Dr. Vonda Wright, UNBREAKABLE: A Woman's Guide to Aging with Power
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[0:45]Dr. Vonda Wright is the author of Unbreakable, a Woman's Guide to Aging with Power.
[0:49]Dr. Wright is a double-word certified orthopedic surgeon and internationally recognized
[0:55]authority on human performance, longevity, and women's health.
[0:59]The founding director of the Performance and Research Initiative for Master's Athletes,
[1:03]she has served as a physician for athletes at the University of Pittsburgh, Georgia State,
[1:07]the Pittsburgh and Atlanta Ballet, World Rugby, and the PGA.
[1:11]A highly sought-after media expert, she has been featured on the diary of a CEO, Jay
[1:15]Shady, and Mel Robbins' podcast, as well as the Today Show, the Doctor Oz Show, and
[1:20]in top publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, and The Observer.
[1:25]She has authored five books, including Fitness After 40, and Guide to Thrive.
[1:29]She lives with her husband, a retired two-time Stanley Cup champion near Orlando, Florida.
[1:35]Welcome.
[1:36]We're talking about your book Unbreakable of Woman's Guide to Aging with Power.
[1:40]Congratulations.
[1:41]Thank you so much.
[1:43]Okay.
[1:44]I ate this book up.
[1:45]I am like your prime target for the book.
[1:47]I needed it so badly.
[1:48]I still need to now, like, listen to all the advice as opposed to just intellectually
[1:53]take it in.
[1:54]Why don't you start by sort of explaining how you became an advocate and your own journey
[2:00]which you write about in the book?
[2:01]Yeah, you know what?
[2:03]So my primary training is as an orthopedic sports doctor.
[2:07]So it's everything you think it would be, like all these badges, sports fields, working
[2:12]with teams of various kinds.
[2:14]But my research has always been in musculoskeletal aging because I refuse to believe the societal
[2:22]myth that aging has to be this inevitable decline from vitality to frailty.
[2:28]And so I've been, I was churning along in my career with those principles until 2012.
[2:33]When I first read the data that women, people like you and me make 80% of the health
[2:40]decisions for everyone we touch, which puts us in the seat of control and almost activism
[2:50]for our own health.
[2:51]But everybody we care about but I found so many women didn't know that and didn't feel
[2:59]listened to and couldn't find the right information.
[3:03]So within my own practice since then I've been really focusing on listening, validating,
[3:10]providing women with the ways that we don't have to end up in the hospital like so many
[3:17]of the women I take care of.
[3:19]Because I say often I am still practicing and I still take trauma call and women a woman
[3:26]comes into the hospital with a broken hip because she had bones that had disintegrated
[3:32]that we could have prevented.
[3:34]It makes me like stand up on chairs and shout from the mountaintops.
[3:38]We can do better and we can help women remain healthy, vital, active, joyful.
[3:44]And yet when I looked into the stratosphere of longevity and living longer and all that
[3:50]stuff we're hearing now so popularly, you probably know what I'm about to say.
[3:56]It is a culture filled with information specifically targeted and men and I felt like based
[4:04]on my experience and the fact that we know that until 1993 women were not even required
[4:11]to be in studies and that women suffer silently, I just wanted to turn a spotlight
[4:19]on to why women age differently and all the tools because there's a lot of tools right
[4:25]now but my women that I care for every day still are fuzzy about what to do and so in
[4:32]this book I'm breakable it's a mindset that we do not have to go from vitality to frailty.
[4:39]It's hopefulness, it's building resilience biologically, mentally and it's what I do with
[4:46]people every day it's like the blueprint I use so I'm excited about it but I'm more excited
[4:53]about the powerful women that we're going to train because of it.
[4:58]That's amazing.
[4:59]I mean I was so struck you had this one image early on with what if you like a cross-section
[5:04]of like three or five and what it all the bone and the muscle and everything and how pristine
[5:09]it looked like with it to triathlete it was like 40 or younger and then like a 70-year-old sedentary
[5:15]woman which if I keep doing what I'm doing it's going to be me and then a 70-year-old
[5:21]triathlete or somebody who keeps going and you don't have to sacrifice the integrity of the
[5:26]muscle and the bone at all if you don't want.
[5:29]We don't and pictures like that or when I was raised I would go to races in the 70s with my
[5:38]dad right my dad was a runner and there would be that lone older woman who are like oh my god
[5:45]the anomaly of that right now more and more we're seeing every lots and lots of pictures and yet
[5:54]I think that's the bubble that I live in probably you live in because middle America every people
[6:00]you know the population of America are still living in the time when aging means for
[6:05]OSP and I know it doesn't have to so in the book you have a set of assessments that we can all
[6:13]do to track through how we're doing now so I took my resting heart rate and it's not the worst
[6:20]but it's like the second worst and I was like okay I don't have to like jump off the couch in
[6:25]a panic and like scamper to a treadmill but it was enough of a wake-up call like I can't even do
[6:32]the next trip the next step of the testing right that was enough to be like oh but I was in shape
[6:38]before I must be in shape now but actually no so what do you do when you get like a bad score
[6:46]so to speak and some of these measures so in the book break up but we did not we took the top
[6:53]eight longevity measures that can be tested and I had my brilliant data scientist statistician
[7:00]weigh them according to how important they were and so it's number one it's meant numbers are
[7:07]objective they're not judgment so many women when I put something out on the internet field
[7:13]judge or tape and that is not how it's intended I the analogy is I can read that I have a hundred
[7:20]dollars in my bank account 100 it's not judging me I assigned value to that but and that's what
[7:27]this is meant for but what it does is what it did for you you're like oh I had and kind of you know
[7:34]I went through that too of I was grinding so hard in my life in my career that when I hit
[7:41]pyramid a positive hit me hard and and I'm not in the shape that I was when I was 40 and what
[7:47]am I going to do about it and do I have to accept this or to lower my resting heart rate again maybe
[7:53]I employ things like VO2 max training once a week and build my cardiovascular engines so what
[8:00]I hope that the unbreakable assessment does is doesn't stop us at a gate but gives us hope
[8:08]that we know how to get back to ourselves so how although do you inspire people to actually take
[8:18]action right there's there multiple levels your book works on like one is education one is fear
[8:23]at what could happen right like if you don't do this then why like but how do you inspire the
[8:31]daily changes that have to happen to get us where we need to go well that's a that's an
[8:37]excellent question and you're right I in the you know I started my career as a cancer nurse all
[8:42]the way back in the 90s so in the 30 years of working with people I have to be honest with you I
[8:47]have tried always to motivate people like you've said stories information fear here's what I know
[8:55]and then I'll answer your question here's what I know until a person decides that they are
[9:02]worth the daily investment the no amount of me shaking my crooked finger at them or any of
[9:09]the techniques will ever work because you have to know that you are worth it and important enough
[9:14]and that for some people that's a mind shift change but the way I have I do it practically for
[9:20]people is to realize that you don't actually have to go from no lifting to heavy lifting
[9:27]in two days and that there's no judgment if it takes you a year or if people are literally
[9:33]starting off the couch the first thing I asked them to do is take a walk after dinner because
[9:41]we've been walking since we were one year old it's a core skill we don't have to do anything
[9:47]different or you know and I'm reminded all the time that not everybody is a walker but if you're
[9:53]a wheeler go out and wheel after dinner and get your skeletal muscles moving
[10:00]Because number one, that is going to work on your mindset that you are worth the investment.
[10:05]But number two, on the sneaky side, contracting skeletal muscle is going to push all that glucose from your dinner blood
[10:13]into your muscles and make you the first step towards metabolic health.
[10:19]And do you know what most of us couldn't do a streak of seven days?
[10:25]We can say, okay, every day after dinner first or someday, sometime for seven days, that's a streak.
[10:31]And after seven days, you're going to be less likely to quit.
[10:35]And I'm going to tell you for sure, you'll feel better.
[10:38]And that's the motivation.
[10:40]You'll say, oh my gosh, I feel better even after seven days, I don't want to stop now.
[10:46]Because I have found also the temporal disconnect, which is a banking term I learned a long time ago, meaning
[10:54]we will not invest today in something that we don't need for 20 years.
[10:59]So that's why I like to bring it back to today.
[11:02]Can I make you feel better today?
[11:04]How long are we talking?
[11:06]No, what?
[11:07]If you can only do 10 minutes, do 10 minutes.
[11:10]If you can do 20, do 20, but I prefer you to 45.
[11:14]45.
[11:15]Every day.
[11:17]Oh yeah, it's just a couple miles because you know how fast the Grim Reaper walks.
[11:21]It's kind of a joke.
[11:25]Studies have shown that you get the most long term benefit out of walking in a pace of three or more miles per hour.
[11:33]So that's about a 20 minute.
[11:35]If you could do four, which is 15, which is that walk jog thing.
[11:39]But so three miles an hour.
[11:41]So in 45 minutes, you'll get to something.
[11:44]It's a couple times around a big loop to work up to to have the metabolic benefit that we need.
[11:50]So does it matter if it's a treadmill or outside?
[11:54]Doesn't your body doesn't know the difference.
[11:56]It just knows that you're contracting.
[11:58]Now on a treadmill, if you want to mimic outside, put the elevation up to two.
[12:03]So that much resistance.
[12:04]But your body actually doesn't care if you're literally on an exercise bike or a stare climber or you.
[12:12]The number of steps between the first floor of your house and the second floor is usually 17.
[12:17]It's just standard for builders.
[12:20]You could do that for 45 minutes.
[12:23]You could do chores up and down your stairs for 45 minutes and get some work in.
[12:28]It's the movement that counts actually when we're starting out.
[12:31]So, okay.
[12:32]Not to keep that.
[12:33]Not to keep.
[12:34]Not to keep.
[12:35]I see that you're skeptical.
[12:37]No, I'm not skeptical.
[12:38]I'm just so I used to think that I had to like get my heart rate way up for that amount of time.
[12:44]Now you're saying just the movement is going to be beneficial.
[12:47]So I'm glad you brought us to here.
[12:49]So if I'm saying, you know, what is the minimum?
[12:52]If you have one half hour a day, that's it.
[12:54]That's all we can do.
[12:56]I want you to walk around for your life, like do your life.
[13:00]And I want you to lift weights for 30 minutes a day.
[13:03]That's what I want.
[13:04]If that's all we've got.
[13:05]But if we get to do several things.
[13:08]Then walking every day.
[13:11]Or lifting two to four times a week.
[13:14]Walking every day.
[13:15]But twice a week.
[13:17]We're going to get your heart rate up.
[13:19]Because they do different things.
[13:20]Walking is great.
[13:21]Maintenance is wonderful for long term chronic disease management, metabolic health.
[13:27]But the act of sprinting.
[13:29]And now I'm not talking about.
[13:31]should carry Richardson sprinting or use the same bolt.
[13:34]I'm talking about whatever it takes to get your heart rate up, whatever apparatus.
[13:38]For 30 seconds.
[13:41]And then completely recover.
[13:43]Takes me two to three minutes to get my heart rate come back down.
[13:47]And then 30 seconds.
[13:48]Do it four times.
[13:49]When you're completely warmed up.
[13:51]That kind of heart rate intensity.
[13:54]At the top of the heart rate.
[13:56]Causes profound metabolic changes.
[13:59]And helps with stem cell health and mitochondrial health.
[14:04]So you don't have to keep your heart rate up that high for 40 for a hit class or something.
[14:10]Because high intensity interval, training is about 70% heart rate.
[14:15]What I'm talking about is over 80, 80, 85.
[14:18]So really intense, but for teeny tiny bursts.
[14:22]So that's how we really reconstitute our bodies and metabolism.
[14:28]What percent of women do you think are doing what they should be doing for them?
[14:32]You know, if we look at population studies and big data.
[14:35]We know 70% of all Americans do not invest in mobility or exercise at all.
[14:41]70% of the United States is very sedentary.
[14:44]So I have to believe that in women outside the bubble.
[14:48]That we live in probably are the same 70% given that 96 million people in this country have pre diabetes.
[14:57]96 million that's from the American Diabetes Association.
[15:01]Pre diabetes is the first step towards, you know, diabetes and Alzheimer's from sedentary living in poor diet.
[15:09]So the number is high, depending on what the algorithm believes you watch.
[15:13]It could look like everybody's exercising, but we know that's not true.
[15:17]So what's your routine?
[15:19]So I do that. This thing I described to you.
[15:21]I lived heavy two to four times a week.
[15:24]I prefer four, but I've got a life.
[15:26]So if I get to and I'm really happy about that.
[15:29]And so the way I lift is based on powerlifting.
[15:32]Which means squat, dead lifts, bench press and some kind of pull.
[15:37]I can't do pull-ups. I'm working on that.
[15:40]Again, like, you know, you were talking about your heart right before.
[15:43]I used to be able to do pull-ups and now I have to work on it again.
[15:46]It's okay, it's not a judgment, it's an observation.
[15:49]And then around those core lifts, then I fill in with the easier single lifts.
[15:55]So I do that two to four times a week.
[15:57]I walk every day.
[15:59]You know, I'm rarely sitting like this.
[16:01]I pace the hallways of my clinic or I'm walking on this treadmill I have.
[16:05]But twice a week, I sprint.
[16:07]And in my own Menopause journey, which I describe in the book,
[16:11]it's the sprinting and the lifting that recompose my body
[16:16]and made me even recognize myself again.
[16:19]Yeah.
[16:21]Kind of remarkable how it does that.
[16:24]So how are you not, sedentary?
[16:26]Well, writing a book and doing all these things that require, like, so is and sitting.
[16:32]Yeah.
[16:33]Well, that is a good point.
[16:35]When I'm writing a chapter, I'm totally sedentary.
[16:38]Right. I've got the big stack of papers.
[16:40]And I, because I don't know how you work, but my brain needs a minute to get into the zone.
[16:45]And then I can't be disturbed. Right. It just gushes out.
[16:48]So you're right. During that time for eight hours, I'm sedentary.
[16:52]But there are other hours in the day.
[16:55]My lifestyle is not sedentary. So those are the anomalies, not the norm.
[17:01]Okay. You're giving me some hope.
[17:03]Oh, my goodness.
[17:04]Can you work on a treadmill?
[17:06]No.
[17:07]Yeah.
[17:08]I mean, I could, I could maybe read.
[17:11]But I couldn't like do an interview. I mean, but you know,
[17:14]that's most people can't like do their jobs on a treadmill.
[17:17]Yeah.
[17:18]No. And thank goodness.
[17:19]Cause I have been interviewed with the hostess on a treadmill.
[17:21]And I'm going to go, yeah.
[17:23]Watching them bump up and down the whole time.
[17:25]I think I'm probably doing this too.
[17:27]So thank you or not.
[17:29]Oh, you can count on me to be sedentary.
[17:31]There are thousands of injuries.
[17:35]Oh, my gosh.
[17:36]So you wrote the book, how are you going to spread the word?
[17:39]You want to shout it from the rooftops.
[17:41]How how can this message really take off and keep going now that you've split the match?
[17:47]So to speak.
[17:48]You know what?
[17:49]It's to me.
[17:50]It's a book.
[17:51]But it by the end of talking about it and talking to people like you in being on
[17:57]social media on my Instagram page.
[18:00]Or I speak from a lot of stages.
[18:03]And I have a podcast called hot for your health.
[18:05]All this 360 media that we have.
[18:09]My goal is to start a movement that we begin to be a group of women that talk
[18:15]about being unbreakable.
[18:18]About aging with power, not as with frailty to keep to keep the two
[18:25]thirds of nursing home people from not being women, which it is, right?
[18:31]I can't get up.
[18:32]They've broken their hip.
[18:33]If I can stop the flow of frailty with a movement of women who see the future
[18:39]in a different way because they've read it or they've seen me jump it around
[18:43]on stage, which I do sometimes.
[18:46]Just to get the message apart, that will be work worth doing.
[18:50]And how did you in addition to everything else end up with like a million
[18:55]people following you on social on Instagram alone?
[18:58]What happened?
[18:59]How did that happen?
[19:00]Well, you know, the truth is I was an early adopter of Instagram.
[19:03]And I just plotted along like everybody does.
[19:08]Until I said back to women, what women were saying to me.
[19:12]And I mean, I can trace the day.
[19:14]It was the day that I said, you are not falling apart.
[19:19]And you are not going crazy.
[19:21]The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause is real.
[19:26]And I knew that because without prompting,
[19:31]women come sit in front of me even today.
[19:33]And they'll say, I don't know what happened.
[19:36]I'm falling apart.
[19:37]I think I'm going crazy because my doctor told me nothing was wrong.
[19:41]And you know what?
[19:42]And this is part that bothers me worse to me.
[19:44]They say, but I didn't want to come here today because I have a really high pain
[19:49]tolerance because women by where our suffering is a badge.
[19:55]So once I had enough people.
[20:00]that I had to tell everybody that we're listening.
[20:05]I see you, I know what you're going through.
[20:07]This is how you solve it instantaneously.
[20:12]People started listening and I'm so glad
[20:14]because I don't mean to sound sadder than I am about it,
[20:18]but women are suffering.
[20:20]Women do not know that the last 40 years in their lives
[20:23]can feel better than it does.
[20:25]And so that's how it happened.
[20:28]I said that and then I expanded on that.
[20:31]And I just, I still answer DMs when I can.
[20:35]I mean, I don't have an automatic message.
[20:37]So because I think that being an educator,
[20:40]I could have been a very happy fourth grade teacher
[20:42]because educating people really excites me.
[20:46]So that's how it happened.
[20:47]Because I listened to women enough to know
[20:50]what they were going through.
[20:51]And you said in the book that it's never too late.
[20:54]But is it like at what point is it?
[20:56]It must be at some point too late.
[20:59]So I guess the question is too late for what?
[21:03]The too late to rebuild all your body muscle
[21:07]that you ever had too late to feel like you're 30 again.
[21:11]Well, here's some examples.
[21:14]I have a friend who had 63 during COVID started out at 100.
[21:18]She's my, I'm only five four.
[21:20]She's my size.
[21:21]She had gotten up to an unrecognizable 181.
[21:25]She felt terrible.
[21:26]She was getting all the chronic diseases.
[21:28]She did macro counting, lifting heavy,
[21:32]walking every day and lost 50 pounds.
[21:36]And now at 67, she chose to become a bodybuilding competitor.
[21:41]She started at 63.
[21:44]The very first research that I came across in 2004
[21:48]when I started my own research
[21:51]about what we were capable of when we were aging
[21:54]was in 90 year old men living in nursing homes
[21:58]where they taught them chair exercises
[22:00]and by rebuilding their neuromuscular pathways
[22:04]started their muscles building and firing again.
[22:07]So if we take those examples of 63 and 90
[22:11]in all the ages in between,
[22:13]that we see our bodies will respond.
[22:16]There's never an age or skill level.
[22:18]Is it easier when we're 40 to recognize it?
[22:22]Easier when we're 50, absolutely.
[22:24]And I would rather start than with people.
[22:27]But if I start with someone who's 70,
[22:29]we're gonna make real gains
[22:31]if they believe they're worth it
[22:33]and we do it consistently.
[22:35]And to accept like patience,
[22:37]if someone's listening to this and it's like,
[22:38]well, I wanna work with you, Dr. Ray.
[22:41]Yeah.
[22:41]So my website allows you to write to me directly.
[22:46]And so people can sign up to see me.
[22:48]They can write me a note.
[22:50]And my staff sends them how I do it.
[22:52]I do.
[22:53]I am still practicing and happily so
[22:56]with all these other things.
[22:58]Amazing.
[22:59]Well, thank you for being an advocate for the rest of us
[23:02]to literally stay in one piece.
[23:04]And it is so important.
[23:07]And we all need the reminder.
[23:09]And the way that you frame it in the book
[23:12]and how user friendly it is and inspiring to.
[23:15]And like that these are the things.
[23:17]Like take the emotion out of it.
[23:19]Like here are the facts.
[23:20]Start with that.
[23:21]It's incredibly powerful.
[23:23]So thank you.
[23:24]Thank you.
[23:24]I accept that compliment.
[23:25]Thank you.
[23:26]Okay, good.
[23:27]You run with that.
[23:28]Thank you so much for coming on.
[23:32]Thank you for having me.
[23:33]I appreciate it.
[23:34]Thank you.
[23:35]Bye.
[23:36]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi.
[23:39]Formerly, momstone have time to read books.
[23:41]If you loved the show,
[23:42]tell a friend, leave a review,
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[23:49]Thanks so much.
[23:50]Oh, and bye the books.