The Checkup with Doctor Mike
Is Your Women’s Health “Expert” Lying To You? | Dr. Jen Gunter
05 Nov 2025
I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/Huge thanks to Dr. Jen Gunter for joining us on this episode!Website: https://drjengunter.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/drjengunterFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrJGunter/Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrJenGunter00:00 Intro01:30 Blaming Reels09:10 Her Journey21:50 Hormone Tests31:22 Taking Advantage Of Women40:10 Women's Health Initiative50:14 Menopausal Hormone Therapy59:50 Testosterone Therapy + Estrogen1:15:57 Birth Control1:26:46 Working With Big Pharma1:42:05 MAHA + RFK1:59:21 Dr. Gundry Battle2:06:00 Starting Her Own Supplement Company2:08:32 Yeast Infections + ProbioticsHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, an exclusive discord community, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today:https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [email protected] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **
Chapter 1: What concerns do women have about hormonal therapy and the internet's impact?
So do you think the internet scares women away from birth control unnecessarily?
I think the internet is both an amazing and a terrible tool, and it depends where you end up. When you Google something, what comes up isn't what's the most scientifically valid. What comes up is the most popular.
Do you think that not enough women are on hormonal therapy? Welcome back to the Checkup Podcast. Lately, social media has been absolutely flooded with wellness gurus and even medical doctors making all sorts of claims surrounding women's health.
Based on what I've seen, there's been a lot of fear mongering and shaming regarding women's bodies, usually done to encourage the purchase of some sort of quick fix supplement or product. This is why I'm so excited to host Dr. Jen Gunter, who's a board certified OBGYN and pain medicine physician, a two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto.
She also writes the Substack newsletter, The Vagenda. She's one of the most prominent critics of wellness pseudoscience and a widely cited voice on women's health from almost every leading news outlet.
In our conversation, not only will she tell you the truth about when hormone testing is useless, how hormone therapy is actually supposed to work, the truth about how women are targeted with vaginal products, but she also opens up about her traumatic experience in navigating the healthcare system in seeking answers to her children's serious, serious conditions.
Please welcome Dr. Jen Gunter to the Checkup Podcast. I think a good place to start would be the fact that I've been dying to have you on the show for probably half a decade or so, mostly because I feel that the women's health space has been contaminated, for lack of a better word, with a lot of misinformation and a lot of look over here while I'll sell you something over here.
And I feel like in my world as a primary care physician, I feel like it's led women to potentially make bad choices with their healthcare, but also perhaps just have a poor understanding of how their own bodies work.
And being a primary care physician, I want to fix it, but I'm not also fully equipped to have every conversation in every bit of detail, especially because in my residency training, I wasn't learning a lot about hormone replacement therapy. It was kind of frowned upon actually when I was doing my training.
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Chapter 2: How has social media influenced women's health decisions?
So do you feel like the situation that I've described is an accurate one, a situation that you've been seeing as a women's health specialist?
Yeah. So I would say, you know, I've been active on social media since 2010 when I first got on Twitter. And I would say that there has been a progression of disinformation online. And I don't have good
studies to back this up but my gestalt is is this really happened when reels became a thing when this really short form fast kind of inject it right into whatever vulnerable vulnerable part of your brain it's going into and Fear is what sells. Fear is what gets our attention. Facts are often super boring. Being really definitive sells.
And you and I know that it's really rare to be super definitive. I can say, yeah, I get the HPV vaccine. That definitively reduces your risk. But we don't have a lot of great data like that. And there's nuances, but nuances don't play out. And so I think what we're seeing is this chorus
in many areas of medicine of this sort of these fast format, you must do this, or you must buy this product, or if the real doesn't include that product, every third one might, you know, that, that it's a long for the ride.
And we're sort of starting to see, like, I think an amplification, you know, once you get, once you tell every single person that they must be on menopause hormone therapy or something bad's going to happen to them, Well, then, okay, when you have all of your followers doing that, then you've got to have the next cell. So then what is it? It's testosterone for everybody.
Or then it's higher doses of estrogen. Or then it's microdosing GLP-1s. Or then it's wearing a weighted vest. And it sort of starts to escalate. And I think it's really difficult for people to sort out the fact from the fiction.
Yeah, I've seen that situation that you're describing of constantly one-upping oneself happen in medical media before even social media. So you'll have medical shows that came on air in the early 2000s that perhaps had some good information, information that people needed to hear. There were campaigns about blood donations and women's heart health being overlooked.
Interesting topics that we needed to hear about. And then as ratings drop, because people get bored of hearing eat well, exercise, sleep well, like grandma's advice still holds up. they needed to do something different. So that's how I feel like you end up with an ABC medical talk show with the title, how your horoscope impacts your heart health. That's like a legitimate series that aired.
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Chapter 3: What is the importance of informed consent in hormone therapy?
So I, and I also do it because I believe people deserve the facts. And I think about times where I've been victimized by misinformation, because it did happen to me after my kids were born. They had incredibly complex medical conditions and people couldn't answer questions. And this was the very early days of the internet.
And I got sucked down some rabbit holes and made some choices I wished I hadn't made. And so I just started thinking about how that experience, you know, dealing with kids that were born at 26 weeks with congenital cardiac defect, with cerebral palsy, all these things.
And then I started thinking about, OK, well, now how how do I translate that experience to what my patients are having and why isn't there a good place for them to go? And so very early on, I thought, oh, I'm going to fix the Internet. Seriously, I was like a backpack on my back and I'm going to have a blog and of course people will come and I'm just going to post content. And I just kept at it.
And initially, I think the traffic was a little bit slow. And then I just thought, well, that I need to be myself. I was reading stuff that... I was writing in a far more, like if I was writing for a journal, right. And I just decided, yeah, exactly. And that's, you know, that's great for academics and you have to meet people where they are. And so I just started being more authentic me.
And I think it just sort of gradually kind of took off and I kept at it. So I think that was also part of it. And, you know, along the way, then different news sites would come calling and,
you know there was a time where you know i had had a couple columns for the new york times i've floated in and out of other sort of like you know print media which obviously helps with your you know your audience but i've just kind of stayed true to writing about what interests me are you comfortable talking about what was that misinformation land or direction that you got pushed into
Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, I think that it's, you know, as I would say the old saying is that obstetricians have the worst pregnancies. I'm sure cardiac surgeons feel they have the worst, you know what I mean?
Heart disease, yeah.
Yeah, exactly, right? So I was pregnant with triplets, and you just heard me say that I have two kids. And so I delivered extremely prematurely at 22 and a half weeks, and my first son died at birth. We elected not to resuscitate him. And then I managed to stay pregnant for another three and a half weeks, which was, yeah. And so I had an interval delivery at 26 weeks.
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Chapter 4: How do misconceptions about hormone therapy affect women's health?
Again, not that it's remotely relatable, but on YouTube, for example, sometimes they have to be shown a thumbnail more than once in order for them to click on a video and switching it prematurely can actually yield worse outcomes. So just showing people who are in different worlds how The human mind sometimes takes repetitive messaging. So same thing with those who are perhaps vaccine hesitant.
Maybe they won't understand what you're saying on the first conversation, but if I can open up that dialogue so that when they are coming in for their second visit, maybe now they're more open to it and taking them through the stages of decision-making.
and also investing in the follow-up, right? So if you can't, if you're not gonna change them, like if I have somebody in the office, I'm not gonna change their mind, I drop it almost immediately. Like you can always tell. Because the best thing is to invest in the relationship that maybe they'll come back and they'll hear it the next time. I mean, I'm a subspecialist.
I also do fellowship in infectious diseases. And so I see a lot of people with very complex vaginal health related issues. And I would say about half the time when I'm seeing somebody, their referring doctor was actually right on, but they probably just, they didn't have like the way, because when you see something a lot, it rolls off your tongue in a different way.
And so there's a different confidence that comes with it. But it also could be that they'd just been prepped three times by hearing it before and that it sunk in like the fourth time. And so I'll send a message back, hey, you were right on the money and I just reinforced what you said. And so, but yeah, repetition. And so you can see how repetition works in a good way.
It can also work in a bad way when we're talking about propaganda.
Yeah. I'm curious because I'm so human interested. In the moment where you're learning about the fact that there's perhaps nothing more you can do to help your children and you're still wanting to investigate, you're still wanting to try something because you feel like perhaps if you don't try, you're letting your kids down. What's your mindset like in that moment?
What are you trying to achieve and how are you trying to balance it without doing too much? What advice would you give to someone who might be in the same position as you?
Yeah. So I wish I could claim credit for what I'm going to say. And I don't know the doctor, but I believe it was in The New York Times. I could be wrong. So I'm just believe sometimes the best thing a doctor can do is nothing, which is no thing. No thing is also an intervention. And so when I finally sunk into me that this was tincture of time, he had to outgrow this.
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Chapter 5: What are the risks associated with hormonal contraceptives?
And both of these things can be true. People can not like it and they can feel it's been incredibly beneficial for them. As for harm, apart from, you know, the risk of being a thromboembolism, which is obviously still much less than the risk of being pregnant or the risk of postpartum when it's incredibly high, I would say, you know, what specific harm are you talking about?
And what often people say, well it changes your brain. Well, everything changes your brain. Pregnancy changes your brain. Postpartum depression changes your brain. Me coming to New York today probably changed my brain. And so what does that actually mean? And so we see a lot of cherry picking about that.
And so it's just, it's difficult because if you want to have a new, the internet doesn't favor nuance. If you want to talk about, you know, the net, you know, the net benefits. I mean, if you look at the economic gains that women have had since, you know, since the pill came out, they've been massive. But we also have other forms of contraception now too, and shouldn't people have choices?
And what's good for one person isn't going to be good for somebody else, and that's okay. But do we have to get all like, you know, I just end up restricting people because I'm just like, you know, what happens is then people get this biased sample, right? And then all of a sudden the propaganda perpetuates itself.
So do you think the internet scares women away from birth control, OCPs unnecessarily?
I think the internet is both an amazing and a terrible tool, and it depends where you end up, right? So I have people that come into the office who, well, this is, pre-Trump, so when the CDC was of value, because I'm very suspect now about all the information, they would come in with fantastic information about different methods of contraception and what they wanted.
And they were incredibly informed. And people can also go to the internet and come away incredibly misinformed. In fact, there's a study looking at vaccine hesitancy and internet users were more likely to actually be uninformed. and when they use the internet. And the reason for that is when you Google something, what comes up isn't what's the most scientifically valid.
What comes up is the most popular. And so unless you're a medical librarian, unless you know how to jury-rig your search, it's very easy for people to be led astray. Do I think people shouldn't go online? No. I think what we should do is teach people how to look things up online. I mean, that's what I think. I think that the vastness of the medical internet shouldn't just be for you and me.
It shouldn't just be for doctors. It should be for everybody. This is a great thing for people to have, you know, all of the library of all of medicine in your fingertips, but you also have to know how to use it. I mean, the analogy like I gave is, you know, back in the day when we had card catalogs and libraries and microfiche, you know, You had to learn how to use the library.
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Chapter 6: How does misinformation about birth control affect women's choices?
You'd go in, you'd go to the card catalog, you'd look things up. And you had to be taught how to use the library. If I wasn't taught how to use the library, I could have walked in and been like, oh, well, you know, I'm just going to look at the National Enquirer that they also have here. Because that's easier.
And there's a time and place to read about alien abductions and all those kinds of things. But I think that we don't teach people how to question the content that they get online. Or we teach, some people learn it. And so I would say that it's both. And this gets back to whether you're selling a product or you're selling a lifestyle. And what we're seeing, I would say, is this rise in
And I don't have a great term for it, but trad wife adjacent type of like eschewing birth control, staying at home, not getting a job. And if that's your choice, that is amazing for you. But presenting this as something that's medically beneficial is a different thing. Right. And so, you know, choices in all things.
Yeah, I also think about this less from negative influencers spreading misinformation and more so because social media empowered everyone to have a voice. And when you think about what messaging is most impactful is when someone is telling you a personal story that has impacted them.
So when you have the most viral content on, let's say, TikTok of a person talking about perhaps a true harm that happened with an OCP, or perhaps something that was going on at the same time as the OCP, that lands for millions of people and therefore biases them the next time they're exposed to any even neutral information about OCPs. And I see that in my practice a lot.
So I'm trying to figure out how do we allow people and amplify people telling their stories, sharing their experiences, but not so much in a way where it biases people against legitimate medical interventions.
I think going in informed is the best thing. I'm going to put in a plug for my book, Blood, the science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation, where I talk about all of, explain all of these issues about hormones and about what you might hear online about birth control and what's true and what isn't. And, you know, what is, what are the statistics on depression? What are the statistics here?
And so people can make an informed choice. So then they can decide if you hear an, I have a very low tolerance. If someone gives me misinformation once, you know, I'm almost certainly out because I'm always worried, you know, what's going to be the next the next thing. And so I think that the answer is information. I mean, I.
I could easily, and this is one of the reasons why I rarely talk about like on my own social media page about things that happened to me. This is not fair. I mean, I could scare people about pregnancies, right? If I talked about, you know, what happened to me, I may be like, hey, no one should ever be pregnant, but that's my story.
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Chapter 7: What role does social media play in shaping health narratives?
Was that Dr. Liver King?
Yeah, right. She was ahead of her time, you know? And so I'm like 19 and I'm like, wait, what? Like, that's the answer. I was anemic. I went to give blood and I was turned away. And I was like, oh, really? You mean like bleeding for eight days, a cycle is not normal. I didn't know that.
And and so, you know, I I suffered with the bleeding because I was like, hey, I guess there's nothing you can do. And I got into medical school and I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Walked over to the OBGYN clinic, stole some pills. Rest is history. But I could not have got through a surgery that would be longer than two hours on my menstrual cycle without bleeding all over the place.
So, you know, is but should I be using that story to tell everybody they should be on the pill? No, that's wrong. That's what happened to me. And so I think this idea that stories are absolutely powerful, but they have to be used in context. And you also have to think, like, what's the message? So if I was giving my birth control pill story and I had a whole wall.
Jen's birth control pills behind me. Right. And I had a deal with whatever company pharma company X to sell Jen's birth control pills. That would be even different. Right. With my story. Or if I was funneling people to, you know, buy my genetic test to tell which birth control pill would be best for you.
And so that's why I think it's really important for people to to understand the motivation behind the influencer.
Yeah. In those situations, like if you had the wall behind you with the birth control and you're working with the pharma company that was selling that birth control, is there a world where you were so passionate about birth control that you did think it saved your life or improved the quality of your life?
And you're like, well, I'm going to do everything in my power to support this thing by working with pharma, by doing this thing. And you might be doing it in the correct way and it would be perceived as negative.
So I think it's very, very hard for people to have those kinds of conflicts of interest and for them not to have an impact on what they say, right? When there's 20, 30, 40, 100, $200,000 more than that involved behind the messaging, do you think that's going to change what you're going to say? Is that going to change how often you make that content? I'm sure it would for me. I'm only human.
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Chapter 8: How can women navigate the complexities of vaginal health products?
They don't want the person who's like, yeah, it takes 50,000 from every company. So I think it's really complicated. I think there's people who feel that they can do that. And that's up to them. I think that
One huge issue, which I think is unfair, is that we collect data on what doctors get from pharmaceutical companies, but we don't collect data on what they get from supplement companies, right? Or from ads or other types of things. And so it kind of gives this different weight that, you know, like if somebody is talking about a supplement,
how i don't know how much money they got or maybe that company bought 20 000 of their books like i don't know like what was the deal behind that so i think that the problem when you only have partial transparency is you know it it creates this former show yeah uneven playing field yeah sure because i just um i did a debate against 20 anti-vaxxers vaccine skeptics and one of the individuals that sat across from me started taking me down this lawyer-like line of questioning where he's like uh
Do you overall trust people? Sure. Do you trust someone that has harmed you before? Well, maybe less so than usual. What if they repeatedly harmed you over and over? Well, then I would definitely trust them out less. Well, do you think pharma has ever harmed us? You get the line of questioning.
Yeah.
And I understood where he was going. And I said, well, I totally get what you're saying, but you're labeling pharma as like one thing, whereas it's an ever-changing group with different researchers. The people who are in the financial office in the marketing arm of the pharma company are way different than the scientists performing the research.
It's also very different than the ACIP and the United States Preventive Service Task Force who are gathering and compiling all the data to decide if this is unbiased and true research. But then it hit me the other day, I was thinking about this. I could have just asked them the same question about supplements. Right.
Well, there's been plenty of supplements that have lied to us, that still lie to us, that their ingredients of what's in the pill is not what's on the label, that have led to deaths, liver failure. Why do you take supplements?
Yeah, I mean, my answer is, I'll be really honest, I love pharma. I would have no children if pharma didn't exist. My kids would have died without surfactant. Because somebody decided they wanted to design a catheter, my son was able to have his pulmonary valve opened when he was three pounds.
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