It’s been a rough few days, but today was the hardest. It is agony to see your kid this scared, and to have to be a rock. I didn’t lose it until I left the OR. They let me go back with him and hold his hand while he drifted off.
He’s got several more hours to go.
Just trying to think positively about his amazing team and how far surgery for young adults with congenital heart disease has come.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and messages.
The surgery went well. Go science!
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
Happy @fluevog day to all who celebrate! Here I am in three of my beauties, with styling assistance from my son, Oliver. I chose these three pairs because I sadly don’t wear them enough!! I need to fix my rotation!
And of course I have posted many times about my Dr. Gunter shoes, which come in 3 colors and are so very comfortable.
I used to make these blondies on heavy rotation when my boys were younger. One bowl and so easy. They basically taste like a big, thick, chewy cookie, but easier to make because no portioning out each cookie before baking!
I think this might have been a @marthastewart recipe that I read ages ago and tweaked. I hadn’t made them for 8 or 9 years and hadn’t written the recipe down, but it came back. Muscle memory I guess!!!
If you are looking for a super easy treat, here you go. If you are one of the minority who makes a snarky comment about sugar or any kind of food shaming, just move along.
Ingredients:
2 sticks butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsps vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups flour
3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350F
Grease an 8X 8 pan and line with parchment paper (I use cooking spray cuz I don’t have time for the flour and butter mess)
Mix the butter and sugar. (I melt the butter in a large bowl in the microwave and then mix everything in that bowl). Add the salt, vanilla and eggs and mix. Then add the flour and stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. Pour into the prepared pan and spread evenly.
Bake for 40-50 minutes (in my oven 45 minutes still leaves the bars chewy, which is essential!)
Try to let cook for at least 30 minutes before cutting into and enjoying!
I used to make these blondies on heavy rotation when my boys were younger. One bowl and so easy. They basically taste like a big, thick, chewy cookie, but easier to make because no portioning out each cookie before baking!
I think this might have been a @marthastewart recipe that I read ages ago and tweaked. I hadn’t made them for 8 or 9 years and hadn’t written the recipe down, but it came back. Muscle memory I guess!!!
If you are looking for a super easy treat, here you go. If you are one of the minority who makes a snarky comment about sugar or any kind of food shaming, just move along.
Ingredients:
2 sticks butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsps vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups flour
3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350F
Grease an 8X 8 pan and line with parchment paper (I use cooking spray cuz I don’t have time for the flour and butter mess)
Mix the butter and sugar. (I melt the butter in a large bowl in the microwave and then mix everything in that bowl). Add the salt, vanilla and eggs and mix. Then add the flour and stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. Pour into the prepared pan and spread evenly.
Bake for 40-50 minutes (in my oven 45 minutes still leaves the bars chewy, which is essential!)
Try to let cook for at least 30 minutes before cutting into and enjoying!
It seems there are an ever increasing number of supplements aimed at menopause. There are doctors, naturopaths, and online menopause platforms etc all with their own “brand,” which gives a bespoke illusion. However, every one of these supplements is simply a private label and there is zero research or medical training needed to get up and running with this kind of supplement. None. I know, because I went through the steps of making my own private label menopause supplement.
When health influencers, including doctors bring their own supplement to market they are capitalizing on the trust that have earned by being a doctor as well as the misogyny that has created gaps in medicine for women in menopause. They are not closing those gaps. Feminism would be doing quality studies to prove your product had value, misogyny is making hundreds of thousands or even millions from untested, unregulated products with bold claims (all with an asterisk indicating they can’t really do anything).
If I went forward with my Dr. Jen’s Menopause Taming Turmeric Supplement at $35 a bottle I would just need to convince about 3% of my followers (right now I have about 260k followers) to buy ONE BOTTLE to make $195,302. And that is the low end, if I ordered more product up front I could push that number up higher.
There is less work than you think involved. It was about six hours of time to get the quotes and figure out how to set up a Shopify. If we had gone through with it I think it would have been 40-80 hours to get completely set up. That is what it takes to potentially generate tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a month, and the only ongoing work I need to do to keep it going is a few hours a month of checking on reorders and social media content to promote my supplements and maybe some paid ads on Facebook targeting women ages 42-65.
Please head to The Vajenda to read all about my private label experience with my fictitious Dr. Jen’s Menopause Taming Turmeric Supplement. I was shocked at how easy it was and the profit involved explains why so many are doing it.
Oliver is home from the hospital. The next step is getting him to eat, so prepare yourselves for some baking photos 😂
I’m trying to make some of the baking a little more heart healthy. The idea is to make swaps or tweaks to add in some fiber and/or protein and reduce the saturated fat without compromising on flavor. Here I used canola oil instead of melted butter and swapped half of the white flour for whole wheat flour. I also added skyr.
These banana muffins were a hit. Some have blueberries, some have walnuts, and some have chocolate chips. I personally love a banana blueberry muffin, but I wanted different flavor options as his appetite isn’t the best. He decided on the walnut, and his brother Victor made a beeline for the chocolate chips muffins.
I’m going to tweak the recipe a bit before I post, but I didn’t miss or notice that there was no butter. There is 1.2 gram of saturated fat per muffin for the ones without chocolate chips.
Oliver is home from the hospital. The next step is getting him to eat, so prepare yourselves for some baking photos 😂
I’m trying to make some of the baking a little more heart healthy. The idea is to make swaps or tweaks to add in some fiber and/or protein and reduce the saturated fat without compromising on flavor. Here I used canola oil instead of melted butter and swapped half of the white flour for whole wheat flour. I also added skyr.
These banana muffins were a hit. Some have blueberries, some have walnuts, and some have chocolate chips. I personally love a banana blueberry muffin, but I wanted different flavor options as his appetite isn’t the best. He decided on the walnut, and his brother Victor made a beeline for the chocolate chips muffins.
I’m going to tweak the recipe a bit before I post, but I didn’t miss or notice that there was no butter. There is 1.2 gram of saturated fat per muffin for the ones without chocolate chips.
Oliver is home from the hospital. The next step is getting him to eat, so prepare yourselves for some baking photos 😂
I’m trying to make some of the baking a little more heart healthy. The idea is to make swaps or tweaks to add in some fiber and/or protein and reduce the saturated fat without compromising on flavor. Here I used canola oil instead of melted butter and swapped half of the white flour for whole wheat flour. I also added skyr.
These banana muffins were a hit. Some have blueberries, some have walnuts, and some have chocolate chips. I personally love a banana blueberry muffin, but I wanted different flavor options as his appetite isn’t the best. He decided on the walnut, and his brother Victor made a beeline for the chocolate chips muffins.
I’m going to tweak the recipe a bit before I post, but I didn’t miss or notice that there was no butter. There is 1.2 gram of saturated fat per muffin for the ones without chocolate chips.
Little update about non hormonal medications for hot flashes that work on the neurokinin 3 receptors/KNDy neurons. We have one drug in the market, fezolinetant (Vezoah), but there are 3 more in the pipeline. One, enlinzanetant seems the furthest along.
This is great news. More options only help women. Also, the development of these medications has taught us more about the neurobiology of hot flashes. And of course, competition is good for pricing.
I have seen some really good results with Vezoah, so I am excited to see what happens. Of course, a drug in the pipeline is not a guarantee it will make it to FDA approval or get approved.
While estrogen remains the gold standard for hot flashes, not everyone can take it.
This is exciting and hopeful. And over time we may learn more about menopause.
Saw this stunning rose in what I can only describe as a spectacularly rambling garden. This is the garden of my dreams. A barely contained chaos of colors. Going to be thinking about this beauty all day.
Saw this stunning rose in what I can only describe as a spectacularly rambling garden. This is the garden of my dreams. A barely contained chaos of colors. Going to be thinking about this beauty all day.
Saw this stunning rose in what I can only describe as a spectacularly rambling garden. This is the garden of my dreams. A barely contained chaos of colors. Going to be thinking about this beauty all day.
Saw this stunning rose in what I can only describe as a spectacularly rambling garden. This is the garden of my dreams. A barely contained chaos of colors. Going to be thinking about this beauty all day.
Saw this stunning rose in what I can only describe as a spectacularly rambling garden. This is the garden of my dreams. A barely contained chaos of colors. Going to be thinking about this beauty all day.
A few times a week I get accused of being in the pocket of Big Pharma. This usually happens when I post about something that is inconvenient to Big Unregulated Natural or inconvenient to those who promote Big Unregulated Pharma (meaning compounded products). Look, let’s call Big Unregulated Natural and Big Unregulated Pharma exactly what they are, untested, unregulated products.
If you are new here, you might not know, but I don’t take any money from Big Pharma, Big Natural, or Big Unregulated Pharma. In fact, I don’t take money from any product/company in the health space. If I tell you that I love a power bar, or whatever, it is simply because I love that power bar. I have picked up lots of great product ideas from people doing the same in their accounts and I like to contribute to the community.
You can look up to see if a provider takes money from Pharma, and you should. But you have no way of finding out how much money influencers and providers make from promoting and selling supplements and diets, compounded hormones, and unnecessary tests like the DUTCH test.
If a naturopath tells you that there is a special way to come off the pill (there isn’t you just stop it), and conveniently they sell a supplement to help, that means they have bias.
If a doctor tells a national publication that a turmeric supplement is helpful for weight loss and inflammation, and then conveniently they sell that supplement, it’s bias.
I know people think they can weed out the good from the biased content, but the truth is repetition works. The more you see misinformation (for example, false claims about supplements), the more likely you are to believe those claims.
We need government oversight, but that will never happen. So the next thing you can do is look people up. Go to CMS.gov, and of course look to see who has a shop and what they are selling. If a $15 meal from a drug company influences doctors, then what is the effect of making tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling Big Natural and Big Unregulated Pharma?
I do love seeing foreign editions of my books! Here is the Simplified Chinese edition of The Vagina Bible, with and without the dust jacket. It is so pretty!
Is your menstrual cycle normal? How is the pill affecting your body? How do you sort science from snake oil?
Join me in Episode #313 as I sit down with Dr Jen Gunter (@drjengunter), a renowned expert in women’s health, for a deep dive into contraception, the menstrual cycle, and common female health myths.
Listen now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. 👆 Link in bio
📸 @directordavidj
#menstruation #menstruationmatters #menstrualcycle #menopause #abortion