When she’s not talking to her angel guides, Christiane Northrup says that taking Vitamin D is better than the HPV vaccine for preventing cervical cancer. When Kelly Brogan isn’t denying germ theory, she’s telling thousands of women in her online programmes to stop taking not only their SSRIs, but also birth control and Tylenol. When Naomi Wolf isn’t explaining to Steve Bannon where women’s liberation went wrong, she’s worried that vaccinated women are poisoning non-vaccinated women just by walking past them.
The train of messianic women wellness influencers rumbles on and on. But their pseudoscience claims and twisted forms of spiritualized feminism meet a brick wall in the work and advocacy of our guest today, Dr. Jen Gunter. Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Gunter is an OB/GYN who has been offering actual women’s health information through a solidly feminist lens for decades as the author of several books, including 2019’s The Vagina Bible, 2021’s The Menopause Manifesto, and her newest book, which dropped just 3 weeks ago: Blood: The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation.
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You know, they always romanticize that women had all these cures.
And it's like, really?
Really?
They had all these cures, then why wasn't life expectancy longer than it was?
If they had all these cures, why was infant mortality 50%?
because if women had secret healing powers, I'm pretty sure they would have saved their kids.
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspiratuality where we investigate the intersection of
conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian
extremism. I'm I'm Derek Barris.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
I'm Julian Walker.
And I'm Dr. Jen Gunter.
Welcome, Doctor.
We are so excited to have you.
We are on Instagram and Threads at Conspiratuality Pod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes over on Patreon.
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Conspiracuality193 speaking truth to goop with Dr. Jen Gunter.
When she's not talking to her angel guides, Christiane Northrup says that taking vitamin D is better than the HPV vaccine for preventing cervical cancer.
When Kelly Brogan isn't denying germ theory, she's telling thousands of women in her online programs to stop taking not only their SSRIs, but also birth control and Tylenol.
When Naomi Wolf isn't explaining to Steve Bannon where women's liberation went all wrong, she's worried that vaccinated women are poisoning non-vaccinated women just by walking past them.
The train of messianic women wellness influencers rumbles on and on, but their pseudoscience claims and twisted forms of spiritualized feminism meet a brick wall in the work and advocacy of our guest today, Dr. Jen Gunter.
Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Gunter is an OBGYN who has been offering Actual women's health information through a solidly feminist lens for decades as a contributor to the New York Times and many other outlets, and as the author of several books, including 2019's The Vagina Bible, 2021's The Menopause Manifesto, and her newest book, which dropped just three weeks ago, Blood, The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation.
I don't know how you do three books in five years, doctor, but welcome.
We're glad for all of your work.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much.
Welcome, Dr. Gunter.
It's an honor to have you here.
We are big fans, as we've already been telling you before we hit record.
You've been speaking publicly about the prevalence of health misinformation online for years.
And I want to acknowledge just off the top here that in your Center for Inquiry talk from 2019, You were quite prescient in identifying the overlaps between left-leaning crunchy wellness and right-leaning distrust of government institutions.
You had a Venn diagram and this exact intersection would become so prominent the following year and so central to what we cover on this podcast.
So that's pretty impressive.
In your latest book, Blood, You reference online clashes between yourself and proponents of a spiritualized ideal of women's reproductive health that should be free from pharmaceutical interference, and they use terms like natural menstruation and real periods.
So tell us, why don't you agree that these are obviously best for real women in tune with nature and God, Dr. Gunzer?
Well, you know, I mean, I suppose it's best if you want your medicine circa 1721.
What these people are doing are really speaking about a time when medicine and religion were pretty much the same thing.
You know, medicine was all about Balancing the humors, returning to an unspoiled state, very similar to religion.
There's so much intertwining between the two.
And, you know, where evidence-based medicine sort of branched off once the scientific method and, you know, understanding things like germ theory and, you know, some of these basic scientific principles, we've evolved into something better.
I would say that, you know, all of these purveyors of wellness and snake oil are really still, you know, stuck in that time.
They use the same language, basically.
You know, it's all about balance.
I mean, they don't say black bile and yellow bile, but they may as well.
I mean, it's really similar.
You write that the disdain of menstrual blood isn't universal, but it's very common.
And you also write specifically that it's misogyny.
And I have a degree in religion.
I studied all the world's religions.
And I remember there being many rituals around the supposed impurity of menstruation.
It usually involved Making the woman leave into a hut or some level of shame was involved.
Do you think this misogyny is lessening over time as we evolve or is it just finding new forms of expression?
I think that some overt displays of it are lessening.
However, I would say that all of the wellness industrial complex is wrapped up in it.
You know, anybody who's using language about pure, clean, and natural is still tying into mythology about bodies being dirty and unclean.
And whose bodies are the most dirty and unclean?
It's women's bodies.
And who is wellness marketed to?
It's marketed primarily to women.
So I would say that it's kind of using new language and it's evolving, but I think the central message is pretty much the same.
It seems too that there's a paradox in the shame theme because often women's health influencers will seem to earnestly invoke misogynistic shame.
Instilled, you know, they will argue and reasonably often by a medical history dominated by men.
And they propose their, you know, solutions that will repair this with pseudoscientific rituals of cleansing.
So, what's the formula then for easing shame in clinical spaces that doesn't go down that road and resort to herbs or yoni eggs?
Yeah, so I think first of all is dispelling the shame, like being able to say the words.
So being able to say the words like vagina and vulva and menstruation.
And for too long, you know, medicine has been, you know, very straight-laced and has been a huge part of carrying the torch of misogyny.
When you find people who are saying the words, talking about menstruation publicly, then people are going to be attracted to that, right?
So first of all, there's that issue.
But I think, you know, medicine has, in addition to sort of being able to speak frankly in ways that people understand, I mean, medicine's not been very accessible either.
And then, of course, there's all these gaps in women's health care, which, you know, these people exploit.
So nobody's filling a gap with an untested, unregulated pharmaceutical, which is what I call supplements, right?
Because if you actually cared about women's health, you would want to study these things to make sure there were no drug reactions and that they actually worked so that women weren't wasting their money.
You would want to have regulation.
So there is a very effective horse and pony show about a bait and switch, I guess, about acting like you're better, like you're filling the gaps when in fact you're a predator exploiting them.
Yeah, one thing that seems really ironic to me sometimes about that wellness Seeing that you're talking about there is that the notion of women's empowerment tends to fall back on outdated stereotypes of what it means to be the divine feminine, to have intuition, to be in touch with a kind of profound inner knowing that
You know, men can't know anything about, for example, but it does seem to me quite ironic because, you know, I think that women's empowerment might be better understood in this case with understanding the facts and, you know, being scientifically literate.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, this idea that we're better off using a polstice made in a bog as opposed to, like, you know, as opposed to, you know, evidence-based medicine that's been proven to work, which is so ironic because, you know, none of these people are communicating on stone tablets.
They're all using modern technology, right?
So, the love of natural only goes so far.
All these people are terrified of 5G and their vaccines, but they're super happy to use their 5G from Verizon.
You cite a lot of red flags and blood.
I just filed an article for Mother Jones and I start off talking about a woman who basically
sells a certified hormone specialist certificate online.
And you cite the term hormonal imbalance that coaches and medical professionals use to sell
supplements or fertility hacks.
We know, as you said, the wellness industrial complex, it's a big business and wellness
is still predominantly composed of women.
75% of our listening audiences is women, so we know that we're all involved in this world
in some capacity.
What are your top pieces of advice for women trying to navigate this endless assortment of products being sold to them?
Block any chiropractors so you're not exposed to the contagion.
They're not medical experts.
I don't know what they're experts in, but block chiropractors.
There's a couple that are fairly influential in the wellness world and just block them.
You know, yes, some of their information might be okay, like saying eat more fiber.
That is also a very, you know, as you guys know, with wellness adding, you know, two truths and a lie, right?
I heard somewhere that's like a Star Trek thing, you know, as written in Shakespeare, written in Milton, and in whoever from Rigel 5, right?
So I'm butchering somebody's fantastic joke, and I wish I knew who to attribute it to.
So first of all, try to not be exposed to people who are bigger sources of contagion.
Although we know that there's awful medical doctors out there, Christiane Northrup being the best example, right?
And Kelly Brogan, I don't know, they're like on par with, you know, vying for misinformation queens, I guess.
The other thing is be so mindful of bias.
When people are selling products, you can't trust them because they're a commercial, they're a walking commercial.
If I had a birth control pill that was like Dr. Gunter's pill with like Merck, then you would rightly say, how can I trust Dr. Gunter about anything related to using hormonal contraception, right?
So you can be a doctor and you can be talking about whatever, menopause or talking about menstruation or a naturopath.
And if you also have a line of turmeric for hot flashes or, you know, ovary support supplements, then you're a biased source.
And so just even using those two things, because you have to follow the money.
You and I all know that the money in wellness is with supplements and online courses.
And then to look for, you know, words like, you know, real expertise, like being a, you know, having an online coaching certificate.
Although that's really difficult for people to sort because, you know, in medicine we have like, we have all kinds of weird names for things.
Like I'm, I'm a certified menopause practitioner.
That's from the menopause society, a recognized body.
But yeah, I could make us, you know, a diploma and give it out to people who do an hour online course.
And I can say that you are, you're a, you know, a California certified menopause provider.
And who could tell the difference?
Who could tell the difference, right?
Exactly.
How can the consumer tell the difference?
And so it's very, very hard.
And we see this at a high level.
You know, there's all kinds of people co-opting names to make it sound like they're professionals.
You said something I think that was very important about if you are offering some kind of supplement That was unregulated.
That was an alternative cure.
That was what the other doctors don't want you to know.
That would actually be quite categorically different than if you were sitting there saying, you know, I've looked at the data on whether or not the COVID vaccine causes terrible reproductive damage to women and it doesn't, right?
There's a difference between you perhaps being seen to endorse Something that comes from Big Pharma but that has gone through some sort of scientific methodology to back up what your opinion is on it.
There's a difference between that and endorsing a product that is just sort of pulled out of the air based on your charisma, right?
Absolutely.
And how does the consumer tell the difference?
Especially when I could pull up junk article after junk article to support the supplement, like turmeric, for example.
There's no data that shows it does anything.
In fact, there was recently the guy apparently who produced most of the papers About turmeric is apparently, you know, all kinds of issues with that.
I only read it cursories, you know, in a cursory way, so I don't want to quote that.
My understanding is, you know, the active ingredient curcumin has never actually been shown to be absorbed in any quantity from turmeric.
But how does the consumer know that when you have not only just junk journals, but you have journals willing to publish junk or journals that can't tell the difference, right?
So it's really hard for the consumer to know the difference because backed by science, Has basically become a meaningless term.
It's interesting you bring up turmeric because in that Mother Jones piece I just filed, I devote two paragraphs to it.
And it only shows efficacy when it's combined with pepperine and usually not in supplement form.
You have to make a dose.
There's so many problems with that supplement and it's one that is so often presented as being efficacious for anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties.
Yeah, but Derek, were you fair?
Did you say that it was proven to turn a lot of things orange, like really bright orange?
I do make a case for henna near the end, so I do try to be fair.
I think that's a lot of the appeal.
You know, and then of course, you know, turmeric also, you know, has, you know, Western exoticism of, you know, other cultures in it as well.
Big part of wellness, right?
So, you know, ooh, the ancients.
Yeah, you know what?
The ancients died of plague.
You know, they always romanticize that women had all these cures.
And it's like, really?
Really?
They had all these cures, then why wasn't life expectancy longer than it was?
If they had all these cures, why was infant mortality 50%?
Because if women had secret healing powers, I'm pretty sure they would have saved their kids.
kids.
And in one of my favorite lines that you write in your book, evolution's motto might be best summed up as good enough.
And it's this religious idea that we're this perfect creature, and you said infant mortality, people died of cuts for a very long time.
People have so much shame around their bodies, in part in the modern era due to this manufactured perfection we see on social media.
So I want to move from social media, we've been talking about online spaces a bit, but to the real world here.
So when you're seeing patients in your clinic, How do you advise them to navigate this space when someone comes to you and says, well, Joe Dispenza says this, speaking of chiropractors, how, what do you do in these real world situations with your clients?
I don't ever say, no, that's stupid.
Or, you know, I, because when someone's come in and they've researched health information, that tells me that they have an interest in being engaged.
So I always say, that's amazing that you were looking things up.
Can you please give me the source?
A lot of times they don't have the source.
It's just something they've kind of heard.
And so if they don't, I say, well, you know, I know that you've kind of heard this, but let me, let me explain to you, here's the science.
But when they do send me something, I have never once had someone send me something factual based.
In fact, they've all been what I would consider some of the worst of the worst, because that's what floats to the top of a Google search.
Because search engine optimization is not your friend when it comes to researching health information.
Google is not a medical librarian, but people think it is, right?
Because they don't know because they're not experts in that.
So that's a bit, so I have a lot of empathy because I know these people are being, they're being taken advantage of.
There are good efforts for going online to get information.
They have been a predator has swooped in.
So I'll explain, I'll say, well, this person's not an expert.
I'll say this person's a naturopath.
So they're not experts in hormones at all.
I don't know what they're experts in, but it's certainly not medicine.
Then I'll say, the quote, the article that they used is in a predatory journal.
And a lot of people haven't even heard that.
Or I'll say, this has been, you know, disproven years ago.
Or, you know, here's a Cochrane review, which is something that we use to look at bodies of evidence that says that there's no data supporting probiotics for yeast infections, for example.
And here's a podcast that I did with a leading expert on yeast infections where we discuss the lack of data.
So, you know, so I will actually use real science to counteract it, but not like, and here's 15 things.
I'll try to bring like three big reasons why I don't believe that.
Um, and then I'll say, but so this is what the science says.
And then I leave it at that because the worst thing is to have somebody then think that you're, you're belittling their search or, you know, cause what you want to do really, if you want to help someone is make a connection.
So hopefully they keep coming back.
So, you know, there's a lot of like sussing out the situation and seeing how receptive someone is to that.
Because the worst thing for me to say is, well, that's all bullshit.
And then they think I'm mean, which would be a mean thing to say.
And then they don't come back and they go having their yeast infection untreated for another two years because they're putting things in there because, you know, that's what Kelly Brogan told them to do.
So I really try to lead with empathy, to not tell them why they're wrong, but show them why the information they found online was wrong.
Yeah, and not only is Google not a great research librarian, neither is PubMed, right?
Like you could find anything on PubMed because it's just sort of archiving So many papers in an indiscriminate way.
So I really love what you said about walking them through.
Okay, let's look at who the lead researcher is.
Let's look at what other studies came after this one.
Let's look at the meta-analysis that says, you know, whether or not, like what the scientific consensus is on all of this, right?
Yeah.
For example, people think that being in PubMed means it's approved by the NIH.
And why wouldn't you think that?
It says NIH.gov at the top, right?
Exactly.
And people don't know the difference between a poorly done observational study that reached with the conclusions versus randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled trial.
And I explain to people, for example, why now, like, I don't ever look at journals from MDPI anymore.
Like, I just don't.
And so if it's in there, I'm like, you know, I'm sorry.
You know, they produce a lot of predatory stuff.
And again, while there might be the occasional good editor in there and there might be an occasional good thing, at some point you have to say, you know, this is just too contaminated.
I can't use that anymore.
Would you just say for our listeners, what is MDPI?
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.
They publish 390 open access journals.
Yikes!
And there's been, you know, increasing, increasing, increasing concerns about them publishing predatory journals.
And so, you know, I've heard so many things from people online.
I've seen people talk about how they rejected an article and then three days later it was published.
And, you know, all these people just stopping.
You know, I've been asked by predatory journals and I'm just like, wait a minute.
You want me to pay you $5,000 for the privilege of writing an article?
I sometimes talk about predatory journals and doctors don't know about it, right?
And I'm like, you know, sometimes I'll have doctors go, well, what about this article?
I'm like, well, it's in a predatory journal, so I'm not interested in it.
Yeah, I mean what's stunning is the extent to which people who define themselves as skeptics will be very, very focused on following the money between, say, a doctor like you and supposed big pharma connections. But in cases like this are
just completely clueless about the reality of like a journal where you're having to pay a
lot of money to get published or you know just just looking at things like supplements and who's
profiting from them. It's extraordinary.
Yeah I mean it's a great bait and switch.
I mean, it's very, very Donald Trumpian, you know?
Blame the other person for exactly what you're doing.
It's a very effective tool to say that you're clearly funded by big pharma, but oh, like my wall of supplements that I make and sell, I'm not.
I care about you.
I care about you because I designed these supplements.
I'm like, oh yeah, you emailed a company and said, can you put these four things in a supplement?
And then put my face on it.
Yeah, exactly.
You know there's companies that do that, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Let's come back to your book.
So, your book really focuses on menstruation and providing a wonderful archive of information on the topic.
During the pandemic, we covered a lot of the spiritualized disinformation about vaccines and noticed that several prominent female conspiritualist influencers Really went all in on these moral panics around supposed dangers for women, right?
Heavy periods, miscarriages, spike protein shedding that was supposedly contagious, right?
What does the data actually show about COVID vaccines and reproductive health?
So first of all, if you want to have a healthy pregnancy and have a healthy newborn, you want to have the COVID-19 vaccine.
That's really without a doubt.
It reduces your risk of stillbirths, reduces your risk of your baby needing to be admitted afterwards, it reduces the risk of neonatal complications, it reduces your risk of needing to go to the ICU.
Because of, you know, the immune changes during pregnancy, pregnant people are especially vulnerable to effects of COVID.
I mean, the stories of all these people being in ICUs and dying during their pregnancy or right after and leaving their newborn or their two children at home motherless, it's just like really tragic.
So if you want a healthy pregnancy, you want to be vaccinated.
There's like absolutely no question about that.
There's no concern about miscarriages at all.
We got some great data early on from IVF programs that showed that they had the same outcomes, whether someone was vaccinated or not.
We now have good data to show it.
So there's no concern.
And of course, there's no medical reason that would happen.
But of course, you don't know unless you study it.
You know, science always wants to remain open.
But I would say that we don't have any concerns about that.
You know, there are really extreme versions of that kind of fear-mongering that Julian brought up, and they draw on some pretty deep-seated fears about all medical interventions, and in women's alternative health, of course, that predates COVID.
So I have a bit of a historical question for you, because on the far end of what you are up against, it seems, as a communicator, are like free birth advocates who claim that obstetrics in
general is captured by a culture of intervention and the interventions are the actual causes
of birth trauma. And then that generation takes its lead from prior anti-medical birth
advocates, you know, famous people like Ina May Gaskin. So I'm wondering what happened.
Like, was there a fork in the road when suddenly a doorway opened up for Christiane Northrup, Kelly Brogan, Jolanne Norris-Clark to walk through and create this alternate reality where babies never die and birth is never dangerous?
So I think, you know, Christiane Northrup was the first woman, really, physician writing about women's health in a public way.
So I think she just benefited from being the first.
It's clear nobody ever read her books who was promoting her or if they did, they're awful people.
I don't blame patients who read the book and don't know because she's the first person and she's a doctor and we didn't really talk publicly about conspiracy theories and the harm and all that kind of stuff in the 90s, right?
So I don't, I don't blame any single person, but I blame people like Oprah and I blame PBS and I blame anybody who was a journalist who wrote positively about her.
I mean, in her very first book, she talks about consulting an intuitive To decide if she should, you know, do surgery on somebody.
I'm sorry, that's, like, absolutely, like, you should be arrested and have your license stripped.
She has openly anti-Semitic content where she, well, it's always when she's saying something awful, she's very canny this way.
It's not her idea, a friend wondered, right?
Yeah.
So her friend wondered if men who are circumcised are more likely to commit rape.
Oh.
Yes.
In her first book.
And so she also, you know, thinks that the fetus can communicate with the mother and that she, she got tired of doing abortions because basically slutty women were using them for birth control, right?
Right wing talking point.
So, No one who's ever been pro-choice, truly, would say that.
That's, you know, such an anti-science ignorant.
And nobody who's done abortions would say that.
Because if you've done abortions, you would know that's not true.
Right.
You know, you would know that the, you know, the very few people who come back for repeat abortions are people in pretty extreme, in general, social situations affected by poverty and other, you know, there's a higher risk, for example, of domestic violence for people who have repeat abortions because they can't get access to contraception because they're in such a controlled situation.
Yeah, so right there, that's in her first book.
So how people didn't respond with absolute disgust at her for being a disgusting person because people wanted to believe in this was kind of like I would say like the next evolution after like the hippies and you know so she sort of was like Very cannily crafted together science and mythology to make this new branch of medicine.
And so I think she was, that's the only thing that I think she's been smart about.
She's not smart about medicine.
It raises, I think, a really fascinating question, which is what I hear Matthew also gesturing towards, right?
Which is, okay, so if everything you just said is accurate, and I believe it is, that from the very start, it was clear that she had these proclivities.
Why was she so acclaimed and taken so to the heart of so many women as this sort of feminist health icon, this advocate for women against a patriarchal and abusive, you know, medical system?
Well, so why are all those junk books in the airport that say nothing number one bestsellers still 20 years later, like Rich Dad, Poor Dad?
Yeah.
Because nobody reads the books.
I mean, seriously, you have a great title, right?
You're a doctor, you get some nice things written about you, maybe in the New York Times, maybe, oh, Oprah says great things about you.
So then because Oprah has this, she can basically transfer Oprah's trust to you.
So if she's vetted by Oprah, then all of that stuff must be true.
She is very much Christiane Northrup, the two truths and a lie.
So her chapters all start out with, you know, like the science, and then it gradually starts getting speckled with more and more pseudoscience, and then the chapter basically ends with, you know, full-on like, what the hell?
Unless you're looking for the casual anti-Semitism that's dropped in there, or the casual, ooh, women are magic, you have to be, have constant vigilance.
And it's done in such a way that, you know, look, she's published by a New York publisher.
People, people transfer trust.
And, you know, she was on Oprah.
I don't know, I had to, I had a hard time counting because Oprah scrubbed a lot of her content.
But, you know, I counted, I think it was 12, 13 times.
She was on her, on her Super Soul Sunday.
And Oprah's never, ever ever said I was wrong about promoting her.
I would be mortally embarrassed, mortally embarrassed, if I had ever promoted her as being anything but a crank.
We should point out that Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, is $1 billion in debt.
That came out last month, so that kind of goes to your point of how effective those airport books are.
Yeah.
Poor dad.
Yeah.
So, I mean, a lot of these books, there's a podcast that... Oh, books could kill.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so my husband's obsessed with it.
And so he like tells me about all these books because we all, we all just read titles or not all of us, but you know...
Many of us just read titles and if you've got a great title and a great story, you're going to be a New York Times bestseller.
If you know how to gin the list, you're going to be a New York Times bestseller.
If you can get blanketed in the media for a week, yeah, you're going to be a New York Times bestseller.
So we transfer trust to a lot of different things.
There was a lot of advantage of being the first person to speak up.
Northrop's public quotes weren't as fringy as what's in the book.
I think she's very savvy, or she was.
I don't think she knows how to rein in the whole, like, 12G implanting nanoparticles in your body now, because I watched one of her, like, seminars during COVID and I was just like...
Well, you're right in our wheelhouse because you're really talking about the effect of charisma and posturing and how someone can get themselves into a very elevated position through that kind of strategy, regardless of what's actually said in the book.
And people are probably not giving it a very close reading.
And so along those lines, we have to do it.
Let's turn to Gwyneth Paltrow for a moment.
I just want to tell you, I always feel bad punching down.
Well, I think that she'll be okay crying on her bed of money.
In your now notorious critiques of her $250 million company, Goop, you've pointed out that Gwyneth is at the forefront of an industry that claims to empower and liberate women while actually exploiting their vulnerabilities.
Well, first of all, she claims it's worth $250 million.
I'll say that.
You know, I don't think that her business has grown much if you look at traffic online.
So I don't know.
I mean, but I always, you know, journalists, when they write about this, that's one of my pet peeves is they just take like Goop's word that they're worth $250 million.
Raising money is not the same as being worth it.
You know, so just Just that, you know, I always like add that in there.
She represents, I think, just another evolution.
You know, there's all these branches.
If you sort of look at the family tree of wellness in women, I would say that, you know, the 1970s is like the first like, you know, the pop-up of all the supplement stores and things like that.
And that's kind of maybe the beginnings of the natural birth movement.
But it didn't really like turn into sort of like hormones and things like that.
There were people, this guy like Dr. John Smith, who was trying, but they didn't really like,
you really churn into something to the 80s.
And then she just sort of took that ball and gave it that next generation.
I would say that she made it sleek and modern and sort of incorporated, you know, the new age,
but not in a way that looked overtly kooky.
She took people out of the top floor in their little place above the subway, crossing your palm for $10.
She took them and put them in Beverly Hills and, you know, you know, sleek clothes.
And then all of a sudden now they're, they're offering incredible advice, right?
So I think she had a very craft, you know, a very crafty rebranding.
You can never discount the power of celebrity.
ever.
But what about what she would say in terms of, I'm empowering women to make sovereign health decisions about how they want to grow spiritually in alignment with their medical choices, etc.
Yeah, I would say you're the worst kind of misogynist, because you're basically promoting internalized misogyny.
Because you, early on, to get page clicks, wrote things like, bras cause breast cancer.
And it is the most anti-feminist thing that you can do to scare women with lies about cancer.
That's how I got interested in her, was someone sent me a link to this article on Goop about bras causing breast cancer.
Oh, we're just asking questions and we're going to empower women.
Lying to people is not empowerment.
Saying crazy things to get clickbait is an empowerment.
Promoting quasi-experts is not empowerment.
You can only be an empowered person with facts.
And if you have all the facts and you hear all the facts and you hear that, for example, researchers have diverted funds from studying chemotherapy or whatever, that might be of value to prove that bras don't cause breast cancer because of these kinds of fears.
The whole idea of that is just so awful, right?
So if you're, but if you're someone who hears, people have studied that.
There is absolutely no link.
And you say, you know, I don't care.
I hear that.
I don't want to wear it.
Okay.
Well, you've, you've made an educated decision, but this idea, so she offers faux education, right?
So she offers something that sounds like it should be, you know, from an expert or just asking questions.
And then, you know, converts that through, you know, through the transference of her authority via celebrity.
And then the fact that the headlines, you know, that the press just laps it up and anything she says is gospel.
Then, you know, you have this perfect storm for faux impairment.
So I always think that lying to people and inaccurate information is the opposite of feminism.
You know, it's basically the patriarchy wrapped up in a pink bow.
You preempted my next question because I actually clipped when you write, feminism demands bodily autonomy, and that can be achieved only with facts.
So we talked about the ideal body, but there is this autonomy strain that runs through a lot of what we study on conspirituality.
I know we talked a little bit about what happens when women come into your clinic and bring up these influencers, but specifically, what methods do you find most effective for helping women actually follow science?
I think helping people follow science is challenging in this world because celebrities carry so much more weight.
There's that.
Listening to people is probably the most effective tool one-on-one.
Listening to their concerns, explaining, you know, how they got here.
Not telling them what they did was wrong or bad, but saying, okay, well that didn't work, let's move on.
Because they spent all that money doing what that naturopath said.
And if you tell them that's bad or wrong, then, you know, it just makes them feel worse about what happened.
So basically what I try to do is I just try to pivot to the good information.
I'll say, here, this is where you should go if you're interested.
So instead of saying, don't look up, don't go to that person, I try to focus on positive things.
Hey, this is a good site.
This is a good site.
Here's some information that I've written about it.
So I try to practice basically what I call, you know, social extinction is really not mentioning that unless it's really egregious.
And so I'll say, you know, if somebody is really stuck on it, then I'll explain why that's bad.
But if somebody is receptive to where to go for the good, because most people are, most people just end up in those backyards because they didn't know where else to go.
And so I think recognizing that says a lot to people.
Do you find, doctor, that there's a price emotionally to pay for that social extinction?
Because I think what you're describing is not only intervening in misinformation and disinformation, you're often also implicitly breaking an emotional bond that a client or a patient might have with an influencer, even if it's parasocial.
And so, I'm wondering if you ever feel that the patient is saying, but you know, this person really sees me or they really love me or care for me, and I'm wondering how that resolves.
I don't actually hear that in the office.
I mean, they might say that or think that.
I mean, I try to not attack the person in the office, but attack their ideas.
So, if I hear about taking a an ovary support supplement from a naturopath.
I'll say, well, you know that naturopath sells that supplement and it's not studied.
And I know which supplement they're talking about.
There's only a few of them that have their own branded supplements.
Yeah.
you know why and I'll say there's isn't any data to support it and it's and then I just move on
because it's very hard for people to hear that people that they have
in fact that they have believed have led them astray.
People don't leave cults overnight. I view wellness as a cult. If I were to say to
you know and I'm an atheist so I'm sorry I'm gonna offend someone who's
Christian but if I actually said you know that communion wafer doesn't turn
into the body of Christ.
You know, some will be pretty upset with me.
They get to have that belief all they want.
You know, my role isn't to, isn't to sort of say how bad or Awful what they've done, but rather to say, here is the answer to your question.
So your question is, why am I having yeast infections?
Or why do I have pain with sex?
Or why do I have these symptoms?
So people seek out wellness because they don't have the answers.
So what I do is I provide answers.
And hopefully then people will be like, Oh, that's never been explained to me like that.
Wow.
So I would say that in the office, I don't have data to back this up, but 80% of the time that works because that's what people want.
That's actually what they want.
They want to get better.
And so if I can explain to them in a way that makes them see that I am actually an expert and I know more than those other people, because I explained it in a different way.
They all come over.
And the people who are like hardcore down that rabbit hole, the best I can do is, again, do that.
And if they hear that, and then I'll just say to them, so, you know, what are you willing to do today?
And what sounds good to you?
Sometimes they say, well, I want to think about it.
And sometimes they say, well, I want to, you know, I, maybe I have five things to offer.
And they say, well, I want to try one of those things.
Okay.
Great!
And that's what an informed choice is.
So I really just try to, in the office, avoid that and provide the alternative, provide the answer that they're actually looking for.
Yeah, it's a redirection and you can see sort of the halo that was over the sort of influencer influence start to tarnish or even disappear almost instantly, it sounds like.
I don't know.
I mean, I think in the office, a lot of people come in and they don't have ideas from one person.
You get the same ideas from like 20 naturopaths and 20 chiropractors online.
I don't think that I would see like a true devotee of Kelly Brogan in the office because I don't think a true devotee of Kelly Brogan would come in for this kind of care.
They might start coming in when they start questioning Kelly Brogan.
So I don't actually get a lot of, Gwyneth Paltrow is right, Chiropractor A is right, because I think that the information comes from a variety of different sources.
But I do want to pull on a thread about this idea about people are really reticent online to move away from these influencers, right?
There are chiropractors out there with large accounts that say the menstrual cycle is a detox.
Or they, you know, and they sell, you know, they promote supplements and their ideas are not backed in science.
And, you know, they have like hundreds of thousands of followers.
And, you know, when people point out like how inaccurate that is, it's amazing to me how many people still keep following them.
Because it's this whole idea that maybe I'm missing something.
And I always say, you know what, there's people giving you good dietary advice who are also not telling you to put a wand in your water to change its ability to absorb into your body or whatever.
And so people are so reluctant to leave these online gurus.
That's such a fascinating concept to me because I guess that's what a guru is.
They are able to get all the support or, you know, somebody who's saying that you can, a doctor, I mean, it's not limited to non-doctors, a doctor with, you know, over 250,000 followers on Instagram tells people that you need to change the pH of your body to treat cancer.
Cool story, bro.
There's an idea in your book that I really loved.
It's about killer whales and the grandmother hypothesis.
It's in this chapter in which you say that menopause has helped drive human evolution.
How so?
Women are uniquely affected by aging, ageism, not aging, ageism, and that's a big thing with wellness grifters, right, as they're preying on that.
And so, I think it's really important for women to understand that menopause, we believe, is really evolution at work.
So, if you think about, you know, whatever, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 years ago, How difficult it would be to food and shelter and in the whole concept of just life would have been pretty hard.
Then you're faced with pregnancy, which is the most metabolically taxing thing a human can do.
It's like the Tour de France, metabolically taxing.
Then you have to survive childbirth with blood loss.
And then you have to breastfeed, which is even more metabolically taxing.
And then you have to raise a newborn until the age in which it can, like, eat and drink and fend for itself.
So, you know, we're not like giraffes.
We can't drop an animal five feet onto the ground and they get up and they're walking.
Like, it's a lot more effort to get a human to the point when they're likely going to be able to reproduce.
Is that better if you have community involvement?
I mean, probably, right?
If you have more than one pair of hands helping you.
But somebody can only help you if they're not encumbered with those tasks themselves.
And so it's this idea that when humans have a long post-reproductive lifespan, which is what menopause is, that they can now actually be useful to the younger generation.
So it's genetics, the long game.
And orcas also have that same phenomenon where they have long post-reproductive lives.
We don't see it really in any other species.
Recently there's been, I think, an ape, a primate.
I actually don't know if it's an ape or a chimp.
There's been a primate that may also have a post-reproductive life.
And so, you know, for humans, it's very valuable.
You know, dogs keep breeding and, you know, if they're allowed to breed and then until they basically drop dead.
Same with cats.
I mean, other animals will just keep on reproducing until the end, until they're very elderly, and that's not the same for us.
And so, it's really this idea that you have value after menopause.
Now we now call it kind of the wise woman hypothesis because obviously you think about it.
Hey, I remember where the water is in time of drought.
So I'm super useful when I'm 65.
I remember how to, you know, source these berries.
I, you know, my mother told me this.
I'm passing that knowledge along.
I've witnessed a birth.
We know that having a birth attendant dramatically, you know, reduces mortality.
So, I mean, not that they had interventions, but you had a support person.
And so that's really the basis of it is that you have value.
So it's not this idea that, you know, you're a useless thing that, you know, is an appendage to society.
You're not the appendix.
You're a super useful thing.
And you know, I always like to tell people, this doesn't mean that your only value after menopause is in being a grandmother or in having children or anything like that.
You know, we're talking about evolution and how we got here.
But the great thing about evolution is it gave us these super big brains.
So you get to do whatever you want with this post reproductive lifespan now.
Thank you so much, Dr. Gunter, for your work and for taking time out to talk today.
We, again, are all big fans and you do so much good work in the world.
So thank you.
Well, thank you guys for having me.
This is such an important and fascinating topic.
Sadly, an endless source of material for you guys.
Yeah, so I guess we'll have you back.
Yeah.
So can I ask you a question?
Yeah, sure.
Do you ever like see something and just like want to bang your head on the table and say, I can't believe we have to we have to do this again?
Or we had like is how often how often do you bang your heads on the table?
Really?
Daily.
Daily.
That's every day.
That's every day.
Yeah, it's actually a problem because it can, I mean for me anyway, I can really start sort of asking when will it end or am I in my own sort of like reactive loop where I'm only responding to things that provoke me.
Yeah, it's a big problem.
I think everybody who deals in misinformation has to square with that somehow.
Well, thank you.
Thank you guys.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Conspirituality.
