Listen Again: Build Strength, Live Longer: The Menopause Longevity Blueprint with Dr. Vonda Wright

**Mary Claire Haver** (0:01)
Today, we're pulling from the unPAUSED Archive and resharing one of my most important conversations to date with Dr. Vonda Wright, a double-bird certified orthopedic surgeon.
In this episode, we talk about why frailty and decline don't have to be inevitable parts of aging for women in midlife. Osteoporosis is preventable, and this episode will show you how to build the bone and the muscle strength that carry you well into your later decades. It's one worth hearing again. Here it is.

**Vonda Wright** (0:33)
I contend that although we certainly undergo some life stage changes, what we call normal aging is actually normal aging for stressed-out, undernourished people who are not intentionally building muscle, not attending to their hormonal health, and not prioritizing mobility. Aging to frailty only seems normal because modern life has made it so and threatens to rob us of our vitality. It's why most of us spend a quarter of our lives deteriorating from chronic diseases that encompass what we now understand as sedentary death syndrome.

**Mary Claire Haver** (1:19)
Both my grandmother and my mother had osteoporosis and fractures, so I always assumed it was inevitable for me too. I knew menopause hormone therapy would give me an edge, but I honestly thought weak bones and multiple fractures as I aged would just be my destiny. I see older women every day who were clearly becoming frail, bent over, moving stiffly, faces showing pain with every step. Recently, on a flight, I noticed an elderly woman traveling with her family. She was very weak and had trouble balancing and had to be guided just to walk, and it was clear she was living with dementia. I could even see through her pants that she was wearing a diaper. Her family tended to her with such love and care, and I thought, my God, she's so loved and so well cared for, thank goodness. But I couldn't help wondering what the last 10 years of her life had looked like. Was this long, difficult end of life slog inevitable? Is this what we're all destined for? Or can we change the way we think about aging, frailty, and independence?
The first time I heard our guest, Dr. Vonda Wright, speak was at a menopause conference. I had never heard anyone talk specifically about aging for women.
She told stories of women coming into the ER with a hip fracture, who also had heart trouble or incontinence, and they would look at her and say, I wasn't always like this. Hearing her speak stopped me on my tracks. She wasn't calm or detached about the way women age. She was furious, furious that so many women are funneled down a path towards frailty, osteoporosis, and muscle loss, when so much of it is preventable.
Up until that moment, I had only heard osteoporosis and sarcopenia discussed as inevitabilities, something you diagnose, accept, and manage with treatment, almost never as something you could actually prevent. Dr. Wright shattered that narrative for me. She said, no, this doesn't have to happen. Here are the steps. She showed me that osteoporosis is largely preventable, that frailty doesn't have to define the latter decades of a woman's life. And hearing her say that completely changed the way I think. The way I practice medicine, and the way I counsel both my patients and my followers. I call this stretch of life the Menospan. And we need to talk about it openly, urgently, and with solutions. Because aging looks very different for women than it does for men. And if we understand the difference, we can change the trajectory. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Vonda Wright to explore exactly how we can age not just longer, but stronger. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner, and also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to unPAUSED, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Joining me today is Dr. Vonda Wright, a double board-certified orthopedic surgeon, internationally recognized researcher, and sports physician with more than two decades of experience dedicated to high-performance orthopedics, aging, and women's health.
She is the author of best-selling guides like Younger In Eight Weeks, Fitness After 40, and her latest New York Times bestseller, Unbreakable, A Woman's Guide To Aging With Power. Dr. Wright empowers people, especially women, to age with strength, purpose, and vitality through evidence-based training, wellness, and lifestyle strategies. She is also the host of Hot For Your Health podcast, and a woman whose perspective on longevity has changed my life. Millions of women experience debilitating fractures every year from osteoporosis, and yet it's still framed as inevitable aging. Rather than a preventable, diagnosable condition, one out of two women will suffer an osteoporotic fracture after the age of 50, versus 20% of men. Most women have no idea that they can lose up to 20% of their bone mass in the first five years after menopause. And as bone mass decreases, fracture risk increases.