What Men Need to Know About Menopause with Peter Taglianetti | HFYH #128

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:00)
Like, I've had women tell me that they haven't been able to have sex for a year.

**Peter Taglianetti** (0:05)
99% of the time, men talk about stuff through joking around. I'm not getting sex or whatever the case might be, but they're saying it jokingly.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:11)
But it's the truth.

**Peter Taglianetti** (0:12)
It is the truth. It's in the back of their mind and doesn't come to the forefront until...

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:18)
The man feels like being rejected. He's not, it just hurts like hell. And then nobody knows what to do, and it becomes this separating thing.

**Peter Taglianetti** (0:26)
You have to be emotionally tied to what's happening to your life.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:31)
Oh, I love that.

**Peter Taglianetti** (0:32)
I'm with you. Let's figure this out.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:33)
This is the key to midlife happiness. Hi, I'm Dr. Vonda Wright and this is HOT For Your Health. Join us for conversations on the bleeding edge of science, health and culture as we bring you tech innovators, thought leaders, and the movers and shakers who are transforming science fiction into your new health reality.
Hi, everybody, I'm Dr. Vonda Wright and thank you for coming back for another episode of HOT For Your Health. You may not realize it, but this podcast has been around for more than a decade. And I always try to bring fascinating people, usually fascinating to me and hopefully fascinating to you, innovators, movers and shakers. And today is a really special day for me because I have a return guest on HOT For Your Health who is an amazing person, in addition to the fact that almost 15 years ago, we started dating and got married. So today I have Peter Taglianetti, who is not only my husband, but he has a fabulous and rich perspective of his own. He is the father of our blended family of six children, which age range go from about 37 to 17 So we've got generations in our household. But not only that, in addition to being in construction and being in business and being in broadcasting, for 13 years, you spent time playing as a left defenseman in the NHL with two Stanley Cups in the Pittsburgh Penguins. And I think it's a fascinating history that I just love to learn about all the time. Our upstairs living room is a museum of that career. But-

**Peter Taglianetti** (2:35)
That means there's a lot of cobwebs on my pictures.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (2:37)
You're so funny. We've got pictures everywhere. But I mean, it's so exciting to me to get to hear your stories probably 20 times each story. But it's a privilege, actually. But you are a good sport, Peter.

**Peter Taglianetti** (2:52)
I bet it'd be a good sport.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (2:54)
Yeah, you're a great sport, sporting-wise. But you are a great sport because you have become the resident expert amongst your golf buddies on midlife menopause and perimenopause because of my career. And I'm just going to say, I admire you for being the resident expert. I admire you for giving input to those guys. But also because when you think about our history, I tell this story a lot, but then I started piecing it together. I tell the story about my midlife and menopause is that at 40, I was in the best shape of my life before I met you, training for triathlons, 19% body fat, had just had a baby at a time when OBS called me geriatrics. And shortly after that, I met you. And little did you know until now probably, until we recognized, because I didn't know that I went directly from postpartum, which is haywire, you've been through that, you have five children, postpartum, to perimenopause. So we go from the hormones of pregnancy to the lack of hormones in perimenopause. And that's about when you met me. And you thought that's the way I was.

**Peter Taglianetti** (4:17)
My hair used to be jet black and that.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (4:19)
Oh, no.
But you know what? I didn't know what hit me. And I can only imagine that you didn't know what hit me because at 47, I tell the story, and you probably remember these times. I had night sweats, brain fog. I had to stick my thermometer leg out of the covers just so I didn't boil us in the same bed together. I had anxiety that I never had before. I was enraged all the time to the point where you said about this perfect job that I had. Vonda, if you don't like it, let's make a change, but quit talking about it, because it was every day all day, right? And then physically, it wasn't easy anymore for me to be lean, to be an athlete. So I didn't know what hit me. And so I can only imagine what you thought was going on. I mean, now we know what's going on. And thank God, I feel like I've mastered this, although you may differ. I mean, this is, we are an open book, because I think we're going to help a lot of people. So I wanted to have you back on HOT For Your Health, to talk about midlife menopause from the husband, the partner's perspective. You've lived this with me. You hear me talking about it all the time. I personally feel in a much better place than I've been in a long time. Because when I talk about menopause, I talk about it as the mental lessons. I know you've heard me say that word. It's hormonal. It's physical. It is psychological. It is social. It affects everybody around me. And the data of Louise Newsome, who's a famous menopause doctor in the UK, amongst her patients, 73% of her patients can attribute their midlife divorces after 20 years of marriage to going through menopause and people not understanding each other. So I wanted to get your perspective. I mean, you have to live with this all the time. This conversation. So based on this, what are your initial thoughts? Because I'm going to keep asking you questions. Did you even know I was going through this? You just thought I was getting gripey.