#1 Women’s Health Journalist: Why Medicine Was NEVER Built for Women | Meghan Rabbitt | #142
Release Date: 01/06/2026
The Dr Vonda Show
Get Dr. Vonda’s latest insights on strength, bone health, longevity, and aging with power delivered straight to your inbox. Join her free health & longevity newsletter here: Today I want to talk with you about how women age, and why so many of us feel surprised by what happens to our bodies in midlife. This is not an episode about chasing youth or fearing wrinkles. It is about understanding why women are not taught how longevity really works in our bodies, and why the years leading up to menopause matter far more than we were ever told. I have learned, through decades of caring...
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Get Dr. Vonda’s latest insights on strength, bone health, longevity, and aging with power delivered straight to your inbox. Join her free health & longevity newsletter here: There’s a moment many women reach in midlife where things don’t feel wrong but they don’t feel right either. Digestion changes. Bloating appears out of nowhere. Sleep feels lighter. Inflammation lingers. And no one ever told us these systems might all be connected. I sat down with Cynthia Thurlow, a nurse practitioner and intermittent fasting expert, to talk about a topic that is still vastly underexplored...
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Get Dr. Vonda’s latest insights on strength, bone health, longevity, and aging with power delivered straight to your inbox. Join her free health & longevity newsletter here: There’s a quiet shift many women notice in midlife that rarely gets talked about in the doctor’s office, changes in their mouth. Gums that feel more sensitive. Teeth that suddenly seem fragile. Dryness, inflammation, or dental issues that appear despite “doing everything right.” I sat down with Dr. Carlos Melendez, a general dentist and practice owner, to talk about what really happens to oral health...
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Get Dr. Vonda’s latest insights on strength, bone health, longevity, and aging with power delivered straight to your inbox. Join her free health & longevity newsletter here: This is a conversation many women don’t realize they need until something starts to feel off. I sat down with Dr. Sara Reardon, a pelvic floor physical therapist known as The Vagina Whisperer, to talk about a part of women’s health that quietly affects how we move, train, recover, and age. It is rarely discussed until symptoms begin to interfere with daily life. We explore the life stages when pelvic health...
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Today’s conversation is one I believe every woman deserves to hear - regardless of age, stage, or current health status. I sat down with Meghan Rabbit, an award-winning health journalist and the author of The New Rules for Women’s Health, to talk about something many of us feel but rarely name clearly: modern medicine was not designed with women in mind - especially across midlife. This isn’t about blame. And it isn’t about distrust of doctors. It’s about understanding the system we are navigating, and learning how to advocate for ourselves within it. Meghan brings a rare...
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In this episode of Hot For Your Health, Dr. Vonda Wright sits down with Dr. Mariza Snyder, a functional practitioner and bestselling author known for translating complex hormone science into actionable, empowering care for women. Together, they explore what’s actually happening in a woman’s body during perimenopause and midlife—and why so many symptoms are misunderstood, dismissed, or normalized when they shouldn’t be. Dr. Snyder breaks down the hormone–brain–metabolism connection, explaining how blood sugar dysregulation, chronic stress, and neuroinflammation contribute to...
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In this episode of Hot For Your Health, Dr. Vonda Wright sits down with her friend and colleague Dr. Juliana Hauser, a licensed couples and family therapist, renowned sex educator, and author of A New Position on Sex. Together, they reframe sexuality as a vital component of whole-person health, longevity, and self-development—not just a set of sex acts. Dr. Hauser introduces her holistic framework for understanding sexuality, including the importance of agency, connection, and self-trust, and explains why sexual health deserves the same attention as other medical “vital signs.” The...
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In this episode of Hot for Your Health, Dr. Vonda Wright is joined by Dr. Corinne Menn and Dr. Kudzai Dombo, board-certified physicians and menopause specialists in active clinical practice with Alloy Health. Together, they unpack what women are not being told about perimenopause and menopause—and why so many women are dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told to “wait it out” during one of the most biologically disruptive decades of their lives. Drs. Menn and Dombo explain the science behind hormonal fluctuations in perimenopause, clarifying why symptoms can be debilitating long before a woman...
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In this episode, Dr. Vonda Wright sits down with triple board-certified obesity medicine specialist Dr. Rocío Salas-Whalen, author of Weightless, to unpack the emotional and metabolic weight so many women carry for decades. Dr. Rocío shares what she sees every day in her Manhattan practice—patients arriving exhausted, ashamed, and feeling like this is their “last stop”—and explains why weight is never just a number on the scale, but a story of muscle, visceral fat, metabolic health, and self-worth. Together, they dive into Dr. Dr. Rocío’s powerful GPS method—GLP-1s, Protein,...
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In this episode of Hot For Your Health with Dr. Vonda Wright is joined by longtime friend, master formulator, and wellness innovator Sanjeev “Jeevers” Javia to break down one of the most overlooked—but most life-saving—topics in women’s health: bone health. Using real data and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Wright reveals why fractures are a preventable epidemic, why osteoporosis is a “disease of youth” that shows up in midlife, and how women lose up to 20% of their bone density during perimenopause. Sanjeev shares how bone operates as a dynamic...
info_outlineToday’s conversation is one I believe every woman deserves to hear - regardless of age, stage, or current health status.
I sat down with Meghan Rabbit, an award-winning health journalist and the author of The New Rules for Women’s Health, to talk about something many of us feel but rarely name clearly: modern medicine was not designed with women in mind - especially across midlife.
This isn’t about blame. And it isn’t about distrust of doctors.
It’s about understanding the system we are navigating, and learning how to advocate for ourselves within it.
Meghan brings a rare perspective to this conversation. She has spent years interviewing hundreds of clinicians and researchers across women’s health, brain health, heart disease, menopause, autoimmune conditions, and longevity. What she uncovered is both sobering and empowering: women have been left out of research, diagnostics, and treatment models for decades, but knowledge changes outcomes.
In this episode, we talk about why women must become active participants in their own healthcare, not passive recipients. We explore what it means to be the “CEO of your health” - tracking symptoms, preparing for appointments, understanding your body, and engaging in true shared decision-making with your clinicians.
We also walk through the body systems where these gaps show up most clearly:
- Why women represent the majority of Alzheimer’s cases—and what midlife has to do with brain health
- Why heart disease remains the leading cause of death in women, yet awareness is declining
- How menopause is a neurological transition, not just a hormonal one
- Why autoimmune disease disproportionately affects women—and why answers are still lagging
- How gut health, bone health, hormones, and the brain are deeply interconnected
About Meghan Rabbitt:
Meghan Rabbitt is an award-winning journalist and author of The New Rules of Women’s Health: Your Guide to Thriving at Every Age. She specializes in writing about women’s health and wellness, and her work has appeared in many national publications, including Women’s Health, Oprah Daily, Prevention, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, and more. She’s known for translating complex medical and scientific topics into clear, actionable information, and for telling stories that help readers better understand their bodies, their health, and themselves.
📘 Book - The New Rules of Women's Health
Your Guide to Thriving at Every Age
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734289/the-new-rules-of-womens-health-by-meghan-rabbitt-foreword-by-maria-shriver/
Website: https://newrulesofwomenshealth.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghanrabbitt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghan-rabbitt-04b80116/
Substack: https://substack.com/@meghanrabbitt
Timestamp:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:28 The Origin Story of the Women's Health Manifesto
00:03:58 Challenges in Women's Health Research
00:09:30 Empowering Women to Take Charge of Their Health
00:18:37 The Importance of Tracking Symptoms and Shared Decision Making
00:24:44 Brain Health and the Impact of Estrogen
00:29:53 The Importance of Exercise for Brain Health
00:32:08 The Role of Hormones in Heart Health
00:39:42 Autoimmune Diseases and Women's Health
00:45:40 Empowering Women Through Knowledge
00:50:40 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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📖 Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power
Dr. Vonda Wright’s newest book, Unbreakable, is a bold guide for women ready to redefine what aging looks and feels like. Blending cutting‑edge science with real‑world strategies, it helps you build strength, resilience, and momentum through every decade of life. Discover how to turn aging into your greatest advantage and live with power, purpose, and vitality.
👉 Learn more or get your copy: https://theunbreakablebook.com
About Dr. Vonda Wright:
I’m Vonda Wright, an orthopedic sports surgeon and women’s healthy‑aging expert. For 20 years I’ve helped athletes and everyday women protect their joints, build muscle, and extend their health span. Here you’ll get science-backed strategies to age with power, so you can keep doing what you love for decades to come.
Connect with Dr. Vonda Wright:
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Read Dr. Vonda Wright’s Substack: https://drvondawright.substack.com/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drvondawright
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vondawrightmd
Website: http://www.drvondawright.com/