Description

As a women's health expert and founder of Health Enhancement Renewal for Women, Inc., Elizabeth Lee Vliet is taking a different, more direct approach to Women's Health issues.

Transcript

Ivy Hartman: Welcome to SBTV.com, I’m Ivy Hartman and joining me now is Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet. Doctor Vliet is an expert in women’s health issues and talk a little bit more about some of the issues that are at stake right now facing women and small business owners who are women. Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Well, I thin it’s really critical Ivy, women have very fragmented healthcare and each body parts gets take into a different specialist and there’s no integration for with the way that our unique hormones affect everything about health. My field is the overlooked hormone connections that women know and doctors ignore. It’s like that was the title of first book "Screaming to be heard: Hormonal Connections Women Suspect, and Doctors." Still Ignore because doctors will tell you that your headaches are not related to your hormones even though you observed that they come every month with your menstrual period. So the neurologist treats the headache but doesn’t do the hormones. The gynecologist treats your pelvis and your reproductive organs and does your Pap smear but doesn’t do headaches and so the hormonally triggered migraine doesn’t get addressed. Ivy Hartman: Now, you are a practicing physician. Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Absolutely. I see patients’ everyday. I also in my spare time write books. I’ve written six books in women’s health. The Screaming to be Heard: Women, Weights and Hormones is my overly stupid, the Savvy Woman’s Guide to Testosterone, the Savvy woman’s Guide to PCOS and the new one coming out is the Savvy Woman’s Guide to Weight Loss. All the overlooked hormone connections that women are not taught. Ivy Hartman: I think here at the NAWBO conference political action and pubic policy is a big part of what NAWBO’s about and we’re talking a lot about with the election this year, a lot about health issues and health reform. Where do you think women’s health issues fall into that? Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Well, I think there’s a lot of talk about women’s health issues but I think that they’re missing the key points. Number one, I think more women need access to preventive health care options, more women need access to services, to properly evaluate issues like obesity, rather than just the limited focus on breast cancer and I also think women need more ability to direct the spending of their healthcare dollars because quite frankly if we go with the national Medicare type payer system I think women’s health will be even less well served than it is now. Because we’re already seeing problems with the fact that women are being put on an antidepressants and mood stabilizers like their candy instead of properly evaluating a lot of the endocrine issues. Hyperthyroidism is grossly under diagnosed in women. The ovarian hormones are never checked and yet they affect 400 functions in a woman’s body. And these are huge issues. The whole issues of early pre-diabetes insulin resistance, doctors just tell patients eat less and exercise more. They never check the insulin and glucose and the way that all of these things play a role is huge. Ivy Hartman: Doctor Vliet is also a public speaker, well-covered accomplished pubic speaker at that. What are some of the reactions you get from your colleagues in the medical field about some of the instances you’re talking out when you say doctors are doing this and you are a— Elizabeth Lee Vliet: And I am a physician. Ivy Hartman: Exactly! Were there reaction from your colleagues and then also what are some of the reactions of some of the women that you’re speaking to? Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Well, it’s fascinating. I’ve given talks to audiences of 1,200 women and they’re sitting there going “Oh, my God! Yes, that’s right! I’ve been saying this for all these years, oh my God!” And you know the audiences of women get it faster than medical audiences many times but then the limitation is they understand what I’m saying and they go and ask their doctors and then their doctors “Oh, no we can’t do that!” Well, that’s the felony. First of all, the fertility industry in United States and the world is based upon checking women’s ovarian hormones where they couldn’t get women pregnant. Well, like here we use the same test to check women who are having other problems since they’re very common sense approach. And yet it’s not being done. Now when I speak to medical audiences, they’ve not done lots of programs for physicians and nurse practitioners and psychologist and psychiatrist around the country and you know it’s fascinating to watch the audiences face faceless because I can look at the audience and know, I can see the light bulb go on in physician’s faces when I’m pointing out these things and they are always like “Oh, my gosh, you’re right! Nobody ever put it that way before, nobody talks about this!” And then I’ll have others sitting they’re kind of looking skeptical. Medicine is very slow to change. The studies have shown that it takes about 17 years for new research to filter down to the practicing physician and I go to the international conferences and I’m bringing the cutting edge research on what’s happening in the endocrine field and doctors here are less open to these ideas then I think the consumers are. And so I may again in terms of women’s health and political action, I think we need to have a larger grassroots effort to have women drive the change to get these issues brought into greater awareness in primary care settings. Ivy Hartman: I’m really glad you said that because I thought what is the answer as for me as a patient and as a woman to solve some of these concerns I have as a patient but also for other women out there, you know certainly it’s not necessarily finding another women physician. They may not share this thing to us the way as you do and so what is the solution. Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Well, that you’re right IVY. First of all sometimes women physicians have been trying it in the same model can be less accepting than the men, least the male physicians will say “Well, I don’t live in a woman’s body, so maybe you’re right!” Women who haven‘t had these problems can be less accepting than men. So that’s one thing. Second thing is I want to use an analogy and this is probably why I started the foundation for a grassroots effort on these issues but if we think about one woman started mothers against drunk driving and look at what the incredible impact she had by saying “I might just tell him I’m not going to take this anymore!” And this is what we need to do. I’m willing to lead the charge and we need grassroots efforts of women who are savvy, who don’t want just sound buys for their health, who want to know the good science, who want to be proactive, be in-charge and that’s why I write my books, is to get the word out, make it available to more women that’s why my website is more educational, I’m not selling products because I’m trying to get women to see you can learn this, you can advocate with your doctor and you can ask for these options and you can make a difference. Ivy Hartman: It’s nice to know that there’s a professional in the field on our side. Dr. Vliet thanks for the information you’ve given us today. We know that we can get information from your books but also we’d like your website address so that we can check out. Elizabeth Lee Vliet: Yes, its www.herplace.com and I have lots of educational materials there that are free and I also have our archived radio shows on woman’s health topics. So please tune in and listen and call in to the ask questions and take charge of your health. Be savvy, be healthy, and have balance hormones. Ivy Hartman: Anyway you’re right here on SBTV.com where small business is our only business.