unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver

In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Kim and Penn Holderness, the husband and wife content creators behind the widely popular Holderness Family, bestselling authors, and winners of The Amazing Race Season 33. Together they built an audience of millions by finding the humor in real life, and in this conversation they turn that same lens on perimenopause, ADHD, marriage, and the particular chaos of midlife.

Kim opens up about the perimenopausal symptoms that arrived before she had any name for them: the anxiety that made everything feel like being chased by a bear, the panic attacks triggered by nothing she could identify, and the growing sense that something was fundamentally wrong with her. She describes walking out of her doctor's office with no treatment after being told her symptoms were normal, the financial reality of having to seek out a functional medicine doctor to finally get the estrogen and progesterone support she needed, and the combination of hormonal and psychiatric care that eventually helped her feel like herself again. She also speaks with real honesty about her postpartum anxiety, perimenopause and depression, and her OCD diagnosis, and how all of it left her desperate for a voice that would simply say: this is hard.

Guest links:

The Holderness Family 

The Holderness Family (Instagram)

The Holderness Family - Music (YouTube)

The Holderness Family - Comedy (YouTube)

The Holderness Family (Facebook)

The Holderness Family (Substack)

The Holderness Family (TikTok)

Laugh Lines with Kim & Penn Holderness (Apple Podcasts)

PC’s Playbook Podcast (YouTube)

Books:

“ADHD Is Awesome,” by Penn and Kim Holderness

“Everybody Fights,” by Penn and Kim Holderness

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver continues her conversation with Dr. Kelly Casperson, urologist, author, and host of the podcast "You Are Not Broken." Part 2 goes deep on testosterone therapy for women, the most misunderstood hormone in women's health, and covers the full range of what it actually does in the female body, why every woman will experience declining levels over time, and why there are still zero FDA approved testosterone products for women while men have more than a dozen.

Dr. Casperson opens with the basics: ovaries make testosterone, the hormone pathway runs one way from cholesterol through progesterone to testosterone to estradiol, and women in normal cycling years carry four times more testosterone than estrogen in their bodies. She explains where testosterone receptors are found, which is everywhere from the brain to bone to muscle to the clitoris to the tear ducts, and why reducing testosterone in women to a libido drug misses the full picture entirely.

Guest links:

Kelly Casperson, MD

Kelly Casperson (Instagram)

Kelly Casperson (YouTube)

You Are Not Broken (Apple Podcasts)

Books:


“You Are Not Broken,” by Kelly Casperson, MD


"The Menopause Moment," by Kelly Casperson, MD 


“The New Perimenopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver


“The New Menopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver

"Sexual Behavior in the Human Female," by Alfred Kinsey


To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Dr. Kelly Casperson, a urologist, author, and host of the podcast “You Are Not Broken”. Dr. Casperson trained in a specialty that treats both men and women, which gave her an early and clear view of the gender gap in sexual healthcare. That disparity became the driving force behind her work, her two books You Are Not Broken and The Menopause Moment, and her clinic, the Casperson Clinic.

Together they cover the full landscape of what women were never taught, what medicine has missed, and what actually works for female sexual health, libido, desire, and sexual dysfunction in midlife.

The conversation gets straight to what most women were never told: that the orgasm gap between heterosexual men and women has not improved in decades, and that the silence around female sexual health has never been about a lack of science. It has been about a lack of priority.

Guest links:

Kelly Casperson, MD

Kelly Casperson (Instagram)

Kelly Casperson (YouTube)

You Are Not Broken (Apple Podcasts)

Books:

“Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” by Alfred Kinsey

“You Are Not Broken,” by Kelly Casperson, MD

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of unPAUSED, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, a board-certified OB-GYN, integrative medicine expert, and author with nearly 30 years of clinical experience, including training in Ayurvedic medicine spanning almost two decades. Dr. Gilberg-Lenz is the Chief Clinical Officer of Monarch, a membership-based healthcare practice built to restore what modern medicine has nearly eliminated: time, relationship, and trust between women and their clinicians.

Dr. Haver and Dr. Gilberg-Lenz open with a question that sits at the heart of women's midlife health: why does the current healthcare system consistently fail to see women clearly? Dr. Gilberg-Lenz explains why the system is not built for humans but for shareholders, reimbursement structures, and productivity metrics that reward procedures over listening. She breaks down the difference between burnout and moral injury, why physicians are leaving traditional medicine in record numbers, and what it actually costs women when their doctors are structurally prevented from knowing them. The conversation traces how the 1910 Flexner Report reshaped American medicine, shutting down Black medical colleges, eliminating part-time schools where women trained, and marginalizing plant-based and indigenous healing traditions in ways that still define clinical practice today.

Guest links:

Dr. Suzanne

Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (Instagram)

Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (YouTube)

Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (LinkedIn)

Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (Facebook)Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz (X)

Books:

“Menopause Bootcamp: Optimize Your Health, Empower Your Self, and Flourish as You Age,” by Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz

“The Myth of Aging: A Prescription for Emotional and Physical Well-Being,” by Dr. Arnold Gilberg

“The New Perimenopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver

“The New Menopause,” by Dr. Mary Claire Haver


To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of unPaused, Dr. Mary Claire Haver sits down with Dr. Kerry Burnight, a gerontologist and national leader in aging research who spent 18 years teaching geriatric medicine at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine and is the author of Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half. Dr. Burnight brings a framework that is especially relevant for women navigating menopause and midlife: the key to good longevity is not how long you live. It is how much you love the life you are living.

Dr. Haver and Dr. Burnight begin with the concept of joyspan itself, a term Dr. Burnight coined to name the missing piece between lifespan and healthspan. Drawing on the American Psychological Association's definition of joy as wellbeing and life satisfaction, they explore why joy is not a luxury add-on to healthy aging but a measurable, cultivatable vital sign. Dr. Burnight explains the distinction between joy and happiness, why happiness is circumstantial while joy is an inside job, and how Viktor Frankl's research on finding meaning under extreme suffering forms the scientific and philosophical foundation of her framework. They also discuss Yale University research showing that aging beliefs alone can impact longevity by up to seven and a half years, influence inflammation levels, and affect disease expression, making the way women think about getting older one of the most powerful health interventions available.

Guest links:

Dr. Kerry Burnight

Dr. Kerry Burnight (Instagram)

Dr. Kerry Burnight (LinkedIn)

Books:“Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half,” by Dr. Kerry Burnight

“The New Perimenopause,”⁠ by Dr. Mary Claire Haver

⁠"The New Menopause"⁠ by Dr. Mary Claire Haver

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices