The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dr. Jackie Walters On What You Need To Know About Sex, The Vagina, Cancer Prevention & Care, & When To See Your Doctors

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

#331: On this episode we are joined by Dr. Jackie Walters. Many of our listeners may recognize Dr. Jackie from Bravo's Married To Medicine. For those who are not yet familiar with Dr. Jackie, she is a philanthropist, health expert, women's advocate, and award-winning OBGYN on a mission to impact the lives of millions. On today's episode we discuss what you need to know about health sex, the vagina, feminine care, cancer prevention and care, and when to see your doctor.  To connect with Dr. Jackie Walters click HERE To Listen To Dr. Jackie's New Podcast click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough is a complete formula that includes naturally-derived forms of all 7 forms of supplemental magnesium and doesn’t contain any synthetic additives or preservatives. Today you can get 10% OFF with a specialThe Skinny Confidential coupon code when you visit bioptimizers.com/skinny and enter code SKINNY10 This episode is brought to you by BETABRAND and their Betabrand dress pant yoga pants. To try these pants go to betabrand.com/skinny and receive 20% off your order. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants you’ll ever wear to work.  This episode is brought to you by Palmers Palmer’s has been caring for your skin since 1840 and is America’s #1 Cocoa Butter Brand. Palmer's just released a new Hemp Oil Calming Relief Body Lotion & Body Oil. With a special blend of 100% natural Hemp Seed Oil & skin-nourishing Cocoa Butter for highly effective skin healing You can find Palmer’s In Store and online at Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS or Amazon. Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her.

It's so confusing because you hear, well, you need a pap smear every three to five years him and her. It's so confusing because you hear, well, you need a pap smear every three to five years and you need this. Let me clarify. You need an annual visit to a doctor annually. A well woman check does not only mean it's a part discussion and it's a part physical exam. And some of the discussion is your doctor listening to you saying what's been going on and you go, oh, well, this could be that.

So things that we could diagnose early. We are talking about vaginas this episode. We're pretty much talking about vaginas every episode, Lauren. No, but this is heavily vagina. This is a lot of vagina. More than usual. That clip was from our guest of the show today, everybody, Dr. Jackie Walters. Many of you guys may know her as a cast member of Married to Medicine. She's also a founder of

50 Shades of Pink Foundation, an OBGYN, an all-around amazing person, and now also an author and podcaster with a new show on the Dear Media Podcast Network. This was a really great conversation. We covered a lot of ground with Dr. Jackie talking about so many things from sex to women's issues to cancer screenings, all sorts of stuff. She's a two-time survivor and has just so much information to offer this audience. We really had a great conversation with her. I think she's so articulate, so incredibly intelligent and could not have had a better time interviewing her. Dr. Jackie also wrote this book called The Queen V and it's all about embracing your vagina. We talk all about labiaplasty in this episode, vagina tightening. We talk about sex after a baby.

We talk about where things in the vagina are, and we discuss fertility. We talk about breast cancer, when is the right time to get checked. We talk about ovarian cancer, and she talks about her experience with breast cancer. Like Michael said, she is a two-time survivor. This episode truly goes all over the place. If you have kids in the car, and maybe you wouldn't listen to this in front of them, but you do you. With that, let's welcome Dr. Author, Podcaster, Dr. Jackie to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her.

Let's just ask the question that's burning on everyone's mind. What is vaginal liberation and how does one reach it? Give us all the details of that. Oh my goodness. Liberated vagina. We all know what it feels like to be a liberated woman. And so let's imagine the vagina is a person. You know, she serves two purposes, procreation and recreation. So it really depends on what you're doing with your vagina. But it's just having the freedom to be a woman and be okay with the things that come along with being a woman. If you are, and the way I

quoted it in my books, if you have a vaginal personality where you are a notorious VAG and you don't mind having a mile high club in an elevator, then you're okay with it. You don't have to be ashamed of who you are. And if you feel like you have some growing to do, be okay with saying, I don't know. And if you need a basketball team to fulfill your needs, and that's what, who you are, then be, it's just being free. It's freedom. You know what the word liberated mean? And it's just being okay with your sexual and feminine health. Why do you think so many men are so uncomfortable with the vagina. Like I feel like they're not, they need like a class in high school called vagina and every man needs to attend. What's the deal? I think men are

not as comfortable because we're not as comfortable. We set the tone for most relationships. And if you notice the household, women set the tone for the house. I think we do the same thing. We don't really like, I have women who still say vagina. They still whisper the word vagina. So I think men are following our lead. Plus, you know, you gotta be pretty complex to understand the vagina and we have more genetic makeup than men. Yeah. I think like, I think you're a hundred percent right on men following the lead. It's like, we like we're not going to take the lead when it comes to that conversation because there's a lot of ways you can misstep in that conversation. So I think it's getting everybody comfortable. But in order for men to be comfortable, the woman who actually has the vagina needs to basically let us know where to go and how to talk about these things.

Because I remember when I first got married, I didn't know how to really break it down like, hey, I'm having my period or hey, I'm having cramps because I'm thinking, how's he going to feel? And I was nervous as to how he was going to feel about my vagina. And so I think with life experiences, with age and with the queen bee, you'll feel liberated enough to just talk about it and say, you know, my vagina is, or did you smell something and be free and open and talk about it. What are three tips that we can do to get a really bomb ass vagina? Like, are there any tightening tips that we can do? Are there any things we should be using to clean it? Or should

we not be cleaning it? Like give us a couple of tips. Okay, first and foremost, do not put soap in your vagina. The vagina is a self cleaning oven, it takes care of itself. And it's made up of vaginal mucus and epithelial cells. So white to clear so you do not need to clean the vagina. It'll clean itself. Secondly, you got to remember some of who you are is genetic. So if you had a mom who had that nice, strong collagen, then you got it like that. But if you have a family history and it lacks elasticity, you may have to do some transformation where you do vaginal tightening. For the most part, we tell women not to put chemicals, but you can do kegel sizers. They have all types of cones now. And you

know how you do when you work out and you tighten up these guns? They make those things for the vagina. So you can use them, but you have to use them diligently. So those are my tips, but don't put soap in your vagina, no douching, no bath bombs, all those things. Don't do it. I have a hot tip where I, every single time I'm at a stoplight, I do 15 Kegels. And until I had a baby, I thought I was doing them right. And then after I had a baby, my gynecologist actually taught me with her fingers at my vagina, how to actually Kegel. So yeah. Can you explain it to someone that's like sitting at home listening to this podcast? How can they learn to Kegel? Cause I thought I was doing it right by tightening, tightening, tightening. It's actually a different kind of tightening. And let me interject here and say, Dr. Jackie, we've done about 350 of these podcasts and we, and this is a, this is a fresh topic for me. So I'm also, I'm going to, I'm going to passively listen here and figure out. But you know what we want, we want you engaged.

Oh, I'm engaged. Just trust me, I'm engaged. But we want you to ask the questions as if I'm not, the questions men won't ask is what we want you to ask. And so we want you to ask when the man's sitting there like, I wish I could say so-and-so. Say those things because we want you to know it. I'm glad you said that. Yes. A kegel is not an easy exercise. You know the muscle you use to keep from wetting your clothes when you got to pee, you got to pee?

That's okay. And it's not easy. It is not an easy task to hold that. Now I'm sitting here doing kegels right now. I know you can see it, but it's like trying to hold that because the muscle, it looks like a sling. And when you're trying to tighten up that sphincter, that urethral sphincter to keep yourself from peeing on yourself, basically, is the muscle that you're trying to use. And there are some cultures, and I talk about it in the book where the ladies have total control over that pelvis. Like once they clench down,

the partner is not moving at all. Now. So if we're, if we're, if we're doing the deed, she could lock, like some cultures, they could just lock you in place. Absolutely. I Kegel sometimes when we're doing the deed, I clamp down. Yeah. And well, I can't, when we're doing the deed. I clamp down. Yeah. And can you get, well, I can't, so we had lunch and dinner. Can you feel that clamp? Can you tell that there's a difference?

I mean, listen, I'm not complaining. I've been chasing this woman for a long time. So whatever she's doing down there, it seems to say it's locking me in place. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But there are kegel sizers, like an exerciser.

And you can buy them weighted cones. And I'll tell you, we can tell, this is a secret, but when you buy the cones and you put them in, you think like, I can hold this little 0.5 ounce cone. You can't.

It takes some work to hold that in. And you graduate up to the point when you have, you know, a bigger cone where you can like walk around with the cone in. point when you have, you know, a bigger cone where you can like walk around with the cone in. But when you first put it in, it's like, so it takes work to hold that cone in place. I read Brandy Glanville's book and she talks about all about labiaplasty and how she had things cut and tightened. She said it was extremely painful. Now this was years ago.

This was probably like, I would say seven years ago. So I don't know if it's changed. Who's a candidate for labiaplasty and is labiaplasty different than tightening or are they the same? Okay. So vaginal tightening is actually, and let's talk about it. A lot of women's will, a lot of women will mix up the word vagina for everything. There's your external genitalia where you have labia majora, the larger lips, labia minora, the thinner lips, the clitoris, the clitoral hood. Then you have the vagina, which is actually a canal made up of muscles. And it looks like an accordion. And a lot of men go, you know, I'm really well endowed. Well, so are we, because when we're aroused, the vagina will lengthen as well. And so when women do vaginal tightening, the first place we tighten is in the vagina. And we use heat in most instances

to create collagen or heat up the collagen so it becomes stronger. Labiaplasty, they don't like the look of the vagina. It was like you fixing the lips and whether the lips are too long. And we talk about it, the most interesting, and I won't say weird, the most interesting labia I've seen was Curly Q. I mean, she literally was born with Curly Q fries for her labia. She hated that. And this was long before we were putting collagen in the labia and we were cutting the labia. But now when you don't like the labia, the lips of the vagina, we can even them up and no two sides of your body will be even. Like you have one foot that's bigger than the other,

one breast is bigger than the other. Same thing with the labia. And some women will have a magnified difference and others will have that subtle difference. But now you can even it up. You can put collagen in and make it nice and puffy. So just like we like to fix our lips, some women like to fix their labia. And so it really is personal preference. Now, as a physician, we try to guide you into not making decisions that you'll later regret. You've seen the ladies with the gigantic breasts, and then they start having back pain. Same thing with labia. We don't want to give you really puffy lips and then they don't serve their purpose that's supposed to keep things out of the vagina and keep things in the vagina. I thought that people were cutting their lips. So now they're puffing them up. They're cutting because they like to

change the size, but you can also puff them up. Yeah. So it just depends. It's like different strokes for everyone involved. Some people like it puffy. Some people like it tight. It's just different. And you want to be careful who you're going to for vaginal rejuvenation too, because a doctor who can cut can just say, Hey, I do labia rejuvenation. And I'm really reluctant to do it because it's like plastic surgery. You know, as much as you tell a woman, this is what it should look like. Some women don't like it. So you want to make sure you're seeing a person who's done this a whole lot or is the way to wind down and to de-stress. Okay. And still here we are in 2021 talking about magnesium. I love magnesium. I don't know why

you're pointing at me like I don't ever since we got this product, ever since you showed me magnesium, I'm sleeping better. I'm more relaxed. I'm more calm. My stress levels have never been better. Honestly. Here's the deal about most magnesium supplements. What I've learned is that most of them are synthetic, unnatural, and not recognized by your body. And here's the other thing that's really important to look into. Most of them are not full spectrum, which means they don't have all seven forms that you need. The one that we're recommending is called Magnesium Breakthrough, okay? And it's complete formula that includes a naturally derived forms of all seven forms of supplemental magnesium. And, and here's very important. It doesn't contain any synthetic additives or preservatives. Yes. As Lauren mentioned, this is the most potent oral

magnesium on the market. Some people like to use magnesium breakthrough in the morning, but I like to use it at night. I just feel like it gives me this amazing sleep. You usually notice it within three to five weeks, and you just notice that you're more calm. And what I like is I feel like it works on your nervous system, too. There's so much to be nervous about right now that it's important that you're really monitoring your supplements. So we highly recommend trying magnesium breakthrough for at least 30 days and seeing if it makes a difference in your mood and stress levels. And today, as always, you get a code. So 10% off

with a special Skinny Confidential him and her coupon code when you visit biooptimizers.com slash skinny, and you're going to enter code skinny10. That is B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S.com forward slash skinny and use coupon code skinny 10. Once again, that's biooptimizers.com slash skinny and use coupon code skinny 10. Enjoy. Is that a surgery that you should have after you've had all your children or can it be done whenever you want? That's a good question. Before you start to cut and tighten the external genitalia or the vagina, you really do want to have your baby making days out of the way because the anatomy is going to change some after babies. So if you are now tightening and cutting and making the, let's think about it. If you make the vagina tighter and you're having a baby, the risk of tearing with an episiotomy is greater. So you want to wait till you've had your babies, unless you just hate your vagina.

And there are some young girls who come in and they don't like the look of their vagina. And so we do refer them to doctors who especially is a vaginal rejuvenation and they, they change it. What are some things that are taboo within your line of work that you don't talk about a lot? We don't talk about anal intercourse a lot, though it happens. And today I actually had a lecture on anal pap smears because the anal cancer is increasing the statistics because women are now a little bit more risque and we're doing a little bit more that we don't talk a lot about anal intercourse. Now, I do talk about what goes on in Vegas should stay in Vegas and you shouldn't drag

it to the front. So if you are having anal intercourse, you need to stop and clean, whether it's a toy or whether it's live, before you come to the vagina. You remember the wipe from front to back? Same theory. You shouldn't go from back to front. Yeah, your penis, your butthole penis is not going in my vagina. You got to go. You got to go wash that.

But the crazy thing about that, though, is some women actually love it. I have one patient who said that's the greatest orgasm she's ever had is when she has anal intercourse. Do you think I can jump in on this? Now I'm part of the conversation again. I think what happens in this situation, I talked to a lot of my guy friends about this, is if you are into that and you have the okay to go ahead and proceed with that. I think a lot of people don't realize that this is something that you need to think about cleanliness with, right? You can't just spring it on the moment if someone's not ready. Maybe you can, but it sounds like there is a lot of back and forth going on when maybe someone's not prepared for it and hasn't thought about being clean. And so then you're getting UTIs, you're having problems. And I tell my guy friends like, hey, don't just spring this on someone out of the blue and not consider this other stuff because both people can have problems. Is that correct? Exactly. And you want to be, two things, you want to make sure you're using the right type of lubricant. This is one of those places where you want a thicker silicone type lubricant as opposed to a water-based or oil. And then it's a sphincter

that keeps everything in and tight. So if you're tearing it or you exercise that sphincter enough, it loses some of its strength and then you walk around with it. And you can't throw it. We have a friend, I won't put them on blast on here

because a couple of people listen to this. And they had anal sex and the woman had real big problems after because she wasn't prepared. There wasn't the proper lubricant. She had to go to the hospital, a lot of tears, and it caused a lot of problem for a lot of time. And I think people don't consider the, let's say the ugly side of that if you're not ready to proceed. Lost condoms, because that's a really tight opening. And we've had a couple of women who have come in and as an OBGYN, that's probably one of the orifices we don't really go into very much and trying to get a lost condom out.

It's interesting. I got enough problems on my hands. I don't need you to be losing a condom in my sphincter. Okay. Yeah. Put it on my calendar. I'm going to need some prep for that. Yeah. And then, you know, another big taboo is women who are really into multiple partners. And so we have seen that a lot now where we have menage a trois.

Is that the threesome? Yeah. And women don't really like to share my most complex case was not knowing which one was the dad and so remember we we got pregnant but we had sex with the same two people at the same time is figuring out who's the daddy that that sounds like a big problem what did did you end up doing? You had just paternity test each one? Yeah, just paternity testing. I would love, like I said earlier, we have a big millennial woman-based audience. I would love to talk about breast cancer and when we should be getting screenings. I hear all different kinds of stuff. I talk to a lot of different

doctors and practitioners, and it seems like everyone has a different answer to this, but I would love to hear what your take is on it. Yeah. And we know you're a survivor and both of our lives have been touched by cancer. And I think everybody, somebody either knows somebody or has a family member. So I think this is really important to discuss. And personally, I, and maybe I'm doing the wrong thing, but I'm constantly pushing my wife saying like, Hey, I know you're younger, but like maybe go get checked or get checked because you just hear these stories of people getting this younger and younger and younger. And we've been told maybe don't get checked until you're in your forties. But from your experience, is that changing? Should people start getting checked earlier or how would you go about it?

So it depends on your family history. Obviously, if you had a mom who had breast cancer at 30, we would recommend maybe two to five years before your mom's diagnosis that we start to screen you. We now do a lot of genetic testing for BRCA1, BRCA2, but there are definitely other genes that will predispose you to breast, colon, and ovary. So if you've got a family history and you want to be mindful of that, we now, it's a part of your routine exam. It's to ask if you had a mom or grandmother or sister who had breast cancer. Any cancer or is it just? We stick with the female cancers, mostly breast, colon, ovary, but we do ask about other cancers that could be on that same genetic line that would predispose you. But we ask, so if you've got that family history, your mother, your sister, your dad, your brother, then you could have some genetic predisposition to having it.

So we test earlier. It depends on which school you're listening to. If you're listening to American College of OBGYN that we follow, your first mammogram is at 40, but I still offer baseline mammograms. And that was still kind of in the air when you should do one at 35. If you're talking to the US preventive health people, they're going to say, no, just wait to 50. Personally, having been diagnosed right at 40, I like 40, but I still offer a 35-old baseline mammogram to women, whether they have a family history or not.

But we are really big into following the school, the college that governs OBGYNs, which is the American College of OBGYN. The American Cancer Society, I believe, still supports doing your first mammogram at age 40. My breast care specialist friends, colleagues still believe in baseline mammograms. So if you're 35, we offer a baseline mammogram where most of the insurance companies will still cover that. But if you're too young, let's say you're 25, they have very dense, firm breasts. The mammogram will look like milk and you can't really see it. So it creates this hodgepodge of, is anything in there? Is it not? So that's why they don't offer mammograms too early because you can't really see it. Here I am again, talking about Beta Brands Dress Pant Yoga Pants.

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color. I'll keep you updated. My favorite thing about their dress pant yoga pant is that they have this wrinkle resistant knit and they don't really wrinkle, which is so amazing. I sometimes wear the same pants like five days in a row. I don't know about you. And this is very, very important to me for it not to wrinkle. These are the pants that you want to wear all the time. They don't dig into your skin. In fact, I was at the foot spa the other day laying on the like the like recliner chair and I was working on my computer getting the best foot rub ever and I was wearing these pants and they were so comfortable. It honestly made me feel like I was wearing pajamas. Right now, all skinny confidential him and her listeners get 25%

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they can leave me alone. I had the mammogram on a Friday. I was leaving to go to surgery from downstairs to upstairs. And I'm like, I need to hurry up. But she kept saying, you need a biopsy. And I had absolutely no family history. I had not palpated a mass and I was living a relatively clean life as far as eating. And so I'm thinking there's no way in the world I have breast cancer. Long story short, I ran into one of the breast surgeons upstairs and she said, after surgery today, come by the office and I'll take a look. And so she did an ultrasound. She did another mammogram and she said, I think we should biopsy this area. I had a biopsy on Friday. My

husband's out of town. I'm calling up the girlfriends like girls going wild weekend. Now when you're 40 though, Michael, that means you're going to go shopping and eating out. And so we did that on Monday. I called pathology myself. I didn't wait on them to call me. Perks of being a doctor. And they kept saying, we'll call you back. We'll call you back. And I finally got a doctor on the phone who told me I had infiltrating lobular carcinoma. And to answer your question, I'm thinking, now I know what the word carcinoma mean, but at this moment, I stopped being a doctor and I became a patient. So I'm like, that's cancer. And so he clarified that it was cancer and he would have the breast surgeon call

me. And there we were with that journey from, you know, a lumpectomy, a second lumpectomy, chemo, radiation, mammograms, MRIs every six months to being diagnosed again. Four years later, when you think, okay, I'm almost at this remission point in five years to now here we are and double mastectomy. It was hard being on that side of the knife. And that's what I said one day I'm going to write a book on being on both sides of the knife in that I was a doctor. I knew too much lymphovascular spaces, the stages, my lymph nodes. I just had so much in my head as a doctor that had me going crazy as a patient thinking, okay, what if it's this? And what if it's that? And what are we going to do with this?

And I'm starting to look up chemos and this and creating my own plan. So it was a crazy time for me as a doctor and a patient. As a doctor and a patient now, I imagine you've developed tools, at least some mental tools to, you know, obviously help you get through this hardship. And if, as you're consulting patients now, maybe that you see that are maybe in your similar circumstances are saying like, are there things you tell them or ways that you coach them in order to get through something like this? To begin with, at first, I was really struggling. I was almost a little out of my mind because every time somebody would say, my mom had breast cancer, I wanted to know the story because I really was thinking about myself, like what happened to her? Or they would say, my friend

got diagnosed again. Well, what stage was she? And I kept trying to project that stuff onto myself. So I had to come out of my own head. But now what I do with women is when I have to make that phone call, I say, hey, this is Dr. Walters. And now I'm Dr. Jackety, everybody. And I said, I have some news. It's not the news we were expecting. So I'm not going to say it's good news, but I got a plan. And so this is how the journey goes. So I take them through. You've been diagnosed with this. These are the options, but I do allow your breast surgeons and your oncology to finalize this. There are a lot of techniques out there now that they can do that's different than what I went through. So I give them a sense of peace and calmness because I'm like, oh, I did that before.

Yeah, girl, you're going to feel really sick. I made jokes about not being able to smell foods when I was doing chemo. So I use my own life as a teaching tool so that they don't feel so afraid. It probably gives you more empathy for the patient. Oh my God. You can only, until you walk a mile in a woman's shoes with anything, childbirth, breast cancer, STIs, infidelity, all of that stuff, then you really don't know how it is until you go. I thought I did. I thought I knew. And you know, I've never had a UTI in my life until in residency. My first UTI, I'm like, oh my God. And I never knew what nausea was like, because obviously I had never been pregnant, but that first third, what the third chemo cycle to feel that nauseous. I'm like, oh my God,

I need to go back and apologize to every woman who I was like, okay, take this old friend. You'll be okay. Because I didn't know what it felt like. Can you work when you're doing chemo? What is that like? Is it just so tolling on your body? I need it to work. I will. First cycle, you're fine. Second, you're okay. By that third cycle, you're feeling like, okay, I'm so sick. I can't even hold my head up, but I mentally need it to work because what is it?

The reticular activating system in your brain works. If you buy a yellow car, 10,000 yellow cars. And so when you're diagnosed with breast cancer, every commercial that comes on is about breast cancer or every Lifetime movie network story that came on was about somebody dying from cancer. I needed to get out of the house. And so I would go to work and work, whether it was all day or partial days, but working was my refuge and going to work, talking to other women and getting through that was better than staying at home for me. For family members or friends, if someone's going through this, like, did you have anyone

in your life that was just a, you know, tremendous support system that did it the right way and supported you in the right way for maybe people are having family members are affected and they're thinking like, how do I support this family? Because it sounds like you want to baby the person a little bit, but it sounded like to you, you wanted to get out there and get moving. So what would you suggest for people that are helping to take care of friends, family? So I'm going to say my husband was thrown into it because he hates hospitals. He hates needles.

He doesn't want to see blood. So he had to man up at that point and just go to chemo with me. He would go to every chemo cycle with me. The biggest thing you can do for a woman who's been, or a man who's been diagnosed with breast cancer is ask them what do they need and realize the needs may change. Because that first chemo treatment, I was like, I feel fine. This is nothing. And we went out to eat, had a good time. I had a little metallic taste by day three. By the third chemo cycle, though, I could not, Curtis was trying to cook. I couldn't smell food. And when taking a warm bath kind of

opened up the scent, I just felt horrible. And so what you realize is their needs may change, but ask them, like, would you like me to do this? And, but you know, your mate too. And, and a lot of times we're going to say, oh, I don't need that. Sometimes you just have to give it a try and say, let me help you with that. And you know, their love language. Curtis bringing me a book in bed was a gift and that's my love. And it was like, okay, I feel good about that. So the one thing to do is remember the cancer is about that person and not necessarily doing what you need to do for yourself. And so if you need to have a breakdown, you probably need to go somewhere else and have a breakdown because now I'm going to try to baby you. I have a stupid question.

Okay, so a double mastectomy. Is that how you pronounce it? A double mastectomy. Is that how you pronounce it? A double mastectomy. If you are diagnosed with breast cancer and you get a double mastectomy, which to me, someone who's not in medical school means you cut the breast off or the breast tissue. Is there any chance that you can get breast cancer again or are all chances gone? I know Angelina Jolie came out with the piece that she wrote, how she decided to cut both, and forgive me if I'm saying this wrong, both of her breasts. Does that eliminate all chances of cancer? I wish it did, but it does not.

Because a funny story I had is when I was diagnosed the second time and the word got around the hospital, one of my colleagues walked up and he said, you do know you could get breast cancer in your scar. I'm thinking like, duh, I didn't go to medical school. I didn't need that. But no, you can still get a recurrence of breast cancer, whether it comes back in the breast, whether it comes back in the nose, it'll show up sometimes in the brain, it can come in the lungs. And it typically is in bones first, then lung, then brain. So you can get a recurrence

of cancer. And I see that a lot. I have a breast cancer foundation, 50 Shades of Pink, and we're the vanity foundation. We want to give you lipstick, makeup, wigs, make you look good so you feel good. And we have had several women walk the runway in the big gala that we do every year looking like a diva. And then in the next year, she's been diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. So it does not. And that's another thing I had to go through. Every time I would hear somebody say the cancer has come back, I would have to work with my head not to think. Because I really think your thoughts create words and words create action. So I would have to work with my thinking and talk to myself like I will live and not die. What do you think, and you might not know, but what do you think the reason so many people are getting breast cancer now is? Well,

we do rule out genetics, but that's not, you know, 20, 25% of breast cancers will have to do with a genetic predisposition. We think that it may have to do with some of the foods that we're eating and how they're, you know, the fertilizers, the phyto estrogens that they have in a lot of the cleansers, but we really don't know. And then if you talk about racial disparity and, and disproportion is African-American women, the last statistics I saw, I've been quoting, we're 42% more likely to die as a black woman. The last statistics I saw, I've been quoting, we're 42% more likely to die as a black woman. The last time I read it, it was up to 70% more likely to die as a black woman than as a white woman. And it's like, I can't explain it.

They haven't been able to figure out what it is and the genetic makeup of men and women that's causing this? No. I mean, there's research all over the place, but nobody's really come up with an answer as to, one, why are you getting it? And we're seeing it now in younger women because the technology is so great and girls are going to the doctor, but we don't have an answer. The books will say, well, you're not going to the doctor. You don't have access to care. I don't know if I agree with it because a lot of Black women I see come into the doctor and they still get a recurrence of a really bad breast cancer. Before we dive into that, I want to talk about Palmer's.

Okay, so I used their cocoa butter brand. It's the number one coconut butter brand on the market, but now they have a new hemp oil collection. And let me tell you about it. Okay, so Palmer's new hemp oil calming relief body lotion and body oil calms, soothes, and hydrates even your driest skin. So if you get dry elbows, cracked heels, dry knees like I do, you can just slap this on. And to get specific with you, it's a special blend of 100% natural hemp seed oil and skin nourishing cocoa butter for highly effective skin healing. So this is really good if you have sensitive skin or eczema prone skin, or even if you just need like dry skin relief, it has this powerful moisturizer in it. So I have this weird thing called a stress rash.

And whenever I get stressed, I itch my legs. And this is amazing for something like that. Okay. Cause it's going to soothe the irritation, boost hydration and improve skin's texture and radiance. So they have the hemp oil body oil and the hemp oil body lotion. And the body lotion is clinically proven to fight irritation, dryness, and itching. So what you want to do is you want to double up and layer the lotion on top of the oil for maximum hydration. Palmer's hemp oil skincare collection is dermatologist tested, hypoallergenic, and safe for sensitive skin. You can find all these products in store and online at Walmart, Target, Walgreens, or Amazon. The pricing is less than $10 each,

which is why we wanted to partner with Palmer's. It's so affordable and effective. From Palmer's, choose what's real. I was going to ask you when you were talking, if it had to do something with life expectancy, since as humans, we're living a little longer, but then you said that younger women are getting it. So maybe that rules it out too. So I don't know. It's scary. It's unfortunate, but it sounds like at least some of the medical advances are a little bit more equipped than they were to start dealing with this if you catch it. Yeah, less women are dying from breast cancer. Though we're diagnosing women, but less women are dying. Now, my youngest breast cancer death was

18. And she just had a horrible family history. Mom had had it, grandmother had it, aunts had it. And she never paid attention. Well, she knew it was there. But as an 18 year old, she didn't process that I should go to the doctor. And so by the time she came in, she knew it was there, but as an 18 year old, she didn't process that I should go to the doctor. And so by the time she came in, she had metastatic breast cancer as well. Well, that's my fear. And especially with this last year we've had with people getting access to their doctors has been obviously, I think very few people have touched on how this is affecting cancer patients and just general checkups is we haven't been able to get into the doctor. But what I worry about all the time, and maybe a little bit of hypoch hypochondriac now, is I really think it's important to go in,

get that yearly physical and check in with your doctors regularly. And I think so many people just don't do that. And by the time they catch something, and I've had friends and family members where they catch it and it's too late. And so when you're talking to people about the frequency of getting in to visit someone like yourself, what do you suggest? Is that a yearly thing? Is that every six months? How often do you want people to be seeing you? And we want to clarify that with our young women too, because it's like you said earlier, it's so confusing because you're here, well, you need a pap smear every three to five years and you need this. Let me clarify. You need an annual visit to a doctor annually. A well woman check does not only mean it's a part discussion and it's a part physical exam.

And some of the discussion is your doctor listening to you saying what's been going on and you go, oh, well, this could be that. So things that we could diagnose early, plus that whole check the ovaries. There's no tests to screen for ovarian cancer or early lesions that could potentially lead to ovarian cancer. So part of going to the doctor is me putting my hands on you. And you know, the exam part where we put our hands in the vagina, we feel the shape and size of the uterus and the ovaries. So you should see somebody annually. And you're right because of the pandemic, everybody delayed their well woman or well check exams. And so we're telling everybody, hit the reset button. If you haven't gone, don't delay it.

Don't wait until you go back to your doctor. Ask for age appropriate testing. For example, if you're 30 and I've been talking a lot about cervical cancer because it was January, which was Cervical Health Awareness Month. Is if you're over 30, make sure you say, hey, am I getting my pap and my HPV? The best thing you can do as a patient, as a woman, is be your own best advocate. No question is stupid. Ask. Part of the exam to me is just talking to, have you been this year? Has anything changed? Any new partners? Just start talking to your doctor. And I always tell patients, talk to me like your good girlfriend. Tell me everything you would tell your good girlfriend, who you did it with, how many you did it with, how you did it, what you didn't do,

because good people make bad decisions. And I say to women all the time, okay, you went out, you were drinking too much, and it happened. Then come get a check. Don't ever be embarrassed to come and do a check to make sure you're okay, because it's better we catch it earlier than later. Dr. Jackie, after I had a baby, I went and got my hormones tested and I was low on progesterone and testosterone. Do you recommend synthetic hormones for girls in their 30s? Or would you say there's another way to sort of fix that? Now, postpartum, your hormones are all over the place. And so checking them doesn't tell me a lot, except I need to get a need to give you time

to get back to your normal, you're not sleeping at night, you know, you have a baby who's crying for you have a husband, you really want to make happy. So're not sleeping at night. You have a baby who's crying for you. You have a husband you really want to make happy. So hormones are all over the place. So we don't typically give postpartum women a bunch of hormones unless I checked and they said, oh, you have no testosterone. I love bioidentical pellets. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to get it done every day, every week. You don't have to worry about the patch itching, you know, the injections. If you did testosterone injections, it's hard to taper that for a woman. So you come in with a deep voice and you're growing a mustache.

But with bioidentical pellets, we can actually give you small enough doses where you get slow release and it can last up to six months. So we, I don't give a lot of hormones to young women because obviously we want to find out what's causing the hormone imbalance first, but that postpartum phase is a hard time. It's so hard. My husband said in third, in like the third month, he looks at me and he goes, what's wrong with you? That's not the right question. I'm never going to live that down. I'm never going to live that down. Yeah, that's not with me. Pull up my scroll. She caught me in a moment of weakness where I probably hadn't eaten enough. I'm not making excuses. I fucked that up. But I paid the price and I've been paying the price.

Let me ask you a question as a man. What did you see or didn't see from your wife? Because I think men who are listening to your show will want to know. They probably say, oh, I was thinking the same thing. I was just not crazy enough to say it. What did you see that made you ask her that question? I think, listen, my wife has always been a very stable person. We've known each other since we were 12. We haven't been together that whole time. We got together in our 20s and pretty consistent. Obviously, we've been together for a long time, known each other. And then obviously, the kid enters the mix and I just saw a different, listen, I don't want to say that, it was a different side of her personality. She had a lot of postpartum depression, anxiety that she's talked

about on the show. And it was like my partner was off and I felt like I didn't have the tools to help her. And every time I tried, I got met with a brick wall or said the wrong thing. And it's because this person I had been interacting with for 20 plus years, all of a sudden was a different person. And I had to adjust and realize, okay, there's things going on, new baby, this is our first child. And so I put my foot in my mouth a bunch of times. And it was a lack of understanding what was going on with someone who has a new child.

And since then, we've had so many conversations with people like yourself, and I've learned more. But I'll chalk it up to just ignorance and impatience and honestly, just fucking up. So I think for a lot of men that were listening, if I was to do this over again, I would be much more patient and understanding that there's a lot of changes that occur with a woman after she gives birth and I would have handled it differently. But at the time I was like, what the hell is going on? Right.

But a lot of women don't even feel good about the way they look. You've longed your body for 40 weeks to this little person who comes out and could tear up things and disrupt your normal anatomy. So you're not even feeling good about how you look. The biggest factor, I think, and, you know, I've never had a baby, is the lack of sleep. You don't realize how much a woman is thrown off by the fact that she's not sleeping at night. And even though as the man, he's getting up with the baby, as a woman, I think you're still listening out because we think he's going to break the kid or do something to the baby. And so women are tired. They're exhausted. They have to breastfeed if they're breastfeeding.

The anatomy is disrupted. They don't feel good. I spent 40 weeks looking like this and I want it back in six weeks. And then I'm thinking about you, like, I really want to have sex, but I'm tired. I don't feel good. So for a woman, there are so many emotions going on that she's not the same person. She's a mom now. And you're right. But here's the part I have to say to the men. We have to give you some credit too, because you are affected by it as much as we are, but not physically. We forget that men are going through not putting up with us being grouchy or tearful. And you don't want to see me sad and crying and not sleeping at night.

So we forget to say that he's in this too. This is an equation that involves the three of us. And sometimes I just want you to take the kid. And as a husband, you're like, well, what do I do with it? And as a woman, you're like, you should know that. Dr. Jackie, I wish you were around about a year ago. But no, all jokes aside, I think I also was looking at my wife being like, hey, what's wrong? You have this beautiful new baby. Our life is good.

Everything should be happy. What are you upset about? Because from my perspective and as a man, we have it very easy. If men had to give birth, I've said this on the show so many times, we'd have one child in the planet and then we would have stopped because men would know we would do this. But I'm looking at it from like, why aren't you so happy? Everything's so great. And because all we're doing really like men have it easy. We sit there, a baby shows up, we get to play with it. And we didn't have to go through all this stuff. So I just, there was a, there's a disconnect that I think a lot of men and women go through where we don't understand why someone could be upset after a great or a beautiful child comes into the world or like everything should be good.

Right. But you make a great point that you have not had to go through. And physically, nothing's really changed for you. For a woman, it's like, stretch marks, my stomach's fat, my vagina hurts. I'm bleeding for six weeks. It's wild. I would like to know, and this was a question that the audience asked about making women's healthcare more affordable. So what would you say to someone who's having difficulty getting pregnant but can't afford fertility treatments? There's so many fertility treatments all over social media.

It could probably be overwhelming for someone who feels like they can't afford that. Now you're giving me a hard question because you're exactly right. Fertility is very expensive. Let's start with the fact that Fertility is very expensive. Let's start with the fact that your greatest wealth is your health. So knowing that you have done everything you can do as a person, fertility or lack thereof still happens. There are foundations out there that are available that you can tap into to see if you qualify. I started a surrogacy agency with a partner and we have a fertility foundation and we are definitely raising money for women who cannot afford surrogacy. And so I would say, turn over every brick, every rock to see if there is something that is available and then go to your

OBGYN where your insurance will cover some of it. For example, if you need an HSG, hystero-salpingeogram, where we inject dye into the cervix to see if the fallopian tubes are open and if the cavity's okay. That can be done with your OBGYN and not your fertility specialist where it is covered by your insurance. So go in. And that's another thing we want to talk about. Be okay with not being okay. Ask questions. I can't afford that. And I say, I make a good living, but there's still some things I want to know, like God, MRIs, those are expensive tests. Ask, is there any way you can do it? Some fertility groups will say, if you stimulate and you will give us two eggs to use in research, they're never going to turn it into a live birth. Then we will do your

fertility care free. So you have to almost get where you shop around to see what's available. And don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. Like my first question in every store is, is this on sale? And so you got to do the same thing with your health. Like, okay, how can I get that cheaper? Is there a cheaper drug that I can use? So be free, be okay to ask the hard questions. And anybody, any doctor who would make you feel bad about asking about cost, you just have to talk to that doctor a little bit. No, ask

questions. How can I get this cheaper? Is there somebody who's doing some of this for free? Are there foundations out there paying for it? And there are foundations who will pay for fertility. With everything that you have going on, what made you want to join reality TV, Married to Medicine? What was the draw? Dr. Simone, who is a part of marriage to medicine was a patient of one of the cast mates. And she had this idea of, I'm going to bring all the wives married to doctors to a show, but was told the show needed to have doctor who doctors who were women and doctor women who were married to doctors. So Simone said, I want to try out for the show. You need to come and go with me. I'm like, I don't want to do reality. No. And she's like, just try out.

I went in to just pacify a friend thinking I'm going to do this. They'll never choose me because my life is boring. And and I can say no. And so when they came and said, oh, we've chosen you as one of the cast. I'm like, oh, I'm not doing that. No, I was just no, no. But, you know, they kind of put the pressure on you. And I'm like, and Simone, like, we've chosen you as one of the cast. I'm like, oh, I'm not doing that. No, I was just, no, no. But they kind of put the pressure on you. And I'm like, and Simone, like, let's try it. If we don't like it, we'll quit. That's not how contracts work either. And so here I am on the first set and I'm like, I can't do this. These girls are fighting. Oh my God, I can't do this. I went outside, I called the producer. I said, Hey, I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm not coming back anymore. They were like, okay, try one more scene. And finally, when they pointed out, like you have a contract

and you have to fulfill your contract. I was like, okay, I'll be back. And so here we are eight years later. And is this something like at this point, are you happy you did it? Or like, obviously you keep doing it. And how do you separate like your kind of TV life from your actual personal doctor life? Or is it so intertwined now that it's the same thing? Dr. Jackie is intertwined because patients don't come in and call me Dr. Walters anymore. They come in like, Hey, Dr. Jackie. And they'll start talking about the show.

I'm like, girl, you got 15 minutes on this appointment. And so I do have to pull them back in, like, let's take care of you first. And so do I, I enjoy the show now because I actually enjoy the girls. Do we fight and you see what happens when the white coats come off? We do banter back and forth. The beauty of it though, is I get to remain who I am and I'm pretty much a peacemaker. So I get to remain that girl who will apologize quickly. I have stuck my foot in my mouth sometimes, and I couldn't get it back out. And I've learned if you own it and not try to waffle and lie, it's going to go away faster. But I enjoy the show because I enjoy the girls now. This is another question from a reader. What impact do

you think Married to Medicine and the representation of strong, brilliant, hardworking women of color have on the Black female community? And that's a great question. If you think about it, when we as women and we as Black women are labeled as crazy on a show, if you stop at your family reunion or at your next Christmas dinner, it's a reality TV show. The same argument. I would never let anyone film our family. It's too much. It's too much. That's my point. And so when we got labeled as, oh my God, you're acting out, I started thinking, I got cousins who act just like this for Christmas. So the platform it has afforded me, though, is an opportunity to talk about breast cancer, to talk about infertility,

to write a book that would uplift, inspire, and educate women, to be able to talk to you guys tonight. So that's the plus side, which has outweighed the negative. Yes, there's a stigma around women and Black women in particular fighting and catty and calling names. But once I started looking at the cast and then watching what happens for Christmas, I'm like, sure, this is a family reunion. I would love to know the process of writing your book. Did you write in the morning, at night? Do you have a morning routine that you implemented with writing the book? Walk us through that. So I started trying to write the book on my own. I started just keeping notes because the crazy part about it is I saved stories that women would tell me. So if you read the book,

the weirdest thing I've gotten out of vagina was a glass vase. I've gotten nuts, boats, snicker bars. I had a lady and women misuse the words in medicine. And she said, I had a history correction. And I'm thinking, oh, a hysterectomy. And so I started saving stories and I would share the stories with other patients so that they wouldn't feel so embarrassed about a situation they had gone through. So I'm writing stories. I'm trying to write a book. I'm

getting a nurse to help me write a book. I found another writer to come in and say, help me make these stories words. And she tried to help me to make them words. And it just, that's how it started. And then from there on, and then crazy enough, we are on the set of the reunion for Married to Medicine. I'm telling Andy Cohen about my book. I said, I'm trying to write a book. And he was like, wait a minute, you're trying to write a book. And he said, I have an imprint with a book company. I want to hear more about it. I shared it with him the next day. Here we are. Dr. Jackie, I'm really happy we got to do this tonight. This is, listen, I've learned a lot. I've learned all about Kegels.

I've learned about anal. I'm just kidding. No, but also I think we've touched on so many important things that I really think are going to help a lot of people. So I want to talk about your podcast. We're super excited to have you on Dear Media. Very happy to see the launch. Trailer sounds amazing.

What can people expect? And so Dear Media is from the queen bee. And as I was saying, I wrote the book so that I can uplift women. I can encourage them and I can educate them and let them know that their bodies are royalty, hence queen bee. And once you learn the royalty around being a woman, you learn to protect your body. You learn to not be embarrassed because your vagina is not making history. Somebody has done it before. And so on the podcast, that's what

we're going to do. We're going to talk to people. And the very first podcast is, if you go back a few years on Married to Medicine, we were about to start filming and my husband was caught up in a big infidelity situation. And I'm like, huh? I was that girl who didn't have any of the feelings like it's happening. And so he's the first guy to sit in the seat because I think women talk a lot about the infidelity journey, but men never talk about it. When did you realize I wasn't enough? What made you feel like you needed more? What happened the moment you found out I knew about it? So my first podcast will be to talk to men around infidelity. I think that's a really courageous thing to do, especially on such a public platform,

because so many people go through that and suffer with those issues, but they don't talk about it. And I think removing some of those stigmas and discussing like, hey, we're all humans. We have moments of weakness and what causes those moments and how do you get through them is really important. So listen, it's so excited to have you as part of the network, excited for the show. Where can everybody find you? Where can they find the podcast? So I'm on Instagram, The Real Dr. Jackie and on Facebook and Twitter, I am Dr. Jackie Walters and the queen V or Dr. Jackie's point of V can be found on any place you find a podcast, Apple, Spotify. What's the other one?

All of them. We'll link them out. All of them, all the major podcast listening platforms. I know. Podcast. It sounds like such a, it just sounds like you bring so much expertise, but also you're very down to earth and you tell us stories about yourself, which I think is such a smart mixture.

Congratulations on launching your podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. Honestly, that conversation went everywhere and it was amazing. Good. Thank you. So you guys be safe. And when you have the next baby, the one thing I'm going to advise you and then I'm getting off it. Buy her a push gift.

And that gift is, yeah, right. That gift is a diamond, rubies, pearls, not something for the house, not a car for the family, but a push gift to say the half of the body that you loaned to my half of the jeans, you give her a gift. Roger. Dr. Jackie, I might have to call you anytime I start to get in some hot water here. I might be like, hold on. Let's put this conversation on pause. I got to put speed dial, Dr. Jackie, make sure I'm not going to get any some shit. And I'm going to come get my labia cut off after my third kid.

Okay, I got you. We'll keep you there. Thank you, Dr. Jackie. All right, be safe. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. You're amazing. Wait, before you go,

do you want to win a copy of The Queen V? That is Dr. Jackie's new book. It is so juicy. I feel like everyone wants to win a copy of this all you have to do is tell me on my latest instagram at the skinny confidential your favorite part of this episode easy breezy and on that note i also want to remind you that we have eight episodes out a month we are producing two extra episodes every single month for you guys so make sure you're checking in on Mondays and Thursdays.