In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Jennifer Garrison from the GCRLE to discuss the importance of researching reproductive aging and how it could impact overall human health and wellness.
Don’t let this episode fool you. No matter what age you are, this episode is vital for you. No matter what gender you are, this episode is vital for you. The word menopause may turn many away, but reproductive aging holds the answers for many uterine conditions and overall human health and wellness. So what’s holding us back from unlocking the mysteries of reproductive aging? Lack of funding, equality, and desire to research in our male-dominated healthcare system.
But there is hope, uterinekind! In the first-of-its-kind center, the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality is pioneering the movement to push for reproductive aging research and equality in doing so. Founded by our incredible guest, Dr. Jennifer Garrison, the GCRLE is backed by Dr. Garrison’s mission to strive for a better healthcare experience through collaborating and funding to accelerate research and knowledge for all. To learn more about joining Dr. Garrison’s and GCRLE’s mission in collaborating or donating, listen in or check out our Instagram!
Lastly, we end on a powerful high note. It’s fusion time! For the betterment of our world!
Thanks for listening, learning, and being you. And join us back here every Tuesday for all things uterus, in service to you, uterinekind.
Carol: We are running full speed into the future of human health without understanding one half of our population, and that is gonna end now. I'm Carol Johnson and this is Hello Uterus.
Joining us today is a person who is leading the call for equality in research of the female body and reproductive systems. This is a must hear conversation, but first uterus in the news. Have you seen the video of the babies in pods stacked? Like it's a baby stadium. I mean, the only thing missing.
In this video is a scoreboard, cheerleaders, the announcer baby number 7,254 has just flipped over and it's human-like pod goodness. I'm telling you, when I saw this video for the first time, I thought, oh God. Oh God. It's happening. but there's so much we don't know yet.
Can you please not? Incubate humans and go down that path until we understand the, like basic building blocks of our system and stuff like that. but sometimes, I'm so gullible. Here's the thing, it's not real That doesn't mean it won't be. Ecto Life is a future imagined by a producer and filmmaker with a background in molecular biology.
The video is going to confuse a lot of people because it's scarily real. You look at this in like the whole script and the the marketing, it's like, Oh, it reminds me of that show that's on Amazon, which you haven't seen it. It's, it's clever and well done called Upload. it reminds me of, of that kind of like tone, like atta life, your baby can be listening to a playlist of your own design, like just this creepy, creepy, creepy, video.
But we really have to pay attention. We're gonna link to it on our Instagram at Uterine Kind. Here's why we have to pay attention to it. This kind of stuff happens all the time. A new idea is, born and then it gets, it has the potential to make money, it gets rushed out into our society.
And then after it's out there, we're like, oh, maybe we should consider how this could go wrong, right? So we're trying, to not have that happen anymore, but it seems to happen.
This reminds me. Uber and I, I imagine that when Uber was conceived, there weren't any women at the table. Nobody who ever feared for their life in a taxi cab or, out walking at night on a street. Because if, if they were.
Protections for them against predatory behavior would've been part of Uber's first pitch deck. And it wasn't until. Girls and women were being killed and kidnapped in the backs of people's cars that Uber started to recognize like, oh, whoops. Right. So I've gotta ask, please, please, for the love of all things, health and wellbeing, if this is gonna happen.
I am begging. Have those who are capable of pregnancy at the table. Okay? Like no more building anything that impacts women and those who identify as women without first including them in the process. Like when are we gonna learn? We better start learning now because technology. Over the next five to 10 years is going to be off the charts in terms of the growth, the understandings, the, things that we're learning.
Today's ending on a high note, is an example of, the speed at which we are accomplishing tasks that are, Teaching us about science and helping us solve global problems, right? So we have to make sure , that everybody is represented at the table because our experiences, our individual experiences help shape better.
Offerings, whether those are products, services, therapeutics, diagnostics, surgical interventions, whatever it is, and that's how we have to be thinking, okay, I think we, we need to go in that direction. So, Ecto life probably gonna be part of our future. Good God. Hopefully not in the way they presented it in this video. lots of interesting things to think about. So check it out on our Instagram and just remember We need to get ahead of these organizations and ensure that there isn't a complete bro culture associated with them, so that we can have some, some healthy progress. That would be really amazing. So what are we gonna learn? Well, we're gonna learn right after this break because Dr. Jennifer Garrison is making sure that happens.
I'm excited to introduce you to someone you need to know and celebrate Dr. Jennifer Garrison. Dr. Garrison is an award-winning neuroscientist and an assistant professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and she also holds appointments in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California San F.
And the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. She is also a scientist, entrepreneur as the founder of the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality. At the Buck Institute in the Bay Area. This is a first of its kind center. It's a pioneering new movement. it is happening probably a few decades later than she would've wanted to see it happen.
Um, but it is wildly exciting. If menopause isn't a focus for you because of your age, don't tune. Understanding reproductive aging will impact our understanding of so many conditions that negatively affect the female body, but our overall human health and wellness. So Dr. Garrison will tell us about the need for the mission of the center, but I'd first like to begin with a frank assessment of what we don't know about the female system.
Thank you for making time to be with us today, Dr. Garrison.
Jennifer: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk here.
Carol: Excellent. So give it to us straight. How little do we know and why should we be making noise about the lack of equality and research of the female body compared to the male body?
Jennifer: Oh wow. . Well, um, that's a big question. women's health in general has been sidelined. As a niche sub-category of medicine for decades, it gets barely 1% of the research dollars and biopharma investments. but it's impacting really over half the global population. And a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of that funding has been applied to study reproductive longevity, which I would argue is maybe the most important, but simultaneously the most neglected topic affecting women's health and wellbeing.
Reproductive aging, you know, the fact that women go through this reproductive decline in the middle of their lives. This is gonna impact every single female on the planet who is lucky enough to make it to midlife. ovaries are aging at about twice the rate of other organs in a female body. And as women are globally delaying childbearing, this obviously can lead to things like infertility and miscarriages and birth defects.
I think most people are familiar with those consequences of reproductive aging in women. But at the same time, ovaries are making hormones that are absolutely essential for overall. so beyond reproduction, the end of fertility makes a woman's body age faster. So menopause, which is, when ovaries stop working, it really dramatically increases the risk of things like cognitive decline, stroke, heart disease, insomnia, and depression, osteoporosis, weight gain, arthritis.
so those are profound consequences. but we don't understand even the most basic things about it. What sets it in motion, why it varies so much between individuals or why it happens at all
Carol: Right, because it doesn't happen in all species.
Jennifer: No, no. Human females are very odd in the animal kingdom. There are US and a few species of whale who go through menopause
Carol: do we understand why that, why It's that, I would think maybe some people would expect that in chimpanzees there would be male menopause and, we would understand our connection there. But like how are we connected to whales?
Jennifer: Well, we don't know. Uh, we really don't know yet why, some species go through menopause and others don't. Certainly reproductive decline. So the ability to reproduce, to have offspring goes down with age. that's, consequence of a lot of different factors.
It takes a lot of different organ systems functioning together to have a healthy, offspring. but menopause, which is, a cessation of menstruation and also at the same time, uh, basically the end of, the supply of eggs. That only happens in a couple of species. so we don't understand why that is. And the evolutionary questions around this are really fascinating and I will say that is not my area of expertise.
but there, there's some really fascinating work going on around trying to understand why, just these few species go through menopause. And I think if we could figure out what the differences are there that. Put us a long way towards understanding what causes this reproductive decline. And that's really, that's really what our goal is here, is to understand what the causal factor or factors or cues or timers we don't even know what they are. Or constellation of cues and timers that so reproducible tell a woman's ovaries to start to decline when she's in her late twenties early.
Carol: That's when it begins.
Jennifer: Yeah. It, it starts so early. When I talk to women who are in their early twenties, what I say to them is, you are at your the peak of your fertility right now. and I, I say that not to encourage them to have babies young, but rather just to help them understand, to be armed with knowledge, to understand everything they need to know about their physiology, so that they can make informed decision.
Carol: Yeah, that's what I, one of the things. About the mission of the Center for Reproductive Aging and Equality, that it's, it's not solely focused or, correct me if I'm wrong, the priority here is not exclusively to extend the period of time for a person to be able to get pregnant. that it. A broader look at the overall female system and how our reproductive system impacts our overall health and to connect the dots between these conditions that, we experience, that we've all heard of, From cardiovascular complications to dementia, to, conditions like P C O S, to connect the dots and understand our female system more. So I think that's very interesting that you're not restricting your focus too. Let's make it so you can get pregnant at 70,
you know,
Jennifer: That is not the goal, although that is definitely what a lot of news outlets pick up on. that is not the goal. it takes, like I said, it takes a lot more than just functioning ovaries to get pregnant. You need to have, um, a lot of other things in line I think it would be quite difficult to.
Make things possible like that. But, what we're talking about is really, allowing women to choose when and if they have biological children, and giving them more, more agency over that choice. And at the same time, giving them true equality in the sense that they can experience.
Healthy longevity the same way that men do. you know, when we talk about reproductive aging or aging in the reproductive system, it certainly does also happen in men. the difference between reproductive aging and men and women is that in men, , it's pretty much synced up with aging in the rest of their bodies.
And so things likee that happens much later in a man's life. there aren't these dramatic negative health consequences, that come with menopause. There's nothing like that in men. So ideally what we'd like to do is just sync up aging in the reproductive system in women with aging in the rest of their bodies. To put it succinctly,
Carol: Yeah. Whi, which then you can see the, impact of that. It's really eye-opening when you can connect thet. On all these things. So by syncing up, aging and reproductive longevity, what then might we realize in terms of health benefits from
that?
Jennifer: Well, so there's a, a lot of different things. the biggest one for me is, is really cardiovascular disease risk. and stroke On average, a woman's risk of a cardiovascular event goes up fourfold after menopause. So before menopause, cardiovascular disease is somewhere down the list of killers of women.
But after menopause, it's a number one killer of women. And it's really, it's really a dramatic change.
Carol: Tell us about your mission with the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality.
Jennifer: Yeah. Our mission truly is, just to facilitate and also to accelerate. We wanna make things move faster. Translating. These basic scientific discoveries in the lab into useful products and therapies that are gonna positively impact women's lives. So that's a, very generic and sort of global vision.
and practically speaking, what we've been doing for the last, almost three years that we've been, working is that we're, trying to. engage an army of creative scientists and visionaries to work collaboratively on this question of what causes ovaries to age prematurely. And, prior to a few years ago, there really wasn't a lot of work going on in this space.
And there's a lot of reasons for that that we can get into later. but what we're trying to do is to get people to work collaboratively on this problem. To, in essence, we wanna build the field. So we use the consortium as an innovation hub and we're supporting, Research we're supporting, connections, networks between people who might not normally work together.
so primarily what we've been doing so far is giving away research grants to scientists all over the world. and we gave away our first grants in 2020 to 23 scientists. we actually just, closed the application window for the second round of grants. and so we're giving away about 7 million each
Carol: Oh gosh.
Jennifer: And we plan to do this as long as we can, raise the money. We plan to do this every year going forward. And I will say that our partner in this, you know, the seed funder for both the consortium and the center that we have at the Buck Institute is the BIA Echo Foundation, and they've been really amazing partners in recognizing this as such an important place to put resources.
And at this moment, we're putting all of our resources. Into funding the research because there just simply isn't a lot of IP in this space. You know, you, you introduced me as an entrepreneur, scientist, and absolutely, I want as fast as possible. I want these, solutions that will really, transform women's lives. But at this moment we just have to answer some basic questions.
Carol: Right. We need a foundation. We have no, like I've, listened to, you talked before and you've talked about like band-aids and, therapies that are band-aids and kind of this, assumptive, diagnosed. Process that goes on when somebody walks into a doctor's office and says, you know, my periods are really bad or I'm not feeling good, and it's like, well, try this, try that.
and the research that you're doing is going to move us out of that way of. treating common chronic conditions that are super debilitating for women. so you have to take that step. It would be so great if you could just launch forward and take all the decades of research that we have about the female system with you, but we don't have that.
And we've talked about this before on this podcast, but I think it, it's really important to hear it from people like, that see it every day and recognize it. I'm gonna say it just the way it's naturally comes outta my mouth, which is women have been shafted. we just, we do not like it.
It's like this, perfect storm of a lack of curiosity, a lack of care, and then a lack of cash. and all of those factors result in the primitive way that we are treated in healthcare settings. Is that
accurate?
Jennifer: Yeah, I, I mean, yes, you're preaching to the choir here. I really do think that the way that we treat women's health is, just so backwards and there's a lot of room for improvement, that's for sure. , we're funding the research, but then we're also trying to build resources To help those scientists, but also to, bring them together with the clinicians and the physicians who treat patients. Because so often in science, people exist in these echo chambers where they talk to each other, but they don't. , really talk to people outside of either their fields, or their, profession.
And this is an area where we really need the clinicians and the basic researchers to communicate with each other. and more than that, we wanna try to, incentivize all the stakeholders to, participate. So that means people in biotech and pharma, funders, people like you who can help.
really broadcast this message, to the rest of the world. So those are the kinds of things we're trying to do.
Carol: So you mentioned that you, distributed your first grants in 2020. Can you talk to us a little bit about what, seemed to be the hotspots in the research and the things that you're really excited learning more about?
Jennifer: Oh my gosh. There's so many things. partly because that this field is, wide open because there hasn't been a lot of, research done in this space. we funded grants across the spectrum because like I said, we don't know where along a woman's life trajectory, those causal factors or cues happen that.
Trigger this early, aging and ovaries. So we were really very generous about what we decided was, relevant. And I think the projects that we funded are just spectacularly interesting. So things like, finding new biomarkers, right? One of the things that is just ridiculous , I think in women's health is that the diagnostic tools we have, that are available, in terms of what we can do to tell a woman either where she is in her reproductive span or what's wrong when you know something goes wrong, are really rudimentary.
And I think there's a huge, huge opportunity for, finding better diagnostics and better biomarkers. So we funded some grants in that space. We funded some grants to try to find better animal models. In menopause, we don't really, because it's just humans and whales,
Carol: yeah, I don't think we'd get very far. We'd probably all be in jail if we were, if we were doing that kind of research.
Jennifer: Yeah. So you know, there's a huge opportunity to come up with better animal models and in vitro models of menopause that would give us a better handle on how to study these things. we funded, research around understanding things like microbiome, and estrogen metabolism.
I think a lot of women don't, realize. The circulating levels of estrogen in their body are regulated by, by their gut microbiome. like I have to actually produce the estrogen myself. But once it's there, the amount of it that's in my blood is really determined by my gut microbiome. And we don't really know much about how that works.
Carol: and it's certainly not anything that's really widely discussed with people who, who are, you know, having those bad period symptoms that, that never really roll into a diagnosis. nobody's telling us that,
Jennifer: Well, because we don't know anything about it. , like, we just genuinely, like, there's so much, unknown here. there are questions like, , why is the age of menopause so variable? Right? This is something that, it's a really multivariate signature of human health. there's a huge window of variability in terms of, when you go through menopause versus when I go through menopause.
it spans over 10 years that, Window of normal. And if we could understand why things are so variable at the level of the individual, I think that would give us a big clue about what was happening. in general, questions like why is a woman's reproductive span, the age at which she goes through menopause, why is that linked to her overall lifespan?
that's a fascinating question that again, if we could understand that. we would be a lot further towards understanding what
causes ovarian aging.
Carol: had mentioned, before going back to this conversation around why. Where we are right now in our, overall lack of understanding. I mean, it's, equal parts frustrating and absolutely thrilling because we get to be the people that watch you all with your super amazing brains go and discover these answers.
And so it's like, Exciting, albeit frustrating. but what happened?, like given the fact that our, our systems, the male to female system, they're both different, So given that understanding, why wasn't there this curiosity like, wow, we should really understand the system that's responsible for, you know, ultimately keeping the species going, but also, because it's unique to the male system, we should get in there and understand that because the learnings that we would have would impact our overall human health. Like, why did that never happen?
Jennifer: Yeah. Well, two things that, that pop up, that I think are the most relevant here. One is that. Unfortunately, the ovulatory cycles that are so important for female reproductive functioning have been considered confounding variables in research. So, the male body has been biology's baseline because it was considered more predictable than the female counterpart, less messy,
less noisy. it turns out that that noise is really important.
Carol: Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer: Um, but that has really meant that, Physiology of the female sex has been understudied and purposefully excluded actually from research for decades. It wasn't until, 2016 that the n I H required its grant recipients to include both sexes in
animal studies. So that was, you know, just barely five years ago, six years ago. so we've had this, yeah, over-reliance on male models. and what it meant was that before they made that rule that 80% of all research was done in male animals. So We're just lacking the data sets. We, you know, we've had this long tradition of using male bodies and it's left a gaping hole in our knowledge.
If we had been studying female physiology as much as we'd been studying male physiology, , we would know so much more about human biology. it's really a shame, but, things are changing. So that's, I don't want this to be a, a negative, message I would say there's a huge sea change in not just the way that we're thinking about research, but in public perception.
and all of the societal taboos that have existed around talking about female biology, things like periods and, pregnancy and menopause, those taboos are being shattered. And so , it's really an exciting time I would say.
Carol: Yeah, absolutely. And that,
that's why the work that you're doing and the way that you're organizing this is so important because if it was in the sense that it's global and that. Your inspiring curiosity in researchers around the world, and it's so much easier to push a boulder uphill when you have a lot of people helping you do it.
I, I really applaud the sort of overall, , structure of the mission because it feels so solid. It feels like, something that will be around for decades and decades and decades and, I'm just so, so grateful. It will.
Jennifer: Oh, thanks. I hope so. I would add one more thing, in terms of why we don't know as much as we should about, about female physiology, and that is that, of the research that has been done over the last 40 years or so, a lot of the research funding has gone towards, towards assisted reproductive technologies, when we're talking about reproductive health and, I think that.
I V F is a, a really important bandaid, but it is just a bandaid. And, you know, ideally what we'd like to do is to put I VF out of business,
Carol: Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, the, when you think about things like that, like, that reminds me of like my, personal passion to put the petrochemical industry outta business. Like if, if I could do that in my lifetime. I want a tiara for that. it would be so satisfying. but what, ends up happening is that other industries or other, opportunities present themselves. And who knows where we could go or we could just keep doing the same sort of rudimentary, stuff that we're doing now. So, it's like, you know, putting one, segment out of business opens up an opportunity for so much more that, that we can be doing.
When you are conducting this research, one of the things, I wanna ask if this is accurate. Like, I imagine that while the research is, is very focused, that the results of the research will have a broad impact on our understanding of the body overall. Right? Like there will be, okay.
So have you focused on studies that look at the brain ovarian uterus connection, and, and I'm asking this from the position of, like being a little nervous when people celebrate hysterectomies for, benign causes when there's other treatments out there, because I've, I feel like we don't know enough about what happens when you remove the uter. And what we do know suggests that it creates some problems that seem to be in alignment with the problems people experience after menopause. so are you focused on that at all? And, and have you had any learnings since you started specific to that?
Jennifer: Yeah. let me just make the disclaimer that I'm a PhD
scientist and not an md, so I don't give medical advice, but I will tell you my opinion.
I am a neuroscientist by training and so, in my own lab we really do focus on the role of the brain in reproductive function. and so I am also deeply biased, just to be clear, , um,
Carol: Got
Jennifer: uh, but I really do think that the brain. It's the key player for reproductive success, right? Like fertility. ultimately a woman's ability to conceive depends on this conversation that happens between the brain, the ovaries, and the uterus, as you mentioned.
And so in my lab, what we focus on is trying to understand that conversation. the brain is control. every aspect of female reproduction, but it's not ruling as a dictator. It's really constantly listening to and integrating feedback. so there's this like dynamic ongoing chemical conversation between the brain and the reproductive organs, and that's what determines, what happens in the system.
And so that language of communication is mediated by these chemicals that are traveling back and forth in the circulation. Brain, the ovaries of the uterus, and we know what some of those key words are in the conversation, which are things like steroid hormones that you've heard of before. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, D H E A.
neuropeptides like oxytocin or G N R H. But I would say that the full lexicon has yet to be defined. So a lot of what we focus on in my lab is trying to understand what those chemical signals are that are being used, and how they change with age, and across the cycle because I, I think that there's some real opportunity there for therapeutic intervention now.
I totally agree with what you said about, the kind of, and this comes back to the sort of primitive way that we approach some aspects of women's health. And that is to, , to do a hysterectomy on a healthy uterus when maybe there are other options available?
I think that in less an organ is diseased. You should probably try to hang onto it.
Carol: Yeah,
Jennifer: you know,
Carol: I, it seems practical.
I mean,
Jennifer: just, that's probably there for a reason. And, uh, beyond just, uh, you know, harvesting ho hosting a pregnancy, yeah, I, I really do think that, there's a lot we don't understand yet about, what the functions of these organs.
Beyond pregnancy. and so when there's the option to keep
it I would, if it were me, I would
certainly try to keep it.
Carol: Yeah. And that's, where, like when you said beyond pregnancy, I think that's part of, We've experienced that's frustrating cuz it's like ick it gives me the ick. When someone calls the uterus a womb, I'm like, ah, god, no, it's more than that.
You know, like, please don't do that. Like, you don't have a cute name for the appendix or for the kidney. You know, like, can you stop it with this it's an organ. Let's treat it like one and try to understand it better.
Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. I, I totally agree. I, and I will say I'm not an expert on uterine biology. This is not my area of expertise. there's a lot of ongoing research in this space too, so I stay tuned.
Carol: Yeah, for sure. so as you're conducting your researcher in the conversations that you're having with the teams that you have around the world, are you talking about the exposure to chemicals in our environment, toxins in our environment, and their effects on our reproductive aging and our systems?
Jennifer: Yeah. So, we did fund some research in this space as well, and there are some amazing research groups, not mine, that are working on this question. And there's no, question that ovarian aging can be accelerated by a lot of different factors. genetics, obesity. , definitely environmental factors.
the interplay I would say between reproductive aging and, those . Environmental factors is crucial. So this is ongoing work. and I think you know, if you step back and just consider. The egg, right? The egg is mostly not changing. I mean, of course it's, it's quiescent for decades before it might be recruited, to grow and to be ovulated, but in the meantime it's mostly just sitting there
And what's changing is the environment around it. And that can mean, the local microenvironments
could mean the sort of, the more macro environments, the ovary. Or even the bigger environment of a woman's body as a whole and then of course that is dramatically impacted by the environment outside of the body.
So, all of those questions are really important.
Carol: do you think that, it's going to take the answers that come from that research to have a positive impact on the way we, manage and regulate chemicals in our, variety of industries, whether it's food or, the growing of food, things like that. Like Will those answers have an impact on it, or are those, industries just too big and powerful and full of cash to be able to, you know, really kind of change their direction?
Jennifer: Well, I hope not. I mean,
I can't predict the future, but I think that, if we find solid scientific evidence that, that some particular chemical or pollutant is, is having a dramatic impact on a woman's reproductive longevity, I imagine that women won't stay silent,
Carol: I'm so glad you said that because, you know, we do have, science that says that endocrine disrupting
chemicals, specifically those chemicals that are in hair straightening
products have a causal effect. It's not just that they're associated, but that they directly cause cervical cancer.
And so, what you're saying is that it's not enough for the science to bring forward the data. We have to demand change. and that's what one of the things that I really love about what you're doing is because you talk about bringing scientists together with clinicians and then clinicians are often the interface with the patients.
And so if we can get these three groups of people. To apply pressure to affect change in industry, then we will be able to improve our health. it is gonna take all of us to speak out. Right? It's not something like, you all can't go to the f d A and say, okay, you have to outlaw this chemical because it's causing cancer.
you don't have that power. Right? I wish you did
Jennifer: Well, I mean, we, we can try. But
yes, I think, um, public outcry is usually a really, a really good tool. and yeah, that is exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to, number one, reframe the narrative in terms of what the research is, and number two to really have a paradigm shift in.
how we make this work, right? Like sort of novel, innovative, operating ideas that are gonna incentivize this collaboration and conversation between these stakeholders who wouldn't normally interact, right? So that means molding the way that scientists and clinicians work together, but also industry and academic partners.
Because I really think that if we can move beyond these traditional siloed models that we can. Potentially push things so that we can realize opportunities and partnerships earlier. And the goal really just to, like I said at the beginning, is to accelerate the discovery towards new products and diagnostics and therapies.
so yeah, that's what we're trying to do. And I also, I really do think we're in a historic moment. the conversation is changing. I think women are pushing. Much more open and honest conversation that will hopefully normalize talking about not just reproductive health and infertility, but menopause.
Carol: Yeah. Agreed. That's why it's a, it's a, an exciting time. So can you take us. The road five to 10 years and tell us about what you feel we may understand and learn about the female system, and then what might the benefits of that understanding be for us and for those who are younger than me.
Jennifer: Yeah. . Yes. well, I think five to 10 years, I really, I genuinely hope that we can move away from this, anthem of I V F, honestly, I v f can fill a practical gap, but There's a really harmful view right now that IVF is, and egg freezing is somehow a cure-all for this generation of women, and I hope that we can focus more on answering these fundamental questions about women's health rather than thinking about assisted reproductive.
Technology as some kind of panacea for women because it's not, it's such a false, hope there that, that's gonna be the thing that helps everyone. but beyond that, I think that in the next five to 10 years, I hope that some of the targets that we're seeing come out of the research, will serve as a foundation for things like systematic, drug development and screening.
That will, I hope, leads therapeutic interventions. And what I mean by that is, you know, we want to extend female reproductive span. We want to. Change the number of healthy eggs that a woman has when she's 40, even if it's only by one or 2%, that would push, that would push a woman's reproductive span by several years and that would have a profound impact on half the population.
that is a little bit of a moonshot, but I think it's achievable. And I think right now we know there are some promising cellular targets on the horizon. things like, targeting inflammation and fibrosis, targeting mitochondrial function, and all of that knowledge is, really gonna come back to not just help us empower aspects.
Women's wellbeing, but to gain some knowledge that's more fundamental, right? So if we can understand what causes ovarian aging, this, accelerated aging
that we see in ovaries that, will give us some clues about what causes aging in the rest of the body. So this is really a vision for catalyzing progress and extending female reproductive longevity that's gonna translate into gains in the healthy longevity space. so ,that's the, the, that's the moonshot goal.
Carol: And, I think that's the, most important thing to understand out of what you're doing. And, for people who are in their twenties and, thirties and, and maybe to some degree they're thinking about menopause or they're thinking about the ability to have children later in life. But, what I'm excited about having them think is, how is my body overall impacted by this unique system that I have that relies on, the communications and hormones and all of these things in this cyclical wild female system. it's not so much just that, to get pregnant, it's that there is an aging issue here and the aging issue leads to things like cardiovascular disease, much earlier in life than a man would experience it and that's why I love so much the word equality in the name of your organization because It speaks to the right of all humans to have equal access to quality of life and this is like a long, long-winded way of saying, That if our nose is pointed into the direction of I V F, it's completely ignoring our overall health and wellness, and it's just looking at us as baby makers.
And I know that that is important for people who wanna have a family and the ability to be able to do that, especially if you're challenged. If you're having challenges getting pregnant, but a lot of times causes like, fibroids or P C O S or something remain undiagnosed while infertility is happening and, all of that mess is because of this lack of foundational knowledge that is understood across the care.
Continuum and that we, broaden our understanding of what quality of life means. It doesn't just mean the ability to get pregnant and deliver a healthy child. It actually means the ability to live a healthy life beyond 50
Jennifer: Yeah, and they're, they're inextricably linked, these two things, right? But it is really important to acknowledge that health piece. and I, I mean, we put equality in the name of our consortium and also in the name of the center at the Buck because i, I think there's no question that, the fact that women go through this reproductive decline in the middle of their lives is it influences every aspect of your life.
from a societal point of view, it, it, It truly does. Come down to an issue of equality. Men don't have to contend with those negative health consequences of menopause. They don't have to contend with the negative, consequences of, infertility and, uh, reproductive aging, in the middle of their lives. They don't have to contend with the vasomotor symptoms of perimenopause that happen to so many women. right when they're at the pinnacle of their careers. . for me, it truly is, it is an issue of equality and I think that, whether or not you wanna have biological children, like health and reproductive longevity are inextricably linked.
Carol: Can't separate them. Well, I thank you for making this your mission because if it wasn't for you making this your mission, we would , well actually we wouldn't even be thinking probably about, how we can understand our systems better and then, live better, healthier lives. As a result, we'd still be thinking about, managing symptoms, you know, not really diagnosing root causes of issues because there's no reason, and just this like kind of screwy way of, treating these really problematic conditions. And so I'm just so grateful. And I wanna make sure that you're supported in that endeavor.
So how can we support you and your teams, and how can we follow your
Jennifer: Oh, thank you. well, we have a website and I will say that it's not, it's definitely not ready yet, but we're building out a, knowledge hub, which is meant to be a safe space for women, but also for clinicians and scientists to come to get information about female health, about, the research that's going on around it.
and I think increased public engagement in supporting the science and the scientists could really help the field. so as much as, the people who are listening can become our ambassadors, I really do think that everyone should be talking about this. as you mentioned before, it's so important for literally everyone on the planet, young women.
should care because, you know, long before menopause, there's a strong connection with overall health, if you have underlying dysfunction and reproductive organs, even in young women, that can profoundly affect other parts of the body. and. older women, even if they've already gone through menopause, should care because this research is hopefully gonna point the way towards alleviating some of those negative health consequences that they may be experiencing.
And men should care not just because there's a, an incredible economic component to this, right? Menopause costs the world, an incredible amount, but because. You know, women who go through menopause later, live longer, but their brothers also tend to live longer. So there's a genetic component here that transcends, biological sex that's important to understand. I would love it if the people who are listening would, join our network. , you know, we want to include anyone who has an interest in this space. You don't have to be a scientist or clinician. And in fact, we want ambassadors to talk about what we're doing to spread the word. We wrote a white paper. and we're always trying to raise philanthropic money. So the more money that I can raise, the more grant money we can give away, it's, it's a very simple equation.
Carol: Yeah. And we have to do it because it's not, gonna get handed to us by other organizations who we've talked before on this show about the national institute of Health and the meager amounts of money that ultimately get funneled towards studying women's health, reproductive health, menopause. I mean,
Jennifer: yes.
Carol: like six bucks last year,
Jennifer: It's not much. It's, not much. It's, It's, getting better. But yeah, we definitely need to expand funding for research and we are trying, you know, we have a lot of different, network building components for building out this ecosystem. And one of them is advocacy and. lobbying different funding bodies to make this a priority, but those kinds of things take time. things are changing but not fast enough.
Carol: So the best website for people to check. would be.
Jennifer: gcr e.org. and you can also, if you're interested, there's a center at the Buck Institute, which is focused on studying this. so we have a, small group of researchers there who are on the ground working on it. So if you're in the Bay Area, you can certainly come and visit us.
Carol: which is, an amazing thing to do because the Buck is is a phenomenal place. in Marin County right off the 1 0 1 and, uh, the work that they're doing overall, not just the work that Dr. Garrison's team is doing, but overall what the Buck is doing is fantastic. So wholeheartedly support that. And how about, so are you on social media,
Jennifer: Yeah. we're on Twitter. although twitter , who knows how much longer that'll last. I think so, um, I'm at jen Garrison with two Ns and, we have at g Sierra E one. Um, we're also on LinkedIn , we're building out a network communication site on the website, which would have a discussion forum for people to join. You know, we're right at the beginning, so it's an exciting time.
Carol: Absolutely. So get involved. We will share all of these details on at Uterine Kind on Instagram, and thank you. Thank you, Dr. Garrison, for not just spending this time with us today, but for also all the content that you create. We'll link to some of the videos that you guys can. Watch now that are super insightful and exciting and it, it really does lift your spirit overall to know that, people are paying attention. Like really smart, really dedicated people are paying attention and we're gonna benefit from that. So we need to support them.
Jennifer: Thank you so much. This was a really fun conversation.
We'll be right back with ending on a high note. Fusion baby . did any of us really even know what that meant? Like fusion? You hear that word and you think like, yeah, cool. Right? But what, and how, and what does it mean? Well, we'll start with with the what? Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
and the people who work there who must be just ludicrously intelligent, were able to produce a net energy gain through fusion. So what that means is that they were able to produce through fusion energy that didn't. Require more energy than it ultimately threw off, right? So it was a, a net gain. You used X amount of energy and in return you got more energy than you used.
And that's how we can create energy without having to do things like burn coal. that's one of the things that down the road could be five years, could be 10 years, could be 30 years. I don't think that we can look at past performance as indicators, because I feel like our technology advancements are going to accelerate and we're gonna learn more faster.
But at some point in the future, The real world use of fusion will directly impact our energy production. That's one aspect there. There will be multiple things that will be impacted from an ability to create clean energy in this fashion. But one of the things is that power plants can run on minimal amounts of lithium instead of massive amounts of coal.
So a power. would use up about 9,000 tons of coal to produce a megawatt of power. . That's a ton of coal. Uh, too much coal, right? And it's also very dirty. , alternatively with fusion energy, you only need about two to four kilograms of lithium and one kilogram equals just over two pounds. So instead of 9,000 tons of coal, we would be looking at four to eight pounds of lithium that.
even if we don't fully understand what all that means, that's one thing that we can understand, which is that's a heck of a lot less material required to produce the same amount of energy, and it's not dirty, right? It's not spewing toxins and pollutants out into our atmosphere that are ultimately negatively impacting our individual bodies.
So super exciting. this is not just about like ending our reliance on fossil fuels, although that is super important. It's, it's about science and progress and achieving first of its kind discoveries, that is where we're at today in so many aspects of our society, and there can be a ton of negative stuff going out in the world.
Personally, I'm working toward pointing my nose in the direction of science and focusing on discoveries because it's like your greatest reality TV show. , you know, in my opinion, it's like every week, you can tune in and pick a, an aspect of science and learn about something that we didn't know.
Weeks ago and months ago, and years ago. And that's thrilling and it's way more uplifting and inspiring and, ultimately healthy for us to be focusing on these things. So yay, fusion. Very cool. Very excited to see how it's applied. And I really hope, again, that there are a lot of compassionate, empathic people at the table so that we don't apply this, you know, like exclusively to the defense industry.
And you know, Batter batter, batter weapons, but that we actually just start, you know, cleaning up some of the problems that we have on planet Earth right now. So that's, that's super important. I wanna thank Dr. Jennifer Garrison for spending time with us today. I hope that we will hear more from her and her teams, uh, about their discoveries and also, all of us working closer together to try to positively impact our understanding of, and the experience of, our understanding of female health and the experience of receiving care for our conditions that primarily impact those formeth, the U.
Thank you, angel and Maryelle for producing the podcast and the whole team at Uterine Kind. We're all passionate about improving the quality of life for those living with chronic conditions, and we are just two weeks away from the launch of you by Uterine Kind, our app that's going to help you monitor and measure your symptoms and learn about your systems so that you can better advocate for wellness and have a better care experience. So we're, we're really excited. It's very busy. there are no weekends right now. There's just lots of fun and, lots of of hard work going on behind the scenes to deliver a tool to you that makes your life better. So I just want you to know you're not alone.
Like there are people like Dr. Garrison and, and the team at Uterine Kind and other research laboratories, and many of the people that we've interviewed on this show, they're all working to help you. And they may not be in the doctor's office when you go in to have an appointment, but trust me, like every day around the world, they're working to ensure that your experience with gynecologic care is.
So you're not alone and you deserve that. You absolutely deserve that. So we will be back next week with another episode of Hello Uterus. Until then, be well, be cool, be kind.