Welcome to the commune podcast. My name is Jeff Krasno.

In this episode, we're going to dive deep into women's hormonal health from perimenopause through menopause and unpack one of the biggest medical mistakes of the 21st century.

So for decades, we've celebrated the onset of womanhood, but we've pathologized

its evolution, what my friend, Dr. Marisa Snyder, calls women's second puberty. We whisper about hot

flashes and mood swings, but rarely do we talk about the deeper biological and emotional

transformations taking place,

or the way modern medicine has systematically failed to meet women where they are.

In today's episode, you'll hear from two remarkable women who are at the forefront of the movement

to address women's health head-on.

Dr. Amy Killen, a board-certified emergency physician who's now revolutionizing women's longevity medicine, and Tamsin Fidel, an Emmy-winning

journalist and author of How to Menopause, who experienced firsthand what happens when our

health care system fails women at midlife.

Together, they're helping rewrite the narrative from silence and shame to empowerment and science.

So let's start with a story that might sound familiar.

So Tamson Fidel is at the top of her game, a seasoned journalist

anchoring a major news station in New York City. Then one night in the middle of a broadcast,

her body sent her a message that she couldn't ignore. I was in my 40s. I'd gone through a divorce

early in my 40s. I had gone through some odd things that were happening, but I had never looked at them as a whole. One night in 2019, I was on the air, and I had had some problems earlier in the broadcast. I'd like look at a word on the teleprompter. You know, the words as a news journalist would scroll across, you'd read an hour and you'd be done with your newscast. And I'd do that every night, live television for 20 plus years. And this one particular night, I would look at a word. I knew the word, but it wouldn't come out of my mouth. I just kind of skipped it. If you were listening closely enough, you'd go, what did she say? Maybe I misunderstood her. We were in a commercial break and I got

what now I realized was a hot flash, really intense. And it just kind of comes to the inner core

of your body and it's, you know, sweat just kind of breaks out instantly everywhere. My head,

my underarms, everywhere. And my heart started racing. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not going to make it through this next, you know, iteration of what goes on. So I said something out loud and a coworker mine said, I think you should get off the new set. And he came, got me, and we walked to the bathroom. He later said to me,

I didn't know if you were having a heart attack. I didn't know what was happening to you. It was

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