The views and opinions expressed on unpaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only.

No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute

for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. In our last episode of Unpaused,

we started a conversation with Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein about what really happens to our joints,

bones, and muscles as we move through midlife. Why osteoarthritis hits women harder.

Why frozen shoulders seems to love this life stage and how hormones weave through all of it.

It was one of those conversations that made a lot of invisible dots suddenly connect.

And we had far too much to talk about for just one episode. So today we're back with part two. Dr. Wittstein is a

practicing orthopedic surgeon, researcher, and associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke

University. Her work focuses on female athletes across the lifespan, post-traumatic arthritis,

frozen shoulder, and what she calls the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause.

She's president of the Forum for Women in Sports Medicine, a core leader in the Duke

Female Athlete Program, and a member of the Milken Institute Women's Health Innovation Initiative,

and co-author of the complete bone and joint health plan. She's not just treating fractures

in patients. She's asking the bigger questions about why women's joints and bones behave the way

that they do and what we can actually do about it. In this episode, we get into hormones,

pain, and cartilage in a way that most of us have never heard before.

Jocelyn explains how estrogen and progesterone modulate pain, why fibromyalgia and

diffuse joint pain so often show up in midlife women, and the role testosterone plays in arthritis

risk for women. She walks us through her current research to understand how aging and sex hormones

change the resilience of our joints and whether hormone therapy might one day help narrow the

arthritis gap between women and men. And perhaps most important, she outlines a real-world

...