Hey, Lissa. Hey, Sam. Are you ready? I'm, I'm ready. Dr. Laurie Brotto. Are you ready? I'm so ready. Okay, great.

Okay. Okay, guys. So very exciting. Today we are joined by Dr. Laurie Brotto. She is a professor in the

UBC Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a registered psychologist. Stop me if any of this is incorrect, but I think it's straight from your website. So I'm hoping she's the executive director of the Women's Health Research Institute at BC Women's Hospital holds a Canada Research Chair in Women's Sexual Health and is the director of the UBC Sexual Health Laboratory where research primarily focuses on advancing the science of psychological and mindfulness-based intentions for women's sexual

health. I'm intimidated already. Don't be, please. So you guys actually reached out to us, but we are so grateful that you're here because you guys are starting this, well, you've, you've had this campaign. It's called debunking desire and the campaign really is focused on that. It's on, it's focused on debunking the many, many, many sex-related myths that exist in our society, especially around sexuality and especially around women's sexual desire.

So stereotypes such as if you don't feel hot and horny and in the mood for sex all the time you're broken, there's something wrong with you. Myths such as everyone else is having great sex except for me, therefore I'm broken. And then a lot of myths surrounding like what are the causes of my low desire. And so really the intention of the campaign is to take some of the science, because I am a scientist and I spend a lot of my time doing research on women's sexual health.

And so using the campaign to share the key findings from the science and get them into the hands of women so that they can benefit from it.

How did you get into this, because this is like your whole life, how did you get into that specifically?

You know, it's really funny because I grew up in a really conservative Italian Catholic family and fell into sex research in rodents.

Actually, I started out as a volunteer job, volunteering in a lab that was looking at the effects of medications and pharmaceuticals on sexual behavior in rats.

So I did that for about six years as a student and as a master's student.

And then the year that Viagra was approved for men, and you all know Viagra is a blockbuster pill, the little blue pill that

restores erections in men with erectile problems, that year that Viagra was approved for men.

There was a really big study that was published. And what the study found was that 40% of women across ages

have ongoing and distressing sexual problems. So I looked at the science then of what do we have for treatments.

So many more women than men have sexual problems. We've got this amazing drug that can be taken discreetly and cheaply et cetera for men.

What do we have for women? And there was nothing. So pretty much that day I shifted my research.

I was still a student at the time of PhD student and then really focused on women's sexual health from that day forward.

And then because I was also training as a clinical psychologist, I think it was the stories that women told me when they came into my office,

the stories of secrecy and shame and the tears and the, oh my gosh, I've never told anyone that sex hurts or that I have no desire.

Yet I love my partner so much. So it was sort of the life experiences combined with just this dismal state of the science that steered me

in the direction of wanting to devote my life to studying treatments that were safe and cost effective for women.

I have a question for you right out the gate here. I'm curious how much desire has to do with attraction.

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