“Looking Back on Three Years of Podcasting”

Hey, welcome to the “Healthful Woman Podcast.” Today’s April 10th, 2023. As you heard last week, we just celebrated our three year anniversary of this podcast. So, for today’s podcast, I’m gonna go solo, and do a podcast on “Looking Back on Three Years of Podcasting.” At the end of the podcast, I say all of my thank-yous, but, spoiler alert, my last and biggest thank-you is to you, the listeners. Thanks for listening. All right. Enjoy today’s podcast. Have a great week. We’ll see you again next Monday, as we start our fourth year of the “Healthful Woman Podcast.”

Welcome to today’s episode of “Healthful Woman,” a podcast designed to explore topics in women’s health at all stages of life. I’m your host, Dr. Nathan Fox, an OB-GYN and maternal fetal medicine specialist practicing in New York City. At “Healthful Woman,” I speak with leaders in the field to help you learn more about women’s health, pregnancy, and wellness.

All right, everyone. This is the special third anniversary edition of the “Healthful Woman Podcast.” I’m your host, Dr. Nathan Fox, Natie Fox, Nate, whatever you’d like to call me. And I’m gonna go solo today. So, it might be a little bit more choppy, and it’s not question answer, but basically, since we celebrated the third year anniversary, I thought it might be nice to do sort of a recap episode as we enter our fourth year of podcasting. If our podcast were in high school, we’d now be a senior. You know, this is sort of like, you know, how Letterman used to have a recap show for whatever anniversary, or Saturday Night Live, or anything. And, you know, maybe to go over some of the highlights, some of our stats, some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years from podcasting, and then end with some thank-yous, and finally, the direction of the podcast moving forward. Nothing crazy’s gonna happen, but just sort of keep you up to date what’s happening.

So, in terms of our stats, so, the first podcast we dropped was April 2nd, 2020. So, three years ago. We had planned the podcast for several months before. And, you know, at the time, my thought process was, I’m a doctor, I’m a clinical practice, seeing a lot of patients, and I and my colleagues, we were doing a lot of medical research and publishing, which was awesome. But honestly, we’d spend so much time working on these publications and working on the research and data collection and writing. And when we get something published, it was great. I mean, it’s really rewarding. Some people find it impressive, but ultimately, the information was not getting to the people who I really cared about, which is all of you, either my own patients, or people out there looking for information.

You know, when you publish a scientific article and 100 doctors read it, you’re, like, really happy. But that’s not exactly what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to really get information to a lot of people. So, at the time, I was myself getting into podcasts, just starting to listen to them. Not really medical, you know, sports, movies, whatever, just for my commute, just for my downtime. And I was thinking, I wonder if there’s anything out there for pregnancy or for women’s health. And I looked around, and I really didn’t find a lot at the time that was great.

Some of the podcasts I found were basically run by laypeople, I would say, where they would interview doctors, and there’s some good information there, but when the person interviewing doesn’t really understand the medicine, they don’t know the follow-up questions to ask necessarily, so the information was a little bit, I would say, shallow. It really wasn’t that deep. And the ones that were run by doctors, I found to be horrifically boring, that I would not wanna listen to myself. So, I thought, you know, maybe we can do this in a different way, present interesting topics, try to make the content relevant, understandable, interesting, occasionally funny, let’s say, and see what we can do.

So, that was our plan, and, you know, I don’t know anything about podcasting. I have no idea what has to be done. I’m an idiot, right? So, you know, I have to speak to people and get the right equipment. And our marketing team, DLM from Grand Rapids, Michigan, you’ve heard me talk about them from time to time, essentially, we asked them, “Do you know anything about podcasting?” And they said yes. And we sort of worked together to develop the podcast. And the thought was, all right, we’re gonna drop it around April or May of 2020, and we had all these topics planned out on how we’re gonna do it. And then of course, COVID hit. And so, we really had to pivot and do a lot of podcasts on COVID, and we actually had to not have people come into the studio. It’s an office with equipment, and it’s whatever, but come into the studio, but do it over the phone, so we had to sort of learn how to do that.

But ultimately, the first podcast we dropped was April of 2020, which was just sort of, welcome to “Healthful Woman”. And then my first guest, that week, was Emily Oster, who’s been on several times before. And the first podcast was “Pregnancy in the Land of Corona.” Fascinating. If you go back to that podcast, which was, like, the first month of COVID, and we’ve talked about this in podcasts since, there was a lot we didn’t know, obviously, but that early on, there really was a lot that we did know. I do plan on doing a podcast sort of as a COVID recap, sort of things where we went right, things where we may have gone wrong, so look forward to that.

But that was our first podcast. And since then, we have dropped 290 podcasts, 217 of which were “Healthful Woman” podcasts, and then we did 63 “High-Risk Birth Stories,” which was a second podcast we started, and then used to drop once a week. And then recently, we stopped it as its own podcast, and now incorporated it into “Healthful Woman.” But that’s a lot of podcasts. It includes 14 mini-series. All of these podcasts are archived. They’re available on our website. They’re available on Apple. They’re available on Spotify. And we are still getting a lot of listens to the older episodes, which is great.

Again, the content, medicine does evolve, and obviously, content might be potentially outta date, but when that happens, we do try to update, if there’s something major that happens in medicine or in gynecology and obstetrics or whatever it is. So, the content up there is typically at least up-to-date enough, obviously. We have redropped 10 episodes over the past three years. Amazingly, our 10 re-drops are mostly by choice and not by necessity. It’s not like summer reruns, where I take off the summer and we just do reruns all summer. I’m doing this pretty much all year-round. Our team is doing this all year-round. Some of the re-drops either because it’s thematic related, like an older podcast, which would be related, so, let’s say mini-series we’re doing, or for example, every year around Yom Kippur, I’ve been dropping the “Jewish Fast Days Podcast,” but that’s really why we do it. We used to be twice a week, then we went twice a week with one “Healthful Woman” and one “High-Risk Birth Story.” And then we’re back to once a week, combining them, sort of, you know, every now and again a “Healthful Woman,” every now and again a “High-Risk Birth Story,” which I think seems like the right frequency. I think that’s not too much, not too few.

In case you’re curious, we’ve had a lot of guests. The most frequent guest on the podcast has been Stephanie Melka. She’s been on 15 times, not including re-drops. One more to come in the next couple months. After her, there’s a tie between Emily Oster and Tamar Goldwaser, a lot of our genetics podcasts. Then, Caroline Friedman’s been on seven times. Mike Silverstein and Jennifer Lam have been on six times. And then there’s been a bunch of people on five times and so forth. I’ve had the pleasure of having some of my family on the podcast. My wife, Mihal [SP] was on the podcast early on. My daughter Neely has been on the podcast. My daughter Kira has been on the podcast, and we re-dropped it. Actually, hers was the first podcast ever recorded, and then we dropped it months later.

Brother David was on the podcast recently. And of course, my father, Jack Fox, was on for two podcasts, which was a real treat for me. We’ve had, just for “Healthful Woman,” so, that is the 217 “Healthful Woman” podcasts, we’ve had close to 400,000 listens over the years, which is absolutely crazy to me. I didn’t think we’d get four listens over the years, and all four of them would probably be family members. I will say, as far as I know, the number one listener to the podcast is my wonderful wife, Mihal, who has listened to every single episode. For those of you out there who have matched her and have listened to every single episode, please let me know. God bless you. I will give you a mention on the air if you’ve done it as well. That’s awesome. Our top podcast in terms of total listens, the top one thus far has been our “COVID Vaccine Update” podcast, with Emily Oster, followed by, “I’m Pregnant. Now What?” with Stephanie Melka, followed by “Dos and Don’ts in Pregnancy,” with Emily Oster. Again, this is really more podcasts than ever thought we would drop, more listens than ever thought we would get, and it’s really been awesome, and I am really encouraged by all this.

Okay. Let’s get to some lessons that I’ve learned over the years from doing this podcast. And there’s some big ones. The first one is not something that I specifically learned from the podcast, but it’s something that the podcast really, really reinforced for me. And that is, it is very difficult to get good medical information. It is really nearly impossible for people out there to get good medical information. Why is that? Well, I think part of it has to do with the availability of information. I’m gonna call that “The Google,” even though obviously it’s not just Google. It’s the whole, you know, internet, whatever it might be, all the available information. Everything’s available to us at all times now.

Now, on the one hand, the Google has absolutely made life better. Number one, there is information available all over the place, at any time, anywhere, for any person, basically, with access to the internet. And that is terrific for patients, it’s terrific for doctors. It’s really a terrific idea, and it has totally opened up opportunities for us. And, it also allows people to do research on topics on their own time. Whether, again, that’s patients, whether that’s doctors, it gives people an opportunity to really, really look into topics on their own, which was very difficult or nearly impossible to do in the past. You’d have to go to, what, like, a library and take out a book, and then the book’s gonna be outdated. It was nearly impossible to do this, and now you can.

However, that same explosion of information has also made it worse. The first problem is that all the information is available, right? There’s no filter on it. And no, I’m not suggesting there should be filters on it. I’m really not. I’m kind of a freedom of speech kind of guy, but it’s just that it makes it very difficult, because most people are not really able to sift through all of the information and come to the right conclusions, right? For one, you have no idea if what you’re reading is legitimate or not, right? How do I know if what I’m reading is from a legit source, from a knowledgeable source, or is it some from, you know, quack out there who’s writing stuff that’s totally unsubstantiated, or biased, or whatever it might be?

Now, that is a difficult task. Occasionally, you know, if you have enough experience with this, and you really are even properly trained in doing internet research, you can sort of figure that out. Say, okay, you know, this comes from the Mayo Clinic, for example, so, it’s probably got a little bit more legitimacy than from, you know, like, Steve in Queens, or whoever it might be, who’s, you know, publishing something. Sorry to all you people named Steve who live in Queens. I don’t mean to disparage you. Just an example. But that is, you know, the first issue, that people read stuff online, and it’s hard to know, is this from a legitimate source, or is it not from a legitimate source? So, that’s problem number one. And it’s sometimes very difficult, because some sources can sort of make their websites fancy and give themselves a fancy name, or a society of this or of that. But you have no idea. Again, they could be biased, they could be commercially biased, they may have a vested interest in something. You really don’t know, and it’s not easy.

The second reason, I would say, even if you know the source is reliable, you’re very confident the source is reliable, when you get all of the information, it’s very hard to know if that information is applicable to you specifically, right? Any condition out there can range from very, very mild to very, very severe, or dangerous, or whatever it might be. And you don’t know which part of that range is applicable to you. Is it all of it, right? Do you have a possibility of having nothing versus everything? Are you really on one end versus the other? Is this relevant to me at all? Are there nuances to this condition? Is it only relevant in certain times, for example, in a pregnancy? And so, it’s hard to know that as just the reader. And so, if you get all of the list of possible outcomes that can happen, it could be quite terrifying.

Usually it ends up scaring you more unnecessarily than it does reassuring you unnecessarily. But either can happen. As an example, I saw a patient a few weeks ago, an ultrasound. She was 16 weeks pregnant, and we’re doing an anatomy ultrasound, and it looked to me…the ultrasound, baby looked great, and looked to me that the placenta might be a little bit low in the uterus. So we did a vaginal ultrasound, and the placenta was not covering the cervix. When it covers the cervix, we call it a placenta previa. It was near the cervix, that either you call a marginal placenta previa, some people call it a low-lying placenta, but ultimately, it’s not an issue. I walked into the room, speaking to her, I said, “Hey, your baby looks great.” I said, “I just wanna let you know, because it’s on the report, that the placenta is near the cervix. Again, we call it a marginal previa, or low-lying. It’s not a placenta previa. It’s not covering the cervix.”

And then, I said to her, “You know, this is not a problem. Very common at 16 weeks. As the pregnancy progresses and the uterus grows, this is gonna move out of the way, like, 99% chance it’s gonna move out of the way. If it doesn’t, you’re still gonna be okay. We’ll figure it out. Like, all is fine. You have nothing to worry about.” And then she said, “You know, are you sure I’m okay?” “Yes, I’m sure you’re okay. This is not a problem. No, it’s not a problem.” “Is there anything I need to do different?” “No, there’s nothing you need to do different.” I was, you know, answered all of her questions, totally fine.

About two days later, I got a message that the patient was calling, and needed to speak to me about her ultrasound reports. I called her back, and she’s on the phone, her husband’s on the phone, and they’re saying, you know, “I went on the Google, and I’m googling previa, and I’m trying to figure out, like, am I gonna hemorrhage? Am I gonna die? Am I gonna get hysterectomy? Am I gonna be admitted to the hospital?” and this and this and this and this. And I said to her, I said, “You know, like, I see where you got that information, but that’s not relevant to you. Like, number one, you don’t have a complete placenta previa. You have this marginal previa, which is different. Number two, you’re 16 weeks, you’re not 36 weeks, right? It’s very, very different if you have this at 36 weeks versus 16.” And I said, “As you recall, we said that it’s gonna move,” and this and that. And she said, “I thought you said that, but I wasn’t really sure, so I went in the Google. I really shouldn’t have. It really took me down a rabbit hole, and I needed to get,” as she said, “taken off the ledge.” And so I said, “You know, that’s cool. No worries. That happens on the Google. You know, sorry I didn’t warn you about the Google and what it might say,” and that’s how we left it.

But that’s a great example. This is a very smart, very educated person, who, you know, I definitely, you know, explained to her what was going on. We had a conversation about it. So, it’s not like anything was awry in the visit. But, you know, she was very curious. And so she went on to Google and looked, and found things that were much scarier to her. And, understandably, she didn’t have the knowledge base to sort of put that into perspective for how it applied to her.

So, what should we do about this, right? What’s the solution? I think on the doctor end, we need to be proactive. And we need to tell patients where to go to get information. Like, where can you find more information on this particular condition, disease, topic, whatever it is that we’re talking about? We have to tell people proactively, “This is a good site. This is where you could go.” The second thing, I actually normally do this myself, I clearly didn’t do it for her, is to tell them what they might find on Google, and why it will or won’t apply to them. So, for example, if I could go back in time, I would’ve said to her, “Hey, if after this visit you go home and Google this, you might find stuff about getting admitted to the hospital, bleeding, C-section, you know, hemorrhage, hysterectomy, death, all these horrible things. It doesn’t apply to you. Here’s why it doesn’t apply to you.”

That would’ve probably prevented her anxiety after googling if I’d been more proactive. Again, I do try to do this, but I obviously didn’t do it for her. And the third thing, which is really important, I think, is we have to forgive people for googling. Like, some doctors get really irritated, like, you know, “Why’d you go to the Google? The Google’s not a doctor. You know, you went to Dr. Google,” and they make a joke. This is the way of life. This is how it is. Anybody who hears anything, they are probably already googling it on their phone before they leave your office. Fine. That’s what I would do. That’s what anyone would do. That’s what all of us would do. We have to just assume that that’s happening, not be judgmental about it, but instead, take into account that that is part of life, and that is something we have to address, again, proactively.

I think from the patient perspective, what is something that you might be able to do is sort of the flip side. Ask your doctor, “Where can I get more information on this? Where do you recommend I go?” That is a really important thing. The second thing is if you are going online, be very careful when reading personal experiences, like a story, right? Because they really are only relevant to that one person. You have to be very clear, is that relevant to me or not? Try to see if the situation applies to you. And again, all diagnoses, all situations have a range of possible outcomes. So, try to see where you might fit in that spectrum. And if you’re not sure, it is a good thing to follow up with a doctor. Say, “Hey, I found this online. I’m just checking, is this relevant for me or is this not relevant for me?” And we’ll tell you it is or it isn’t. And I think that’ll be helpful.

If you find a good source, stick with it. Whether that’s a website, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s this podcast, another podcast, whatever it might be, a book that someone wrote. If you find a good source, use it. And I think, for all of us out there, we have to continue to find ways to get good, reliable information out there that people can find. Whether that’s really building up one website that has a tremendous amount of information on it, or whether that’s a podcast like this one, that continues to drop episodes and new content, that people have somewhere they can go. Again, whether it’s a podcast, it could be website. It could be a series of books. I know that a lot of us don’t read books anymore, but there are good books out there. Obviously, I’ve always enjoyed Emily Oster’s books. We have her on. But that’s somewhere I tell people, if you like reading books, read this book. I tell ’em, like, “That’s a good book. I like what’s in there. It’s reasonable.” Because some of the books are different, and I may not like them.

Okay. An example of when this works. So, we have a podcast on induction of labor. And so, in our practice, when our scheduler, Linda or Chris, call the patient about scheduling their induction of labor, you know, they say “Okay, you’re gonna come on this time and this date, and here’s who on call, da da da. And, you shall listen to the podcast on induction of labor.” It gives our patients whatever it is, 45 minutes of a real thorough review, from their doctors, what’s gonna happen during the induction, so that either at their next office visit or when they show up for induction, they’re already, like, pre-informed. They already have an idea of what’s gonna happen, in a way that we know is reliable, because we did it.

But it doesn’t have to be necessarily from our practice, right? It’s not that different from practice to practice. There’s some variation. And again, that doesn’t have to be a podcast specifically. It could be a handout that the doctors have. It could be a website, whatever it is. Similarly, fasting in pregnancy, I mentioned that before. We know that there’s gonna be a ton of questions in our practice, because, in our practice, we have a lot of Orthodox Jewish women who wanna fast, or might not wanna fast, who knows, on Yom Kippur. And so we know that’s gonna come up, so we have the podcast available, and we drop the podcast. Obviously, we still get questions. It doesn’t remove all the questions, but it sort of gives a lot of people a lot of background, so A, they might not have any questions, or B, if they do, they’re much more precise and much more relevant to them. And that’s been very helpful.

I had a patient recently who I saw for a consultation for gestational diabetes. I never met her before. This is the first time I’m meeting her. You know, it was over Zoom. I say, “Hey, you know, I’m Nate Fox. How can I help you?” She said, “Hey, we’re gonna talk about gestational diabetes.” I said, “Great.” And I said, “You know, tell your story, this, this,” and I said, “What do you know so far?” She goes, “I already listened to your podcast with Casey, so I know all that already.” I’m like, “Good.” So, right then and there, we basically were able to remove the preparatory part of this consult, where I have to educate her necessarily about gestational diabetes, and we jumped right to, like, what’s useful for her? What does she need to know? What’s helpful for her? What is specific to her? You know, what should she do? What shouldn’t she do?

And the conversation was at a much more productive and higher level for her, right? That she doesn’t have to spend the whole time, you know, trying to learn about gestational diabetes during the consult. She can actually ask her own questions about her. It’s very similar to if you’re taking a class in high school or college, and the teacher, the professor says, “We’re gonna discuss this book in class.” Well, if you read the book, it’s gonna be a lot more helpful than if you didn’t read the book, right? If you’re expecting the teacher to read the book to you and then have a discussion about it, that’s not gonna be as productive.

Okay. Next lesson. And this is related to birth stories. You know, it was very early on in the podcast that we realized how important someone’s birth story is to everything we’re doing, right? There are the conditions that we have, and then there’s the stories about the condition, the experience. So, for example, someone, you know, wants to learn about hemorrhage, postpartum hemorrhage. So, I can talk about what a hemorrhage is, and what we do, and how we treat them, you know, statistics and management and all this stuff. But having a hemorrhage is an entirely different side of it. I might have some insight, because I take care of people who have hemorrhages, and I’ve spoken to people who have hemorrhages, and, you know, I know about it, but clearly I don’t have the same insight as someone who went through it.

And so, to learn about a topic, it really is useful to get both sides. To get the medical side, how the doctor thinks about it, what we do about it, but also the personal side, what it’s like to go through it. And that’s useful, as a patient, to understand that, but also as a doctor, for me to understand what people experience when they go through a hemorrhage, is helpful to me in how to treat them, and also how to discuss it with them and process it with them afterwards.

In the same light, most people do not get the opportunity to tell their story. They just don’t. It takes a while, but it is helpful. For a lot of people, it’s cathartic. If they went through something difficult, it is helpful to talk about it out loud. If they went through something that’s wonderful and joyous, it’s great to talk about it and to say it out loud. It makes you feel joy. It makes you sort of feel gratitude. It gives all of us a great perspective on what someone goes through. It helps others who might have gone through or might in the future go through something similar to understand it and process it. Really, this is, like, a life lesson. It’s important to be a good listener, to listen to people. I was always told this is why we were given two ears and one mouth. We should listen twice as much as we speak. And in practice, I really have been trying more and more to just spend the beginning of my meeting with someone listening.

I’ll say something very open-ended, like “Tell me your story,” or “Tell me what happened,” or “How can I help you?” And then I just sit back, listen, occasionally take some notes if they say some details. And after 5 to 10 minutes of them telling their story, typically I know almost everything I need to know already. I’ll usually follow up with some pointed questions about, you know, tell me about this, tell me about that, some details. But they feel like they’ve been heard, that someone’s listened to them, which is a really important part of this entire process, and it’s true in life.

Another part of this, related to birth stories, is what I’ve learned is people really process birth very differently, and it’s not always related to the outcome. So, clearly, if someone had a very bad outcome, a tragic outcome, a sad outcome, they often are bad experiences, obviously. But every combination is possible. There are definitely people who have had very bad or very sad outcomes related to pregnancy, but for some reason they don’t feel traumatized by it. They almost feel at peace with it. How does that happen? Some of it, obviously, is personality. Some people are just wired differently than others, and that’s fine. But a lot of it is how everyone else behaves around them. Are we supporting her through this difficult birth? Are we informing her? Does she understand what’s going on? Are we making sure that she doesn’t feel guilt over what’s going on? That she knows it’s not her fault that this is happening? And I think that if we really, for people who are going through difficult times, if they feel supported, if they feel informed, if they feel heard, if they’re not made to feel guilty, there’s a much higher chance that they’re gonna feel at peace with the outcome, either early or eventually. And that’s a really important part.

On the flip side, there’s people who have good outcomes and ends up having a lot of trauma from their birth, right? They have a healthy baby, they came out healthy, but they’re traumatized by their birth, by the experience. And again, some of that is the person. There are some people out there who find trauma in everything. Okay. But that’s not really my experience. Most of the people who have a good outcome but feel trauma from their birth, it’s not because of their personality. It’s usually because they had tremendous fear at the time of their birth. They had tremendous lack of information. They didn’t know what was happening to them.

Again, they felt unsupported at the time, or they felt guilty, and they weren’t given the time, the place, the space, whatever it is, to process this, and to come to some sort of peace. And what does that take? Again, sometimes it’s just being able to talk about it, to tell their story, to process it. Whether that’s with a friend, whether that’s with a family member, whether it’s a doctor, whatever it is. Just because they had a good outcome does not mean that they feel great about the birth. And I think that’s one of the really important lessons that I’ve learned over this podcast. And I’ve really tried to focus on that, A, what was the outcome, but B, what is their sort of feeling about the birth? And again, I’m not a psychotherapist, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not doing this professionally. This is no different from how I would be with a friend, just to listen to people, and it really helps a lot more.

Some thank-yous. I first wanna thank my practice. Everyone in my practice has been giving me the time and the space to do this podcast. I really do appreciate it. A lot of them have come on as guests of the podcast, which I really appreciate. Obviously, as I mentioned before, there’s Emily and the entire team from DLM in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the great state of Michigan, the great town of Grand Rapids, Michigan that we’ve mentioned before, for producing this podcast, for editing them, and for helping someone like me, who understands nothing about technology, putting this up for you guys to hear.

Obviously, I wanna thank all of the guests who’ve taken their time to come on the podcast. I don’t pay my guests. There’s nothing they get out of this other than, you know, either personal favor to me or it’s cool to be on a podcast, or whatever might be. But I do appreciate it. But obviously, my biggest thank-you is to all of you, our listeners. I do this podcast for you, and I truly appreciate you tuning in, and your feedback. I am continually honored and humbled that so many people really care about what we’re saying. I do not take that lightly, and I try very hard for this content to be informative, for it to be helpful, and to be interesting. And again, from time to time, hopefully funny. So, really, from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much.

In terms of the future, who knows? I hope to continue to grow the audience. It has been rising steadily over three years. The number of listens per week, per month, per whatever, it’s been going up. And, again, to bring up new topics, with new guests, I would be more than happy to start, like, a mail bag, where I answer questions that come in. And we do get a few questions from time to time, but I’d love to get more, again, like, clinical questions, and it’s sort of hard, because I don’t wanna answer people necessarily individually by email. It’s hard to do these things by email. But maybe if someone sends in a topic or a question, I can address, you know, four or five of them on one podcast. So, please do continue to send suggestions, either whether it’s questions, suggestions for topics, suggestions for speakers. Feel free to volunteer yourself if you’ve got something interesting to say, whether it’s your own birth story or you’re a professional of some sort, or you’ve got some insight into something, whatever it is. I read every single thing that comes through the website, so please, please send them in.

And again, please do post reviews and comments. I ask for them every show, and I really mean it. Frankly, I don’t actually care what our star rating is. I would not stop this podcast if the star rating dropped, but I am told that the podcast becomes more visible to others if the stars are higher. I don’t exactly understand that. It’s something with an algorithm, that if you type in something and they’ll put up podcasts with higher stars, so God bless. The more five stars, the better. The more important part to me are the comments you have. I really do appreciate them. I read every single one of them, and I love getting them, and I really, really appreciate them, so please send them in.

From a personal note, doing this podcast has been extremely rewarding to me personally, and I do think it has made me a better doctor professionally. So, I do plan to continue until we either run outta topics or until I say something truly stupid and get canceled.

Thank you for listening to the “Healthful Woman Podcast.” To learn more about our podcast, please visit our website at www.healthfulwoman.com. That’s H-E-A-L-T-H-F-U-L-W-O-M-A-N.com. If you have any questions about this podcast, or any other topic you would like us to address, please feel free to email us at hw@healthfulwoman.com. Have a great day.

The information discussed in “Healthful Woman” is intended for educational uses only and does not replace medical care from your physician. “Healthful Woman” is meant to expand your knowledge of women’s health and does not replace ongoing care from your regular physician or gynecologist. We encourage you to speak with your doctor about specific diagnoses and treatment options for an effective treatment plan.