids, and obviously I took a long time to kind of rehab myself after that. You know, my son, Victor, has cerebral

palsy. He's doing great now, but at the time there was like a ton of work on his muscles and a ton of work on balance. And I just was like thinking, well, if I want my son to actually be moving and doing things, then I probably should be doing that too. So that's kind of how I started getting back into exercise was again, thinking, what should I be modeling for my son? You know, what should I be modeling? And then I started running again and then, you know, gradually got into a bootcamp at work. There were people doing it at lunchtime and then got fitter and fitter and was able to do more. And, you know, in my mid-40s, I was doing half marathons. I was running 10Ks. I was working out.

I was, like, showing my muscles to people. And I was like, man, I can't believe it really took until, like, my 40s, basically, to actually realize that I could do things with my body. And, you know, I spent most of my, you know, life up to that point thinking that I was do things with my body. And I spent most of my life up to that point thinking that I was not athletic in any way. And then I realized it's not about athleticism, it's about training and having somebody show you like everything else in life, right? Having somebody show you what to do.

How did I get good at medicine? By studying, by reading, by doing it over and over and over again. How did I get good at writing? The same thing. And so, oh, gee, light bulb moment. I guess that would be the same for exercise too. Yeah. It's so interesting hearing you talk, feeling the familiarity of what you're saying, because I also was never picked for teams at school, terrible at team sports, always felt I was letting people down, felt humiliated, all of that. And it wasn't until my 30s that I discovered the exercise that I liked. And I don't think

it's a coincidence that that coincided with the time that I was doing the first few rounds of unsuccessful fertility treatment. I was going through a divorce and it was almost like I wanted to re-inhabit my own body for what it could do rather than what it couldn't. And I love the feeling of strength I get from that now. And I wonder how much you feel it's also about a process for women of getting to know their bodies. And so often we're encouraged just to think of ourselves as a sort of head attached to this fleshy avatar that we don't really understand, as a sort of head attached to this fleshy avatar that we don't really understand, which your work completely overturns that idea. But how much is it about just getting to know you, your physical self? Thinking about the time that I grew up in and probably very similar for

you was that, you know, women were not encouraged to exercise. No, you had to sort of lie about it if you did. Yeah, I remember that. And then it was really you did aerobics like that's what women did the women didn't go to gyms none of that was like accessible or available and you got like dressed up to go to aerobics it was a very very different sort of mindset at the time but yeah I think the empowerment of knowing your body knowing how it works knowing what you can push I think um that you know that's something that I would like everybody to know, you know, that you feeling strong in your body and you can feel strong in, there's so many different ways to feel strong, right? So it doesn't have to be like lifting weights per se, not realizing how, wow, this is so good for my mood. You know, I've been missing out for years

on like the impact of, of exercise on your mood. And I was like, you know, I hate exercising. I still hate it. I hate going to the gym. I hate the actual physical act, but I love how I feel afterwards. I love that. And so I just keep reminding myself. And also, again, I'm trying to model for my kids. And you look at the health benefit of exercise and you just can't deny that it is the thing for every organ system. Should you change how you exercise according to where you are in your cycle? No, you should do what feels right for you. There's all kinds of people with accounts online

trying to say, oh, you should lift heavy this week or you only do aerobics this week. And absolutely not. You should just let your body be your guide. You know, obviously, you know, if you're a competitive athlete and you've got breast tenderness one time of the month, then you might need to structure your lifting or whatever so you don't miss out on an arm day because your breasts hurt or something like that.

But that's also pretty intuitive, right? You're trying to figure something. But there's no secret to what time of the cycle you should do something. I love seeing professional athletes post that they achieved their personal best and they were on their period. And I was like, damn, you go, girl. That's amazing. What about the menopause and exercise? Because a lot of people, I'm sure, will be listening to this, just going through the menopause and feeling completely exhausted and like, oh my gosh, I can't, that's just one thing. I just can't drag myself to do any exercise. I just want to lie on the sofa watching reality TV. If they're feeling like

that, is that them listening to their body? Or should you encourage yourself to do exercise to help you through this transition? So you should always encourage your body to exercise. That's almost always, maybe there's very few medical exceptions. That's not the right reason. But I know, I know, look, I get it. I don't like the answer any more than anyone else does. But I would say that if you're so tired that you can't get off the couch, and that's the time to seek medical care. Because there are many things that could impact that. So if you're up all night with hot flashes, well, your fatigue could maybe be corrected with treating your hot flashes. Depression in the menopause transition is a very real thing.

Depression can make people feel like they can't get off the couch. You can have your depression treated. Iron deficiency from heavy bleeding, that could cause that. So there could also be medical reasons for that. So hopefully people's inner voice also takes them to the doctor so they can make sure they understand why they're so tired. And I think another thing that's really important, so often we're like all or nothing. If I'm going to go out and run five miles, I'm not going to do anything.

And anything less is a failure, right? As opposed to even getting up and walking around the block is a success. And so to kind of reset your expectations about even doing something is always better than nothing. Is there an exercise you can do sitting in a chair? Can it just be for a walk and go outside around the block? It doesn't have to be a 45 minute high intensity training session. I wish you could be everyone's doctor. Honestly, it would be so nice just to know that you would

get Dr. Jen Gunter when you went with any issue. Thank you for that. That's really helpful. Peyton, it's happening. You are finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions.

If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the besides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise mother a mother to many follow let me say this

on the wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts watch new episodes on youtube or listen to let me say this ad free by joining wondery plus in the wondery app or on apple podcasts shrink the box is back for a brand new season. This is the podcast where we put our favourite fictional TV characters into therapy. Join me, Ben Bailey-Smith, and our brand new psychotherapist, Nimone Metaxas. Hi, Ben. Yes, this season we're going to be putting the likes of Tommy from Peaky Blinders, Cersei from Game of Thrones on the couch

to learn why their behaviour creates so much drama. So make sure you press the follow button to get new episodes as soon as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Shrink the Box is a Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Your final failure, again, deeply relatable, is your failure to say no. Apparently you take on too many projects because you don't want to disappoint people and you want to help. And that must be really difficult as a doctor because you're being asked to help a lot of the time. At work, it's a bit easier because I just

say no to committees. I hate being on, I'm terrible. I'm like, you don't want me to lead any committee. I'm not organized in that way. So it's not about patient care, saying no, absolutely. What the issue for me is when for me is when I get called by a reporter or I get called by a group saying, hey, can you come and do this talk for us? Or, hey, we're fundraising. Can you come and help us? And I can't. There's only so many hours in the day. And so it's really hard. And often I say, oh, sure, I'll help. And yes, I'll do this. And yes, I'll do this. And I have to really learn to start to say no. And it's hard. And sometimes you get like a snarky message back.

I only have so much time in the day. And I want to do fun stuff too. I don't want to be up all night preparing another lecture or preparing another thing. I want to have a break in my time as well. So yeah, so it's really learning to say no sort of for me in the times outside of seeing patients has been a work in progress. You wrote to me that you fear something happening if you say no. What's that fear? Yeah. So either like the fear that they'll interview the wrong person and then there'll be this like awful information that goes out there. Like they'll interview a naturopath who

will tell people then the color of your period blood has some kind of meaning. And you're like, no, it doesn't. It's just oxidized. But you know, so that kind of thing, or that it'll be like that one great opportunity that I like, if I didn't take that, that was going to be like, the thing and I don't even know what the thing is, but that that would be some hidden opportunity. It's going to unlock like the door to Narnia. And sometimes when we can't say no, it's because we want to please people. Would you describe yourself as a people pleaser? I think it depends on the context. On one hand, I don't actually really care what people think about me. I was about to say, because then how do you take on the goops of this world, which I think is such a brilliant,

courageous thing to do for someone like me who constantly worries what other people might be thinking, which is so boring and I'm growing out of it, but it's a long old process. How do you find the strength to take to Twitter and be like, no, you're wrong? I care what people I respect, I care what they think about me. People I don't respect, I could care less. And so somebody who's out there selling snake oil, like I have no respect for you. So what you think of me, I don't actually care. The randos on the internet, the Gwyneth Paltrow's, the people selling snake oil, the, you know, the naturopaths selling their supplements. Like, I don't care what you think about me at all because like, you're not worthy of me caring. What's the thing that's most annoying you at the moment in the wellness space? Oh,

I think home hormone tests and this whole like, oh, you need to check your hormones to see where you are. And it's all not true. You don't. And it's one of these things that's difficult because there are times when we do want to do hormone tests. Absolutely. So for example, someone who's coming for an infertility workup would need blood work. Someone who hasn't had a period in three months would need blood work. But this idea that people who are having a relatively normal menstrual cycle should need to have their hormones checked or because they feel a little fatigued, they should have their hormones checked. And then it leads down this whole sort of predatory pathway. Well, then you have to have those results interpreted.

And then you need to buy my supplements so you can, you know, optimize your hormones. supplements so you can optimize your hormones. And so I would say the online world of hormone balancing is probably the thing that is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. Okay. Dr. Jane Gunter, even though you do struggle to say no, I'm so happy that you didn't say no to coming on How to Fail. You've been such an enlightening guest and I've loved our conversation. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. I just want to remind you that Jen and I talk more over at Failing With Friends. It's a wonderful community of subscribers where we chat through your failures and questions. I think that when you start to hear those negative thoughts that you need to actively reframe them and say, okay, let's look at what's here on paper.

No, I am not unsuccessful. I have done very well in my life. I'm a great person. I'm a great mom. I'm a good friend. I think you actually need to actually stop and say out loud the things that challenge that cognitive distortion. If you're not yet a subscriber, I'd love for you to join us. Just visit the How To Fail show page on Apple Podcasts and click start free at the top of the page to begin your free trial and start listening today. And please remember to follow us. Press the plus button on the top right

to get new episodes of How To Fail as soon as they drop on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.