It's Her House built for women's health, and we're talking about innovations that are shaping the future of women's health care, answering under research topics, and at the end of the day, fueling a better quality of life for women. I'm Melissa D'Lea, and after years of frustration, venting to my mom, and trading horror stories with friends, I'm so excited to see awareness and investment actually transforming how our bodies are understood, how we're diagnosed, and how women are cared for. In each episode, we share stories from real women like you, your mom, your sister, friends, and we interview experts who are tackling women's health challenges head on.
Anonymous:When I was in my early 60s, I started having severe pain intermittently in my stomach area. I had always had various aspects of pain, but it became so severe that it was not my quote unquote norm. And I ended up in two instances in the emergency room where the pain was so severe and had lasted for, you know, like hours. It was evidence something was going on. First time I ended up in the emergency room, they asked me a couple of questions and ended up doing an ultrasound to look at my gallbladder.
Anonymous:And they said, well, your gallbladder just, it just doesn't look all perfect. Well, you can just go see a surgeon. Spoke to the surgeon and he said, well, let's just take it out. And I said, well, should we coordinate with the gastro person? No, we'll just take it out. That's definitely your issue. Took it out a month after having my gallbladder removed, which yes, it is a known surgery, very common, but it is still a surgery. I had the same pain, ended up in the emergency room, had the surgeon come in. Oh, I think you just may have eaten something. You have a bowel blockage. What did you eat? Nothing unusual, mister surgeon. Well, I you know, it's just something that I think it'll pass. Should I go see a gastro person? No, I think it was just an anomaly. Nothing.
Anonymous:I at that point said, because this had been going on and off for several years, had talked to my general practitioner about it and she said, well, you've always had stomach issues. I ended up making an appointment with the gastro person, advocated for myself, went in and explained my situation. The suggestion was, Let's do an endoscopy, see what we find. Which they did and lo and behold, cancer was found.
Anonymous:If I had not advocated for myself, I wouldn't have not known that I had cancer for that much longer. So do I think that because I was a older woman that I was not listened to as acutely or taken seriously? Yes. I do.
Melissa:Unfortunately, I think many women can relate to the story we just heard personally, or maybe it's someone in their family. And it gets me mad thinking about those situations where women are not taken seriously, where they're not listened to, or where there just aren't available options. I actually had someone I met recently tell me she had to bring her boyfriend into her appointments just to validate the pain she was dealing with. And as mentioned by the woman in this episode story, those situations make it even more critical to feel confident about advocating for yourself and candidly for all of the women that you love. While it is a fact, as we're talking about, that research on women's bodies has lagged behind, our intuition, it doesn't let us down.
Melissa:Maybe you can relate to that feeling of disjointed health care experiences or the weight of trying to connect the dots and communicate all of the information you've digested from appointments and online back to multiple physicians. I've been there. I've tracked symptoms and, like so many other people, chase answers. One of the most eye opening experiences for me was a physician I had seen for years. I mean, overall, he was fabulous.
Melissa:He listened. He gave me a lot of time. But I've been going through a few things that I thought might be related: skin issues, migraines, painful periods. And I was politely asking this doctor, could these symptoms be connected? Is there any merit to what I'm reading, what I'm feeling? And his answers to me were a response along the lines of maybe. Maybe they're connected. Maybe there's something there, but most likely not, or we don't really know. And as frustrating as that was to me, I mean, I do know there are many things in life that just haven't been answered yet.
Melissa:But really the frustrating part was he then said to me, again, this is what stuck with me and fired me up. He said, I could never be a woman. It's just too hard. Women's bodies are so complex. And I was just like, what? Are you kidding me? I mean, I walked out of this appointment completely irritated and hurt. I had liked this guy. Super smart, kind, accomplished. Again, a medical professional. And in retrospect, I really don't think he was trying to be rude or dismissive. It was almost like he was talking to me as a friend.
Melissa:And that's just how he truly felt. There are centuries of cultural and scientific history as to why so many women deal with gaps in information, gaps in their care. But thankfully, and what we're talking about on this show is the progress that is actually moving things forward. Today, there are real investments being made to understand women's bodies and then to actually deliver that holistic care. In today's episode, we're interviewing a lifelong advocate for women, Maria Shriver.
Melissa:Among many endeavors, she is currently chief visionary and strategic advisor for the Cleveland Clinic's Women's Comprehensive Health and Research Center. The Cleveland Clinic, if you aren't familiar, is a leading healthcare institution, and they've created this state of the art organization to centralize developments and really focus on empowering women to navigate their entire health journey. At the center, women can access providers from all different specialties in one place, whether that's in person or via telehealth. And again, getting that personalized care. Your body changes as you move through your 40s, your 50s, your 60s. And for me, at this point in my life, those bodies are my mom, they're my aunts, and so many other women that I love in my life. But before I know it, it'll be me, my sister, my cousins, friends, and our daughters.
Melissa:As my doctor reminded me, our bodies are complex. Maria has led a life spanning public service, journalism, celebrity, and she really continues to leverage her influence and passion in committing to advancing healthcare for women.
Melissa:If you're not familiar with her story, I'd encourage you to call your mom, your grandmother, your aunt, your mentor, rather than looking her up. Share this episode with them. Say thank you because these women are paving the way for the future of our quality of life, and we can't thank them enough.
Melissa:Maria, it's so nice to speak with you. On the show, we focus on celebrating innovations in women's health. Health is also about quality of life. You are living a big, beautiful life and you recently published a book called I am Maria. So I figured I'd let you introduce who is Maria.
Maria:So Maria is the woman that's in that book. Maria, like every single human being is a multitude of different things and Maria has changed over the decades. I was a daughter, I was a wife, I'm a mom, I'm a sister, I'm a cousin, I'm a friend. And today I, you know, I'm in my kind of I feel like in my zone. I'm doing work that I find to be really meaningful.
Maria:I'm a grandmother, always a mother and I kind of really feel that I'm living my spiritual best life actually and and I feel blessed to be this age, to have work that is meaningful to me and blessed to be able to be in conversation with my kids, my brothers, my family, and my extended family, which are my friends.
Melissa:And one of these projects, you are leading the charge for the Women's Comprehensive Health and Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic. I think a lot of women, myself included, have had experiences where, you're sitting in the doctor's office or you're trying to chase down symptoms and you just get that feeling of, okay, this does not feel comprehensive. Right. Were there any experiences in your life where you came across those challenges?
Maria:Well, I grew up with a mother who was sick for pretty much most of my life and yet she continued to carry on and be a force of nature and change the world with her work and her passion. But I watched her go from doctor to doctor to try to get relief from her symptoms and it was always like I don't feel right but I'm not getting any answers as to what's wrong with me and I think every single woman has felt at some point in their life whether it's like as a young girl, whether it's as a young mother, whether you're perimenopause and menopause and no one's ever spoken to you about that, whether you're post menopausal and people don't even see you you know so I think that every woman has had, that experience and that I find that the older you get all of a sudden you're dealing with symptoms you've never even had before. I started getting migraines in my 50s. I was like, I don't get migraines, I got asthma. I don't get asthma and then I was told, oh that's actually a normal thing that happens to women in menopause.
Maria:I'm like, well no one told me that and so I think that I do the work that I do partially for myself, for my daughters, for my mother but for every woman who has felt misunderstood, unseen, who has felt crazy in the doctor's office or coming out of the doctor's office and I'm hoping that it changes the trajectory of women's health journeys which I know it is going to and I'm seeing that in real time. That's why I partnered with President Biden and First Lady, Doctor. Jill Biden to launch the White House initiative on women's health and research to bring it to a federal level. That's why this is so important. That's why we launched the Women's Alzheimer's Prevention Center and Research in Las Vegas to show that women, would come, that they were interested in prevention, that they did care about their brain health and we have launched a more comprehensive center here to show that women will of all ages come and need help.
Maria:I don't think women think you use the you know we put the word comprehensive in because so often women think I got a pap smear, I got a mammogram, I'm good to go and that's what women's health is or some people think of women's health and they think only of a woman in her reproductive years And then really in the last eighteen months or two years women are hearing a lot about menopause or but what is that? When does that start? And so I'm trying to ignite a conversation, spark a revolution for people to think about the continuum of women's health. You know, from when you first get your period, into your reproductive years, coming out of those years, into your perimenopausal years, into your menopausal years, into your postmenopausal years, into years where bone density is an issue, osteoporosis is an issue, neurological diseases have to be part of your checkup. So it's a continuum and we need a comprehensive approach for the continuum.
Melissa:What are some of the most exciting things that you're learning working alongside researchers at the center at the Alzheimer's organization?
Maria:Well, I've been in this space for twenty plus years. I have kind of reported on women, I've been an advocate for women at work, I've written reports on it, I've written reports on women in Alzheimer's, I've done documentaries, I launched a women's Alzheimer's movement to fund research into women's brain health, I, as I said, worked at it at the federal level and then now I'm just seeing that women of every age need help. Women of every economic background need help and the need is pervasive, the need is global, and the need for research is extraordinary. We are decades and decades behind so that women who are entering their menopausal years don't have the research on HRT that they deserve.
Maria:So they're making decisions like I did on the cuff out in the wild west so to speak without information and that's wrong. That's, should not be the case in The United States Of America and my goal is to change that for future generations and we're doing that. My goal is to dramatically overhaul women's health and research once and for all and we're doing that and it's happening in real time, which is exciting.
Melissa:I think you're also making a lot of progress in educating people women about clinical trials and why it's important to participate.
Maria:I always try to tell women it's a form of national service to participate and that you also get really good care. I know that people are super busy so it's hard, and I know that women at different ages have different time constraints on them so it might be, possible for a woman at a certain age to come in and be a part of a trial and in a different age it's not and but there are many ways to be involved in a center like this. You could spread the word, you can rally support, you can be an advocate for yourself and others who might not have family members. You can invest in research and you can keep the conversation going. You can be a reporter about this issue.
Maria:I hope to, you know, spark, you know, millions of, women to become reporters about the state of women's health. I hope women will start voting on women's health, on caregiving policies, on family friendly policies because we deserve much better than what we've been giving and we need to change it at the corporate level, the national level and the personal level.
Melissa:If you could give advice to women about how to advocate for themselves Yeah. What would you say?
Maria:Well I think, you know, you have to have the courage to use your own voice and I think that for many people is challenging. I think not to, even though the doctor has gone to medical school, you know your body better than anybody. You know how you feel better than anyone. So I would say which is what I say to my daughters, start keeping a record before you go to the doctor's office. Don't go into the doctor's office and go, I don't know how I feel. I don't know when I started getting a stomachache. I don't know what foods give me a stomachache. I don't know when, I don't know how long I sleep. I said go in as your own best advocate and go in with notes. Go in, here are 10 questions I wanna get answered in the time you have with me. Here's, what I'm experiencing. I've written it down. I notice that when I have a drink, I have a stomachache. I notice when I eat this kind of food, what does that tell you? I might be lactose intolerant, I might be this, I might be that. So be a partner but come in with notes, come in with, material and then go out with answers.
Melissa:We talk a lot about technology when we're speaking about innovation but I think you bring up a great point and it's in your book. Writing is a tool that's been around but can be very effective in all mediums.
Maria:Yeah, so write it in your notes, write it in your notebook but go in and don't be a passive person just sitting there going I don't know because you do know.
Melissa:My last comment is I think all the work that you're doing is really helping adult women. I'm excited to see some of that you know bring down to their daughters. I think young women as they're navigating the challenges of growing up, they're also navigating challenges of their bodies that weren't traditionally spoken about.
Maria:Yeah, and I think we have to advocate, as I said, whether it's a physical thing, whether it's emotional, whether it's anxiety, whether it's mental health challenges. This is all when I talk about comprehensive health, you know, depression, mental health, cognitive health, anxiety, all of these things, OCD, cutting all of these issues are health issues. Financial health is a health issue, right? Stress is a health issue. And also be supportive of our sisters and I mean that globally, largely and their journeys and don't judge just because it didn't happen to me doesn't mean it's not happening to them. More of a reason to talk about it.
Melissa:Yeah. Thank you so much for joining. It was a pleasure speaking with you.
Maria:Thank you so much.
Melissa:We didn't have a chance to sit down and ask Maria to shout out another innovator in women's health like we normally do, but I feel really confident that she would be proud to recognize the researchers and physicians leading the women's health center at the Cleveland Clinic. I am equally excited to bring light to the amazing work that they're doing in future episodes. I also wouldn't be surprised if Maria shouted out her mother in some ways. You can connect with her via her newly published book, I Am Maria. Thanks for listening.
Melissa:And I hope you're able to share this podcast and what you learned with others who care about women's health. Whenever I get frustrated about health concern or struggle, I always remind myself that I have more information than my mother did and way more than my grandmother's. These innovations are so important and we can't stop talking about them because those conversations result in progress for generations to come. I'd also really love to hear your stories. The stories that end in hallelujah and the bombers.
Melissa:If you're comfortable, you can leave a voice message by going to her-house.com and clicking your stories. Again, that's her, the dash symbol, house.com and your stories. Everything is a 100% anonymous and always will be. I wanna hear about your period, your doctor's visits, your PCOS, pregnancy, giving birth, what happens after birth, being postpartum, raising your daughters, caring for your mothers. I wanna hear about sexual health, mental health, weird symptoms, your immune system, and seriously, any differences that you recognize between women and men, because we are different down to the chromosomes that encode the entire maps of our bodies.
Melissa:People are researching these topics and we're going to find them.