Here’s an all-too-familiar tale: A woman is struggling with chronic, confounding health issues only to be told it’s “all in her head.” Sound familiar? Lauren Bosworth has been there, and she doesn’t wish it on anyone. Lauren and Dr. Jodie Horton join us to discuss Love Yourself Well: An Empowering Wellness Guide to Supporting Your Gut, Brain, and Vagina.
Read the transcript:
Dr. Denise Millstine: Welcome to the “Read. Talk. Grow.” podcast, where we explore women’s health topics through books. In the same way that books can transport us to a different time, place, or culture. “Read. Talk. Grow.” demonstrates how books can also give a new appreciation for health experiences and provide a platform from which women’s health can be discussed.
At “Read. Talk. Grow.” we use books to learn about health conditions in the hopes that we can all lead happier, healthier lives. I’m your host, Dr. Denise Millstine. I’m an assistant professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic, where I practice women’s health, internal medicine, and direct the section of integrative medicine in Arizona. I am always reading and I love discussing books with my patients, my professional colleagues, and now with you.
Today we’re talking about wellness, and I am so excited about my two guests. My first guest is Lauren Bosworth, who is the founder and CEO of total-body care brand, Love Wellness. Since launching the company in 2016, she has expanded Love Wellness to include vaginal health, gut health, and ingestible beauty. Lo is seeking to change the narrative around self-care culture and empower others to feel supported, welcomed, and safe during their wellness journeys. She lives in New York City and hails from Laguna Beach, California. She holds a bachelor’s degree from The University of California, Los Angeles, and a Culinary Arts degree with an emphasis on farm-to-table cuisine from The International Culinary Institute. Combining lessons from her own health experience, with knowledge of a panel of medical experts. Her new book is “Love Yourself Well: An Empowering Wellness Guide to Supporting Your Gut, Brain and Vagina.”
Our second guest is Dr. Jodie Horton. Jodie is a board certified OB-GYN practicing in Washington, D.C. She’s a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Medical College of Virginia. She completed her residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center and now is an assistant clinical professor at Georgetown University Medical Center and the department of OB-GYN, where she teaches medical students, residents and, of course, her patients about women’s health.
She combines holistic and Western medicine to provide the best care to her patients and has recently been a wellness advisor for Love Wellness, as well as a contributor to the book we’re discussing today, which once again is “Love Yourself Well,” out at the end of December 2022 from Day Street Books. Lo and Jodie, welcome to the show.
Dr. Jodie Horton: Thank you.
Lauren Bosworth: Thanks for having us. We’re so excited and honored. Really appreciate it.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Absolutely. Well, we are really grateful that you’re putting this book out into the world, because clearly women need this information. So Lo, let’s talk about your backstory in terms of health. So if you’ll allow me to — You were living the dream. Super successful, doing everything that you wanted to do, and suddenly started to have symptoms that became quite disruptive. Tell us about that.
Lauren Bosworth: Absolutely. I moved to New York City in 2012, when I was getting out of a very serious long-term relationship. My body started to fail me. I was depressed and anxious for the first time ever, but in a really significant, meaningful way. It felt like it was happening deep inside me, deep within my bones.
I continued to have these women’s health issues as well. I started getting yeast infections and UTIs, and it became a chronic issue for me. I am somebody that is a problem-solver. And I am somebody who is also really passionate about biology, women’s bodies. So the subject matter is really interesting to me. I would go to the doctor and I would try to get care for these different types of symptoms. Often I was told, “This is just in your head,” or “This is just stress.” It felt like I should believe that everything was psychosomatic to a certain degree. It took me many experts, and ultimately 18 months, to get an initial diagnosis, if you will, that I was actually dealing with really severe vitamin deficiencies.
It was like the light bulb went on for me. I finally had something to connect to that started to explain, at least, my neurological symptoms. I had really severe B12 and D deficiencies, and if you let those go on for long enough, it can lead to anxiety, depression — all of the things that I was experiencing. The big question mark, though, remained for me on the vaginal health and intimate care side of the house. Why was I experiencing these neurological issues, but also these personal care issues? That took me an even longer journey over many, many years, through the development of Love Wellness, in fact, to understand ultimately the interconnectivity of the gut, to the brain, and the vagina. That’s what the book is really about. It tells my own story of my health challenges and what I had to do to overcome them. It also tells the story of why I started my company, and how I really did it. I’m just so excited for the book to really serve almost as a textbook or a guidebook that is easy to understand for women — that really teaches them about whole-body wellness, but that really, the gut serves as really an important piece of the puzzle. Maintaining that microbiome supports brain health and supports vaginal health. We really consider all three of those organs on that axis to be critical pillars of women’s health in general. I’m really excited to share this story and to get the information out there.
Dr. Denise Millstine: It’s so fantastic. Jodie, tell us a little bit about how common it is to have an experience like Lo’s, where she’s had these UTIs, which are treated with antibiotics, then she gets a yeast infection, which is treated with antifungals, but then the yeast infection comes back. Is this the first time you’ve ever heard this story?
Dr. Jodie Horton: Absolutely not. This is so common. With Lo’s experience, I always feel better when patients have a diagnosis, even if it’s not something they want to hear. But they’re relieved because, like you said, you’re attaching your symptoms to something and it’s not psychosomatic, but sometimes it’s difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on. People present with these symptoms, and then it’s this broad differential diagnosis, and then it’s up to the patient and the doctor to narrow down those symptoms, do the right lab work or imaging tests, and then figure out what’s going on. But sometimes it can take a while. That’s why this book is really important for patients to learn about their bodies and be hyper aware of their symptoms, so that when they do talk to their doctor about what’s going on, it’s a true dialogue. You could be your own self advocate, and then along with your doctor, figure out what’s going on. But it can be a very frustrating experience.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I love how you framed that, because often we’ll see women who have a UTI and the easiest, quickest thing to do is prescribe an antibiotic. But you could be doing a disservice if you don’t back out and say, what’s the whole picture here?
Dr. Jodie Horton: Exactly. Especially if they’re recurrent urinary tract infections or yeast infections, vaginal infections — It’s important to look at what the cause is, not just treat the symptoms because you’re right, you can do more harm.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Lo, I like how you spoke to the issue of vitamin deficiency, which can be incredibly common. For me as a physician reading your book, what bothered me is how long it took for you to have that detected. Since the truth is, these are very routine, conventionally available, covered by insurance, if you have insurance. Labs that can be done by your primary care, your OB-GYN — really, most physicians or health care professionals could have ordered these well earlier in your journey.
Lauren Bosworth: Yeah, absolutely. We actually speak to this in the book, in Part One. We speak about empowered self-advocacy. And there was a very interesting couple of sentences in the book that talks about advocating for your health in the female body, and the history of women’s health. In the late 19th century, hysteria was really the cause of a malfunctioning uterus, and the solution was marital, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, rest. That diagnosis and that guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that definition of hysteria* was used by psychiatrists in the United States until 1980. As a female patient in a female body, I think that all of us are still trying to advocate for ourselves when we go to the doctor, we’re trying to be heard.
It’s incredibly disappointing to me as well that a simple blood test that could have given me that initial diagnosis and helped me avoid so much pain and suffering wasn’t done early on. But I think the good outcome here is that I have been able to turn my experience into something that is tangible and real so that other women hopefully can avoid that type of experience. One of the things that I talked to Dr. Horton about a lot is that it’s become very clear to us that there’s this interconnectivity between the gut, brain, and vagina — and why is it that if I’m having a UTI or a vaginal health issue, that the medical community isn’t looking at the broader picture? It’s an interesting conversation that we have a lot.
I also say — why is a brand doing this work? Why isn’t Big Pharma doing it or someone else talking about this? The reality, as Dr. Horton and I talked about yesterday, is that medicine is an evolving practice. What we know now is not what we knew in 1800 or in 1980. It’s really fascinating to me as the founder of the company, but also as somebody who deeply cares about the subject matter. It’s just fascinating that we are coming to the table with this evidence-based information versus somebody else.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I completely agree with you. It’s the reason that Mayo Clinic is invested in the Women’s Health Center and has clinical work and research and education in women’s health for these very reasons. To your point, women were excluded from scientific studies, outside of fertility and childbirth, until the 1990s. I don’t want to say how old I was, but yeah, I was an adult in the 1990s.
Don’t you think, Jody? It’s just crazy to imagine that there was a time that that was thought to be okay for women in general. Then when you start to look at women of color, they’ve been excluded from this for the entire time.
Dr. Jodie Horton: Right. One study with men or a limited group can’t apply to everybody. To go back to what Lauren was saying, this hysteria concept of just attributing any type of pain or ailment or anything experienced by women can be attributed to their female organs or mental disorder is still kind of lingering. I see it in the ER when people come in with abdominal pain —automatically, if someone has a vagina, an OB/GYN is called. There’s so many other organs inside the belly. There’s the kidneys, the stomach, the bowels, the pancreas, the spleen. There’s so many other things — the muscle — and none of that is explored. We’re automatically called. It has to be the vagina or it has to be the uterus. That’s not always the case. And so, again, self-advocacy, being hyper aware of your body and the symptoms that you’re having, is going to help you find out what is really, truly going on.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I don’t want to spoil the book for future readers, but you tell a great story in the book about being called to see a patient for Cervical Motion Tenderness. And when you got to see the patient, they didn’t even have a cervix.
Dr. Jodie Horton: I was like, Are you kidding me? This is insane. All they see is you’re female, so it’s got to be your vagina.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Yeah. One of the quotes from the book as well that I’ll paraphrase is that – Lo, you’re making an effort to destigmatize talking about women’s health topics. And as a carry-on to what you said about the business-side, I love how you say that your approach is to say “Why, exactly?” So if we know women are supposed to wear white cotton underwear, why exactly is that? And really pulling that apart to say, what’s the importance there? I guess I opened the can of worms. So, Jody, do you tell women to wear white cotton underwear when they have vaginal irritation?
Dr. Jodie Horton: I definitely tell people to be cognizant of what they’re wearing and where they’re buying their underwear, what type of things that they should look for: cotton, bamboo. I’m not sure if I’ve ever said white specifically, because if they’re like me, I’m someone who buys underwear for whatever reason — cotton crotch, or if you have recurrent vaginal inspections, maybe avoid thongs or G-strings. Look for breathable fabrics. If someone’s got recurrent issues, then you’ve got to start looking at what you’re doing or what you’re wearing that may be contributing to those things.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Lo, you spend a little bit of time in the book talking about thongs specifically and really revisiting what they’re for. Is it really that important to get rid of your panty lines, especially if you’re dealing with some irritation? It’s not that nobody should ever wear a thong. It’s just that if you’re struggling with that irritation, think about that as part of the picture.
Lauren Bosworth: Absolutely. That’s one of the things that I’m like, Dr. Horton, “Why is a thong bad?” And we explain in the book, bacteria in the gut and the vagina engage in behavior that we are calling ‘bacteria crosswalk,’ where they walk across the perineum from the anus, which is connected to the gut, to the vagina urinary tract, and then bam, that’s why you’re getting a UTI or that’s why you’re getting BV.
That’s why you might want to consider a different type of underwear or undergarments. So Dr. Horton is here to tell us why, and I’m here to ask us, but why?
Because I want to know. And when you have information broken down in a simple, straightforward way, that reduces stigma and shame. Then it’s just — “Oh it’s just my body. It’s just science, it’s just biology, it’s just bacteria, it’s just cells.” That’s when women start to become much more comfortable with the subject matter — when they actually understand it on a fundamental and basic level.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Well, you comment in the book about what percentage of women actually don’t know their own anatomy, and it is shocking how many women don’t know what the anatomy actually is or have ever looked. I mean, I hope there’s a movement to encourage women to learn, to look, to understand. But that, too, is pretty new.
Dr. Jodie Horton: Yeah, I was shocked. I remember I read an article that said upwards of 45% of women were not able to identify their female anatomy. And you have to think back to when we learned all this — probably in fourth grade when we didn’t understand anything about our bodies or probably even thinking about our bodies, and how much changes we’ve gone through since we were nine years old. You start having your period, you start developing breasts, and having all these changes in hormones. It’s not until something starts going wrong that you’re like, what is actually happening again? Because there’s that stigma. No one’s really going to talk about it. It’s funny because I always seem to be the favorite for parties because I do talk about my job and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re saying vagina or vulva or you’re talking about bodily functions.’ Then people start telling their stories and they start feeling comfortable. I’m like, yes, this is normal. This is what happens to our body. Not all of our genitalia is external like a guy, so you’ve got to do more exploration. You have to learn more about what’s going on for sure.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Let’s talk a bit about leaky-ness. So, leaky brain, leaky vagina. In terms of the microbiome, you do a great job of really framing, like you said, the crosswalk and the importance. Let’s start with the gut, because that clearly is at the center of our microbiome, though not the only, but definitely at the center. And in your course of dealing with your illness, you got a lot of antibiotics. You were actually ingesting and being exposed to a lot of things. Talk about what that meant as part of the importance of getting to a place of being well, again.
Lauren Bosworth: Absolutely. So I had, like I said, a couple of things going on. I had vitamin deficiencies and then I kept getting these recurrent vaginal infections. Ultimately, it was pointed out to me that I most likely had some kind of gut health issue. I was probably dealing with leaky gut, which is generally, we believe, caused by food sensitivities, specifically gluten, antibiotic overuse, ingesting different types of sugars, alcohol, pesticides.
We live in 2022, it’s hard to avoid having a leaky gut, frankly, if you don’t really know about it. I also think it’s challenging to a certain degree in the medical community because there’s still a lot of anecdotal evidence about leaky gut. Some of it is evidence-based, but a lot of it is anecdotal. But for me, I believed that my issues ultimately were being caused by my gut. I couldn’t absorb my nutrients well because I was having a gut health issue. It was trickling down and becoming vaginal health issues. We talked about vaginal, bacterial crosswalk. I’m also fascinated by the concept of quorum sensing, which is bacteria in the gut and the vagina engaging together.
You can think about it and we talk about it in the book. Imagine it is like teen bacteria in the gut and the vagina texting each other, and if the gut in the bacteria are out of whack because you just took an antibiotic, they’re going to tell the vagina and the bacteria to also be out of whack — then you might get thrown out of balance and then that invites in a yeast infection.
Once I understood that leaky gut could trickle up and trickle down and create a whole host of issues within the body, really for me, that’s when I understood as a founder of this business the types of products that we wanted to make and the types of categories that we wanted to be into. We try every day to teach and educate women that all of these systems are interconnected, but it starts with the gut.Being a human in 2023 is challenging because of all of the things that we’re dealing with and facing every day, right from the food that we consume to the types of products we’re putting in and on our body. It’s hard to be a human. Our microbiomes are constantly being disrupted.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I really like how you framed all of that, because you’re right that the concept of leaky gut has a terminology issue in conventional medicine, but we all understand that there are things that we ingest or are exposed to, that make our gut less robust. There is definitely evidence that it has to do with these tight junctures**. I just want to restate the elements that you said that can loosen those junctures. You mentioned food additives, pesticides, which are on a lot of our healthy foods, actually, but they’ve been raised with pesticides. Other things are alcohol, which we’ve done a couple episodes about women and alcohol, and I think it’s something I think that we all need to be revisiting. And then over-the-counter pain medications like ibuprofen or naproxen can also loosen those junctures. If you’re the person who gets a headache and pops ibuprofen, you might want to rethink that in terms of the downstream effect on your gut health. Other things, of course, one of which is stress. Let’s shift to talking a bit about loving the brain and your approach to that.
Lauren Bosworth: Yeah, absolutely. For me, the addition of the brain and looking at the brain from a brand perspective has happened more recently. It’s because when I was dealing with my depression and anxiety, at first I was taking a lot of traditional SSRIs and Klonopin. Those medications absolutely remain incredibly important and have a place in people’s lives. I think what’s interesting, though, is that the brain does not have a microbiome. We’re talking about all these microbiomes, but the brain doesn’t have one. It does have the blood brain barrier, and you can think about it in the same way as you think about the gut wall. The blood brain barrier has these tight junctures, but we believe that they can be penetrated by bad guys — things that are leaking out of the gut, toxins, chemicals, etc., and can possibly penetrate that blood brain barrier because of their size.
If you think about certain medications or cocaine as an example, those molecules are small enough to penetrate the blood brain barrier, and some of the things that are escaping that leaky gut that can get into the bloodstream are also small enough to penetrate that blood brain barrier. We believe that that can cause mood disorders and what we are calling leaky brain. Brain health ultimately is supported by a healthy diet and probiotics, which boosts production and delivery of happy hormones. Most of your happy hormones are made and produced in your gut, and it’s your gut microbiome that is telling that organ to make more serotonin and send it to the brain. The serotonin is also small enough to get through those junctures in the blood brain barrier. Just like it trickles down, it trickles up.
Dr. Denise Millstine: You talk quite a bit about sleep and the importance of sleep. We live in a go, go, go society where many people don’t take the time to sleep or their brains are so busy that they really don’t get into those deep, restful phases of sleep. But you say in the book, no sleep, no sweep — which I think is an important concept, that when we don’t get into those deep phases of sleep, we really don’t get that cleansing that the brain needs overnight.
Lauren Bosworth: Yeah, absolutely. When we were doing research for the book, the bits on sleep were some of the most interesting things that I learned, and I’m still continuing to try to apply them to my daily life — the different phases of sleep and how each phase of sleep is incredibly important. Everyone knows this. You get a bad night’s sleep, you feel awful the next day. It’s very easy to identify that. But it is fascinating to read about or learn about what’s actually happening in the brain on a nightly basis when you go to bed, and how critically important that is to reducing stress and just overall function. That was something that I was fascinated to learn when we were writing the book.
Dr. Jodie Horton: And like you said, it affects the whole body. And, you know Denise, as a physician. I get very interrupted sleep. I feel like I’m chronically fatigued. I cherish those days. If my body tells me I need sleep, obviously, when I’m not working, I take that time because of the importance of sweeping the brain, reducing the cortisol levels. Because it does affect your gut, and just overall feeling — your brain fog, your memory, or making good or bad decisions. It increases inflammation throughout your body. You hear about how important sleep is, but I don’t think people really realize how it affects you. You feel bad, but it truly does affect your overall health.
Dr. Denise Millstine: And I think that we normalize getting bad sleep. It’s one thing to get a bad night’s sleep and wake up the next day and say, ‘Oh, I don’t feel very well,’ but if we’re always getting this non-restorative sleep, we start to think this is just how we feel. We don’t feel well. We don’t realize it’s because, night after night, we are not doing the things that you suggest in the book, which are to be kinder to your brain, to move away from your phone and get out into nature, to do things that then allow you to get into those more restful nights of sleep.
Jodie, I want to switch and talk about vaginal health. There is a list in the book about things not to put in the vagina. Some of them are easy to identify, but I think our listeners would love to hear even more. The list is surfactants, parabens. and fragrances. Can you tell us where those tend to come up and where women should be watching for those and probably avoiding them if they’re having issues?
Dr. Jodie Horton: If you look at a lot of the products that you’re using — I’ve even told patients to stop using certain types of shampoos just because when they’re showering, those products can certainly get on the vulva or the vagina. This patient was experiencing recurrent vaginal infections. It’s something that you have to look at. It’s not only what you’re ingesting, but also what you’re putting on your body. That’s really important and I think people forget about that. You want to look at the ingredients of the things that you’re using. Those ingredients that you just listed can certainly dry out the vagina and change the pH of the vagina. A normal vaginal pH is between roughly 3.8 to 4.8. People often use soaps that have dyes or fragrances to mask odors or to make the vagina smell a certain type of way, and this is actually doing more harm. It’s getting rid of the normal bacteria in the vagina that helps you fight infections. Again, causing more harm than doing good. You just have to be cognizant of those types of things. Also, knowing the difference of the vulva, the external female genitalia – if you choose to use a cleanser, make sure you use a pH balance cleanser – something that’s very neutral, and then the vagina, it cleans itself. Everyone’s heard of a self-cleaning oven. Let it do its job, don’t disrupt it. The vagina knows what it’s doing.
Dr. Denise Millstine: The vagina knows what it’s doing. I think that’s going to be our catch phrase for this episode.
Lauren Bosworth: It knows what it’s doing. It has a brain, right Dr. Horton, M.D.?
Dr. Jodie Horton: Yes, that’s right.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Fantastic phrase. Well, a lot of self-help books and books that promote wellness, particularly when they come from industry, I feel like they then try to sell you on the products from that company or say, and the only way to achieve wellness is if you buy these 8,000 things from us or sign up for our subscription. And Lo, I just really want to express gratitude that when you move into the section on the plan, how to become well — You frame it in terms of what you eat, what’s in your environment, how you sleep, how you’re managing stress, the vagus nerve (which people will have to get the book to learn more about that), how you move, and also you recommend orgasm very specifically during each week. I just really appreciated that your book is certainly supported by the company and the products that the company makes available to women at a very reasonable price point, at a high quality. That’s why you designed them, but it’s not the only way to approach this wellness plan — that it really is holistic and multifactorial.
Lauren Bosworth: Oh yeah, absolutely. We make supplements, we make probiotics, we make vaginal care products, but the supplement plan to me, really was one of the lesser important parts of it. The nutrition, the food swaps, and those lifestyle changes — sleep, de-stress, detox, sex, vagus nerve stimulation, movement — those are the things that you really want to key in on. Of course, supplements can be helpful. Probiotics is a big part of the plan. I firmly believe that probiotics are the new multivitamin. Everybody should be taking a probiotic every day, because of all of the things that we’ve talked about. Of the things that we’re doing and the things that we’re encountering, lots of stuff can disrupt the microbiome. Probiotics can be really, really helpful — but baseline, what’s more important is resolving your gut health issues. You do that by identifying what is inflammatory for you. An elimination diet is a critically important part of this. What I really love about the diet plan and Love Yourself Well is that it’s not super restrictive. You can still have white rice on the plan. You can still have certain types of goat cheese and things like that. It’s not a plan that’s put in place for weight loss. It’s a plan that’s put in place to help reduce and heal inflammation, and ultimately help you identify what those triggers are for you. When you want to bring things back in, when you’re testing things out, the whole point of an elimination diet is so that when you do eat something that is bothersome to your system, you get a big reaction.
Let’s say you have a problem with dairy. If you eat dairy every single day your whole life, that inflammatory reaction is going to be less noticeable because you’re experiencing it constantly. It becomes your new normal. But if you remove the thing, and then on week four you have a little bit of it, your body is going to really tell you in a loud way, ‘Hey I really have a problem with this.’ That’s really the point of an elimination diet, ultimately. You restore your gut health, you heal a lot of the inflammation that’s going on, and you are ultimately able to identify what some of those inflammatory triggers are for you.
Dr. Denise Millstine: I also really appreciate how you broke the plan into what feels like very doable steps. You don’t say, on week one, here’s how you live your perfect life. You say on week one, here’s where you start to look at where the things are that might be contributing to not being as well as you could be.
Lauren Bosworth: My friend is a certified nutritionist. Her name is Janine Higbie. She did a lot of work on the plan, and she specifically focuses on women’s health, fertility, and pregnancy. It was created with that eye. She said, “When I have people come to me, I always start them on a plan that builds week by week, because you can’t expect people to instantly modify their behavior and go so extreme right away.” I thought it was really brilliant that she has the plan build week over week. Week one is a prep week. You try to taper off caffeine. You do a household cleanout of obvious toxins that we know cause problems. You set a consistent waking time every day. You have an orgasm one day. Then we start to get more into some of the nutrition stuff and you build on the movement. You build on healthy sleep patterns like that.
Dr. Jodie Horton: I think that also helps build consistency as well. Like you said, it’s very doable. It’s not extreme. You build on it from week to week. It’s not asking you for crazy ingredients to create meals. These are things that you could easily do at home. Even for me, who doesn’t cook at all. It’s very doable and it’s not restrictive. I think it lends to continuing it, versus having this extreme change of lifestyle that’s hard to maintain when you’ve — like Lauren said — been doing the same thing your entire life. These easy steps make it something that will hopefully turn into a lifestyle change.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Well, on that note, I just want to thank you both for being on “Read. Talk. Grow.” and for talking about your forthcoming book, “Love Yourself Well.” I’m excited for it to be in the hands of our listeners and for it to continue to destigmatize talking about women’s health issues. Thank you again.
Lauren Bosworth: Thanks, Dr. Millstine.
Dr. Jodie Horton: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.
Dr. Denise Millstine: Thank you for joining us to talk books and health today on “Read. Talk. Grow.” To continue the conversation and send comments, visit the show notes or email us at readtalkgrow@mayo.edu.
“Read. Talk. Grow.” is a production of Mayo Clinic Press. Our producer is Lisa Speckhard-Pasque and our recording engineer is Rick Andresen. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not designed to replace a physician’s medical assessment and judgment.
Information presented is not intended as medical advice. Please contact a healthcare professional for medical assistance with specific questions pertaining to your own health if needed. Keep reading everyone.
*The DSM included a diagnosis of “hysterical neurosis.” You can read a full history of the evolution of the term here.
**The correct term is “junctions.”
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