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Carolyn Lawrence Interviews the Leaders in Women’s Health

“Women live longer than men, but may not live better. That’s a really important difference.”

Carolyn Lawrence, President & CEO of Women of Influence, sat down with the four leading female minds of our time when it comes to women’s health, to see what they know, and how we can improve our success as a whole.

BY Carolyn Lawrence   PHOTOGRAPHY Gabriel Li


Are you healthy? It’s a question many in our community were faced with last fall when Arianna Huffington spoke to a crowd of 900 men and women over lunch. Her theory is that we all must redefine what success means—beyond money and power—by including a “third metric” for sustainable success, namely, healthy living.

It’s also a question we’ve asked our audience directly, surveying the Women of Influence community on the importance they place on taking care of their health. The numbers were dismal, but didn’t surprise any of the panel of experts we rounded up to discuss it.

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The Women and Health Panel
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Dr. Vivien Brown M.D, Vice-President, Medical Affairs, Medisys Health Group, is a noted family physician in Toronto and an internationally recognised speaker on women’s health, cancer, adult immunization, stress in the workplace, healthy aging and women’s brain health, among many others.

Leslie Beck R.D. is one of Canada’s leading nutritionists, a best-selling author of 12 books on health and nutrition, and part of the Medisys Health Group team.

Dr. Marla Shapiro is a medical expert for Canada AM and CTV News in addition to running her own practise, a member of several boards and recognized as a leading scientist and researcher for her work in women’s health and contraception.

Lynn Posluns is Founder & President of the Women’s Brain Health Initiative, a global foundation raising money for research and education to combat women’s aging brain disorders. She has received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her vision and leadership.


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Carolyn Lawrence: Vivien, what do you see as the biggest issue surrounding women’s health?

Dr. Vivien Brown: One of the biggest issues for women is coping with, dealing with and understanding how to moderate stress levels. Stress has become a huge issue for women as we all try to “lean in” like Sheryl Sandberg says. We all try to have our families, to be wonderful with our partners and at the same time we have an aging population, and aging parents [we need to care for].

CL: How do you know when you have a regular amount of stress versus a dangerous amount?

VB: Women are incredibly talented and able to cope with a lot of tasks, but when we start to look at our own health issues, our own levels of exercise or quality time with our children, when we start to short change ourselves in those areas, we’re going down the wrong path. Some stress is normal and your adrenalin kicks in and you handle it, but chronic stress is what really ages you. What women have to be attuned to is how much they can cope with and learn how to say no. That’s the real key. What we see with chronic health issues is tension, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, weight gain and women say “yeah I know I need to do what I need, but I don’t have the time, it’s just not my priority.” Chronic putting your health aside is an indicator you’re not coping well. And I think the other side of this is more emotional; whether you’re able to enjoy the enjoyable things. If you’re working hard and then you go home and your kid has a dance recital and the whole time you’re there you’re on your BlackBerry and you’re missing everything—you’re not even enjoying what is enjoyable. And if the enjoyable things are not enjoyable, your stress level is too high.

CL: Leslie what do you think are the biggest issues surrounding women’s  health?

Leslie Beck: I would add that whether it’s work stress or the stress of trying to balance so many things, I see how it completely affects a woman’s nutritional factors—their nutritional intake, their weight—because it’s how they often cope with stress. For example, are you going home every night and having two or three glasses of wine just to take the edge off? Are you not sleeping well and eating well? I think stress robs women of energy and when I see clients, whether it’s for weight loss or blood sugar, I would say eight out of 10 times the goal at the top of the list is “I want to have more energy.” Stress is becoming an epidemic.

CL: Lynn, you have a totally different perspective. What do you see as the biggest issue surrounding women’s health?

Lynn Posluns: Well because my focus is on brain health, the interesting component that comes out of this is that stress can be a precursor to many other issues that can lead to dementia down the road. So if you don’t get the stress under control, and again it isn’t any stress but this chronic stress, it can affect your cognition.

CL: Marla, as a physician, but also medical expert in the media, what do you see as the biggest issue?

MS: The biggest problem that women have is really being able to translate attitude into behaviour. It’s not that women don’t know that stress is bad for their health. That’s not exactly a news flash. Now, they may not know the literature behind the dementia study that shows that chronic stress does in fact increase risk of dementia as an independent risk factor above and beyond other vascular risk factors. Whether they understand the science behind it or not, they understand that too much weight is no good, they understand that smoking is no good, they know that exercise is good for any number of reasons…They may not know it’s good for your brain but they know it’s good for your heart. Women have a hard time translating attitude into behaviour.

CL: Why?

MS: Well, when you look first at all the data that’s been collected and listen to women, they will tell you a list of the things they can do, but in fact the vast majority of them do nothing and that’s because women don’t know how to prioritize themselves. Hopefully they’ll walk away from our discussion with the fact that this isn’t about creating selfish time, this is about investing in your health and well-being. And it’s an important message to your family and to your children: taking time to care for yourself is just as important as brushing your teeth and bathing on a daily basis, or washing your hands after you go to the bathroom or whatever else it is that we model to our children.

VB: One of the things that we haven’t talked about that’s really important is the concept of social connectedness. I would say that just by coming to an event like the one we’re hosting, just by bringing out your friend and saying “I’m going to hear what the panel has to say,” that whole social connectedness portion is important for brain health. It’s important for healthy aging because you learn something, and as you learn more things your brain keeps on working.

MS: And women get support from other women. The mere act of being together helps support healthy living and reduce stress. You already have the short hand of being able to understand each other, we all understand the multi-tasking thing. If my husband were sitting here, he wouldn’t have a clue as to some of the issues that we feel that we balance when we’re doing so much. You understand where I’m coming from, so then let’s cut to the chase. How can I make it better? How can you help me make it better? Other women are engaging you and talking with you, that in itself helps.

VB: Those are the benefits, but the risk of not having social connectedness has to do with depression, and can lead to dementia. A lot of people, especially if they start losing their memory, withdraw because they are embarrassed and they don’t want to be in a situation where they’re showing their cognitive issues, so they withdraw from being socially engaged, which exacerbates the depression, which in fact can be a precursor to dementia. So it’s a spiral down. It’s shocking that social connectedness is the biggest predictor of healthy aging. Not heart health, not brain health, but social connectedness. That’s the point that I wanted to make because women often disengage if there’s marital strife, if there are problems with their children. They retreat and become more isolated. So when you asked me earlier on, what are the predictors of chronic stress, one of the predictors is if you see yourself becoming more isolated. Because what happens is you are withdrawing and you’re losing that network and that support that is so integral and so important.

MS: Stress is self-measured. If you feel stressed, then you are stressed. There is no diagnostic tool per say that we have in the medical profession. There is nothing that you can measure in a blood stream that will tell you if a person is stressed.


CL: Lynn, I’d like to hear from you specifically on why we need to look at women’s brain health, can you tell us about why this is important?

LP: It’s in the statistics. More women than men are going to suffer from brain aging diseases, depression, dementia, strokes. But research today still focuses on men, so one of the reasons it’s important for women to understand this is that they will be affected 100% of the time, either themselves directly or as a caregiver, women are major caregivers in society. In fact, today dementia is the most feared disease, it almost surpasses cancer.

MS: Yes, right. It has to do with the fear of the loss of control—that once dementia sets in, there’s nothing that they can do to stop it. For this audience, that’s part of why it’s so important.

LP: And the other thing that I see is from the research. There are some environmental or lifestyle issues that you can change, because not all dementias are Alzheimer’s, some are vascular and therefore you can change what you do in order to avoid the problem. And even if you are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, there are things you can do to delay its onset. But the whole thing I’m learning is the earlier you start looking after your brain health the better. You shouldn’t just be thinking of dementia as an old person’s disease. By the time symptoms show, the damage to the brain has happened 20-25 years earlier. Scary thought. We should be asking “what do I do when I’m in my 30s to help myself, so that I stay cognitively alert as long as possible?” It’s great if your body ages well, but you also want to stay cognitively alert as long as possible.

CL: And what’s different for women’s brains in treatment and prevention versus men and the research that exists today?

MS: Right, that’s part of the problem. They don’t look at the difference in gender when they study brain health today, and that’s basically anywhere in the world. They don’t know what the differences are.

VB: We know some basic things. For example, we know that there is definitely a role in terms of hormone and brain health. Something happens in terms of estrogen and, as Lynn says, unless we invest in women specifically, and understand what those gender differences are, and study these populations, we won’t be able to pick up those vital clues.

LP: Part of the reason that they don’t study female brains at the grassroots level of research is because the hormones in the female rat make them too complex. In other words, it costs more money to study female brains than it does male because you’ve got to discount that hormonal issue. So you might need three or four times the number of rats to conduct a study. These studies are expensive and need funding, but funding is hard to come by. So if you need to do research at the various stages, you want to make your research project as easy and inexpensive as possible, in order to access funding. That can mean focussing on male subjects exclusively. In addition, it’s about education. From a prevention point of view, we want you to know what it is that you should be doing in order to age healthy, because statistically, women’s healthy life expectancy is 25% worse than a man’s. So women tend to suffer more as they get older.

MS: She’s not saying life expectancy, she’s saying healthy life expectancy. There’s a difference. Women live longer, but may not live better. And that’s a really important difference because life expectancy for a woman is quite excellent.


CL: Each of you in your own area of expertise are leading breakthrough initiatives in some way. Vivien, tell me what it is that you would love to accomplish? What’s the leading edge thing that you have for our readers to know about what you know?

VB: One of the areas that I feel most passionate about is healthy aging and how women can make good choices. Some of the things that we can do today are very well studied, very clear and being under-utilized. I’ll give you the example of immunization. We know today that we can immunize to prevent shingles disease. We can immunize to decrease your risk of pneumonia. We can immunize to decrease your risk of flu and, very importantly, we know that the HPV vaccine in women can decrease your risk of cervical cancer. These are things that are out there, that are doable and that are finite. When we talk about some of the other issues, like increasing your exercise, that is an on-going, recurring task. When we talk about immunization, it’s something you can do today, you can tick it off your list and then you know you’ve done good for yourself. And, depending on which immunization we’re talking about, also your community. When you’re immunized for the flu, you protect the people around you. This is under-utilized all across Canada. It’s an area that’s well studied and it’s an area that we could certainly move forward on.

CL: And what percent of the population takes their immunizations?

VB: The last study was actually done in 2006, so it’s not recent, but basically less than 50% of adult Canadians are appropriately immunized for all the things that we can do. What’s exciting, Carolyn, is that this is a practical measure we can do today with a measurable outcome—where we know there’s a 70% decrease in cervical cancer, a 60% decrease in influenza [with immunization]. We know the outcomes, and I think that’s why we need to act on it.

CL: Leslie, what’s leading edge in nutrition? What do we need to know that you know?

LB: What’s been proven to aid brain health is the Mediterranean diet, which includes many foods that are anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant rich, and low in saturated fat. This has been shown to reduce the risk of memory loss and thinking problems and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. And including foods in your diet like DHA, Omega3 fatty acids in fish…that is so critical for keeping the lipid membranes of brain cells flexible. It may even help reduce beta amyloid build up [which is associated with Alzheimer’s]. Vitamin D is an important anti-oxidant to get from your diet. Polyphenol rich foods, whether berries or walnuts, also help the brain.

CL: Marla, what should we know about?

MS: Trust evidence-based medicine. I have a really hard time with all the anecdotal experts. Patients come in having read this book, or that celebrity endorsement, and are swayed by what they read on twitter without recognizing the difference between evidence-based science and medicine. For example, when Vivien talks about HPV vaccine and the fact that we know how important this vaccine is not only for cervical cancer but anal cancer, penal cancer, head and neck cancer, all of these things are evidence based. But people hear things that will come up in the media that are conflicting. We should be more responsible in presenting the evidence.

CL: So where do we find the evidence-based information? 

MS: You must have an ally in your medical expert. When you have a relationship with Leslie or Vivien or myself, or any other healthcare worker, it’s a partnership. I tell my patients that it is not my job to keep you healthy, it is our job in a collaborative partnership.

CL: How do we boil it down for someone who thinks they need the stress, and packed schedule and thinks they need to be on their BlackBerry at the recital or that they can’t make the time for the gym?

MS: You know what, I’m going to tell you something. If you are not mindful and you are not invested, then you’re not going to be [no matter what your doctor says to you]. And I don’t invest in those who are not mindful and I don’t invest in those who do not want to be enlightened. I would say to women that I think this is an incredible opportunity at any age and stage to empower yourself. To say I love myself enough that I’m going to make small changes. If you sit there and tell me I can’t, I can’t, I won’t, I can’t, then I say, you won’t. That’s your choice. You have to own it.


Interested in getting access to role models like the women in our health panel? Visit our upcoming events page and see which speakers we have lined up this season!