Build Lifelong Strength, Age with Power, and Fight Off Frailty with Dr. Vonda Wright of 'Unbreakable'
Show Snapshot:
Feel like your midlife body has betrayed you? Stiffer joints, mysterious aches, less energy—these aren't just inconveniences, they're warning signals about your future independence. Dr. Vonda Wright, orthopedic surgeon, and author of "Unbreakable," returns to the show with a science-backed blueprint to prevent the broken hips, osteoporosis, and frailty plaguing too many women. As the country's leading voice on menopause's musculoskeletal impacts, she reveals why 70% of women experience debilitating joint pain and muscle loss. Plus, what are the six "time bombs" of aging you can control? How does your "unbreakable score" predict independence at 90? Why is muscle your literal longevity factory? Get the tools to stay strong, mobile, and unbreakable for decades ahead, beauties!
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Follow Dr. Wright:
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Dr. Wright’s Book:
Unbreakable: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power
Quotable:
Muscle is a metabolic powerhouse. It is important for glucose metabolism. It produces, like bone produces, hormones which travel all over the body to communicate... We need muscle for life, for continued glucose, for strength, not to fall down and subsequently break.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:03
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Beauties, we have an incredible show today. We are welcoming back to A Certain Age one of your favorite guests and mine for a conversation that might change your life. Dr. Vonda Wright returns to the show to help us live long, live strong, and age with power, because aging does not have to add up to osteoporosis, broken hips, or reduced mobility.
Today, we are going to dive into the pages of Dr. Wright's latest book, Unbreakable – a book that will accelerate your ability to stay healthy, age vibrantly, and fight off what Dr. Wright calls the time bombs of aging. If you've been hanging around the metaverse or the women's health space for any length of time, Dr. Wright needs no introduction, but I am giving her one anyway.
Dr. Wright is an orthopedic surgeon, a researcher, an author, a podcaster, and the country's leading voice on the musculoskeletal impacts of menopause. Dr. Wright knows why you have frozen shoulder, why you have aches and pains, fragile bones, even acute pain. But she knows that if you put the work in today, you can vastly improve your odds of remaining mobile, independent, unbreakable tomorrow. I am so here for this, and I know you are too. Welcome back to A Certain Age, Dr. Wright.
Dr. Vonda Wright 1:35
I am so excited to be back with you, Katie, because years ago, when you and I were first entering the meno-verse, we were first or second with each other – like we were early, right? So I'm so glad to see the progress we've all made in the last two to three years.
Katie Fogarty 1:53
Isn't it amazing?
Dr. Vonda Wright 1:55
It's totally amazing. It's wonderful to have this be a conversation on so many lips. It's wonderful to have so much content and resources and voices that are really giving women information they need to make informed decisions about their healthcare. And I am so excited that your latest book is out in the world. I've read your other ones when you've been a guest on the show. This is your fourth time coming back, and my starting question is, I outlined what you've got on your plate. You're an orthopedic surgeon, you run a large women's health conference, you are a frequent media expert, public speaker, you have a phenomenal podcast. Yet you found time in your schedule to sit down and write this book. Why was it important for you to find the time to write and share the message behind Unbreakable?
Dr. Vonda Wright 2:41
You know, I think my whole message, since the dawn of my career, my whole goal, has been to change the way we age in this country and to dispel the myth that aging has to be an inevitable decline from the vitality of youth down a slippery slope during which we spend the last 20 years dying. And on top of that, women live longer, so we go through the process of dying slowly due to decrepitude and disease longer. But I have never believed that was inevitable.
And so I felt like with all the amazing education coming out in the meno-verse about what menopause even was, and the role of ovaries outside of reproduction, and all the things that I talk about and you talk about, and our colleagues talk about, I thought, "You know what? We're at a point where there is so much information that women need to know what to do next." Because what I found was, as people were understanding perimenopause, menopause, and I'm going to tell you for sure, Katie, I still see patients every week. There are still women who have never heard of it. So our job is not done. Our job is just beginning.
But I wanted to give people the "now what's next?" How do I prescribe for my patients? How do I prescribe exercise, which I know we're going to talk about, and nutrition and all the things. But I said this to you before, the women I serve are smart, they're inquisitive, they're curious. And I just didn't want to say, "Okay, here's another exercise plan, here's another this or that." I want them to understand it in the context of aging, and that's what Unbreakable is all about. It is all about the science of aging. It is all about optimizing health, and then it is about how to move to peak performance and longevity, because women's longevity is different than men's longevity. So this is, I say, the first book in the space specifically looking at living longer, longevity, if you will, aging better.
Katie Fogarty 5:00
It's such a phenomenal framework. It's broken into three big, broad areas. It's 14 chapters. It's so much information, but written in a way that's clear, digestible, actionable. We're going to get into the framework of the book in just a minute, but I want to start by asking you about the opening chapter, which focuses on what you call the time bombs of aging. And this is an incredibly important chapter for every person to read. I see why it's number one in the book, because it really sets up why this book is so important.
And you know, what are some of the time bombs of aging? I think you outline about six, but give us a perspective. Why is what we're focusing on today going to make a difference, and what will it stave off tomorrow?
Dr. Vonda Wright 5:47
You know what? Within the science of aging, there have been a series of papers written really looking at, well, what is happening biologically that causes us to age in the way we do? And they're called the hallmarks of aging, and so those first started out as three and six and 12 and now 13. But for the purposes of this book, I have chosen the six that I think have the biggest impact on aging and women's health, and I call them time bombs, because we can be going along, going along. These hallmarks, or time bombs, are normal metabolic processes that your body has always used, and I'll go over a few of the titles of them.
But what happens with aging is the normal pathways break down, or they function less efficiently, and that contributes to the aging process. So the ones that I summarize in Chapter One are things like DNA changes and DNA damage. Remember that our genetics, our DNA, which we inherit from our parents, are made as the code to who we are, what we are, how we think, and that our whole function happens when that code is decoded into things like proteins and enzymes. But that normal process makes mistakes, and when we're young, those mistakes are easily corrected, but as we age, the mistakes accumulate, and the mistakes can become overwhelming.
But here's the thing, when you get to the second section of the book where I'm telling you, here's how I prescribed lifestyle to my people. We tie it back to how implementing those lifestyle changes affects, for instance, DNA changes and damage. Or the second time bomb that I talk about, which many people have heard, which is inflammation, the chronic inflammation, which we now say "inflammaging," that contributes to chronic disease, to pain, to further malfunction. Or maybe it's "engine failure" – the third time bomb, which is just my name for when your mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of our cells, the place where our body takes the building blocks of energy we give it from our food and makes the energy of the body, which are called ATP. Mitochondria can also break down and lead to terrible diseases like diabetes, like chronic inflammatory diseases.
And so I wanted people to know the "why," the why of the fourth time bomb, like senescence, which is cells that have gotten too old to work well, but are too damaged to actually start down the pathway of death. So they just circulate in this dysfunctional manner, secreting all kinds of cytokines, which are cell communication molecules that damage us further. So I think it was important, even if you don't love science, but especially if you do love to know why, to put that first in the book as a framework for the rest of it, because who's not tired of just another set of instructions without being told why?
Katie Fogarty 9:21
100%, and you tie it back to how it impacts all these conditions that women see in their mothers and their grandmothers, that they have become smart about recognizing that could be a part of their future. We have osteopenia. We have osteoporosis. We have people in our lives who have fallen down, they've broken a wrist, they have frozen shoulder, they've broken their hip, and we're experiencing joint pain, and we recognize that if we're putting the efforts in now, we can make a difference.
So you say in the book that muscle is the engine that drives your health span. You call it the literal longevity factory. Yet, too many women actually neglect this important measure of fitness. 70% of women experience musculoskeletal symptoms like joint pain, muscle loss, reduced bone density, which is a pretty astonishing number. Why? Why does this affect so many women?
Dr. Vonda Wright 10:00
Well, that's such a great and loaded question. First of all, I think that people don't realize how important muscle and bone working together are, because, bless our hearts, our only perception of what's going on inside of us is what we can see in the mirror. So if we think that muscle is only important because of how it looks in the mirror when we're working out, or how it fills out the sleeves of our dresses, or bones of how it relates to our cheekbones, we are only understanding a very small fraction of why those tissues work in the first place.
Because, believe me, while that's important to us, because that's all we can see, it's the least important for what's going on in our bodies. Muscle is a metabolic powerhouse. It is important for glucose metabolism. It produces, like bone produces, hormones which travel all over the body to communicate. And bone too – bone is an endocrine organ. It produces hormones such as osteocalcin, which work everywhere from the top of our head to the bottom of our toes.
But without knowing the importance of these internal structures, we may just only view them as we see them in the mirror, and therefore it is really easy to ignore their larger function and then think "I don't want to build muscle. I don't want to have more muscle. I'm good with the way I look in the mirror," but that's only a fraction of the story. We need muscle for life, for continued glucose, for strength, not to fall down and subsequently break, for instance, to produce the hormones that we summarize in the book. So I just want people to get behind the skin, if you will, and really understand the fascinating parts and roles of our body.
Katie Fogarty 11:23
It was absolutely fascinating. I had no idea that there was a link between the bone and the gut microbiome. Oh, and I truly am somebody that thinks the bones are the things that kind of like the skeleton, you know, hold your system up. It's like the framework around your house. It's that type of thing. But I didn't realize it was also like an electrical grid that was communicating information to the rest of my body.
And I found the book to be so fascinating, and I 100% agree with you. The women that listen to this show, the women that follow you on Instagram, that tune into your podcast, that turn out at your health conferences, are smart and educated, and they want this information because they are smart enough to know how to turn it into actions that can improve their health. We're going to be getting into that in just a minute.
We're heading into a commercial break, but when we come back, we are going to talk about how we take all this information, all this wisdom that you give us in the first two chapters, and we turn it into this sort of this blueprint, this framework, this action plan that your book walks women through to age with power. We'll be back in just a minute.
Katie Fogarty 13:20
Vonda, we're back from the break. When we went into it, we talked about how your book really treats the reader with a great deal of respect. It gives them the information and intelligence they need to better understand why they're going to be committing to the guideline and the framework that you outline in this book, and how they're going to take their newfound smarts and put it into action.
But I do want to start by asking you to share a little bit of your own story. Because what was wonderful in the book, you open with talking to a friend, Eva, who says that she couldn't recognize her body in midlife, she had sort of lost a step with her own vibrancy. You experienced this yourself. This is one of the reasons I think you're so passionate about this topic is because you are not only the doctor, the expert. You're like the rest of us listening to this show who find themselves in midlife, wondering, "Huh, my body feels like a rental car I haven't been driving for very long. It feels a little different." So tell us your story.
Dr. Vonda Wright 14:15
So I'm going to be honest with you, Katie, I didn't know what was happening in my mid-40s. I'm an aging and longevity researcher, musculoskeletal researcher, and yet, as I say in the book, quite honestly, maybe I thought I was never going to age. Maybe I thought it was never going to happen to me. Maybe I was one of the scoffers like I think everyone thinks that. Vonda, everyone's like, "Wait a minute, that's for other people, not me."
But I'm going to tell you for sure, I started my 40s coming out of the best shape of my life. I had a child at 40, which, thank you OB for calling me geriatric at that point. But whatever, I managed to make it happen and building my career, just moving as fast as possible, all the things that women do, whether it's inside or outside of their home, until suddenly it was like a Mack truck hit me at around 47.
And I wasn't sleeping. Such a common story. And here's the perspective for me on not sleeping is, remember, I'm an orthopedic surgeon who trained for 11 years and never slept, right? Because of my training, and so I'm not kidding you, Katie, I could sleep in a comedy club. I was so exhausted all the time, right? So I go from that to waking up in the middle of the night, not knowing why I'm awake, sticking my thermometer leg out the bed.
But worse, those are things that I can laugh about. But worse, I had heart palpitations, and I thought I was going to die because my family dies of heart disease. I actually am so passionate about getting to know all about heart disease. I was the president of the American Heart Association in Atlanta when I lived there, right? So I'm really serious about heart disease. And here I was in the middle of the night waking up with heart palpitations and feeling so anxious. And I am generally not an anxious person. I'm like, "I'm gonna figure this out. Everything is what it is." And suddenly anxious in a mind that could not remember nouns.
Katie Fogarty 16:25
I've had that experience, it's scary. It's frightening.
Dr. Vonda Wright 16:28
Katie, I kid you not, it's frightening in the street. It's frightening talking to friends. It's frightening in the OR when I'm describing with adjectives what I want. I want that thing that – adjectives and verbs. I want that thing that opens and shuts to pick things up versus "give me the forceps, please," right?
So there was that, and not knowing, I started looking up early signs of dementia, because my Aunt Ida had died of dementia, because at that time, more than a decade ago, I was not yet a midlife and menopause expert. I had not gone down the road of literacy. And I'm going to tell you for sure anyone listening, it is frightening when you don't know why. You have no idea what your body's doing, and I have women still, every day come in my clinic and we're talking about their shoulder, but the fact that I can put a name and a voice to what they're feeling, other than "you're just getting old and going crazy," they're weeping in my office, because this is such an unknown experience until you start becoming midlife and menopause literate.
And then suddenly, I've seen it in a room. I've been in rooms with you where we're like, we're understanding, but we're looking around, and everybody's shaking their head up and down, like, "Oh my God. That is exactly what it felt like," and I love those moments because it makes people feel like they're not crazy. It makes people feel like there's a solution that they can step in front of this by understanding more.
Katie Fogarty 17:44
100%, and when you recognize that you're not alone, when you identify and name what's going on and you begin to become literate. You get the tools that you need, and you put this into action. I mean, you share in the book that you – we're gonna get into now, your system and how you want the readers to move through the book, and how you applied it to your own life, to make the changes. And to kind of, I don't wanna say, bring your body back, because we move forward when we age, and that's a good thing, but to kind of hit a reset button where you were able to work on all the things that you encourage readers to do.
So let's talk. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Vonda, I love hearing it, and I know listeners do too, because the most important thing about any of these conversations about our health is recognizing that we're not alone, and recognizing that a provider is listening to us carefully, and you do that because you have your expertise, but you've walked the walk, and that makes an enormous difference.
So let's talk about how you organize this book. You break it into three big areas. Can you share with our listeners what they are?
Dr. Vonda Wright 18:51
Right? When you open the table of contents, we start with a real introduction. I don't want you guys to skip that, because it's going to really frame where we're going. But also I hope it makes you feel comforted, because I tell my story, I tell Ava's story, I tell the stories of other people, and sometimes we just need to understand, like you said, we're not alone.
But then, in the first part one, we discussed the time bombs of aging as a framework. I spent an entire chapter on movement and mobility and relating it back to why we can be in control of these time bombs if we just harness our understanding of mobility. But I don't stop there with just the physical, because I believe a big part of midlife becoming unbreakable in the future is pivoting our mindset. Because honestly, Katie, I say this all the time from stages or wherever I'm talking, that if we are constantly looking backwards over our shoulder, I always look over my left shoulder and worshiping 25 years old, or our youth, or, "Oh, my God, how great it was to be in college." Yeah, it was fun in college, right? It was fun when we were young, younger.
But listen, I contend to you that what's beautiful about now is the confidence that comes from remembering our successes, the understanding that we can fix just about anything, and we have done really hard things, and part of aging is the wealth of experiences. So I ask people to pivot their mindsets, to face their future, and we help them set goals and understand their why for even wanting to feel better.
But I always feel like we do better where we know where we are now. So I got with my big data scientist – I am thankful that I have so many great resources. So I have this brilliant big data scientist that I do a lot of research with. And I said to him, "Listen, here are eight measures that we know are scientifically backed that can give us a feel for our longevity and where we are on that." And so we dug up all the research, we developed a scale called the Unbreakable Assessment.
It's eight tests that you can do on, you know, I suggest Sunday afternoon, but whatever, whatever works for you, you just go through these tests. It's like VO2 Max. You can do that in a metabolic lab, but you can also do it on a track, the sit-to-stand test, which I put on social media that kind of exploded the grip test, and then each one of these eight things is weighted by importance via statistics. That's why I needed my big data guy to generate a score.
Now this score is not a judgment, and I want to make really clear Katie, because sometimes when I put out a challenge, like the push-up challenge, or the balance or the sit-to-stand. 97% of women are like, "Yes, let's try to do that. Let's see where I am." But there are always a small percentage that feel – I don't know. The words that come across in social media are things like shame and disappointment, and I just want to assure anybody listening that is never what we're doing when we're evaluating where we are, we are looking to see what the opportunity is to look, feel, be better. So I just wanted to frame that.
So in the book, it's called the Unbreakable Assessment, and it's on paper in the book. And when I launched the book website, in a very short amount time, it will also be digital. So that's really exciting, because you can't know where you're going until you know where you are.
Katie Fogarty 22:54
100%. I want to jump in, because when you do this assessment, you get an unbreakable score. And I want to be truthful here, I have not yet done it. I have read the book, but I have not yet done the test. I'm in the middle of a move from my house, and so my bandwidth is somewhat limited, and frankly, I don't want to do it yet, because I'm like, I want it. Once I get it, I want to get into action on shifting and moving it. And I hear you about the measuring stick, and women are held to a lot of unfair measuring sticks throughout our lives, but I hear what you're saying.
This is not a measuring stick to hold ourselves and judge ourselves as falling short. It is an assessment of where I am today, so I can see my return on investment when I move forward. And you can only know if you're moving forward correctly, if you know where you're starting from. Even though I have not done these eight assessments yet, they are pretty simple to do and easy. Maybe shifting the needle might be hard, but figuring out where you are today is not difficult, and the chapter very clearly outlines these simple assessments that you can even do at home. So I think it's a really wonderful jumping off point.
Dr. Vonda Wright 24:07
Well, and let me just take one of them to explain why it's amazing and important to observe, just so people know why, right? So each one of these measures something important, but the very first one, the VO2 Max, which we give you instructions on how to do that around a local track. The reason I want you to know your VO2 Max or estimate, it is not because I expect you to be an elite Tour de France athlete. I want you to know your maximum measure of cardiovascular fitness because there is a level of VO2 Max, called the fragility line, after which it is nearly impossible to live alone and live independent.
Now, I don't know about you, Katie, but it is my goal to die being able to do whatever I want to do when I want to do it, if I want to live independently. I want that option, because I can get up from a chair or I can climb a stair. So the fragility line is the VO2 Max, after which you can't get up from a chair anymore because your fitness is not good enough.
Now, if we know from research that the VO2 Max, if you don't do anything to increase, it will decrease about 10% per decade. So the point of knowing where you are now, starting in midlife, is not to judge you for not being in shape, or to applaud you for being in such great shape. It is for you to be able to calculate. Will I ever cross the fragility line? And if I do, oh, my god, let's do something about it. Now. Does that make sense?
Katie Fogarty 25:44
It makes 100% sense, which is why I thought this chapter was really phenomenal as well. And the distinction between the measuring sticks that pop culture puts on us are very different from getting a clear-headed assessment of where we are so we can figure out how much we need to move forward. Plus, I'm a gold sticker lover. I'm just gonna admit it, maybe it's not my best quality, but I like to see progress, and so it's nice to know, "Oh, look, I started here, like, I could do, like, eight..." I can't even do any pull-ups. So that's like, I gotta put that on the list. But like, you know when you do certain reps and you can do more. It feels good. We like to see results drive. And this is a great – I know from reading the book Vonda, that your goal is to hit 97.
Dr. Vonda Wright 26:40
I tell you why, and it's like, it's great. Your parents are both with us, and you know, you come from a line of people who can hit 97 and hit it well, and you're putting the work in today, and that is exactly why you're here today, because it's very clear in the book, it's not about bikini bodies. It's about having a body that works for you. And working for you is different for every person. For some of us, it's grandkids. For some of us, it's traveling the world. For some of it is like just excitement about carrying your own groceries in. And I think the thing about getting up from the chair is a really, really important measure, because you can't get up from the chair, listeners, you can't get up, you can't get off the toilet.
And Vonda, I know from hearing you speak on different stages that you are dealing quite often in surgery with very frail women who show up with broken bones, and it is not a pleasant experience. None of us want to be there, so we are putting the work in.
Okay? So now that we've done our unbreakable assessment, we have our unbreakable score. What comes next?
Dr. Vonda Wright 27:43
So then we have to get in gear and get into action. So the entire section two of the book first relates everything I'm going to teach you to do back to the time bombs of aging. So you know the why. But then we talk about, okay, now, how do we prescribe exercise? And so an acronym I have used from the beginning of my writing is called FACE, F-A-C-E, your future, because my very first book, I said, "Let's just give you a bunch of information and let people make it up themselves." But I have found in the wisdom of 25 years of practice now people do best with specific instructions.
So the FACE protocol allows you to do that. F is flexibility and mobility – we need to maintain our muscles and our joints through full range of motion, and that's something that takes attention. FA is aerobic. I specifically talk about my progression from high intensity interval training all the time to training that is on the opposites of that – base training, which is low heart rate, sprint intervals, and VO2 Max training, which is on the top of that, leaving the middle where everybody gets hurt out of the equation.
FAC is carry a load. I have never specifically said you have to carry this much weight this much time, even when in my first books, and when I say carry a load, I am now directing people because of what I've learned over the last 20 years and how I lift now compared to how I lifted as a younger woman, to work their way up to lifting heavier weights for fewer reps, because here's the goal with longevity, we are lifting to remain powerful. Power is strength over time, meaning strength through motion, getting up from a chair, putting our suitcase above us in the airplane by ourselves, being able not to trip over something due to weakness. So power because we know we lose our type two muscle fibers, our power fibers, so we need to retrain our neuromuscular pathways. This is getting into the book, right?
And then E, F-A-C-E, equilibrium, which is another word for balance and foot speed, because here's the deal, you can build all the muscle you want. You can maintain your bone density. Most people that I take care of do not break and then fall. Most people, I take care of fall and then break. So E is all about preventing falls, and I know for sure you and I have talked about that before, because I know you brush your teeth on one leg.
Katie Fogarty 30:04
Yes.
Dr. Vonda Wright 30:56
Look, not only outlines those things, but oh my gosh, the appendix is almost as long as the chapters, because we lay it out in deep detail with descriptions of every exercise and protocols for foot speed and balance and how to lift heavy. And the beautiful thing is that when the app is live, when the book is published, there will be pictures of it. Some of those pictures will be of me doing it, so we're not trying to leave you abandoned at all.
Katie Fogarty 31:22
That's fabulous to hear that there's an app coming. I mean, the book does a great job of describing things, too, and some of these, the E equilibrium, the balance exercises, again, don't have to be hard to do. It doesn't require a gym or a weight. It requires standing on one leg, maybe putting your arms out in a T, bending forward, moving back, shifting your balance from one leg to another. Tree poses things that anyone can do. You don't have to be an elite athlete to do these things. And I feel like because they're not very sexy, they don't have, like, the glitter. I don't know how to even describe it, like you don't see people doing them on the cover of workout videos, but they're really challenging to do.
Dr. Vonda Wright 32:05
Oh yeah, you know the other – I don't remember when it was, but I was standing by a pool teaching everybody a new balance training called the balance reach. You are so right, Katie, it's not sexy. It's not glamorous. I mean, really, it looks kind of ridiculous, but it's highly effective. Can be done at home with no equipment. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be hard. That's another thing I appreciate about this book.
So let's talk for a minute about how somebody who's maybe a beginner is thinking about this and somebody is a little bit more advanced. One of the things I appreciated is you shared, I think, was in the chapter on nutrition, about how, like, the importance of even taking a walk. And maybe it was with your friend Adla, when she first started saying, like, "Here's where I am today, and I'm not happy and I want to be somewhere different tomorrow." You said, start with a walk. And again, walking doesn't feel very sexy, but you talk about how it's movement – you called movement a shield against the time bombs of aging. And when you take a walk after a meal, I didn't really had ever put two and two together that it helps the nutrients be absorbed by your body differently. There's just so many fascinating tidbits in this book that make this feel extremely doable, leaving aside lifting heavy dumbbells.
So if somebody is a beginner, how would you recommend they approach the book? And then maybe part two, if somebody is really like, "I'm kind of a fitness buff already, like, how do I use this to like, level up?" What would be your recommendation?
Dr. Vonda Wright 33:31
I think no matter where your starting level is, the first section of the book on the science and the unbreakable assessment fit you, because you can approach that from any standpoint. For people who are stepping off the couch for the first time in their lives, I give people who are doing that a name called "adult onset exercisers." You're ready to go now. Love that. Maybe you're a "once upon a timer," meaning remembering that in high school you used to do this. I mean, that's fine. In high school, I used to easily squat 200 pounds. And that's a once upon a time statement. I don't care where you're starting, but if you haven't been doing anything for a while and you're literally starting off the couch, what I find people jump to is feeling bad about it, or all the negative associations, but literally people, what I want you to do, and what you're talking about, Katie, is go back to your primary mobility skill, the thing that we are so celebratory about when we're one year old.
Listen, I have almost three grandchildren, two and one on the way, and we celebrate when those little people walk one step at a time. We're all there with our cameras. I mean, it's a big deal, right?
Katie Fogarty 34:32
Yes.
Dr. Vonda Wright 34:33
In adulthood, we can go back to that very basic mobile skill – most of us can do it. Just get up and take a walk. Walk or move, you know? And I want to be inclusive, because I do get comments like this that not everybody can walk really well. Well, it doesn't have to be on your two feet, it could be on a bike, it could be on a rower, it could be in a pool, if that's where it feels good to you. But what I want you to do is move, because it's a foundational skill that we've known how to do since we were born, and then, in a formal way, since we were one year old, because that small victory feels good in the moment. And then if you do it seven days in a row, that's what we call in running a streak, and you're not going to want to break your streak, you've already done it seven days in a row. But if you time that walk after your biggest meal, you are then going to help your body push glucose into your muscles, lower your blood sugar, and you start this cycle of healthiness.
Now that's the beginning. What if you want to do more? Well, the jumping exercises I have in this book, all levels can do them, beginning or advanced. What if you want to do balance exercises? Everybody can do those. What if you want to lift? Well, the good news is, I've included in the appendix a beginning, like very rudimentary lifting program. Just here's your bodyweight exercises. You can do this all the way up to the heavy lifting protocol that is in this book.
Katie, this is actually my heavy lifting protocol written by – and I went through it the year prior to writing this book – by my strength and conditioning coach. I happen to have my office in an elite performance club here, so I have access to all these pro body coach people, and so he and I made this protocol, and I've been through it myself, and that's what we publish in the book. And the beautiful thing is that we have written six additional protocols, which will be on the app, taking you from off the couch all the way up to heavy lifting and even adding tempo, which means it's slower lifting because it's harder, right? One, two, three, down and then exploding up, and that's very advanced lifting. So we've tried to offer people of all ages and skill levels a way to get mobile in Unbreakable.
Katie Fogarty 36:30
Vonda, you've mentioned the app a couple of times. When can listeners and readers expect to have access to that?
Dr. Vonda Wright 36:36
Yeah, the app is going live June 10. The full access to all the bells and whistles will be available on day of publication, which is August 26.
Katie Fogarty 36:45
Exciting, and it's going to be great to have the visuals. It'll be great to have sort of that accountability, that ability to kind of interact with it in a different way beyond the book. Although the book is very, very easy to move through, read and understand.
Dr. Vonda Wright 36:58
It is, in fact, I don't want people to think that the book is partial. You have to go to the app. Actually, the book is self-contained. If you were on a cruise ship with no internet access to get to the app, you would know everything you need to know in this book. So I don't want anybody to think that we've left out the good stuff. It is self-contained. You can get it all there, but we just recognize that we're a digital world, and some people like things in a different presentation. I'm an old school book girl.
Katie Fogarty 37:26
All right, so we're nearing the end of our time, but I want to touch on a couple of other topics before I have to say goodbye to you. So the book is 14 chapters, as I shared, each one to me, is a standalone – you could, you know, clearly it builds, but I think each one has so much value in it. Was there a particular chapter that you were really excited to write?
Dr. Vonda Wright 37:45
You know what? In all honesty, I loved putting all this in one place, and I think the physical chapters are very important. But there's a chapter in the performance section, which is the third section of the book about mindset and how we build hardiness into our lives. Hardiness is the part of resilience that we can train like a muscle, and it talks about the concepts of control. Do we believe that we have the agency to take tiny steps to better our lives? Commitment? Are we committed to living longer, better, stronger and challenge? How do we view the hard things in our lives as insurmountable versus "I can get through this. I've done hard things before," and I think aging is not for sissies, and I think it's just as important as we build our physical bodies to build our mental bodies. And so I loved that chapter because I have lots of wisdom for myself and other researchers about really how to use our mindset and our brains to age better.
But the other thing I really love about this book, Katie, and definitely want to get it in, is that I'm a sports surgeon, and I live in a very "bro world" in my day life, right? I – 94% of the athletes and people I work with are male, and that's fantastic. I know what to do with them. But when it comes to longevity, women may live longer, which we do, an average of six to eight years longer, but we cannot simply adopt the male version of longevity and assign it to women, because women age in a cataclysmically different way than men do, because of our perimenopause and then our frank menopause, when estrogen walks out the door, which has whole body implications, which means that we need to be addressed as the complex system we are, and not just a rinse and repeat version of what works in men.
So I just want to make sure that people understand that is my point of view in coming and putting everything in one place with a mindset that women can create an unbreakable future, both physically, psychologically and mentally. I just believe we can and that's what this book is all about.
Katie Fogarty 41:15
And that's why I love the book so much, why I love having you as a guest on the show. I believe that our attitude towards aging is so much in sync and so much aligned, I see rich possibilities for creating a vibrant phase of our life to take on creative new projects. I talk to a woman every single week who's reinventing what it means to be in midlife across a variety of areas, creatively, in terms of their relationships, in terms of their career. And I don't believe aging is an end, and you don't either, and that's why I love having you on the show. It's so inspiring. You're doing so much good in the world, and this book is really going to make a difference.
When we opened the show, I said, this is a conversation that might change your life, and I totally believe that to be true. If you listened, if you buy the book, if you engage with the app, you are going to get tools to make sure that you have the physical ability to age the way you want to – whatever that looks like. None of us want to fall apart, break something, wind up suffering in our later years. So this is an incredible book, an incredible resource. Dr. Wright, I'm so delighted you came on the show today. Where can our listeners find you and find this book?
Dr. Vonda Wright 42:20
So this book is available on every book buying platform, in all the bookstores. If you're a paper person like you and I, I still love to go to bookstores and feel the books. You can find me on my website. DR, D-R, Vonda V-O-N-D-A, Dr. Vonda Wright, and lo and behold, all my social media is under that handle. Dr. Vonda Wright and I post every day, so I would love to have people join me.
Katie Fogarty 42:45
Thank you so much. The book is Unbreakable: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power. Thank you, Dr. Wright.
Dr. Vonda Wright 42:51
Thanks for having me, Katie.
Katie Fogarty 43:12
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. What a phenomenal conversation. Always such a treat to have Dr. Vonda Wright on the show to crack open the pages of her latest book, Unbreakable. I am so grateful she's found time to be with us today. She is all over the map. She's crisscrossing America. She's in Europe. She is taking the unbreakable message on the road. I'm sure you've seen the press. I'm sure you've seen her on television. I know why this book is doing so well, because it shares information that we all need to get into action today to make sure we are unbreakable tomorrow.
If you took something away from the show, if you feel smarter, if you feel that you are into action with your health today, let me know in an Apple podcast or Spotify review. I would also say, share the show with the women in your life and the men too, because we want them to be unbreakable with us. Sharing is caring. This one deserves all the stars. This one deserves to be passed along to the women in your text thread. Thanks for sticking around to the end of the show, and as always, special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly, beauties.