The Myth of the Whiny Woman: Why Women's Symptoms Are So Often Ignored

Why are so many women still dismissed, misdiagnosed, or undertreated in modern healthcare?

In this episode of Wellness Connection MD, Dr. Jim McMinn and Coach Lindsay Mathews take an evidence-based look at sexism in medicine and the very real consequences it has for women’s health. From menopause and hormone imbalance to heart disease, chronic pain, endometriosis, autoimmune illness, thyroid disorders, sleep apnea, ADHD, autism, and stroke, they explore how women’s symptoms are too often minimized, misread, or attributed to anxiety, stress, or “just being hormonal.”

They also discuss the menopause knowledge gap, the long shadow of the Women’s Health Initiative, and why women have historically been treated as a variation of the male medical standard rather than as patients with distinct biology and risk profiles of their own.

This episode is not about blaming individual doctors. It is about confronting a larger system problem in medicine—one that affects diagnosis, treatment, pain management, hormone therapy, and even survival.

Most importantly, Dr. McMinn and Coach Lindsay discuss what needs to change, and what women can do to better advocate for themselves in a healthcare system that too often fails to listen.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Sexism in medicine and gender bias in healthcare
• Medical gaslighting and the dismissal of women’s symptoms
• Menopause, perimenopause, and the hormone replacement therapy debate
• The Women’s Health Initiative and its long-term impact on women’s care
• Why endometriosis and chronic pain are often diagnosed late
• The pain treatment gap in emergency medicine
• Women and heart disease: missed heart attacks, delayed diagnosis, and worse outcomes
• Other commonly overlooked conditions in women, including stroke, autoimmune disease, thyroid disease, sleep apnea, ADHD, autism, and migraine
• What healthcare providers can do to improve women’s care
• Practical ways women can advocate for themselves in the medical system

If modern medicine is serious about being evidence-based, it must get serious about providing women the care that they deserve. 

Transcript

Welcome And Medical Disclaimer

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Connection MD Podcast. I'm Dr. Jim McNein. In today's episode, we'll take on a difficult but necessary topic: the persistent dismissal of women's symptoms in modern medicine. We examine how women's pain, fatigue, heart symptoms, hormonal changes, and other legitimate health concerns are too often minimized, misattributed, and written off as anxiety, stress, exaggeration, whining, or normalized as just part of being a woman. This episode looks at the evidence behind those patterns, the long history that shaped them, and their very real consequences, including delayed diagnosis, undertreatment, unnecessary suffering, and sometimes preventable death. We also discuss menopause and hormone care as one major example of how women have been underserved by the medical system, along with heart disease, chronic pain, endometriosis, and many other areas where bias still matters. Most importantly, this is not about Dr. Bashing, it's about changing a medical culture that too often fails women. I hope you enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Welcome to the Wellness Connection MD Podcast with Dr. McMinn and Coach Lindsay, where we bring you the latest up-to-date evidence-based information on a wide variety of health and wellness topics, along with practical take-home solutions. Dr. McMinn is an integrated and functional MD, and Lindsay Matthews is a registered nurse and IIN certified health coach. Together, our goal is to help you optimize your health and wellness in mind, body, and spirit. To see a list of all of our podcasts, visit.com. To stay up to date on the latest topics, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast player so that you'll be notified when future episodes come out. The discussions continue this podcast for educational purposes only and diagnose or treat any disease. Please do not apply any of this information without approval from your personal doctor. And now, on to the show with Dr. McMinn and Coach Lindsay.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection MD Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Dr. Jim McMinn, and I'm here with our own health coach, Coach Lindsay Matthews. Together we bring you the evidence-based podcast with honest, commercial-free, unbiased, up-to-date information about functional, integrative lifestyle and wellness medicine. Our goal is to empower you with practical solutions to help you overcome your health care challenges, to optimize your wellness, and to become a better captain of your ship when it comes to your health. Well, good morning, Coach. It's great to see you again.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Good to see you too, Dr. Mack, and it's great to be back with all you listeners.

The Hidden Cost Of Dismissal

SPEAKER_02 2:31

You know, Coach, today we're going to talk about a topic a little bit different, but very real, and it just needs to be discussed. We need to get out there. We're going to pull back the curtain on one of medicine's dirty little secrets and most dangerous and sometimes deadly biases, and that is the systemic dismissal of women's legitimate health concerns. From heart attacks brushed off as anxiety to painful symptoms left unexamined and untreated, we're diving into evidence-based reality of sexism in medicine and the very real cost to women in America. And by the way, I was just talking to somebody the other day from Latin America, and she said the same thing is going on down there. So this isn't just America. I think it's worldwide. But now the word sexism may sound a bit harsh, but we gotta tell it like it is, coach. This stuff is very real and it needs to be talked about. Sometimes the things we do to women we would just not do to men. I've always considered myself to be a humanist. But darn it, coach, I've been backed into a corner and I've been forced to be a feminist. And I have this amazing wife, Dr. Cheryl, two wonderful daughters, a sister that I love dearly, lots of incredible women and friends and colleagues in my life like you, coach. And I had the world's best mom, so uh, what can I do? I've got to be a feminist, right, coach? And you know what? I think so should all other men out there who care for the women in their lives.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

I appreciate that about you, Dr. Mack. And looking forward to doing this topic with you. I think we were talking off-air about it, just the idea that we just gotta put these things on the table and talk about them so that we can move forward and acknowledge it.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

It's a lot more comfortable just to ignore it, didn't coach. Yeah, yeah. It really is. And it's as I said, it's kind of one of medicine's little secrets. Uh, but I I think we need to get it out there.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

I think a lot of people don't realize how deep this issue truly goes. We're not just talking about a few doctors with bad attitudes, we're talking about a hugely impactful, deep-rooted systemic bias against women in medicine that has been there to some degree from the beginning, and it still exists. For some women, this has resulted in years of misdiagnoses, delayed treatment, preventable suffering, increased mortality. And research gaps have taught generations of clinicians to underestimate women's pain, to misread their symptoms. And too often, that leaves women sicker for longer before anyone will take them seriously, which then erodes trust in our medical system and leaves many women feeling gaslighted by the very institutions they went to for help.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

And that's right, Coach. And this issue of sexism in medicine is not new to me. I thought about it for a long time, and I actually, many years ago, wrote a published article about this. But what brought it to the forefront

“Whiny Woman” And Medical Gaslighting

SPEAKER_02 5:17

again and made me want to do a podcast on it, was an interview that I happened upon with Dr. Mary Claire Haver, MD, OBGYN doctor, who wrote a new book called The New Menipause. And she was on a book tour, and one of her interviews caught my ear. And I have to be honest, coach, I have purposely not yet read the book because I wanted to tell the story from my own unique perspective and not just parrot what she said. And I didn't really want to be influenced by her. However, it appears the book has been quite a hit. It made the New York Times bestseller list and has had excellent reviews. So I do plan to read it myself, and I highly encourage anybody who is interested in the subject to also read it. But the perspective I will discuss on this podcast today is my own lived uh experience, evidence-based perspective on this issue of sexism in medicine.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

In her interview, Dr. Haver shared a story from her residency days as a young OBGYN intern. And so this is kind of a paraphrase of how she told her story, but she had a patient in her 40s with a laundry list of symptoms like irregular periods, insomnia, headaches, dizziness, weight changes, low libido, mood swings, just those classic perimenopausal symptoms that a lot of times women describe. And when she presented the case to her chief resident, when Dr. Haver shared it forward, he taught her a secret medical shorthand for those patients, and that those women were to be automatically dismissed as WW, which stands for whiny woman. He basically said something to the effect of just don't put it in the chart officially, but women this age just have a ton of somatic complaints, pat them on the back and tell them it'll be okay and move on. There's just not that much that we can do, so we don't want to waste our time and energy on it.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

It's kind of sad in the coach. Yeah, yeah, it hurts. So uh you know, we saw this kind of woman at the McMinn Clinic every day. So we know that this phenomenon is very real. However, I must admit I never heard the actual term Wani Woman in my own training. But as it turns out, the term Wani Woman or WW has appeared in American medicine, but only as an informal, off-the-record slang rather than anything official or systemic or something that might end up in the chart. It uh you'll never see it in textbooks or diagnostic frameworks or professional guidelines, but instead it surfaced in certain clinical situations, uh particularly in earlier male-dominated training environments. It was casual, dismissive slang by the docs to quickly brush off women's complaints of things like chronic pain, fatigue, or other complex multisystem concerns, especially when the labs were normal and the systems didn't quite fit into kind of a neat, tidy little diagnostic box. It was basically medical gaslighting 101. It's a lot easier to label these patients as an overly emotional, hysterical, exaggerating, malingering, whiny woman, instead of recognizing their real hormonal biology, was seriously messing with their brain, their nerves, their energy, their sleep, and so much more. A thorough and honest inquiry rather than a dismissal would require a lot more time, brain power, and workup.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

And time and brain power and energy is a huge part of that. So we can understand to a certain degree why this happens, but certainly we don't want to excuse it. So the use of terms like whiny woman reflects a broader and really well-documented pattern in which women's symptoms have been more likely to be minimized or attributed to psychological causes or just not investigated sufficiently enough. When clinicians are under pressure, whether it's time constraints or diagnostic uncertainty, there's this natural tendency to simplify and kind of move on. And sometimes that means labeling instead of investigating. So this echoes historical missteps, such as the overuse of diagnoses like hysteria and the delayed recognition of very real and very painful conditions like endometriosis.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

You know, coach, let's pause for a minute and look at the history behind the word hysteria. It's kind of interesting. It comes from the ancient Greek word for uterus. In early medicine, a wandering uterus was thought to be the cause of a wide range of symptoms, including anxiety, shortness of breath, mood changes, and even paralysis. This concept actually goes way back to ancient Egypt, about 4,000 years ago. But by the 19th century, hysteria had become a commonly used catch-all diagnosis for women's concerns in Western medicine.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

That's so wild to hear the root of that. The diagnosis of hysteria was actually listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, otherwise known as the DSM, which is the medical Bible of psychiatric diagnoses. Up until 1980, it was listed there.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

That's not that long ago.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

No, it's really not. And even to this day, women are sometimes still labeled as being hysterical when they present with many of their very real physical and emotional complaints.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Now, Dr. Haver had the wisdom to realize that these women weren't whiny at all. They were just in early menopause, and their symptoms were legitimate and treatable signals of hormonal chaos. She went on to realize that the term whiny woman was ugly, sexist, and it was insider jargon that dismissed women's very real suffering. Dr. Haver's book calls out this system and shows how it contributed to women being under-treated, over-medicated for individual symptoms, and just dismissed outright and sent home, made to feel like they're just going crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

She uses her experience to highlight why so many women feel invisible and unheard in healthcare, and why we need to transition to an approach where we listen intently, treat appropriately, instead of failing women by ignoring or understudying or minimizing this massive hormonal shift that literally affects half the population for 40% of their lives.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

That's profound, didn't it coach? Yeah. And in medicine, we're trained to look for patterns, or as I often say, connect the dots. But sometimes we mistake our ingrained biases for pattern recognition. Our institutional learned bias is that these women were just whiny, dramatic, anxious, somatic, or sensitive. That can become a shortcut that shuts down needed further diagnostic thinking and testing.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

It's important to acknowledge that modern medicine has slowly been moving away from this mindset with increasing emphasis on patient-centered care, bias awareness, and gender-specific research. But our experience suggests that we still have a long way to go, and this is not just a relic of the past.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

And before we proceed further, Coach, as I always do, I'm never into doctor bashing. And this is not about doctor bashing. We are in no way claiming that every clinician is evil or sexist. On the contrary, these doctors work incredibly hard and long to learn their craft, and they go to work every day to help people. Kudos to all the doctors out there. However, doctors are just practicing and thinking exactly as they were taught. Like Dr. Haver was being taught by her chief residents how to think there. And this is a medical system issue, not an individual doctor issue. So the solution is to change the culture and the system and not to bash individual doctors.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Agreed. And we also don't want to create or enforce a victim mindset for women either. And so, like you're saying, we're trying to push forward a culture change. And that does require us to pull back the curtain and take a look at what's here in an evidence-based way, like we always like to do on this podcast.

Menopause Suffering That Goes Untreated

SPEAKER_01 12:55

And there's much more to this discussion about sex system in medicine than the menopausal and hormone piece. However, let's start with that, since that's what inspired us to visit this issue.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Yeah, you know, coach, when I retired from emergency medicine after 20 years in the trenches and opened up a private practice uh with a more sort of holistic, integrative, functional approach. I have to admit, I was really taken aback by the number of perimenopausal and menopausal women who presented to me feeling absolutely miserable. And you saw them too, coach. These classic women complained of hot flashes, night sweats, uh, severe insomnia, brain fog, low mood, anxiety, depression, extreme exhaustion, low libido, vaginal dryness, painful intercourse, and on and on and on. They were just a shell on their former selves and they were miserable. Some of them actually even told me, Doctor, I can't go on living like this. And what was interesting, that all of these women had excellent primary care and OBG William doctors. And they had seen these doctors for years with the same complaints, but their concerns were completely unaddressed for whatever reason. The consistent answer they heard from their doctors was, all of your labs are normal, so I really can't see there's anything wrong with you. Or as my very own beloved mother, Martha, heard from her doctor with a pat on the back, said, Oh Martha, you're just getting old.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Agreed. And you know, Dr. Mack, I was a younger woman sitting in your clinics experiencing this, and now where I'm at today, these are friends that I'm hearing this with, you know, in in Bible studies and you know, social circles that are sharing these things out. And you know, the older women I'm hearing them say, well, that's just things you get to look forward to. And so there is this also not just from the medical system, but we as women have bought into this idea that this is just what happens with life.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

And so we all need to kind of change our thinking coaches.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yes, and it doesn't have to be that way. Yes. So it's this kind of gaslighting experience, and it leaves women feeling like they're going crazy. And unfortunately, they don't have anywhere else to turn, and they're just expected to go up on, go on with their lives. You know, I like to say that phrase, pull up your big girl panties, or as you say, Dr. Matt, cowgirl up and suffer in silence. And I've got to say here that there are just as many female providers who are dismissing women as men, male providers. Go figure. But I guess that sexist, whiny women brainwashing in medical school and residency and society at large affects all doctors, men and women, both.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

And the unfortunate but very real consideration is that these providers are usually pressed for time. One of my OBGYN friends saw approximately 50 patients a day. Wow, coach.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

I can't imagine having to have that many conversations back to back.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

So if you do the math, coach, that's really not very much time with each patient. So when a patient comes in with uh 15 complaints, like we talked about earlier, the doctor, by right, feels overwhelmed. She just absolutely does not have time to deal with it. And so it's a lot quicker to just uh pat the patient on the back and tell her that she's getting old or or that it's normal or it's just a part of being a woman than to truly deal with the patient's legitimate concerns. Or even worse, coach, she gets out the script pad and writes a script for something like a one-size-fits-all prim pro, which might actually do more harm than good.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

And coach, it took me a while, but one thing that occurred to me is that when a patient has so many complaints, there's often what I call a common denominator. And really, kind of think about it, coach. If a woman has ten different symptoms, is it really likely that she has developed ten different diseases? I don't think so. So in this case, instead of treating anxiety with Volume, depression with prozac, insomnia with amnion, and so on, I realized that all of these complaints were due to a common denominator, which in this case was hormonal fluctuations. So most of these women, a personalized, balanced regimen of biodental hormones, was like a magic bullet that turned their lives around completely from a train wreck to vibrant living. It was amazing and it was a satisfying transformation to witness. And this is how Dr. Haver came up with her conclusion that they were at the same time under-treated and over-treated for specific diseases. For instance, they were under-treated with hormones, but they were over-treated with things like sleeping pills, anxiety pills, depression pills for each of their individual complaints.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

And really pulling back all those layers, it's so much hope to think, well, there might be a more simple root-level solution to this versus getting super complex and balancing all of these meds on your counter in your cabinet. So it's kind of exciting. Unfortunately, the menopause knowledge gap in medicine is downright embarrassing, really, when you think about it. Menopause affects literally half the population at some point in their lives and for many years. So it's not a rare condition, it's not one that just we don't expect, and it's not a niche or specialty area. So the proper management of menopause and hormone-related conditions should be really bread and butter for every provider who takes care of women. And yet most doctors receive zero training about it in medical school or residency. And even among OBGYN doctors, only about a quarter of them get any serious training in HRT or hormone replacement therapy.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah, but the good news, coach, is that these women are almost always treatable. And let me say there are some women who can't take HRT. I get that. But for 90 plus percent of women, yeah, they are treatable. The key to addressing this misery for most women is a personalized, tailored regimen of biodenttical hormones. This literally gives these women their life back. I've seen it with my own eyes time after time, and I know you have too, coach. Routinely, we would see these women back in the clinic at their follow-up visit months later after starting HRT, and they would be like an entirely new person. I would ask about each of their symptoms, which were rated as extreme when they first came in, and they would respond, better, better, better. In fact, I had this wonderful follow-up question I would ask routinely, and it goes like this if I could now wave a magic wand and make you feel perfect in mind, body, and spirit, what would I work on? And they would often sit there and think for a minute, and then they would respond, Well, Doctor, I think I'm there. I can't think of any other problems I'm having. And it was like pure magic. And coach, I'm not exaggerating. Now, coach, I went through the same kind of medical training that most doctors do, and during medical school and residency, I learned almost nothing about HRT. Almost like menopause didn't exist. It was a non-issue. But when these women kept pouring into my office, I decided that the buck stops here. I went about tapping into every resource I could think of to become proficient in the administration of biodental hormone therapy. And quite frankly, before I started using HRT, I never would have believed the amazing outcomes that are possible with hormone restoration. The outcomes were almost too good to be true. At first, I thought maybe I was just seeing things or as a fluke. But after you see a couple hundred of these women come back who get their lives back, you know that this is very real. And in fact, I would have to say that as I transitioned into a more sort of integrative functional model of healthcare, HRT was the most important tool that I added to my toolbox for my female patients.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

But it does get

The WHI Study And HRT Fear

SPEAKER_01 20:16

a bit complicated. One factor that confuses the issue is that when it comes to HRT or hormone replacement therapy, there are lots of choices. And it matters greatly what you use and how you use it. We won't go the into this in detail here on this podcast since we already addressed it in two prior podcasts. One was in November of 2018, and the other was in August of 2019. But if you're interested in this issue, we do want to encourage you to go back and review those podcasts for more detail. And you can find this online at McMinn.buzzsprout.com.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

So why don't more doctors administer hormone replacement therapy? And the answer to the aversion to HRT comes from a very large study back in the 90s called the Women's Health Initiative Study. It suggested that HRT caused some serious problems, including more heart attacks, blood clots, breast cancer, and so on. However, it turns out the study was poorly designed, massively misinterpreted, and the findings were generalized in ways that was just simply not supported by the data. I remember, Coach, before the study came out, we used to give some sort of HRT to most women who came into the clinic with menopausal symptoms, usually PRIMPRO, which is a sort of a one-size-fits-all non-biodential hormone therapy. However, I remember when the study came out, we were all just flabbergasted. We thought we were helping these women, but in fact we were hurting them. And so we immediately yanked away the hormones and gave no substitute. And oh my gosh, these women felt miserable. They were angry at us and they let us know it. But as doctors, we felt helpless. There was nothing else we could do to help them. So sadly, as it turns out, the reduction in HRT did not produce any meaningful health benefits, but instead, withdrawal of HRT. Unnecessarily cause serious suffering, poor quality of life for whole generations of women, making them feel absolutely abandoned and hopeless.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Dr. Peter Ataya stated in his excellent book, Outlive, that it's very hard not to argue that the withdrawal of HRT is one of the greatest single failures of the modern medical system. And we agree with him wholeheartedly. This isn't just about hot flashes and night sweats. Properly administered bioidentical hormone replacement therapy can improve heart disease, brain health, mood disorders, sleep quality, musculoskeletal health, metabolic health, urogenital health, bone density, sexual function, skin health, and overall health span and lifespan.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Whoa, coach, tell me something else that can be that powerful. I can think of that. Anyway, to kind of wrap up our HRT portion of our whiny woman podcast, uh, uh, these women are not being whiny or hysterical at all. They are suffering not only from the effects of menopause, but also from a medical system that was not built for them. It is time we honor the fundamental biological differences of women and deliver the optimized, personalized HRT care that they deserve to live rich, full lives. Any doctor that takes care of women owes it to them to ramp up and learn about the proper administration of biodetical HRT. It's the right thing to do. The evidence backs it up and it's good medicine.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Menopause is only one example of how the medical system treats women as second-class citizens. So let's move on and look at the bigger picture of sexism in

How Medicine Was Built For Men

SPEAKER_01 23:34

medicine.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

You know, coach, history tells us that it's a sexist world we live in, and it's been since the dawn of time. We don't have to go back too far in our own history to witness this when American women didn't have the right to vote. Historically, women couldn't own property, they were excluded from higher education, and they were prevented from performing jury service. They could be fired if they got pregnant and they couldn't get credit cards or mortgage loans. In fact, my own wife, Dr. Cheryl, wanted to keep her maiden name when we got married, but the county clerk wouldn't let her. She said it was against the law there in the county where we lived. So they forced her to change her name. Now, every time we drive into Calhoun County, I teasingly call her Mrs. McMinn. So blatant sexism has been ubiquitous for ages, and anybody who denies it has their head in the sand. And unfortunately, the practice of medicine was no exception. From the very beginning, medicine was built by men for men. Men were the default human and women were the inconvenient afterthought. Western medical education and practice were dominated by men, and traditionally, women were routinely excluded from clinical trials. This meant that much of the knowledge and protocols and practices of modern medicine were built on data derived almost exclusively from male bodies.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Preclinical research on animals and cell lines primarily used male subjects. This meant that the foundational understanding of disease pathways was built on a male biological framework, ignoring the fact that fundamentally women are different from men anatomically, physiologically, genetically, neurologically, psychologically, biologically, chemically, hormonally, mentally, spiritually, sexually, and in their socially constructed gender roles and lived experiences. There are differences, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Right, coach.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

But what's good for men must also be the same for women, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:26

That's how we men feel, coach. So anyway, I tell my wife that all the time what's good for me must be good for you, right? So uh anyway, so women were treated as a variation of the male norm. The underlying assumption was that the results in men could simply be generalized to women, and that shaped what got studied, how symptoms were defined, how drugs were dosed, how people were treated, what got funded, and whose pain and symptoms were taken seriously. And when we treat women as just atypical versions of the gold standard of male, because of these male-dominated traits, the consequences are not just abstract. They show up as misdiagnoses, inappropriate dosing, untreated pain and suffering, delayed referrals, and sometimes preventable death.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Historically, that bias was explicit. For example, major prevention trials in cardiovascular medicine, including the multiple risk factor intervention trial and the physician's health study, studied only men, leaving women's heart health in the dark, even though heart disease is the number one killer of women. This has had deadly consequences for women, and we'll talk about more, talk about this more with heart health in just a bit.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

So the American medical community continued to ignore the fact that women are different from men, and they were so negligent in this area that the federal government finally had to step in when they passed the Revitalization Act of 1993, a law that required that women be included in medical studies.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

So when a doctor today dismisses a woman's real pain as probably just anxiety, or labels her as whiny or hysterical, they're not working in a vacuum. They're working from a tradition and a culture that has been dismissing women's health concerns for millennia.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Now let's take a look at a couple of specific areas where sexism shows this ugly head, starting with the assessment and treatment of pain.

Pain Bias And Endometriosis Delays

SPEAKER_02 27:19

When it comes to pain in women, sexism can be subtle. It doesn't always look like open hostility. Sometimes it's as simple as a physician saying, period, pain is normal, or it's just part of being a woman, even though the patient has been missing school and work, fainting, vomiting, or living with disabling pain for years. In this case, women's pain is minimized, psychologized, or normalized. The stereotype is that a woman's complaints of pain are exaggerated, emotional, hormonal, dramatic, or somehow less credible than it would be in someone else. I would confidently venture to guess that the medical community would take it much more seriously if men had the same pain. In fact, it would probably be declared a national emergency coach.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

For instance, a 2025 review describes persistent gender disparities in pain management during medical and gyneological procedures and attributes them to bias, the absence of gender-sensitive sensitive protocols, and communication failures.

unknown 28:22

No.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

So anyway, another powerful example is endometriosis. This is very real but poorly understood and is often debilitating and characterized by pain, which can be severe, also heavy and irregular bleeding, infertility, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, nausea, and fatigue. The consequences of this common disease include missed days from work or school, reduced productivity while at work or while at school, difficulty maintaining consistent attendance, needing to leave early or take unscheduled breaks, trouble concentrating, falling behind in schoolwork, lower academic performance, missed exams or deadlines, limited career advancement, reduced work hours, difficulty performing daily tasks, reduced physical activity, chronic fatigue, sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, frustration, strain on relationships, avoidance of sexual activity, infertility, and difficulty conceiving. These women also experience financial strain due to lost income and medical costs, and they have reduced participation in social activities and they experience social isolation. Wow, coach, that's a mouthful.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

It is, but it happens and it's real, and those are real consequences. And yet the diagnostic delay remains strikingly long. A recent systematic review found that the overall time to diagnosis averages nine years. Nine years of emergency room visits, dismissed referrals, and the slow, corrosive self-doubt that comes from being told over and over that what you're experiencing is normal. Or worse, that maybe you're exaggerating. I can imagine the woman walking out of the doctor's office or the ER and just feeling so defeated and just nowhere that she can go where she's being taken seriously. And when we ask women just to endure this pain quietly, we're not asking for resilience. We're asking them to absorb this systemic blind spot in our medical system.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

And coach, you know, as I've said many times, I was an ER doctor for 20 years, and even in the ER, we see this pervasive pain gap. The research here is pretty consistent. Research corroborated by Harvard Health shows that women's pain is taken less seriously than men's in the ER. One landmark study found that women who presented to the ER with acute abdominal pain waited significantly longer than men for pain relief. The same symptoms, same degree of pain, but a very different sense of urgency on the part of the providers. Unfortunately, women were perceived as being weak and not being able to tolerate pain or overstating pain levels.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Another analysis of 18 million ER visits found that women were much less likely to receive opioid analgesics for abdominal pain and more likely to receive sedative meds instead, like Valium, assumably because the treating physician decided that the woman's pain wasn't real pain, but instead just anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Interestingly, research shows that both male and female providers are more likely to rate women's pain as emotional or exaggerated compared to men's pain.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Another documented scenario is that women are half as likely as men to receive painkillers after coronary bypass surgery, a procedure that may be a quite painful experience. And unfortunately, such trends are far worse for women who are also marginalized by race, ethnicity, disability, or class. So black women are especially hard hit. And it's important to acknowledge that.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Yeah, coach, I'd like to emphasize that. I think that there is a lot of ism in medicine, whether it be classism, racism, whatever. But yeah, certainly black women, it should be noted with enthusiasm that black women are especially hit hard here. But again, that uh that is something we'll have to go into in a different podcast

Heart Disease Misreads Women’s Symptoms

SPEAKER_02 32:37

someday. Another important area where women have experienced blatant sexism is in the area of heart disease. Heart disease is the number one killer of women, but women having heart attacks, particularly young women, are at much higher risk of delayed and misdiagnosis. Women's symptoms often don't match the sort of Hollywood heart attack picture that most clinicians were taught. The medical community based our understanding of heart attack symptoms on studies done almost exclusively on men, which is why we still sometimes miss heart attacks in women who present with different symptom patterns than men. Again, men's symptoms are considered to be the gold standard, and women's are described as atypical, even though they represent over half of our population. Go figure. Sounds like sexism to me, coach.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

That word atypical does a great disservice to women. It implies that women are unusual, an exception or something that deviates from the normal. But if you are a woman, your symptoms are not atypical at all. Your symptoms are females' normal language of distress. The problem is that medicine never learned to listen to the language of the female body, even though females represent over half the population, and heart disease is the number one killer for women.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

You know, coach, I saw this deadly consequences of this uh during my many years in the ER. Over and over when I called the cardiologist on call in the middle of the night. If the patient was a woman, then it was just a hard sell. She was less likely to be taken seriously. And as an ER doctor, I had to really advocate for these women and go to bed for them to get the care they needed.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

And this sexism is not benign. Studies consistently show that such attitudes towards women's heart health result directly in delays in recognition, delays in presentation, and delays in treatment, worse outcomes, and even greater mortality.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

The American Heart Association confirms that women with heart attacks are less likely than men to receive guideline-directed therapies, less likely to undergo cardiac catheterization, less likely to get timely reperfusion, and younger women are especially penalized by this gap. They are less likely to receive timely evidence-based care and often have disproportionately worse outcomes than men their age.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

It starts even earlier than the first heart attack. Women are less likely to have their cardiovascular risk formally evaluated by their primary care doctor and less likely to have guideline-based prevention and more likely to have their symptoms attributed to stress, anxiety, or other non-cardiac causes. So they come into that first cardiac event with more unaddressed risk on board. And this is especially dangerous because women carry female-specific risk factors that often go unrecognized, such as pregnancy complications like preeclampsia and gestational diabetes, early menopause, autoimmune disease, and endocrine disorders, all of which significantly increase long-term cardiovascular risk, but they're rarely incorporated into routine risk scoring.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

And kosher doesn't stop there. After the first heart attack, women are also less likely to be referred to cardiac rehabilitation. And even when they are referred, they're less likely to complete the program and with less follow-through and worse recovery.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

And then women are also less likely to receive intensive secondary prevention, including high-intensity statins, aggressive risk factor modification, and timely cardiology follow-up after hospitalization. These gaps compound over time, widening the survival and recovery divide.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

In 2018, a study found that women having heart attacks were more likely to die when treated by a male doctor. And a significant part of that gap traces directly back to dismissal, delayed recognition, and delayed treatment. The consequences are stark, coach. Studies show that women are less likely to survive their initial heart attack and less likely to leave the hospital alive and more likely to die within a year. The bottom line in this case is sexism can be outright deadly, coach.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

Yes. And as you're listening to this, you might think this is old news, a remnant of the past. Think again. Certainly we're making progress, but a major 2024 systematic review.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Two years ago.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Yes, spanning 19 studies across 17 countries found that women with cardiovascular disease consistently waited longer for treatment, they received fewer diagnostic tests, and were prescribed fewer life-saving medications than men with the same conditions. Women were 2.5 times less likely to be referred to a cardiologist, and that gap was even wider when the referring physician was male. So we are making progress, but we still have a lot of work to

Other Diagnoses Women Wait On

SPEAKER_01 37:38

do.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Now we'll briefly mention just a few other areas where we still see some similar sexism in medicine. Stroke diagnosis and treatment. Women, especially younger women, are more likely to have stroke symptoms dismissed as migraines, stress, anxiety, or intoxication, which can delay brain imaging and time-sensitive treatment.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

ADHD and autism, diagnostic criteria were largely developed in male samples. So girls and women are more likely to present in ways that are missed, masked, or misread. Many are diagnosed late or first labeled with anxiety or mood disorders instead of the correct diagnosis.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Migraine and functional levels are next. Migraines disproportionately affect women, yet severe or disabling headaches is still often minimized as stress or tension. And some women are labeled functional or psychogenic before receiving an appropriate neurologic workup or treatment.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

When it comes to sleep apnea, women with obstructive sleep apnea are often missed because classic screening patterns were built around more male presentations. Women are more likely to present with insomnia, fatigue, and mood symptoms and fragmented sleep rather than the stereotypical symptoms clinicians are trained to look for. So once again, they experience that delay in diagnosis and then under-treatment.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

And when it becomes to reproductive and sexual health, conditions like vulvo vaginal pain disorders often have a diagnostic delay measured in years, in part because women's pain is normalized and female sexual pain remains poorly understood and rarely taught.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Regarding autoimmune disease, women make up the large majority of patients with autoimmune disorders and diseases. Yet their symptoms are often dismissed as stress and anxiety before anyone orders an appropriate workup. The same can also be said for chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and dysautonomia, which also disproportionately affect women.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

And next is thyroid and endocrine disease. Women with thyroid symptoms are often just told that they are stressed, depressed, or hormonal before endocrine disease is seriously considered and treated.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

There's also an issue with psychiatric misattribution of physical symptoms. Women are more likely than men to be given psychotropic meds when presented with the exact same physical symptoms as men, reflecting this tendency to assume their complaints are psychological rather than medical.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

And in oncology and other specialties, physicians are significantly more likely to discuss sexual dysfunction with male patients than with female patients, facing comparable risk, leaving women less informed about major treatment effects.

SPEAKER_01 40:25

Women are also underrepresented in some device trials, even though the safety and performance of implants and high-risk devices can differ by sex.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

Another area that is biased is the issue of lab reference ranges in your blood work. For decades, those ranges were established using predominantly male study populations, meaning the numbers we use to define normal were never truly normal for women, sometimes resulting in misinterpretation and improper treatment.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Interestingly, if a woman seeks to have breast augmentation, she's statistically likely to end up with a larger implant if she sees a male plastic surgeon than if she sees a female per plastic surgeon.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

Isn't that interesting, Coach? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And finally, we'll mention the uh insurance coverage. When Viagra came to the market, many plans covered Viagra, but the exact same insurance company did not cover women's birth control pills. Now, that's blatant sexism if I ever heard it, Coach. His erection is more important than her reproductive freedom. And as a singer, James Brown once said, it's a man's world, Coach. Again, let me be clear. Don't think of this as just a thing of the past. This is happening right now. We're making progress, but old habits, stereotypes, and isms die hard.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

So why? Why does this keep happening? What's driving this pattern? The root cause runs deep. The reasons for this bias are complex and it's uncomfortable to acknowledge. And it reflects a greater societal trends that are happening, specifically in the medical field. Part of it's historical, having to do with medical research, like we discussed. Part of it's educational. We don't adequately train physicians on conditions that predominantly affect women, like menopause, endometriosis, PCOS, autoimmune conditions. These don't get the curriculum time in medical school that they deserve, given how common they are.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

And part of it, frankly, is cultural. We've internalized societal messages that women are more emotional, more dramatic, and more likely to complain. These biases are often unconscious, which makes them even harder to combat. Again, this is not about individual, evil, or incompetent doctors. This is about a system failure that profoundly affects the morbidity and mortality of women. So when women say that they are not being taken seriously, this is not just anecdotal. This is well-documented, real lived experience of women backed up by outcomes data with sometimes disastrous consequences.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

So the real question is not whether sexism has existed in medicine. It's plain and obvious that it does, it has, and it still is present. So, what can the medical system do to improve this and change it?

How Research And Training Must Change

SPEAKER_01 43:10

The first step in moving forward is for us to all just acknowledge that the problem exists and to recognize how deeply it's shaped the evidence base itself. Despite overwhelming evidence, I'm sure there's still doubters out there that this is even really a problem. Those people would probably dismiss this entire conversation as politically correct until we acknowledge that it's a real problem. We really won't have the will to be able to change it.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

The next step is to change the way we do research from the ground up. New research must include women, not just as participants, but as subjects of inquiry with analysis that examines sex specific effects rather than treating sex as a nuisance variable.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

We need studies designed to detect gender based differences when they matter. And we need To stop calling women's presentations as atypical when they don't happen to align with the male presentation. The real problem is that our template was too narrow to begin with. Women should not be treated as a niche or a special population when in fact they represent more than half of the population whose health data should be central to medical science.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

We need more investment in research on conditions that disproportionately affect women, such as endometriosis, autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and migraines. These conditions affect millions of women and receive a fraction of the research funding that conditions predominantly affecting men receive. The diagnostic delays are not simply a matter of clinical oversight, they are a reflection of where the money goes and where it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

For instance, the top five diseases that primarily affect women are endometriosis, PCOS, fibromyalgia, thyroid disease, and autoimmune disease. When you compare total investment, the money flowing into erectile dysfunction substantially exceeds the money flowing into all of these top five women diseases combined, even though millions more women suffer from these diseases than men suffer from ED.

SPEAKER_02 45:17

Then we need better medical education with implicit bias training for practicing clinicians, which emphasizes gender-sensitive care, not as an elective, not as a single lecture, but as a thread that runs through every course, every clinical rotation, every board exam. Medical education has to stop teaching women's presentations as atypical to the male gold standard.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Then we need to check our own biases as a provider. Before dismissing a woman's symptoms as stress or anxiety, ask yourself: would I order more tests if this patient were male? Am I making assumptions based on gender rather than on the evidence in front of me?

SPEAKER_02 45:57

And we need appropriate diagnostic criteria that accounts for differences between males and females. And major medical guidelines should be audited for gender bias and updated where the evidence demands it.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

And specifically, in regards to menopause, we need to treat it like the significant life transition that it is. Offer evidence-based treatment options, explain the risks and the benefits of hormone therapy based on current data, not on old poorly done studies like the WHI study. Give women the information they need to make informed decisions about their bodies.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

And as providers, if we take care of women, then we need to ramp up and learn the latest evidence and current treatment protocols for HRT so that we can properly advise and treat these patients.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Next, we need to listen. Really listen. When a patient tells you something is wrong, believe them. They know their body better than you do. Your job is to help them figure out what's happening, not quickly move on with your day to the next patient.

SPEAKER_02 46:59

Coach, I wrote a published article years ago about listening. I called it the most powerful tool in medicine. I thought so then, and I still think so now. But unfortunately, we have lost the art of medicine. First of all, because doctors simply don't have the time, and also because they're too focused on checking the boxes and upcode everything in their electronic medical record system while they are pretending to listen to the patient. Now, I'm sure I've been fooled a time or two, coach, but my default was always to listen and to believe these patients. If they tell me they're having pain, then they're having pain. And it's not up to me to determine that it's all in their head or that somehow it's normal. I would rather err on the side of being fooled every now and then than to routinely under treat women's pain, miss a heart attack, or to dismiss women's testimony about their own bodies.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

And finally, the clinical culture has to change. I'm encouraged that more women are becoming doctors, and undoubtedly this will help move the culture in the right direction. However, we should not be fooled into thinking that women providers can't be sexist too. And we mentioned that earlier in the podcast. Many of the whiny women type patients who come into our clinic have had female providers who were obviously not attending to their legitimate issues.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

And so, what can you do as a female patient to minimize the potential for a sexist bias against you?

How Women Can Advocate At Visits

SPEAKER_02 48:18

It's worth saying out loud that women shouldn't have to work harder just to get appropriate care. But until the system catches up, these are some strategies you can use to help you get heard. First, speak the language. Framing your experience in clinical terms can shift how you are perceived. For instance, you'll always tell the truth, but be specific. Instead of saying I feel off, say I'm having crushing chest pain that radiates to my jaw, if that's what you're having. Don't beat around the bush. Doctors can't relate to, I just don't feel like myself. Doctors will never find that complaint in the index of any medical textbook.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Come prepared. Write down your symptoms, triggers, and timeline before you visit your doctor. Track those patterns. For example, this happens four times a week, lasts for 20 minutes, and starts after I climb the stairs. That's data, that's information. And bring a two-week log. Your phone notes app can work really well for this.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

And you have the right to ask questions, and it is your doctor's job to answer those questions. For instance, you might ask, what's the differential diagnosis that we're looking at here, doctor?

SPEAKER_01 49:24

If your symptoms get blamed on stress or anxiety, say, I'm open to discussing that, but I'd like to also rule out physical causes. What's the next diagnostic step?

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Create accountability. For instance, if a test or referral is declined, say, I'd like it noted that I am requesting this and that it was declined. And I would like to have a copy of my clinical note from today. It's okay for you to push back now and then.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yes. Pin down a follow-up plan. For instance, ask what is the plan to evaluate my symptoms and what's the timeline? That turns this vague reassurance into an actual plan.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

And review your visit notes, which are often available in the patient portal. If your symptoms are mischaracterized, request a correction. With the electronic medical record, doctors often use a cut-and-paste template, and which are sometimes inaccurate.

SPEAKER_01 50:16

Bring a health advocate to your appointment, someone who can confirm what they've observed. It is especially helpful if your advocate is someone in the health care field.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Ask for or seek a second opinion when the explanation doesn't fit or you're not improving. That's not doctor shopping, that's appropriate care. And for chest pain, neurologic conditions, fainting, and severe abdominal pain, ask directly. Have we ruled out all the life-threatening causes?

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Consider changing your level of care. For instance, if you're not getting what you need from your doctor, go to an urgent care. The ER, a specialist. They're able to operate under different thresholds. So also they can provide just a new set of eyes looking at the same problem and sometimes come up with new perspectives and new solutions. And remember, you are the only person who lives in your body full-time. You know what you feel, and you deserve a partner in your health, not a gatekeeper.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

You know, coach, we were talking a little bit before we started recording that this patient dismissal is not unique to women. We we talked on the show uh previously how Tyler experienced that many times. And I think we all do to some extent, uh, but certainly it's much more common in women. And and you know, there are times when things are psychogenic, right? However, if you're having real pain, you're having real pain, and don't ever let anybody tell you it's all in your head. You know you're having real pain. So I think we have to all kind of, you know, get our bristles up and stand up for ourselves every now and then. But uh anyway, to wrap this up, the bottom line is sexism in medicine is complicated.

Final Takeaways Plus Support The Show

SPEAKER_02 51:45

It's been there since the dawn of recorded time, just like it has been in the rest of society. Sometimes it's subtle and sometimes it hits us in the face. It's about many things. It's also about who gets heard, who gets studied, who gets funded, who gets diagnosed on time, who gets pain relief, who gets to be seen as a reliable witness to her own body. And at the end of the day, it's about practicing good medicine, not just for men, but for all people. For some people, it's actually about life and death, coach.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

If medicine is serious about being evidence-based, as it says it is, then it has to be serious about women, because you cannot call a system evidence-based when half the population has to fight to be believed.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Women patients deserve more than a sympathetic pat on the back without investigation, like my mom got. They deserve evidence-based care, prompt care, respectful care, and a medical system that treats their health and their lives as fully worthy of first-class respect and first-class science.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

To every woman who has been told it's in your head, it isn't. Your symptoms and your pain are real. The fact that medicine has failed to understand you is not a failure of your body or your ability to communicate. It's a failure of the system. It's a blind spot, it's huge. And the very institutions that were supposed to protect you are failing you. Women deserve better. Let's all work together to bring women up from the back of the healthcare bus. We must not stop until women are treated like first-class citizens in medicine.

SPEAKER_02 53:15

Look, coach, you know, many years ago, I I went into medicine to help people. I've I always felt like that. I never lost that spirit. Uh, but right now, we as providers are not helping the women the way that we need to be. We're dismissing their concerns, missing their diagnosis, and leaving them to suffer through treatable conditions because we haven't bothered to educate ourselves or to examine our biases. The myth of the whiny woman needs to die, coach, and be buried forever. And here's my call to action. If you're a healthcare provider out there, commit to doing better. Read up on menopause, learn about the conditions that disproportionately affect women, check your biases, and above all, listen to and trust your patients.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

The myth of the whiny woman is an operating system that flies under the radar, largely invisible, rarely acknowledged, and running constantly in the background of every clinical encounter a woman has through her life with the medical system. And that myth is not benign, as we've discussed. When physical causes are not investigated, when tests are not ordered, when the referrals are not made, and when the real disease continues to be unchecked, then real people suffer and die because of this myth.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

So let's be honest about it. It's a male-dominated world. If men had to deal with many of these issues that women experience, then we would have fixed it a long time ago. So let's change the conversation about women's health. One evidence-based discussion at a time, starting today. It's the right thing to do, coach.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Agreed. And that will bring us to the end of this edition of the Wellness Connection MB. Thank you so much for listening. We hope we were able to share something with you, something that informed and inspired you.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

Before we part, I'd like to remind folks that our podcast is one of the rare podcasts these days that remains completely commercial free and unbiased. And if you would like to make a contribution to the show to help us keep it coming to you, then there are a couple ways you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

First, if you buy nutritional supplements and we're not asking you to buy anything you don't already take, then consider purchasing physician grade supplements from our full script dispensary at a 10% discount. You can see the link to full script below in the show notes. Or you can just go to McMinnMD.com and the link will also appear there at the bottom of the home page under Helpful Links.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

It's quite simple. Just click on the link and they'll guide you through the process. It's a win-win. You get the high quality supplements at a discount, and we get your support for the show, for which we are very grateful.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

You could also make a contribution directly to the show via credit card or by PayPal at the Support the Show link, which is in the show notes. Thank you so much for your support. It really means a lot to us.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

And please don't forget to subscribe to the shows so that you won't miss an episode and tell your friends and family about us. Help us spread the word about evidence-based, holistic, functional lifestyle, and integrative medicine.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

If you like the show, then please help us out by taking a moment to rate us on iTunes. I'm proud to say that we have one of the highest ratings in the wellness podcast space. So thanks to you listeners. Please keep that love coming. It means a lot.

SPEAKER_02 56:19

If you'd like to reach out to me to comment on the show or to make recommendations for further topics, you can do so at drmcmin at yahoo.com. And if you'd like to view a transcript of the show, then you can go on over to McMinn MD.buzzsprout.com and you'll find it right there. And now, coach, can you please leave us with one of your wonderful Coach Lindsay Pearls of Wisdom?

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Thanks, Dr. Mac. You know, I want to end this podcast on a note of both honesty and hope because yes, there are real gaps in the system. And yes, women experience those gaps in very personal ways. But again, the goal of this conversation isn't to create division or reinforce a sense of helplessness, it's to bring awareness. Because the research is clear that these patterns exist and we want to move toward better care on both sides. And because at its best, medicine is a partnership. So when patients and providers stay informed, curious, check themselves about bias, and they're willing to engage, that's where the best outcomes can happen. Your body's not the problem. So ask questions, stay curious, and don't ignore what your body's trying to tell you.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

Medicine is a partnership, and the woman is the captain of the ship, right, Coach? Yes. Right? And that should do it. Until next time, stay curious, stay informed, keep it real. And remember, small actions can lead to big changes. Take that first step towards better health.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

This is Coach Lindsay signing out.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

And this is Dr. McMinn.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Take care and be well.