unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver
Menopause, Frozen Shoulder and the Joint Pain Wake Up Call with Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein - Part 1
20 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is frozen shoulder and why does it affect women in midlife?
The other thing I always do whenever I have a woman with frozen shoulder, I always take basically a perimenopausal or menopausal history. I always ask them, are you having hot flushes? Are you having night sweats? You know, like what else is going on with you? And I make a lot of referrals to women's health and probably
three to five per day in my orthopedic clinic to women's health because they're having these concomitant symptoms. And do I have proof that initiating systemic estradiol reverses or makes your shoulder better or makes you not get on the other side? No, but I'm studying that. But does it make sense to me that it would? It does make sense to me that it would.
And they need their other symptoms treated anyway.
The views and opinions expressed on Unpaused are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. One day, I came across a social media post from an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Jocelyn Whitstein.
She was explaining the key lifestyle strategy she uses to prevent osteoporosis.
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Chapter 2: How does declining estrogen impact joint health during menopause?
It caught my eye because I'd been receiving a little bit of flex on social media by the weighted vest haters. Immediately, I shared her post on my page. I know my followers would want to hear this too. I was right. It blew up. Tens of thousands of women were tagging their friends saying, why has no one ever told us this before? I quickly learned more about Dr. Wittstein.
She's a practicing orthopedic surgeon, a researcher, and an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Duke University and a mom of five. She isn't just another expert giving bone health tips. She's lived this science from every angle, as an athlete, a clinician, and as a woman navigating midlife herself. I knew I had to invite her to the podcast.
Her research interests are female athlete across the lifespan, post-traumatic arthritis after knee injuries, frozen shoulder, and the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause. She's the president of the Forum, Women in Sports Medicine. She's also a core leadership member of the Duke Female Athlete Program and a member of the Milken Institute Women's Health Initiative.
She is the co-author of The Complete Bone and Joint Health Plan.
Chapter 3: Why is early intervention crucial for treating frozen shoulder?
Dr. Whitstein's work is changing how we think about musculoskeletal health across the female lifespan, from injury prevention to joint health, and how menopause hormones and movement intersect with our long-term independence and quality of life.
Today, she and I will talk about osteoarthritis, how it disproportionately affects women, why frozen shoulder loves midlife, and how hormones influence pain and bone strength, and how hormone therapy fits into the bigger picture of prevention versus treatment.
This conversation will challenge how you think about movement, hormones, and aging, and it might just change how you care for your own body. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
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Chapter 4: What are the symptoms and phases of frozen shoulder?
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That's www.primallypure.com. Use code UNPAUSED at checkout for 15% off your order. Well, welcome to Unpaused. Thank you for having me. I am so glad you came in from North Carolina to New York to film. So tell me a little bit about your background. What kind of kid were you? Where did you grow up?
I grew up basically up and down the East Coast in Connecticut, the D.C. area, North Carolina. My dad was an ophthalmologist, so like any child of a medical practitioner, we followed the chunks of his life, you know, medical school residency and his first practice.
Chapter 5: How can hormone replacement therapy influence frozen shoulder risk?
So I'm an East Coaster, mostly. Why did you go into medicine? I actually thought I would not go into medicine, which I think is also common among children of doctors. And I hear my own kids saying it now, like they don't want to be doctors. But when I was an undergraduate, I thought I wanted to do something related to nutrition. So I studied nutrition as an undergraduate at Cornell University.
And somewhere along the line, probably when I was a junior, I decided I wanted to go to medical school. I think I had been suppressing that. And I
That's exactly what happened to my daughter.
Yeah. And then I had to take all those prerequisites all in a year and catch up and go. And, you know, I'm glad I made the decision. But for some reason, I saw myself in health adjacent fields, areas I was interested in. But I'm really glad I studied those things as an undergraduate because I applied them now.
Chapter 6: What role does physical therapy play in managing frozen shoulder?
My daughter, undergrad, ended up being nutrition as well. And then she kind of second year-ish decided. So she was able to catch up. But she never got to go to Europe or do the fun things, you know, because she was like playing catch up to make sure she had all the prereqs.
I think sometimes you realize you don't want to do anything else, but it comes to you late after you study a lot of the adjacent things.
Yeah. Did anybody try to talk you out of it?
Did your dad? When I told my dad I wanted to go to medical school, the first thing he said was, are you sure you want to do that? And my youngest, who is now 18, just said to me the other day, you know, do you think I could study this and still apply to medical school? And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, he's going to tell me he wants to go to medical school and I'm going to
have that feeling of I don't want him to have the stress and the sacrifice and the lack of sleep and, you know, things like that. But at the same time, if he ultimately decided he wanted to do that, like I know he would be happy with his decision in the end, for example. And it's the question that people ask you all the time. If you could go back in time, would you redo it?
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Chapter 7: What preventative measures can women take against joint pain during menopause?
Yeah. And it's hard to say, but yes, because I like where I am now, but I wouldn't want to redo it.
Yeah, exactly. Go through that training all again. So why orthopedics? There's very few women in orthopedic surgery.
Right. About 6% of orthopedic surgeons are women. I've been accused of being naive about many things, but I was actually quite naive about that when I applied. I didn't actually really know that, which is odd. It's very obvious. It should have been obvious. You know, you do a visiting rotation here or there.
Yeah.
You don't see many female orthopedic surgeons, but I think I just see people for people.
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Chapter 8: How do cultural perceptions affect the understanding of frozen shoulder?
And so I've always had like a lot of male friends. I also have female friends. And it's kind of funny why we go on these rotations. I just had... a great experience everywhere I was. I really enjoyed the people I was working with. It was fun. I was learning a lot.
It didn't really cross my mind that there were like no female attendings or maybe one or two at various places and, you know, one female resident. I mean, I of course noticed it, but I didn't kind of think about like, what is the true statistic?
I mean, I know it now and the number is growing, but there's a very interesting study that looked at the rate at which orthopedic surgery will get to parity in terms of sex in the field. And it's well over 200 years before we will be at parity. At the current rate of attrition.
Yeah.
I think for a lot of people, athletics is a gateway to orthopedics. So student athletes are often very aware of nutrition, musculoskeletal health, often have an injury here or there, often have a chance encounter with someone in the field of orthopedics who then, you know, it just gets you thinking about it.
And when I originally went to medical school, I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician, actually, because I love children. Same. Same. And I did one block and it was just like not for me. It was either. I mean, I adore our pediatricians that our children have had over the years and they're amazing, but I couldn't do it because for me it was like either boring or very sad.
And I just it was not for me. And I wanted to be in the operating room. Doing surgery, I really like taking care of people in a way that I can acutely make them better. You know, they have an acute injury and I can solve it. And then I gravitated to sports medicine, which is, again, that is something that a lot of former athletes do.
Just sort of an area of interest for many people who have that background.
Yeah. So you were a collegiate gymnast. Mm-hmm. Has that really shaped part of, like you said, you know, coming from the athlete world? Were you injured? I mean, most gymnasts... I've had some.
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