Can we start by just defining sexual health? What is it?

So I always say that sexual health is health, right? We think of it as something completely different, like it's just a side of our lives, but it's actually a big part of our lives. So it is defined as something that you have psychological, emotional, physical well being associated with pleasure, right? Giving and receiving pleasure. But it's much more than that, right. It affects us psychologically when you're not having good sex. It affects us physically sometimes, and it really is a big part of shame. And we're going to talk about that, I'm sure, about how sometimes when you have problems with sex, you feel shame. But the other big thing is when you're having problems, sometimes that can signal other health conditions. So if you're having, for example, men who have erectile dysfunction are more likely to have heart disease, and so you're more likely to see erectile dysfunction first before you see heart problems. And while we don't have the data on that, for women, it's probably very similar because the genitals actually act very similarly.

I'm not sure I've ever heard anybody define sexual health in such a comprehensive and holistic way. Because when I think about sexual health, I think, is my sex life healthy? And does that mean I'm having enough of it? Am I enjoying it? But you're talking about it an entirely different construct, which is it's integrated into your whole health and well being as a human being.

Absolutely.

Wow. So what do we get wrong about our bodies when it comes to sexual health?

Well, I think a lot of it comes from what we see on media, right? We see these people, they see each other. They immediately want to have sex. They rip off their clothes, and they orgasm within, like, seconds, right? Like the male penetrates the female in a heterosexual relationship, the woman's orgasming in seconds, and it looks like the best time of their life. And that's not real life, right? That's not what sex is. Sex is playful. Sex is supposed to be fun. Sex is supposed to be a time to explore and try new things and sometimes be awkward and weird, right? There's weird noises. There's funny things that happen, just like they happen anywhere in life. And sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it's quicker. But it's all sort of variation of normal. And sometimes it's not normal, but ultimately it's play. And I think what we really get wrong is we take it way too seriously, and we take it so deeply into our souls as something to be insecure about or uncomfortable, when really it should be something. The only time adults play is during sex, so we should allow ourselves to play and have fun.

I think you might have just changed my marriage. No. I've been married for 28 years, and I love having sex with my husband. And at the same time, we have been together as partners for 30 years. And I have always thought about sex as, like, intimacy and orgasm and pleasure. That's it. And so the idea of redefining it as a moment and a chance for play with somebody that I love, because you're right. Like, I would be mortified, even though I've been with Chris for 30 years, to have something embarrassing, whether it's a smell or a noise emit during, like, ruin the mood. But if you think about it from the framework of play, it kind of changes everything.

Yeah. It allows you to explore, try things that you've never tried before. And that's part of, like, when you've been together for a long time, right? You sort of get a script, right? You do the same thing. You know, it works. You're gonna achieve climax doing this way, this time. But then it becomes boring, right? So you need to have that room to play and try different things and be okay with it being awkward or funny or not great. Like, every sexual encounter doesn't need to be mind blowing. It's okay to occasionally have mediocre sex, but, like, use it as a tool. You only get better at sex as you do more, have more sex. And as you try new things, you will get better at those new things as well.

Well, you know, if I think back to when I was younger, right before I. I got married and have been in this relationship with Chris, I think I was relying on new partners to have the sex be different or fun. But I would imagine that you're gonna tell us. It's incredibly important that you bring that yourself to your sexual encounters. This ability to play, to experiment, regardless of whether you're in a longstanding, committed relationship or you are, you know, having sex with multiple partners.

Absolutely. I mean, you sort of have to have variety, right, in anything in life, right? You don't have the same meal every day. You don't eat the same dinner every day. You're sort of doing maybe a different workout every day. Like, you're trying different things all the time. And so, just like in your day to day activities, sex needs to be a little variable at times.

Well, I was just laughing to myself. Cause I'm sitting here thinking, well, maybe we've been sex fasting. To try to make it interesting since it hasn't changed in a while.

And that's not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing.

That's true. One thing that I think a lot of us wonder is how much sex is normal and how much lack of sex. Like, I'm not asking the question. Right? But what's the average amount of sex that people are actually having?

Yeah. So, first off, what's normal? What's normal is so individual, right? So as long as you are both satisfied with the amount of sex you're having, like, say you're having mind blowing sex once a month and you're so happy with that, that's fine. Right? But let me tell you some averages. So, averages, on average, the average American has sex 52 times a year, so about once a week. But that's varied based on age. So you look at a 20 year old, they're having sex about 80 times a year. So, you know, maybe once a week. So maybe twice a week, whereas a 60 year old is more on the order of 20 times a year, so maybe once every two weeks or so. And so it's variable. But, you know, what is a sexless marriage? So there's no true definition, but, like, the researchers will define it as less than ten times a year. But again, like I said, if having sex ten times a year and you're super satisfied, both of you, that it's not sexless, it's passionate, it's enjoyable, it's great, you know? So I think ultimately, it's very individualized, but really realizing that, like, there's no benchmark you have to meet.

Well, I think that there's. At least, speaking for myself, there's always this sense that it's not enough. Not only because I would love to have more and so would my husband, but also the sense that other people are having a lot of sex and that there's something wrong with us or our relationship because we're too tired or, you know, we mean to, but then we don't, or life gets in the way. And so I do think that a lot of us get caught up in our heads wondering, am I having enough sex? Am I not having enough sex? And I suspect you're about to tell me, Doctor Reena, that I need to be talking to my partner about this and not you on a public podcast, but.

Exactly. It's really a couple thing. It's not a. Or if you're multiple non monogamous relationships, then it's you and those partners. Right. But ultimately, it is not about keeping up with the Joneses. Right? They could be having five minute sex four times a week, and you're having, like, a passionate lovemaking experience that lasts an hour once a week. But it really. It's all about what you enjoy, what you like, what your partner feels good about, and that's what matters. It is not about what your neighbors are doing or your other partners or how often. Like, I was wondering, this tv show where this actress, they had, like, a swing in their bedroom, and they were like, oh, we use it every day. And I was like, oh. I even felt like, oh, man, they're having a lot of sex. That's a lot. That's amazing. And is that something to aspire to? I'm like, yeah, if you have the energy and excitement and you both want that, great. But let's be real. Most people are busy, right? They're taking care of kids or aging parents or taking care of work, becoming busier in their job. That's just not realistic for a lot of people.

Well, if I put a swing in my bedroom, it would become a rack for dirty clothing, you know, that you kind of throw things on. So how long should sex last?

Yeah, so this is a great question. On average, people think that sex lasts. Men think that it should last. Should last about 16 minutes. They think it lasts about eight. This is, again, like, the whole experience. Women want it to last about 25 minutes, but they've actually done studies where they've had couples have sex around the world. Okay? And they've had them use stopwatches. So, like, the female partner will turn on the stopwatch when they penetrate and turn off the stopwatch when they stop penetrating. And the average time is about 5.7 minutes. So 5.3 to 5.7 minutes. So it's really not that long. Not as long as we think. And so that's average. And that range is really wide. So it's, like, from 0.1 minute to 53 minutes. So, you know, again, it's a huge variability, but ultimately, again, it comes down to, are you satisfied? Are you having an orgasm? Is he having an orgasm? Are you both feeling happy at the end of it? Because that timer doesn't include foreplay. That timer doesn't include the other things that you're doing. This is only talking about penetrative sex. Now, is that all sex is?

No. Right. Sex is manual, is oral, maybe anal. It could be non genital. Like, you could still call sex like, you're naked and you're stimulating other parts of the body. So really? What is sex defined as? And are you both deriving pleasure from it? And I like to say, like, it's also about the journey, not just the destination. Like, yeah, orgasms are great and everybody wants an orgasm, but, like, is the rest of it fun? Are you enjoying the intimacy part of it, the tactile part of it, the stimulation, that sort of stuff like that matters?

Well, and to your point, the playfulness of it. How does a woman's vagina expand during sex?

Yeah. So during sex, you know, there's a lot of changes, not just the vagina expanding. On average, the width is about three to 3.5. Length is about eight to 9. That will actually double in length and width. Double, double can up to double during arousal and to allow for, you know, getting ready for penetration. Whether it's through a phallus, a finger, a toy, whatever, it's going to enlarge. The other thing that happens. The labia majora will shrink because they're usually closed off to make it a little. Keep the introitus closed a bit. So they will kind of shrink a little bit as well as the clitoral hood with a hood on top of the clitoris. And the labia minora will get engorged, they will get bigger, and they will turn red or pinkish in color. So our body is just, like, amazing. It really protects us so that when we're about to have sex, we're not going to hurt ourselves. Right. You start making lubrication, you start getting wider, you start getting longer. Your cervix moves up and out of the way because sometimes it can be painful if you're penetrating and the cervix is still there.

For some people, that's painful. So your body does all these things to make sure sex will be pleasurable.

Wow. How long does it take your body to do that?

So everyone's a bit different. We know that it's estimated maybe it can take up to 25 minutes for some women. So foreplay needs to be a part of sex for some people now, some people are faster, some people are longer. But ultimately, most women can tell you when they're ready, right? They can have that to say, you know what? I'm ready. I feel ready, or I'm not ready. And I think the issue is sometimes people don't speak up about those things, right? They're just like, oh, like, okay, maybe it's uncomfortable, maybe it'll be fine in a minute, right? But, like, really, there's a whole process. And then the other thing about lubrication a lot of people get wrong is they think that if you're well lubricated, you're aroused, and if you're not, you're not. But that's not exactly true. Certainly there's many people where, well, lubrication correlates with arousal. However, there's some people who lubricate not because of arousal, just because of other things.

Like what? What would you lubricate for?

Say you feel a threat is coming on, you know, and your body prepares itself so it doesn't get hurt, and so it might lubricate for that reason, or it may see something that it seems somewhat erotic, or it may feel something somewhat erotic, and so your body just says, oh, that's sort of I'm turn. You know, you should get ready, but you may not mentally feel aroused. Right. But then there's people who are turned on and they don't make as much lubrication. Now, that can be due to genetics, that can be due to hormones. So, like going through menopause, things like that, lubrication decreases. It doesn't mean they're not aroused. That means you need to use lubricant or you need to consider other treatments to increase lubrication. For the woman who may be struggling.

With that, well, it's interesting to hear you explain the actual medical mechanics of what's going on in her body, because I'd always just thought about foreplay kind of as a warm up, getting yourself in the mood. But when you all of a sudden said your cervix moves out of the way to get ready so that your vagina can double in length and width, I'm like, holy cow, there's a whole lot going on that takes a little bit of time, which is why it makes it even more important in some cases to really open yourself up to the play and to give your body the chance to even relax and do it so you can enjoy it.

Absolutely.

And is that length of time different for men? Typically.

So men, you know, it's sort of very binary. They get an erection or they don't. Right. And so that is not always the only sign that they're going to have with arousal. You'll also see both men and women will have nipples sort of become more erect. There's other signs as well, but very often they're seeing the manifestation of that increased blood flow through penile erection. Now, in women, the homologue is their clitoris gets erect.

The homolog, what is that?

A homologue is essentially when you have two structures that are made from the same embryologic tissues, and they develop into their variety of structures. So in men and women, you start off with a genital bud, and this in men becomes the penis, and in women becomes the clitoris. So they are exactly identical. If you cut open an anatomical. An anatomical visual of the penis and the clitoris, they're identical.

Really?

They're identical. They have two bodies of erectile tissue, two spongy bodies that fill and engorge with blood. They look exactly the same.

That's wild.

Yeah. So that's why I mentioned earlier, looking at your own body with a mirror. So, one, it's also so that you can. If something is abnormal, you can see it. Right. Because sometimes people will have skin conditions, and they won't know. They've never looked down there. Right. So that's one reason. But two, is to identify where is the clitoris? Like, pull back the clitoral hood. Does it come back easily? A lot of women don't realize that they can actually get smegma. Or, like, you know how? If you have sons, you'll know this. Little boys get smegma under their foreskin. It's sort of like dead skin cells and oil. And it can actually.

I'm laughing because they used to call the guy that I dated in high school smegma bun. I don't know why. It's a terrible thing, but. Okay, so women can get that too.

Yeah. So sometimes that develops, and because women don't know, they don't look. They don't ever pull back the hood of the clitoris, which is basically like, foreskin is the exact homologue. Again, that same word of male foreskin. If you don't pull it back, you won't actually know that there's something developing under there that could then lead to discomfort, pain, maybe having less of a strong orgasm or having no orgasm at all. And so, you know, you have to look down there so you can see what your normal structures look like, where everything's located, and then you can actually identify, you know, what is normal and not normal. If things change, you can look down there and you can say, hey, I saw this before, and it's different now.

If we were to take a mirror and take a look at ourselves.

Yeah.

What are we looking for?

Yeah. So I think ultimately, like, go online and take a picture of type in vulvar anatomy. Okay.

Vulvar. There's an r in it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a vulva. Vulvar anatomy.

Okay. Okay.

But anyway, so from the outside in, the first thing you're gonna see is your labia majora. So those are sort of like the large lips of the vagina. Then you're gonna go in your cere labia minora. And so just look at the size. Look at what they look like. You know, of course, make sure there's nothing abnormal. Like, you don't see a mole or something weird there that you've never seen before, but just, like, so you know what they look like. Right? Look at the clitoris. Follow it up. Look at the clitoris. Pull back the clitoral hood gently and see if you can pull it back. Take a look at the clitoris, and then look at the urethra, which is underneath, on top of the vagina. Make sure it looks normal to you. I mean, again, you don't. You don't know. Everyone looks a little bit different. But, like, get a baseline of what you look like, and then look at the vaginal canal. It should be pink, supple, healthy looking. Right? And then. And then you should sort of get a sense of what you're looking at. And then you can also see, like, sort of just what the size is, what it looks like.

Just, again, everyone's different. And if you look at. There's actually websites where you can look at, like, labia, a lot of people get worried about, like, are my labia too long or do they look too weird? But, like, you can see all different shapes and sizes. It's very unique to you. You can see one's longer than the other, some are long, some are short. And that's completely normal. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to worry about. And, like, just sort of knowing what you look like is empowering you. Because, again, like I said, if something changes, you can go back and look again and just say, like, what is something different from what I remember?

As a woman who's been married for 27 years, I feel like my sex life could use a reboot. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, per se, but I just feel like at any moment in time, any one of us is capable of creating a brand new chapter around our sexual health, around sexual pleasure. And that's why I wanted to talk to you.

Well, I think this is a great conversation to have. Just so you know, that's completely normal and typical, that most people in a relationship could use a little tune up when it comes to their sex life. And it's funny, Mel, because, you know, if you think about it, in other areas of our life, right, we want to get our health. We want to optimize our health? Well, we'll start to mix up our routine and we'll start lifting weights and doing cold plunge. I know you did, Osana, but with sex, we kind of are in the dark, literally. And we don't really know what to do to make it a little bit more interesting and vibrant. So we'll certainly get into all of that today.

Well, I want to bring in the listener because they are our kind of co pilot on this episode, and I asked 5 million of our Instagram fans, do you want to create a new chapter in your sex life? And what would that look like? And so I want to read some of them to you. Doctor Emily. Hot and steamy. Just feeling like having sex would be a good new chapter. How can I be more in the mood and want to do it more adventurous? No reminder of being a mom. Feel great about my flabby body. Having sex in public without getting caught. Less angst, more fire. Having more passionate sex. I mean, we've got pages and pages, safe and calm, that once in a while it would be with a person rather than a toy soul connection. My husband could be more active and enthusiastic about seducing me to do things. No judgment. Feeling comfortable. Spicy, passionate. A twist of humor. Build a connection where the partnership has been distant. How to love. Feel sexy with the light on and not blaring. Build fun. Connection, or even some kink. I'd like to feel safe and be able to express myself.

I'd like to get out of my head and communicate my desires. I'd like to have great sex, period. Because at the end of every day, I feel outtouched, out, talked and outdone. I'm too tired. Kent. Wow. We create a new chapter despite all of these things that so many of us feel.

Doctor Emily absolutely, Mel. In fact, I think that we're going to address so many of your listeners today, and I know that we will be able to create a new chapter. We all can. It's all available to us. You know, it's sort of, it's a complete myth that we all believe that great sex happens automatically. We should magically always have great sex and that if we talk about sex, we have to work on sex. We're going to rob it up. It's magic. So then we go through life thinking like, well, it should be as wonderful. It was in the beginning because that's why we mate, right? That's why we pick a partner. Because we have this really, you know, nre or new relationship energy in the beginning of a relationship. And then we get into relationship, and we're, you know, we know that something's off. It's not as interesting as it was. Maybe we want something different from our partner, but we don't know how to talk about it. We don't know how to ask for it. And when we look around, there's not a lot of great information. And then a lot of us just decide to remain silent, and we silently suffer through really disappointing, not pleasurable sex.

And so that's really my mission, is to make sex easier to talk about and to normalize that we're all having these challenges. I mean, your listeners were so articulate and vulnerable and real about it, but that is more common than not. If we're in a long term relationship, we're gonna have some challenges, and we wanna keep it hot.

Well, and I also wanna pull in all of you who are single, because you're writing in, too, saying, how can I be self expressed and feel safe when I'm having sex as a single person? How can I get rid of the shame and orgasm when I feel, based on being raised Catholic, that sex is supposed to only be enjoyed in marriage? One of the themes that I saw consistently from all of you who poured in questions and comments about what you wanted out of your sex life and what's holding you back is shame is overthinking and is the inability to ask for what you want. And so, you know, is that basically what you see, Doctor Emily, in your work with people and in the books that you're researching, writing?

Yes, absolutely. So I call them the pleasure thieves, Mel. And it's stress, trauma, and shame. And these three things are the biggest killers of our sex life. Our sex drive, our ability to be adventurous and connected. And so we can go through them real quick. I mean, I think that stress, for example, this is the thing that's always really surprising, that we tend to silo sex. We put sex over here, and then we think about our overall health and our wellness and our relationships, but we just kind of think hopefully, like, the sex will just, you know, fix itself or it's not really related to everything else going on in my life. But if we have stress and we have anxiety in our life and, like, who doesn't, right? We somehow think it's not gonna creep its way into the bedroom, but we can't live in a state of spiked cortisol. Right. And also live with pleasure. Like, it's really hard when we are in our heads and we're worried and we're anxious to also feel arousal and desiree, they cancel each other out. So until we can find practices to learn to calm ourselves and calm our nervous systems and just address it.

And I've got a lot of tips in my book smart sex, and in my podcast I've been doing. It's everywhere. I mean, I talk about this all the time. So the big number one is stress and anxiety. We have to understand that our physical health and our mental health directly impact our ability to have pleasure in the bedroom.

Okay, I want you to stop right there, because I think already you are starting to get at really important things that we need to accept as fact in order to really reimagine what role sex is playing in your life and what you want out of it. And I resonated with what you said because, you know, I think about in my own situation with my husband, who I love, I am still extraordinarily attracted to him. We are both very much healthy, sexual, loving human beings. We even are sexting, you know, more than we ever had after 27 years of marriage. But here's the problem. I'll wake up, I'll be thinking about him, and I'll literally be like, all right, tonight, you and me close off, we are having fabulous fucking sex. And he's like, yes. And then the whole day goes bye. And Chris climbs in bed first, and I'm like, all right, I'll see you in a minute. And then he falls asleep within five minutes. And by the time I walk in there, I'm freaking exhausted. And he's got his eye mask on and his retainer in, and I'm about to put mine in, and I'm too tired.

And that is the killer of why I just don't feel in the mood. And it's killing the amount of times that we have sex. And so maybe we should start at the top, which is, is there a secret to having the best sex of our lives on the road ahead of us? How do we do this, doctor? Emily?

Oh, absolutely. Okay, so first, that is so relatable, Mel, that we. We think we're gonna do it tonight.

Yes.

And we get in bed and we're all exhausted.

Okay?

We've kids, we work. But again, what we're going to get into shortly is like, everything we know about sex we've ever learned, if we've ever learned anything, it's pretty much untrue, not accurate, not healthy, and not really how we're supposed to have sex. So we have to troubleshoot here, because a lot of couples get into the situation that you do where they think like, well, we're going to do it on date night or we're going to do it this night. And what I really talk about is I get people say, what time of day works for you and your partner? Because really you have to kind of hack it. And one of my top tips is scheduling sex, but in a realistic way because, you know, probably now, like, that wasn't the first time that that's happened, but in the morning you were super gung ho. You're like, we're gonna do it tonight. And then the, you know, the day gets ahead of you. But to really think, okay, we, Chris and I, you could say to your husband, we prioritize sex. We think it's important. So let's take the time to figure out, maybe it's Saturday mornings, maybe it's like we know the kids are out, it's before our workout or before our lunch.

We're going to do it on Saturday. And then the beautiful thing about scheduling sex is you don't have this guilt on Wednesday evening and then Thursday. When it did happen, it didn't happen because you know that it's going to be Saturday morning or whatever time you decide is the optimal time for both of you to have sex. I find in relationships there's usually a higher desire partner and a lower desire partner. And the lower desire partner does kind of hold the power in the relationship because they're the ones that's deciding when the sex is going to happen. And so if that's the case, just having a conversation, saying, listen, I know that I want you. I don't want you to feel bad and rejected. Because eventually the person who's always initiating starts to feel that they're not desired, there's something wrong with them. Their partner no longer finds them attractive. We create so many stories in our head because we don't really want to say to our partner, hey, can I check a story with you? I've been feeling like you're really not in the mood lately. And so, you know, we're going to get into some tips about that.

But really it's just about being practical, being realistic. And Mel, here's the thing is that most couples believe that sex is sort of this magical thing that we don't really understand. We're going to close our eyes in the dark and hope for the best because we don't really understand arousal, desire, what has to be in place for these sex to happen, right? Like what is getting, what is getting in the way, right? So we just have, there's so many factors, Mel, that, like, we, like, for me, if my house is freezing, if the dishes are, you know, still in the dishwasher, if we hear the kids in the next room, we haven't texted our boss back. Like, there's so many factors. Right. So we just have to really look at it and be realistic.

Well, I love what I've already taken away, which is it's nearly impossible to get yourself into a high arousal state if you're in a stress state right now. And that, that is a really big takeaway. And there was something else that you said that everything that you've been taught or learned or absorbed about sex is basically wrong.

Yeah.

And so what do we have wrong about sex, Doctor Emily?

Where do we start? So the first thing that we have wrong is that we should always automatically be turned on and ready for sex when our partner is. And if we're not, we are broken. You know, and I often hear this in my book. I call them, I call men and women, I say vulva owners and penis owners, because, you know, we all have different, just our body parts don't necessarily dictate, you know, who we sleep with. But if you are so. But this typically goes for women.

Right.

We'll say, like, I am not really ready to go with my partner. And what we found is, is that there's different ways that we get, that we get turned on. There is spontaneous desire and there is responsive desire. Typically, men are like frying pans and women are like slow cookers.

So use the term penis owner, which would be Chris and Volva. I thought you said Volvo. And I was thinking, wait, the cars we drive? But you're talking about the vulva. And can I just ask a question about that terminal, please? Why are you saying vulva and not vagina?

Okay, so that is such a great question. So the vulva is the external part of the vagina, okay? And that is where the magic happens for so many vulva owners. Like, that's where our, that's where we're going to get more roused. We are not going to have the most orgasms from a penis going inside of us or really from anything. Now, some women do, but it's only 20% are going to have an orgasm through a penis going inside.

Okay, hold on. I want everybody to just hear that. Well, I just want to stop there. And I know I'm now going to get criticism for interrupting you, but I have to have every single vulva owner hear that.

Okay.

I feel like, we have been sold a bill of goods that you're supposed to orgasm when there's something inside of you. And what you are here to say, doctor Emily, as the expert in this area, is that only 20% of vulva owners actually have an orgasm when there is something inside of you and that the erectile tissue is on the outside. And now we're looking at where we need to focus, correct?

Mm hmm.

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you for clarifying it. There's also internal. A lot of them start on the outside. There are internal clitoral nerves. We call it the g spot. There's a lot of sensitive parts inside, but the magic is on the outside. It's like how you have to, like, warm up, right? You have to warm up your car. I know we're both from grew up in Michigan, right? I always think about how you had to warm up your car and scrape the ice off the window before and then you could start driving. So when something just goes inside of us, we're not warmed up yet. We're not turned on. And this goes back. And I want to go back to the orgasm thing, but first to finish the responsive and the spontaneous. What happens a lot for vulva owners is our partner, who is a spontaneous reaction to seeing us naked or to seeing us in the kitchen or whatever we're doing. And maybe your partner Chris, will grab you and say, I'm in the mood. And you're thinking, I just have 16 windows open my computer. I was about to walk out the door like, there is nothing about me that is aroused and turned on right now.

But sometimes women feeling like we're broken or we should do something, we acquiesce, and we say, okay, let's get to it. Then. How the sex goes down is usually the partner's like, okay, well, I'm turned on. I'm erect. I spontaneously have this erection, and I'm gonna put it inside of you, and we're gonna have sex for seven minutes until I have an orgasm. So the things that are untrue is that thinking that we should have an orgasm every time. But since no one, we have a lot of inaccurate information. We don't even think to do the research. My career started because I was in my mid thirties, thinking, what is wrong with me? Why aren't I having orgasms? Like my partner is? He's always having a good time. But what's going on with me? And I found there wasn't a lot of information out there. And so I think once we get the accurate information and we all educate ourselves because, again, there's so much, you know, misinformation. We don't require sex education in America at all. Only, like, 17 states require sex education to be medically accurate if we teach it at all. So we're all walking around with, like, you know, misinformation about even how we get turned on and our bodies.

And so we grew up with movies where you see the man and woman come together and they make out, they fall into the bed, and then they come at the same time. And it's only heterosexual couples we see having sex. I mean, I think it's just also the definition of sex being just based on penetration goes back to, you know, religion and society, and we're told that we should only have sex if we want to have a baby. And this is the only position to have sex. You can just see how fraught sex has become and how much, you know, that's just the tip of the iceberg of the information. That's really not correct.

Okay, you know what we need to do? I think. I think we need to say that this conversation today is going to hit the reset on all of that. And my mission is to arm us all with the information that you need that is factual, that is driven by your health and self expression and by having more connection in your life and more pleasure in your life. Because as you were just talking, I was thinking to myself, well, even if you do have sex education, which I believe every human being needs, you're literally learning about the physical piece of it. You're not learning about the pleasure, the self expression, the confidence, the boundaries, the communication piece of it. And so pleasure is left entirely out of the mixed. And because we don't talk about our bodies or about sexuality openly in our culture. And this conversation is going to reach people in 194 countries around the world, anywhere, anyone who's growing up, where there is a shaming or a should or a set of rules around what's right in your culture versus what you, as a consenting adult, may want to create for pleasure. Pleasure that is going to make you feel shame.

And so what? Let's start with the actual basics so that we can all, from this point forward, own our relationship with sex and pleasure in our life. Whether we're single, whether we're married, whether we're in our late teens, or we're nearing our deathbed. What is the purpose, beyond having babies, for having a healthy sex life? And why does it matter?

It's really important to have a relationship with ourselves, our bodies, we can give our bodies, like, so much pleasure and connection. And so it's really part of our overall wellness, our mental health, our physical health. And so sex is important because it's like if we're in a relationship, we want to be intentional and conscious and, you know, really giving lovers. Right. We want to, you know, it's why we're with somebody romantically. Otherwise, we're just roommates. We require intimacy and touch to, you know, it. Also, all this stuff is really great for our nervous system. And I think, I know with all of the shame and misinformation, we sort of are all not really sure what to do. We know that it's important, but we don't really know how to make it happen in a way that feels good. So masturbation is a huge part. I call it solo sex.

I love that.

Yeah. Solo sex is a really important part about being sexually healthy as well. It is the most primary relationship. The more we get comfortable pleasing ourselves and experimenting with what feels good, then we know our turn ons, what kind of touch we require to get in the mood. It's really creating the owner's manual for our own body. So then we can share that with a partner. And I often hear people say, oh, well, I don't need to masturbate because I'm in a relationship, or I'll wait till I meet a partner because they're gonna, you know, I'll wait till that happens, but right now, I'm just gonna sit home alone and do nothing. And the problem with that is, number one, we tend to associate then sex with a partner. We're giving our sexual partner a power away. We're saying, well, I can't feel any pleasure in my body until I meet somebody that's gonna give it to me. And we are. But I have always reminded we are responsible for our own pleasure and our own orgasms. That's number one. Number two, we often feel that it's shameful. So we grew up in an environment, again, which we talked about, where we were told that masturbation, maybe you're going to go blind.

You're going to be a bad, you're going to go to hell. You know, you're going to feel bad about touching ourselves. So we have to get over the shame around masturbation and the other reason why it's important, and let me just say this, whether you're in a relationship or not, because I also hear people in relationships say, well, you know, I don't want my partner to masturbate it or masturbate. It feels like cheating. Or I hide in the basement, and we can get to that part in a second. But the third thing, why it's important to have a relationship with our bodies in this way, is self acceptance. So if we're walking around all day and we're not loving our body, we're not sending it negative messages. I can feel my thighs rubbing together. I've gained weight. I don't feel sexy. And then we're not touching our bodies at all. And then we get into the bedroom with somebody, and we're wondering why we can't be present, aroused, turned on, intentional. It's because the negative self talk. So those are some reasons why it's, you know, very important to connect with our bodies and give ourselves pleasure.

You know, it's sex with somebody we love, and that is ourselves. So I have a lot of tips for that, too. To get started, to learn to feel good about it. I encourage couples to do it together.

Let's stay with this, because what I'm gathering is that for everybody listening, the access to a brand new chapter in your life filled with pleasure and the kind of sexual experiences that you want begins with you and solo sex. And for me personally, you know, I just will speak very openly about this. You know, I lost my virginity when I was really young, and I think part of the sort of shame around sex comes from feeling like we were going to get caught. Like it was something that you have to squeeze in and you do it in secret and nobody can hear you. And I kind of carried that into college years and law school years, and I was never somebody that understood that masturbation was important. Important. I didn't know how to do it when I tried it in my twenties. As lame as that sounds, I actually could not make myself have an orgasm. So I basically just kind of gave up. And it wasn't until I was given my first kind of vibrating thing from my bachelorette party that I was like, oh, wait a minute. This is easy. Okay. Wow. And again, I'm 55, and I.

There just wasn't the information available. Like, there was so much shame, so much just secrecy around it. And I even feel that way about solo sex now. Like, I feel not like I'm cheating on Chris, but like I'm doing something wrong. If I'm in our bedroom alone and I'm using one of my vibrating toys and that I'm like, that there's something wrong. Like, I literally wait until I hear his truck leave the driveway, and then I'm like, oh, okay. It's okay to do that now. I just saw your eyes go wide.

No, I did. Thank you for, first off, thank you for sharing that, Mel, because that's so, first of all, that's so relatable and so common. And I was much like you, Mel. I didn't masturbate or have an orgasm until I got a vibrator in my mid twenties. Twenties. There's literally no shame in having a vibrator. Vibrators have also been shamed. We think. And this still all the time, male partners will say, well, I think it's going to replace me and it's somehow, you know, cheating on me. Or we should just be having it the natural way, which is penis goes in vagina. But we've already talked about debunk that. How it doesn't work. And the glorious thing about having a vulva is that we have 12,000 nerve endings externally and internally in our clitoris, our clitoral network. And Mel, here's a funny thing. When I was in the middle of writing my book smart sex just last year, for years I've been doing this for 20 years, I've been saying the clitoris has 8000 nerve endings. We all say that. 8000. We got 8000 nerve endings. The circumcised penis has 4000. Come to find out because we finally are studying women's sexual health and women's body.

We've got 12,000 nerve endings. So of course, like with a vibrator, it's. We get all these. It's really hard to stimulate. So use something vibrating. It feels amazing. And more women are likely to have orgasms that way. And the cool thing about it, we can get into this. How? Maybe you and Chris could play together with it. It's. It could become a really intimate act that couples share together and actually enhance intimacy.

I really think it's important. Important because this is a deep point, everyone. If you don't know how to delight in your body and if you don't know what turns you on, is it fair to say you will almost never be able to communicate what you need and what you like with whatever partner you end up having?

Yeah, absolutely. Until we understand our own owner's manual, what actually feels good. And take a mirror and look between our.

Oh, my God. I don't want to do that. Why do. Why do I have to do that?

Because that's how we're gonna understand. Because then you understand. Like, oh, wow, look. The left part of my clitoris is more sensitive to.

I don't think I would do this. Really?

Okay.

You gotta look at it.

Yes. You gotta take a look. Yeah. It really. It's a way of connecting. And then once you do that, you're like, oh, wow. I notice when I start to stroke my clitoris, my vulva, my labia, look, it becomes more swell. It goes. It becomes engorged with blood. And that's when you start to see it changes, and you're like, oh, wow. And now I'm learning how to give myself an orgasm. And so we want to be our own best advocates for everything, right? In our life. We, like, stand up to our doctors or our bosses or whatever, but with sex, we're like, you can figure it out.

Yeah. Or just go a little up to the right there. Yes. Or you're inching them down. Or you're, like, trying to gently position their face in a different direction. Yes.

Right. But honestly, I used to believe, Mel, someday my prince will come, and so will I. That was my motto. I'm like, he's gonna ride up on a horse, and that's when it's gonna happen. Until I took it into my own hands.

I think it's really important to unpack the discomfort I feel on behalf of everybody listening. Okay, please do. Well, because, you know, when you say I'm down for understanding my body, having solo sex, understanding which side, where, what feels good, what doesn't, so I can communicate with Chris. There's something about the idea of watching myself do it or letting Chris watch me do that. That was a hard no, and I don't know what that's about, but it's clearly I'm not the only one that feels that way. Anybody here in the. In the studio, we see. Do I see? I'm seeing hands raised. But I also have heard a lot of younger women, because I've been around my daughter's friends, and they speak very freely about how they tolerate lame sex and how they don't actually know how to ask for what they want. So can we just stay on the solo sex thing for a minute? Because when we asked our audience if I told you, I mean, I have hundreds of pages of DM's and emails and comments from people talking about the fact that, how do I make somebody do this? How do I communicate what I want?

How do I get over the fact that I don't feel like it? Because I don't know what feels good. I personally feel like this solo sex relationship with yourself is the place where we all have to start. So let's talk about the fact that I don't want to look at the vulva in the mirror. I want to turn the lights off. I want Chris to drive down the driveway, and I want to explore in the dark. And then tell him, hit 02:00 and hit like 10:00 on the clock.

It's so real. I love it. You are so not alone. Well, at least you know how to tell time with your vulva. Now, see, that's probably. Some people don't even know that, Mel. Some people don't even know the ten and the two. So you're getting somewhere. Oh, my God, Mel. Everyone feels like this is so. This is more common than not.

Is that normal?

Yes.

I've been married 27 years. This guy has seen me deliver three children. He has helped me, like, get over the flu. I mean, he has seen me at my worst. I'm sure he would love it.

Yeah.

What the fuck? Why? Why am I so inhibited?

Well, you know, there's. Because we don't literally, because we don't have any models of this. We tend to glorify male masturbation. Right. We see it in movies. We tend to say, like, oh, I know they're gonna do it. Men's gotta get theirs. You know, like American Pie and Porky's and all the movies we grew up in. Female masturbation is like, silent. It's like, it's wrong. We shouldn't have to do it. Makes us, like, easy or slutty or whatever that old, you know, language is. But, Mel, I have to say, there's been some interesting science and research that have shown that when women actually look at themselves in the mirror, when they are in the state of arousal, when they're pleasuring themselves, they actually tend to get more turned on. Now that might have been a skip of a step here because we still have some more to cover, but I think it just getting over the hump of. Of, like, first off, I guarantee that Chris would probably find it to be one of the hottest thing he's ever seen in his entire life. And I have data I've researched from my listeners over 20 years.

Like, they can't believe that they hadn't done it once. They do it because here. And what I'm talking about now is a little bit of mutual masturbation. And this is one of my top tips for couples that I just love because, well, it's all awkward and weird. And so much of what I do is literally get people over the hump. Literally. So they can hump over the hump. So they can hump better of this. Like, oh, my God.

All right, so walk me through it. What am I doing?

Okay. Okay. So this is what you're doing. Well, first, I mean, I would love you to have a conversation with Chris on your next date night. Cause I don't think it's something that you just kind of start doing in the bedroom. I think it's great to talk about it first.

Okay.

And so we talking about, like, over.

A salad or something? How do you bring this up? Cause we got a lot of questions about this. How do I raise a. The fact that I want something different, or I want to try something when I'm comfortable talking about it?

I'm telling you here it is. Okay. Because we're gonna. We're gonna loop back in to your. We're gonna work this into your mutual masturbation with Chris tonight.

Okay.

Okay. So maybe tomorrow.

Tonight. Let's go. Well, I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow morning.

So this is the thing. So it makes sense that everybody asked, how do I get my partner to blank? That is really one of the top questions. It is all about. I have an easy way to do it or a formula that people can remember. It is the three t's, and that is timing, tone, and turf. And you will use this for any conversation, awkward conversation you have around sex, because we. So the first one is timing. And you want to have this conversation when you're both in a more parasympathetic state. So you're relaxed. Relaxed. You're energized. You're at ease. Maybe it's date night.

Let's assume it's not date night, because most people don't have a date night. Let's just start with that. That's also probably part of the problem, because you're not prioritizing. Let's just say you're sitting on the couch. You're relaxed.

Got it.

The kids aren't around, and that's a good time to have a conversation.

That's perfect. You're sitting on the couch. I love it. So then our tone. So the timing is when you guys are in a good place, hanging out. But I know about date night. I know that most couples don't. But there have been so much research that shows that couples who prioritize date night have more pleasurable, satisfying sex. But I know it's another hurdle, and it's another thing on your goddamn list. But we all have a couch, and we all go for walks, perhaps because the next thing is your. Is your turf. So the conversation should not happen in the bedroom, believe it or not.

Okay.

It's the bedroom. We love the bedroom. To be left for sleeping and for sex. Keep it a sacred space. The conversation is happening outside the bedroom, on the couch, on a walk, on a road trip, when you're in the car, because that way it's less awkward because you're not making eye contact, but it's still intimate.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah.

Plus, they're trapped. They can't go anywhere because they're in the car with you.

Exactly. They're trapped. You're walking the dogs, you're hiking. Okay. And then our tone is curious and compassionate and open and just saying, you know what? Hey, Chris, I realize I. We haven't had a lot of talks about our sex life, and I would love to see what if we could start to talk about it. Doctor, Emily was on the show today. She encouraged that everybody has a growth mindset around sex, or find out if their partner has a growth mindset around sex. And I realize that this is one area that maybe we could work on together. We could start to learn some new things. We could start to talk about it, you know? Is that something you'd be interested? So let me say this, Mel. I gotta warn people. This is. That it might not go well at first because we don't talk about sex ever. We don't hear about it. And so sometimes after 27 years, our partner brings it up. In that way, we automatically assume that we must be doing something wrong, that I'm gonna get some negative feedback. You don't want to be with me. You don't like my body. Like all these things go in our head, that it's gonna be judgment, right?

So we have to say no, but this really. And you have to keep taking it back to, this is about us. I want us to have more pleasure. No, that's not it. You're not doing anything wrong. Let's learn together. So once we get past that, and he's like, okay, Mel, I'm down. Like, let's talk about it. Then you could say, so we got the timing, tone and turf. So we've just covered all of those. And then you could say, you know what? I think that you could even be honest. I masturbate when you leave the house. And I think it would be really hot to masturbate together. What? Or you could even say to him, what's your masturbation practice? Like, do you know what his is like, Mel?

I have no idea. Because he doesn't do it in front of me.

Okay. So I guarantee you he's doing it. Maybe in the shower and the bit. Maybe that's why he's so tired.

Maybe this truck.

He'S leaving, going down the driveway and parking down the street, and you're in your house. You could be together.

I am going to have this conversation and I feel. Yeah. Why are we so embarrassed about this?

Because we don't have experience of people talking about it. Because when it is, we're shamed. We think it's gonna take the magic way. And you think that there's some magical fairy dust, unicorn, rainbow thing that just gonna make it magical and feel good, but that's not how sex works.

Okay? So, you know, I read that for every thousand barbers and beauticians that go through your four step training process, in terms of the skills that you're teaching them to be mental health advocates, you're reaching a million people.

Yes.

That's incredible. You're reaching 3 million people a year by training barbers and beauticians to be mental health advocates as they are listening to their clients who are sitting in their chair.

Yes.

And what does the training look like? There are four parts to it, and I would love for you to explain it because these four parts are things that we can all learn how to do for people in our lives.

Absolutely. So the four parts of the training is active listening, validation, positive communication, and stigma reduction. It is a yemenite four point formula that, I like to call it that therapeutically, is used in some, a lot of therapeutic sessions with therapists and patients. But it is, we utilize it in an advocacy space in regards to how barbers and stylists can help their clients by using these tools after cutting hair. So it is, you know, perfect example. It's a conversation. Conversation that they're having with their client every, every week about how's life going, how's work going. But they can lean in and use these skills if their client is going through a challenge at home or at work, and they are able to listen better, they're able to, you know, communicate in a positive way, they're able to reduce stigma and uplift mental health and embrace it more than, less than saying, you know, hey, you shouldn't worry about that, or, hey, just pray about it is going to be okay. And really be able to use these skills as a promotive way, a promotion of promoting a healthy mental health and emotional journey, and their mental health journey particularly.

So it's really a. I always like to say it's a perfect way of doing a grooming session, making someone feel good on the outside and in the inside.

Oh, I love that. I absolutely love that.

You know, when we worked with these barbersh and provided the training and support, is really empowered them individually, probably just as much as it has empowered their clients. And I think that's something that's very important, because as we empower them to be their best self, it really helps to connect with the broad audience in the community, because that's really the purpose of the actual training, is that if we can reach someone, you know, reach them, that they can reach other people, and those people can reach even more people in their household and their community, it can really become a ripple effect. And so I feel like that in itself has been. Has been an impact.

Can you, like, let's just say, let's just put us in the chair. Somebody comes in, I plop down in the chair, and you're my barber, and I'm having a hard day. What do you do as the barber? That is part of the confess project.

So it, you know, it can lead as, hey, you know, I noticed that your day is going hard, man. I know, you know, you was there last week. You know, what's going on? How's everything? You know, how can I be supportive in this. In this moment? You know, you are actively listening to their feedback that they may have given you. You're also showing that you can communicate in a positive way, but you're also even just by those few words, you're. You're even starting to validate them. And so maybe their next response is, man, I'm having a hard time at work. I'm about to lose my job. I'm behind on my bills, and, you know, it can even go to, you know, I understand that you're going through this, and, you know, I'm with you here in this moment. You know, I'm compassionate. We also provide barbers, I'm sorry, with resources in regards to also how they can support individuals that may need housing, that may need, you know, sign up for healthcare. So outside of the training that we offer there, also, we provide a resource directory to each barbershop to be able to help people with whether that's getting employment or whether that's just general resources, you know, whether that's bill pay, you know, so outside of.

Because we recognize that mental health can be impacted by people's daily walk in life.

Oh, of course. Like, I was just thinking about that example. I'm about to lose my job. That's a situation that causes anxiety. And if you start to spiral in your head, you're not going to be able to problem solve and to get ahead of it and to be proactive, you're going to get trapped in your thoughts and you're going to feel ashamed. And, you know, one of the things that I found as we were preparing to for this interview is that we polled our audience of more than 5 million people. And I was really sadly, not surprised that roughly one out of every five people that responded to some questions that we put up on Instagram said there was no one, not one person that they felt like they could go to. And when we asked them to name Lorenzo, the quality of the person that they could talk to, the. The same word kept coming up over and over and over again. Non judgmental. Non judgmental. And I think when you think about training your barber, your, your hairstylist, your beautician in these skills of active listening, of validating, of leaning in, of asking questions, what's going on?

How can I help you? You know, it's normal to struggle, but, you know, you can't let the worry get you down. You might want to call this number and get some help so that, like, when you train somebody just to do those small things, you're training people to help in a non judgmental way. And I think one of the reasons why we confess so much to our thera, to our hairdressers, I mean, I know I do. She knows more about me than my therapists, for crying out loud, is because I just kind of feel like it's not going to go anywhere and that she's not judging me. And that's what you found, too. In fact, the confess project has participated in this big study at Harvard Medical School. Can you tell everybody a little bit about that study and what you found by training and amplifying this incredible group of barbers and beauticians to be mental health advocates.

Yeah. So there was 32 barbers who participated across eight states in the Harvard research study. And it lasted for about, you know, eight to nine months. It was very interesting. Our barbers was honestly uber excited. It was started off as not as exciting because, you know, you have a large institution coming in wanting to talk with, talk with people about mental health. But I relatively say that it was, it was an exciting opportunity. One of the things that we really recognized early as the study became about, and even as it's now published, it is recently we've been published in an international journal to really show the great work that happened. But barbers are shown to be mental health and suicide prevention gatekeepers.

Wow.

And also can be an aid to help decrease interpersonal community violence as well. But also, something we saw in the research is that women barbers and stylists are just as instrumental because they are a great connection to children and their mental health. And it's even to say as well, the studies revealed that the barbers can be this, this framework that we have can be beneficial to even domestic violence. So it was many, many. And that's just kind of high level, high level results that we got out of it. And that that goes along to also say that, you know, the confess project, you know, 90% of our barbers that has participated rather received therapy in a barber shop rather than going to a clinic.

Now, why do you think that is?

Comfortability, honestly, and I believe, you know, the cultural component and I think even environmental, you know, who, you know, again, we go back to the stigma and shame of mental health, going to see a, with some of our barber, say, I don't want to go see a shrink inside of it, you know, in a clinic.

And so, yes, because we've been doing it kind of. But now you're bringing in the trunk training. And so one of the things that's so fascinating about this is that people go back to their barber or their beautician over and over. And so this relationship develops and you see somebody and you tell your barber and your beautician everything. And so I would imagine that it's like the perfect opportunity to really give people support, especially at a moment in time, Lorenzo, where people feel so lonely, they feel isolated. Most people don't have the resources to hire a therapist or a mental health professional, and you are providing this kind of service and intervention right at the chair, and the people in the chair don't even realize it. I mean, this is incredible.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just, you know, we're glad that obviously, barbers and stylists have been seen as cultural assets, as community leaders, and glad that we're now helping them to use their assets in a greater way around supporting people, supporting their mental health, supporting their well being, because we know one's mental health is great, their well being and who they are as a person. Person will shine even, even better.

Can you give us just a couple examples of how barbers and beauticians that have gone through this training have made a difference already in small ways and big ways.

Yeah. So, you know, we've had, you know, barbers and stylists that has went through this program to, you know, for them own selves to. To check themselves into a rehab, to, you know, build a strong relationship with their children, build stronger relationship, better in their marriages, but all the way enough more to help save someone from taking their life by suicide. Wow. You know, dying by suicide, rather. So we've seen it at the very most, minimal state of relationship, better boundaries, better health, better well being to saving lives. And so that's how impactful this training that they're using, this tied around active listening and how to communicate better, how to reduce one, reduce stigma around mental health, but also how to get someone to help that may be in a crisis.

Well, you know, it's true. Like, if you think about even some of the little day to day struggles that people face, Lorenzo, we don't talk about about it, but if you're sitting in the barber's chair and you're kind of looking at yourself and this person that you know is behind you and they're touching you and they're like, how's your day going? You tend to start to spill the beans. And so sometimes the difference between you, like, just drowning in heartache over a breakup or you not knowing what to do about a kid of yours that's struggling in school, like, the different can be made by one person listening and making a suggestion that makes you start to feel like you could do something. Or this is a resource that you could call and you, through the confess project, are training barbers and beauticians to do that for people. That's extraordinary. If you can't afford to go to somebody in functional medicine to get this all tested, how do you figure out what's going on? You have in your new book, young forever, you have all of these self assessments that you can do, but do you have to have testing at some point?

Or is there a way for you to get testing, have an accessible way? Because a lot of, like, one of the things. I agree with you, I agree with you that our medical approach and the medical system is about treating illness versus keeping you healthy and whole. I agree that we treat symptoms, but we never, we have a hard time getting to the root cause.

I agree. I agree.

But so I just want to, like. Cause I know that what's gonna happen with this conversation, doctor Hyman, is that we are going to activate anyone listening to. Absolutely. Take the next ten days of your life and see what happens when you reset your diet and you remove a few things. Absolutely. Add in those simple supplements that cost you less than a dollar a day and you are worth that investment in yourself and see what happens. Absolutely. Take the steps to lower your stress and tap into your body's ability to reset, like even just the five deep breaths a day that activate the vague and tone the vagus nerve. But if somebody's going, I want to learn more, what is the next right scenario?

That's a great question. One of the challenges I've always had with medicine is it's kind of a secret guild, and doctors hold the reins. They can order the test or they can't. They will give you the results or they won't. They'll help you interpret them or won't. And so you're at the sort of women mercy of whoever you're seeing. And most doctors do a good job and want to help people, but the, it kind of kept in the guilt. So in the book young forever, I do have really extensive questionnaires that allow you to figure out almost 80% of what's going on. And then depending on what you find in those, you can kind of follow up with different kinds of testing. But because of this problem exactly that you're talking about, I decided to co found a company with a good friend called function Health, which allows you, without a doctor's order, to go to any quest lab in the country. And there's thousands of them.

Oh.

Get a blood draw of over 100 biomarkers that normally cost $15,000 for $500.

Wow.

And it comes with a whole interpretive map and framework and dashboard that's filtered through the lens of functional medicine that I wrote that allows people to not have to go see the doctor and still do 80% of, or why the.

Hell did I go to your clinic then? If I could have just done this doctor Hyman burying the lead. No, I'm just kidding. I am just kidding, everybody. I do want to say something that I was able to go to the medical center right here in this tiny town of Manchester, Vermont, and have blood drawn for those tests.

Yeah, right.

And so you don't have to go to your primary care, you don't have to go all of the minute. Clinics that are popping up are places where you can go if you're going to do those things, to order the blood draws.

Thing is, you have to usually get a doctor's order. So the beautiful thing about function health, this company that we created, was that you don't need a doctor's order. So you can go to the website, sign up, and they'll network with over 50 different states doctors in every one where you can just go and get.

Kind of get testing done.

Yeah, get the testing done, get your results, and track it over time. And you can see your hormones, your thyroid, your insulin, your, like, age related markers, your brain chemistry, so much about what's going on with your brain.

You know, what's so cool about this, if you can afford to do it, and we'll put the link in the show notes, is it's like getting an x ray of your insides.

Yeah.

And you've already, you've already. You've proven to us that you heal from the inside out.

Yeah. Yeah, it's absolutely true. And, and I'm so excited about this approach because it empowers people to be the CEO of their own health. And the reality is that, you know, even if you go to the doctor with all these complaints, they're going to be able to, quote, manage your symptoms. I don't want to manage people's symptoms. I want people to get better. I want people to reverse these problems and not need a doctor. And the truth is, most of the things that work are not things you're going to get at a doctor's office, which is drugs and surgery. So sometimes you need them and I use them. It's not a bad thing. But most of the problems we have don't respond very well to that. And all these things we talk about, whether it's depression, I mean, any depressants just suck. They don't work that well. They have all these side effects. And anxiety medications are highly addictive. I mean, they just cover over the symptoms. What if you could actually figure out why you're having the problem and fix it?

Well, I think you told us why. It's inflammation. It's a gut that's out of whack. It is the stressors in your life, it is the toxins in your environment. And not understanding that your body has this elegant design that is super intelligent and responsive and can heal itself if you are conscious and intentional about the right input?

Yeah. And that's what's exciting that's happening now in science, is we're actually getting there. Like, the old paradigm's dying. And in the longevity space I've been working in, and when I wrote about young forever, where these scientists are now talking about what's underlying all these diseases, these 155,000 diseases, that's not what we need to be thinking about. It's these ten underlying problems that tend to go wrong as we get older that can explain all disease. And if we treat those, we may not be able to just extend our life by five years by getting rid of cancer or heart disease, but by 30 or 40 years. That means living to be 120 and being in good shape. Like, I don't want to be 120 in a nursing home, in a wheelchair. I'm able to ride my bike, go for a horseback ride, make love. You know, that's what I want to do when I'm 100 or 120.

Wow. I. You know, I'm glad that you said that, because oftentimes I hear the word longevity, and I had that reaction, like, well, I don't want to be rotting away in a nursing home. Exactly. 125. That sounds terrible.

It's terrible because most of what we see, Mel, in the world is abnormal aging, and we think that's normal. Oh, it's normal to become frail and decrepit and not be able to do what you want and lose function. And the truth is that most of us, our health span doesn't equal our lifespan the last 20 years of our life.

What's the difference between health span and lifespan?

Well, health span is how many years you're healthy. You can do what you want. Lifespan is how many years you're alive. So if you're fine till you're 60, then you get dementia, and you're nursing them for 20 years. Years that, you know, that's not good. So that's what you want to do, is make your health span equal your lifespan. So on my last day, I want to go for a hike with my beloved. I want to come home, make a delicious dinner. I want to have a bottle of wine, probably a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and.

Wait a minute. That wasn't on the diet.

Who cares? I'm 120. And then I make love, and I close my eyes and drift and maybe take a jump in the pond.

That sounds incredible. You know, my mother in law is 85 years old. She jumps out airplanes. She walks 5 miles a day.

There you go.

She's having the time of her life. When Chris and I, like, went alcohol free for a bit, she's like, I'm not doing that. Like, I have my one glass of red wine a day. That's what I need. She plays cards. She prioritize friends.

Exactly.

She is the definition of vitality at that age. And she's like the energizer bunny. I can't imagine her running out of steam. And that's what I think you're talking about when it comes to vitality. So I'm going to try to extrapolate this for people that are brand new to the idea of healing of trauma, of nervous system dysregulation. By asking you a question, do you believe that the majority of breakdowns or mental health issues that we face as adults go back to the issue of stress, trauma, hyper vigilance that you experienced during childhood?

Absolutely. And that also is to include, however, the structural brain neurological changes. This is where we can, I think as a field, get caught in a little bit of the chicken or the egg, because, again, because stress does imprint on us biologically, genetically, a lot of us do then see or born with even structural changes right in our brain. Imbalances in neurotransmitters. Again, the field is still the psychology field, that is, and the medical field, if Im being perfectly honest, is still learning, is still evolving, is still growing. And it took until within the past decade for us to realize that. One of the number one things Im sure maybe some listeners have heard of neurotransmitters. This idea that when you're diagnosed with a mental illness, whatever it might be, your neurotransmitters are off a hormone in your body that impacts our mood. While that is absolutely part of the story, for a very long time, we located the neurotransmitter production and maintenance in our brain. And now we understand that it isn't just our brain that creates and produces and uses neurotransmitters, it is our gut. So now we have another whole part of the body that is impacted by decisions that we're making.

Food we're eating pollutants that are in toxins that are in the food, that we're eating, habits around eating the food that, again, were passed through generation. So to simply answer your question, we can't localize it to just one exact factor, in my opinion, which is why I'm such a proponent. And I've shifted the way that I work and think and practice and teach into a more holistic model, because it's all of it. And the reality of it is there are structural changes, there are imbalances in our nervous system, there's dysregulation in our nervous system, and imbalances in our neurotransmitter, I should say, that are creating then the symptoms that are resulting in diagnoses. And my hope is to take the whole picture into account and to give people the opportunity to explore the deeper underlying causes, because that's the area where we can begin to intervene by making new choices, by creating a different internal environment, it for ourselves, by creating a different external environment for us. To live into can then help us resolve some of those longstanding symptoms.

So I'm going to give you a personal example, okay? Because I think it will help people start to process where we're going to go with this conversation by thinking about this example. And I will be the. I will be the emotionally immature parenthood in the example, okay? So we have a daughter who has just started to talk openly about the fact that she feels very stuck in life, in her words, that she does not feel alive, that there are very few experiences happening in her day to day life where she feels truly alive. And the other thing, and this is sort of a little joke, is that we say, you know, we love you because you don't take yourself that seriously. She's really, really funny, but you take everything else so seriously. So she is the typical hypervigilant on top of everything, stressed out. Gotta get everything right. And when I apply your work to this situation, knowing that she's talking to a therapist, I say that as her mother, when she was born, I was. I had severe postpartum depression. I had an incredibly traumatic birth, and I was, in your words, emotionally immature, which means I personally, as a new mom and just as a human being, at the age of 29 or 30, I could not handle my emotions.

I screamed, I vented. I, you know, was very unpredictable. And on top of it, for the first eight weeks of her life, because the postpartum depression was so severe, Doctor Nicole and I was so heavily medicated because it was a dangerous situation psychologically and physically for me. I couldn't take care of her. And she has now that she's an adult and in therapy, and she just did, you know, some really interesting guided psychedelic therapies has had now a memory of that period of her life as an infant and really being in distress, wanting me to come and just remembering my husband coming and one of our close friends that would sit with me while my husband was at work, while I was very sick. And she also has had this sort of experience in therapy of realizing that I really wanted to be there. But that core experience very much cemented a kind of experience of the world for her. And I, of course, was just passing down the lineage of stressed out, volatile, intense, you know, not that warm kind of behavior that I grew up around. When I look all the way through my lineage of, you know, immigrant, working in coal mines, domestic servants, farmers, like, work, work, hard work.

And I look at her, and as, you know, she's talking about a job, and she's talking about doing this. And I'm thinking, actually, this is about you healing the. I hate to say it this way, so please correct me, but I feel like the damage I fucking did to you because I didn't know any better.

I want to commend a couple things here, Mal. First, your honesty in sharing these experiences and also the environment that you've since created. It sounds like to the extent that your daughter is able to begin to share these realities, these conscious awarenesses that she's having, because that is a gift, to be able to communicate honestly with those closest to us, especially those that might have been a participant in whatever create the circumstances that we lived in our earliest life. That is such a gift, because few families, I think, have at any time, and I know my family in particular now, we're just recently starting to be able to. To share things with these, with each other, in honesty, share what our different realities. I have two other siblings are and what, and allow that to be the case. So that is absolutely something to celebrate. And the reality of it is, you know, when we're not, when we don't have the resources to take care of ourselves, and when we're stuck in these. This dysregulation that we're talking about in our nervous system, we're stuck in a survival mode in and of itself, of our own.

And so my heart, I actually felt myself welling up an emotion hearing you share that story for not only your daughter, for you as well. Like you were sharing the awareness that she had of you wanting right to be present. I think postpartum depression is one of those rarely talked about experiences that is. So I think a lot of times it's highlighted on how it is for the child of that disconnection, though, how painful it is for the parent who in their heart wants to be. And I think this is the case with all of us, with all parents, is there's a lot of well meaning, well intentioned individuals that are of two minds within themselves, if they're even aware of it or not, of wanting to do, to show up in whatever way and attuned and connected in a loving way, oftentimes wanting to reverse patterns that they know didn't serve them from their own childhood, yet not being able to. Because the reality, and I use the term survival mode to really highlight the reality that when we're in survival mode, and this is all just driven by our nervous system. So it's not anything logical.

Our survival is our priority, which means that a child, a loved one, a partner, right. Isn't isn't where our attention and our resources need to be allocated at that moment. It's quite literally in us getting through the next few moments of life. And this might sound dire, which is why, again, I'm just offering that this is all driven by our ability to survive, by our evolution as a human. So this is, again, where we are of two minds, where we might desperately want to show up, to connect, to be attuned to our child. And our body might not be prioritizing that child at all. It might be prioritizing us and our survival and us making it through the next moment, however difficult that moment is. And so, again, I just want to, you know, thank you for your honesty in shining the light on a topic. Is this because I've spoken and worked with in my past practice, a lot of women who were so shameful about the experience of having, you know, that deep rooted depression, even of this is another controversial, I think, thing to admit of maybe being of two minds about how it is to actually be a mother.

Right.

There might be a very well intentioned part that does want to show up and does want to be in care of a child. And the reality of needing to be in care of someone else for 24 hours a day is very difficult. It's very challenging, and there might be then conflicts in and of itself. So again, I want to commend you for your honesty, and I want to commend the. The environment that's being created in your home where these things can be talked about, because I think the more we're able to, again, be non judgmentally honest with ourself and with other people to relieve ourself. Like you're even sharing. When I look back in time, I see the same patterns just. Just like I experienced with my mom when I look back at her family experience. It's cold, it's disconnection. She literally had a father who came home from work. He was the financial support of the household, put up his newspaper, and quite literally ignored the children. So it's not surprising that the mother then emotionally, that I, you know, was born into, didn't have the tools to emotionally connect, no matter how much she wanted to do different and knew that that was a painful experience for herself.

She was locked in her own survival mode and was just simply unable to.

Yeah, I agree. And I. And in sharing the story, it actually is somewhat liberating for me because I don't want to pass down that generational cycle or trauma of being in survival mode and being. Having a conflicted relationship with giving and receiving love. And what I can so profoundly see is that since I'm catching this in myself at 47 and I'm still working on it, my kids probably, I'd say, at least six or seven times a week. Go. Watch your tone, mom. Watch your tone of voice for me is when my emotional immaturity kicks in, when my inability to tolerate something thing. You know, Mel Robbins is now her eight year old self because her tone of voice goes nasty. Just like I heard in my household, the tone of voice in the adults around me go nasty when I was eight years old. And so I want to make it very clear as a takeaway for people that if you are resonating with this idea of, you know, being in breakdown or feeling stuck or feeling disconnected in your adult life, first of all, we all go through it, if not a lot, a couple times, right?

A couple big breakdowns. Everyone goes through, so it's normal. But it's not. It's. It's. It's good news, because you're awakening that your current way of living on autopilot or being shut down, or in the words of my daughter, not feeling alive, that's not how you're wired or meant to live. And so this moment of consciousness is an opportunity, and I will also highlight that through my own example. The first place I want you to look is I want you to look at Doctor Nicole's work, because what she's saying is the first place to look is in your childhood and how you have gotten to a point as an adult where your ability to tolerate discomfort emotionally is no longer serving the kind of life you want to live. And I'm willing to say I, through experiences I did not mean to create for my daughter, I taught her hyper vigilance, like she had to become the adult. I wasn't even able to be the, like, present. And I feel terrible about that. That. Do I wish I could go back and wave a magic wand? Absolutely. And I know for both of us, there's this huge opening present for both of our healing, not to mention our ability to have a mature, loving relationship on our own terms versus being in a relationship that is driven by the patterns of our lineage and what we were taught when we were children.

Does that make sense?

Oh, 100%. I'm shaking my head very ravenously over here because, you know, I also. I think it's important for me to state as well, is I still have moments where, for me, my reactivity comes out as passive aggressive, snarky, you know, underhanded comments where I'm not able to directly say it is how I feel to another person again, because without that attunement and childhood, without that safety, I learned the act of suppressing it, of going away on my spaceship and not ever saying what was really wrong. I also have a habit of disconnecting from my loved ones my relationships, of literally going and walling myself off in my bedroom and then holding them responsible for not coming in and not being connected and not supporting me when I need it. And I like to use this visual, it says if I have my hand held out in front of me and I'm demanding, sometimes even with daggers on the end of it, and then demanding someone come and give me a hug. And again, all of this for me. You said something really beautiful that I think is important to touch on. All of this goes back to, for me, the inability to be emotionally connected, to give and receive love in my childhood.

And as counterintuitive as that sounds, especially for all of us in relationship, many of us, few of us, I should say, in adulthood, actually have had that lived experience of giving and receiving love, for being who we are, for just sharing how it is for us, what we think, what we feel with another individual. So while we might. And this was so much, you know, of my life, for so long, all I desperately wanted was to be connected. I would leave partners because you weren't able to connect with me, I didn't feel close to you. And it took until, you know, the awakening that began in my. In my thirties, you know, my thirties, my early thirties, because it was several years of time before I was able to see myself as holding those daggers out, see all of the ways I was disconnected from my own authentic emotions, not sharing them with other people. So how am I going to be deeply and authentically known to someone else? I never gave anyone the opportunity because for me it felt so scary, so vulnerable, so threatening, that having those daggers out and blaming you for not coming closer was that safe zone.

It was just a replication of that early experience, again, that was created in my household with all of my family members, but namely around my own mom, who wasn't equipped, didn't understand, probably had a deep rooted desire like I was sharing earlier, to be emotionally connected, but didn't know how herself.

Yeah, I mean, we only can do what we've been trained to do until we wake the hell up and heal ourselves and teach ourselves to do something different. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe. Bye.