In this interview, actress and singer Naomi Judd opens up about her battle with hepatitis C. She shares a message for those also suffering not to let a bad diagnosis become a self-fulfilling prophecy – and why you should never give up fighting to get better. Naomi also discusses what it’s really like to live in a celebrity family and how she’s learned to develop boundaries in order to live a happy private life, despite the constant spotlight.
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When a doctor sitting there in a star sweite lab coat with something degree on the wall tells you it's really programming your your body because the mind is the body's information pathways, the body's control power. And you and I know um that your belief, whatever you believe, literally becomes your biology. Everyone. I'm Doctors and this is the Doctors Podcast. Naoly Judd, thank you joining us today. I love you. I love you for who you are, and I love you for what you're doing for America. Are you very kind for there's so much information out there and anybody. I mean, I have a little bit of an edge because I'm a former ri n, but we're absolutely overwhelmed and you are sort of a go to guy. You're very kind, Naomi. I must say when we when we first met on the show, I was struck by your passion and your insight and into what illnesses and how it can change you. I must say, I remember when we're doing the interview talking about how down and out you are at a certain point in your life and how you actually were able to get everything back together again with your great daughters and pull up for the very few of you out there who don't know a lot about Nami Jail. Let me just give you the quick brief. You know, besides being a TV host and bestselling author, she's a five time Grammy Award winning singer. She's as well as songwriter's humanitarian, and she really is we're can talk about that today, a wonderful motivational speaker. And she's as survivor as that survivor element that gives her so much authority when we speak to the different health challenges to all of us facing our lives, and may only this case is hepatitis C. Now we take us back to your hepatitis and and how you sort of figured out what it was and cope with the illness itself. It's a very mysterious disease. Um, let me lead off by acknowledging I love to be able to say this. This is why I salute programs like yours. But I was a nurse here and um I'm coming to you from by Little Uh Valley and libor Sports, Tennessee. Um, I'm here and I'm also in the Land of Oz at the same time. But I was a nurse. I actually had this noble, romantic fantasy of becoming an m D. Um in my pocket of the world. Apple. Hi, I'm from Ashley, Kentucky. Until one ownA exhibited this extraordinary talent and I took a d turn to singing. So I've always had the yearning to be part of the healing process. But when I worked as a nurse, primarily worked in I see you, I see you, and you know, I'd say, all these years, I have never thought about that's right, I see you. I love that. Well. I'm a word master. I see the whole world in signs and symbols, in our type of language. Um, I kind of live in the invisible world a lot of the time. I guess because I'm a spiritual person. I use the word religious, but um, basically I think we're spiritual beings lived had a human experience. But when I worked as a nurse in the hospital, and we now have something like eighties five fouls and healthcare workers nurses every year to get stuck. Um. But anyway, it's a very head If you guys have seen e Er or anything about the trauma bays, it's a very hazardous place. You get bodily fluids of all sorts. He gets stuck. Um. So I was one of those. And I only say that because in most cases which have seemed you don't know the ead bology, you don't know the origin of the seas. I never did ide drugs. I'm pretty old fashioned. Um the girl Sam's the square, I can't roll out of bed. It was one of those people that didn't, you know, I've never, I think, technically been drunk. I love my Margarita's, but I mean, so I'm not one of these um real at risk people. I got hepsy probably I don't know, but I was diagnosed with non ain on being on c in n ON and I were at the top of our game thanks to the dear fans. We were just rocking and rolling out there in life highways and am you know. Change is the true nature of the world. And that's one of the things that illness those two us, that just stops us dead and flips our world upside down. So you're, as you said, You're cruising along, You're singing. Everyone loves you. You find you find that you gotta have the taste. So that what happened in your life then I started, I've been outrageously helping my whole thinking life. I've never I mean, I was like an eighteen year old chearlier. I never had anything. I had bowless energies. Frankly had to because you're waking up the different city, a different subculture in America every day, and we're performance thousands have sold out concerts every night, and it just takes an ordinate amount of energy because I am a sponge too, not only writing the songs, traveling, doing the concerts, all the pr and media, but maymen, every night there would be so many people who um, and for me, it's really about the exquisite reality of meeting people. I mean, tripping out on six Grammys and doing all the TV specials all that. This is a hoot. But I know there's stuff that's in different or special about me. I've always felt like services the work of the soul, and I've always felt like whatever I was doing it was just a chance for me to expand. So having said that, here I am in my glory, having had a rough life poverty, raised the kids on welfare, survived domestic violence, put myself through college to get my r In degree while I was raising the kids. Thank you very much, and then all of a sudden, you know, it just stops my show. So I really had to understand that it's not what happens to us, it's what we choose to do with it. When I was diagnosed, they were saying non a not being on sea because back then we didn't have a diagnosis of HEPATITISY. We know that A is um fecal oral contamination, restaurant workers whatever. Not washing your hands, you're on the couch, six weeks, you get up, You're okay. BE much more serious. BE is blood borne um. It's like ten times more infectious an age the actual viruses. And because late to liver cancer and out a serious problem and new we should point out, by the way, with Naomi Judd, her new book, Naomi's Guide to Aging Gratefully is what we're gonna talk about for the rest of the show. But Naomi points out that hepatitis B is a is a more infectious agent than than AIDS. When you guys are out there and worried about getting blood transfusions, for example, during surgery, it's not the AIDS virus that we worry about that it's a one and a half a million odds that's going to happen. But hepatitis caused by one of the viruses can occur in up to one in a hundred cases. That's a much bigger problem for us and folks who have a risk getting blood that anything else. I'm sorry, now we go ahead. Well, let's stop there and acknowledge what the college two factors are for happy and hepsy as well. Any time we say the word blood born, why don't you speak into that? What is blood born? So? These are bodily fluids that have blood in them, and most obviously your own blood. So if you give someone a blood transfusion, or if you stick a needle in you and then somebody else, whether it's a healthcare worker who doesn't buy mistake or drug abuser who's sharing needles. These are the reasons, by the way, that that folks get really concerned about drug addicts and how to limit the intravenous contamination that occurs with these folks. There are other bodily fluids as well. They can contaminate you sexual activity, uh and infactly, biting somebody sometimes can transmit a virus that's in your blood stream to somebody else. We'll also getting a tattoo. I'm gonna go ahead and say this because um, we were talking on a cell phone. She knew it wasn't a landline, and I think it's okay. But Pamela Anderson, the Anderson who got HEPSTAY, called me and her first husband, Tommy Lee. Uh, they shared tattoo needles on their honeymoon. How romantic is that? So anyway, you can get it if you share any kind like a razor, if you have to have even a toothbrush, if you happen to have an open gum, blading gum, any sort of open um. Certainly if you get an organ transplant, if you um. But hepatitis B is incredibly um dangerous. Thank god, we now have a series of vaccines as a series of three, so you can get that, certainly, your healthcare worker, please please. But then hep C. And it's always interesting to me how we come upon this stuff. The v a hospital is a great um way to diagnose illnesses because these guys have their permanent records on file three years and years, and we really get a lot of information from our veterans, like the good news bad news. But they started noticing in the eighties that these veterans had this very deadly mysterious virus. And again hepatitis. Just me, I T I S on the end, does means inflammation of like bronchie as conseilite as a pendicitisa means liver. So they were having this hideous virus of their liver and it wasn't a and it wouldn't be that. I right, these are we used to call it non a non be just to show you, you know, sometimes they're sort of limited and coming up with names. It was that's what they said for me, and dig this and this really talks about how all of us falls through the crack. I mean, I'm on the cover of People magazine and Rolling Stone and these doctors kept this diagnosing. They just said non anc in. Well, gonna gonna go ahead and say they finally came out with inclusive test perhaps say they gave it to me that I didn't have. I did mhm. So there me make a great point about celebrities and how they're treated. I must say whatever I have friends, I say, I'll never get v I P care because when you have v I P care, people start doing things for you and to you that they normally don't do. So that changes the norm. And guess what, the norm often works pretty well. So, for example, if the chairman of the department is doing a blood draw on you, they don't know mely drawl, So you're not going to get the best job done that you could get done, because usually it's a technician that does that. They do it pretty darn well. And I must say I reminded of one very moving event in my life. I was about the operator in a physician. I take care of a lot of doctors and this was a young orthopedic excursion who needed a valve change in his heart. And as I was walking into, you know, around his table as he was going to sleep, I said, okay, Dr So and So, I'll see you in a couple of hours after the case. He looked over to me, just before they put the mask in his face. It's like this is like out of a TV movie, and he said, it's Mr So and So do you And it was very clear he didn't want to be different. He knew as I do. And you I think you appreciate as well. Since you're in the healthcare field, you don't want to be different. When you go to the hospital. You want to get the average care as long as the people who are giving average care pretty good at it, and that's a lesson I think for all of us to keep in mind. More questions after the break nam me, So you're your top of your career. You're you know, you're winning all these Emmy's, everyone's putting you on their covers. Uh, you're you're getting honored by Actually you have been honored as one of the four greatest women in country music. So everyone who knows who you are. And you're struggling with a very difficult diagnosis with the oregan the liver that's our ultimately toxifying organ. I mean, there's the reason why. It's the foundation of of irabdic and traditional Chinese medicine. You know, it's just so important and cleansing the body, and it's inflamed in toxic itself. So how do you get your life together? The first thing you do is spend time alone. Um. I was, well, I had to because I was I was in a fatal position in the dark room girl. Um but I think the first thing anybody listened to the sound of our voices right now needs to do just to spend some time alone and realize that if a doctor douse you, hey, a very deadly diagnosis. You really have to appreciate this is another human being and they probably are putting a medical hex in a curse on you. So many of us um listen to doctors as if they're demo gods. And when this doctor, and I'm not going to say the name of the institution, it's sort of the Rolls Royce here in America. When he told me I had less than three years to live, it was a sticky wicket because all of a sudden, I'm the patient in the wheelchair instead of the nurse. It's my old hild billy gut sticking at a hospital account, and I am so vulnerable. I don't know where I am. I can barely send any sentences because, as you said, delivered to toxic ue. It's the ultimate filter we called the factory. I was so poisoned by my own body. I was slipped out because I was gonna lose my career by known and I had contracts for a year of concert. I felt like I was the CEO of a big corporation. If I didn't sing, the people didn't eat. We have like eighty people or it was hideous everything that could go wrong? So what what? What was Winona thinking through this, are you telling them about illness and the high risks that are uh what all was grading for you? Interestingly, when I was starting to be um symptomatic, I took her to the doctor because she has severe asthma. This is a problem for us sing or believe me, I know all the doctors here because I used to work with him at the hospital before I started singing. So I take her him, our allergists and um. While I was there, I know the nurses because, like I said, they were my partners on the team at the hospital. And I pulled one aside and I said, you know, do deliver panel on me. I'm tired. Um, I'm kind of a here. I have a lot of great fever or called chronic headache. I am just not myself. Well, we went back to adjust one note as asthma medications. This is a good um example of how nurses and doctors um don't take care of themselves. So we go act for why known as stuff and the doctor Miller pulls me on the other room and in front of Winona says, kiddo, you're a l t a s here through the roof. There's something wrong with your lover, you're the sick puppy. So Amanda was actually right there beside me when he said, you've got to cancel your winter tour. Get about it. You're not gonna be able to put on pantyhose, let alone jump off our and a half on stage, and Winona started descending into clinical depression. I had to go to a psychiatrist for the first time of my life. Um actually was a psychologist and told my husband in front of a psychologist because I didn't know how to do it alone. We found a Christian therapist here in Franklin to tell Ashley and everybody in the family because he said I was gonna die. He said I was going to take a six ft dirt neap and I just UM. Once when a doctor standing there in a starch white lab coat with some big degree on the wall tells you it's really programming your your body because the mind is the body's information pathways, the body's control tower. And you and I know, um that your belief, whatever you believe, literally becomes your biology. So I just want to caution people there are so many intelligence, um educated folks who don't understand the power of the mind has so your body literally will manifest, will will make real whatever you believe. And if you've got a doctor telling you that you're going to die or this is going to happen, I just want to caution people get out of the bleachers and get into the game and realize nobody can do that to you. It does become a self fulfilling prophecy. So I the first thing I had to do was step away from that start becoming a detective. One thing, by the way, to me, I've heard your quarters saying that a dead end is just a place to turn around. Yeah, which I think is a pretty good way of looking at it. Whenever you get a diagnosis, and it's investigating alternative approaches, getting second opinions, which only ten percent of us get, but a third time of it changes a diagnosis of the treatment. These are all no brainers for all of you out there listening, especially if you've got a diagnosis that your folks taking care you aren't sure about. It doesn't mean they're not good docs, I aren't doing their best. But the reality is we're all humans and we've got limitations in our ability to make diagnosis, and it's worth getting more folks thinking about your well being. Well. The first time I discussed cover of Life magazine, what was that ten years ago? It was back when I was still suffering, And I remember somebody actually brought it to me and that there was a scourgeous doctor who wrote his bicycle to work every day at a hospital in New York City to talk to his doctors and more importantly listened to, I mean, his patients, listen to his patients, practiced um the art of I don't know that it was raiky, but I sort of energy medicine, yes, And I was so right in the thrall of investigating the power of the spirit and the mind over the body. And in my huge heap of study material was your issue in Life magazine. And I thought, my God, in heaven, there's a doctor not only all of those patients that here are trying to figure out how we can save our lives and participate and find a partner in the healing journey, because that's what it is, it's a partnership. And I just really latched onto you. And I remember looking at your pictures and you were happily married, you had kids, and I was like a fan. And then we meet because we're speaking together later on at a symposium on integrative medicine and I meet You're wise and then I see the the show on TV and it is called second opinion. I get a second opinion from my vet. It's that important. It's so true. But the other thing that I love about you and the ways that you're you're, as you said earlier, you're you're a word meister. You you think about common problems in uncommon ways, which is a talent that is so endearing and so useful, which is one of the reasons that it's great out and had you on the show, But it been in your family. I mean, you guys, it's been said you're saying like angels and fault like the devil, but you loved it right, But you loved each other right through the struggle. You actually triumphed in part because the family pulled together. You knew how to get folks who could could have gone apart right through the chronic illness that besets you and instead got the family grow together. I mean, how does the mother do that? How do you how do you get people to be winners by fighting back the way you're arguing that they should. Well, the bottom line is UM. And I actually preached my first sermon is past Sunday. I had a girlfriend who was ordained installed as the first thing me all pastor of the Maddest Madnu. That's church in New York City. And that's what I talked about, that the deepest source of your identity, the deepest source of is the God of our understanding. I'm going with a girlfriend to a meeting. Whatever your beliefe is a higher power. All that you have to appreciate that it's not what happens to you, it's what you choose to do with it. And we're all here to grow in love and wisdom. And when every time I get smacked in the face, I realized the deepest source of my identity is God. And I tried to teach our show not to speak because what you are speaks louder. But I tried to every day to show one owner and actually, um, even if we were eating beans and cornbread, blowny and crackers and sleeping in one bed and had no heat and all that stuff of life, it's not what matters. It's your spirit. It's what you choose to And I had them be insatiably cure is from the minute they could understand. So it's really about just opening up your eyes and your heart said, Okay, now we've got a family issue. What are we gonna do? Can we Are we gonna implode? Um? No, We're gonna all realize. The bottom line is we have separate reality. I love to say shift happened, and a major shift and our family happened. I'm gonna say, fifteen years ago, did you thank everybody and your family thinks alike and you've all had the same experiences because you share it, You're from the same gene pool, you live under the same room. What was the event fifteen years ago? Oh, actually appeared nude in a movie. That's the first time I said that. But she played Marilyn Monroe and an HBO special. Uh, she and Mira Savino played uh, Marril Monroe that before and the after. She was that before she was the dorma Jean Baker, before MARYL. Merrow became a celebrity and actually was living at home. She set us down at the supper table and she said, I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you, guys, I did a new scene in a movie when my husband, you know, spit his ice teeth through his nose, pushed back for away from the table, and why Nona just sort of walked around on the back porch for a minute, came back in, and I thought, okay, we are all three in the entertainment world. It never had occurred to me, and I know that sounds bizarre, but we're such normal people. Um had never really hit me that we've got to develop boundaries. For instance, I can't talk about Ashley's marriage or one owner's problems in public without them giving me permission. Of course, of course, but I have I have emotional incontinence, I have diarryet. Now I will tell you anything, I'm gonna use. That emotional incontinence was me thking about dealing with the emotions you mentioned. Shift happens, and that's part of the theme of the first chapter of your great book, Naomi's Guide to Aging Gracefully Gratefully. I can't apologize it is gracefully as well, by the way, and we do talk about that later. Now, these are the facts, myths, and good news for the boomers. So talking a little bit about the birth of a notion that the first chapter in the book, well, I get really kicked off again. I just feel like the average person's representative out there in the world. And I've had this exclusive privilege uh doing stuff that ordinary folks read about through the media, and I know all the tricks of the trade, and I know movie stars because I've actually been in movies. I know the course of royalty of country music, and I travel in all fifty states. So over the years, I've been so dismayed by our culture's preoccupation with youth and beauty, and it doesn't make people happy. And that's what bothers me is that let me ask you, you're the big guy, what do you think is the number one cause of unhappiness? And I will say that Americans are the most depressed and and happy in history. My girlfriends and guy friends who are psychiatrist behavioral therapy therapists have taught me that Americans are more depressed and happy than ever. But see, for me, Naomi, happiness has always been about gratitude, because when you're grateful about the things in your life, whether it's having the bologney sandwiches, there's even in one bed, as you've counted earlier, it's because you've got some new gig going or you got on the Oprah Show. It's it's that's not it, that's those are the single little high moments. Anyone's gonna be grateful about those. It's the day to day gratefulness that we feel towards being blessed to be alive, the people who are dear to us, people who truly love us, and we love them back. That's what ultimately brings happiness. And so when you're not happy, that introduces a whole bunch of other headaches, because why the heck are you here? What's the point? And then it all begins to implode from there. And I think one of the challenges we face in these countries that I mean, we have access to everything you think right, and you have enough money to eat most of us, no matter where you are in the social system, you've got a lot more stuff going on than just about anybody else in human history has ever had. But you're always looking out there and seeing what somebody else has and forgetting about the fundamentals of what truly drive happiness. And as you have said yourself, you traveled all over, You've been in the right circles, and not everyone's happy there. And this is an old Saul. But the reality is, if you don't focus on those fundamentals, valuing and being gratefully for your own body and how cool it is appreciating the relationships there are, dear to you, you're not gonna be happy no matter what. And by the way, the people who I admire the most are the folks who look only at those simple things to bring them happiness, because you know what, they're always happy because if you're looking for those things, you can actually get those things. And that is the human plight. That's actually what makes humanity click. Well, you can't in the case to the new area, Yeah, yeah, baby, because the answer is today's Americans don't know who they are, So your answer is right in there. Today Americans have no clue who they are and what their values are. And that's because we have cultural a d h D. Everybody is so busy, so stink and wrapped up in going and doing. And you've heard that to saying you're a human being, not a human doing. Every night I go sit. I mean, you would be astonished to see where I am right now. By the way, one Noonah lives over the hill behind me and actually lives up the road. We share a valley. I've never owned a diamond ring. I don't give a hoot about cars or designer clothes. I would never buy one of those stupid thousand dollar purses. Every night, my husband and I cooked supper last night. Um, we grilled up. We sit on the front porch every night, and I've got a hummingbird, theater, my dogs and the glider with me. I live such a stripped down life, and it's because I have learned through my travels and making an encyclopedic range of people that what you said is absolutely true. And today people don't have a clue who they are. There's been too much time in the media. You're hypnotized by advertisers, so you're right, it's not known who you are. And what makes you feel my goal is right in the world, Well, you know, in in the book, you highlight some of the key items that I feel are important for us as we try to come to grips with the reality that aging is normal and it can be okay. You point out by the way that you want us to be inspired the change you know, choose having a new growth experience. I see what the acronym stands for in the book, but you also say that the next big cultural shift will be the redefining of aging. And when we come back from the break, I wanted to ask you uh to be a little clear on what that really means to you and how is it that you think the nation is going to shift its goals so we begin to actually reward wisdom to help us declutter spiritually to find the purpose and meaning that we want in life, and by doing that practice the positivism that that you've been articulating so beautifully on this program. And I say that in part because there are a lot of folks out there struggling with that very reality. There's lots more when we come back. I'm clear on some of the basic issues, but the one that really gets me is whether or not we can really make this big cultural shift that you arguing we need to be able to make. What do you think I think we should because the reason I wrote the book is that there are seventy eight million of us for the largest demographic and the history of healing current, and I don't understand while we don't acknowledge and then utilize our personal power, our economic clouds boomers and it's obviously because of the Second World War, the soldiers came home, everybody got busy in the bedroom and we started having, um, these big families. So that now, I mean, I'm sixty one, how do you well, you're still a boomer. I mean, why not? There's forty three next week. She's a baby boomer. Also, this this age range right now is predominant in our culture. We have the wisdom, meaning we have experiences if we choose to uh to use them wisely. We've got the deep pockets, we have disposable income. Why aren't we uh using that? And obviously the shift is we've got to get to the advertisers and the marketers because they're not keeping pace. And you've got poor little Paris Hilton, Britney spears shave in her head, Lindsay Lohan, uh Nicole Richie, digittle girls in rehab, their miserable people. I mean, they've got pathology going on. Somebody needs to help them, not put them on the cover of magazines and hold them up as some poster child for happiness. There is the exact um, what's the world, ma'am? What's the word? Um? There, they're the antithesis exactly. Well, let me ask you, though, because in the book you talk about some of the things that we can do actively in our lives today. So I think we all grasp the fact that there's a culture war going on and we're going to have to influence that process. At the same time, there are things that we can do just to make ourselves happier, because I think a lot of the reasons people go for the bait of wanting to look like the magazine cover is because they're not happy with the status quo. Why aren't we happy with the status quo? And you talk about decluttering ourselves right physically, spiritually, and emotionally, So I mean, how did you do that in your life? How should we do that? How's the listener out there do that? Well, if you think back to your past and you're still acting out of your least, your beliefs are based on your early memories and experiences. And I was very blessed. I didn't realize at the time. From a pocket of Appalachia and my grandparents and NaNs and uncles lived in the country. They didn't even have running water. I mean, I can make life soap, I can cook on a wood cook sotave, I can recognize the poisonous steak make and raise a garden. And when I lived with um my aunts and uncles and Ogden Judd, my granddaddy in the country, our lives were so stripped down for us to sit out on the porch and the eave and the listen to the whipper wells and go pick stuff out of the garden, wash it off with well water and eat it. There was just this stripped down connection with nature, with our capacity to do things ourselves solitude. I didn't have a TV. There was no television in their house. Didn't you have a radio? If a car came down our road, it was like good. It's hard to mail me to decrete that. For a lot of folks, uh you know, who are still in the workforce, but boomers, and they are living in an urban environment. And I grew up in a place. I grew up Warmington, Delaware, which is not as roll as where you grew up. But I had grass in my front yard. I couldn't see another house when I woke up in the morning. So I'd love to be able to live in that environment. I try to create it where I live now, but it's tough. Well, Thank you for pointing that out, because I've kind of going off on my tangent. But what I do now, and you know what, being on the road thirty or forty years later after my childhood experience sort of jump start at the process for me. Because when you live on a bus, I don't know if you've ever may you ever been in a big tour bus, not like you've been. I mean, you've got bunks, you've got a little tiny bathroom, you've got your microwaves, your coffee maker. It's like a little room. So you wake up on the sidewalk or in the parking lot the next morning and you're in New York City, or you're in um Rooster Poot, Texas, the Brain at North Dakota. So and then, yeah, I've been there, done that. You go to the hotel room and you've got a bed and a toilet and a TV set and somebody brings you food on a tray. What a deal. So I started learning again that it's kind of like what David said when that when they I mean Michaelangelo, when they asked him about David his magnificence of Vulture, he said, how did you create this masterpiece? He said, I got rid of everything. It wasn't David. And I've said the privilege have been able to buy a land in the wilderness now, and I choose that's the word I choose every day. I just got back from New York City and I have to live in a motel room in downtown Manhattan. What says, how good? And then I also still travel a lot to the speaking engagements. I was last week. I was in Pueblo, Colorado. They have a big problem with domestic violence, so I went out there. So everywhere I go, I choose to spend an hour in solitude and then warning by myself. I take my little dog, I have my little rituals. I don't watch TV, so I really choose, um, what I read, what I listened to, and even got to know that today people on around if I get around energy vampires, dark energy drains, drains. But I gotta see these are so good. Why do you call the vampire energy vampires? Energy vampires? And you guys know who I'm talking about. And I do a whole thing in my book about emotional house cleaning, and I have to kind of fuss at girls. Um, I'm having a party at my house tomorrow night, raving about thirty five people over and I'm cooking and um, I got a friend bringing horses and we got fireworks. And one of the things that always happened, the girls all get together as a ladies. Um at under the big tree. We caught the world according to us, hmm, a circle of girlfriends. And it always comes down talking about emotional house cleaning because we have the disease to please. We are control freaks, we're perfectionists. He's got to get rid of the energy vampires around us. It's about it's about stripping down. Uh. The older I get, the more I get rid of you know. That makes and I love that quote about David Michaelangelo. The idea excep for except for underwear. I'm wearing less makeup more underwear. As you say that. By the way, so she focused on the He said to focus on the size and condition of your heart, not your brass eyes or the number of wrinkles in your face. That's a quote from the book. By the way, numbers, pay attention to your cholesterol, what's your trick lester ride, you know, what's your blood pressure? That? Pay attention to those numbers and I was Daddie LaBelle last week, who has diabetes. She's injecting seven times a day, and we were talking about how critical it is. Two and at least I love being around my girlfriends like Dolly Parton and all because we have our own little club. We're so put upon with pressures in the media, so look our best and all that. But so we you know, we're always talking in st esoteric little like who's your favorite makeup artist? And and who do you go to for I don't do botox, but you know that kind of stuff. So I was talking to Patty about the numbers we should pay attention to, or if your guy, what's your ps A state specific images? Those are the only numbers that matter. But in addition to the actual numbers, which we actually should focus on, you also touch on some sensitive issues like sex. I mean, most folks think that when you get older, sex is done, and it turns out, actually that there's a pretty sizeable cord of folks who are able to be sexually active way into their eighties and longer. So, I mean, how do you get folks to realize that the things they think they're supposed to do in their old aren't the thing they should be doing. You get away from this thinking media. That's why I keep saying you have to be discerning. Um, but you know, not watching television or watching tell mean, if you're not watching me, you'll you know, you'll do will be more often. But I desire Craving to have sex is something that folks have to intellectually get comfortable with two, especially for women, where four plays a twenty four hour event. Yep, um, yeah, say men are like a microwave, the women are like a confection of And the deal is being healthy. And if you start shutting down and spending and I'm you know, such an enthusiast of solitude spending some time with your stuff in the morning and saying, you know what worked for me yesterday? What were the moments where I felt like I was in the zone? What were the moments where I was in the flow yesterday? And who am I around that makes me feel like shoo, I liked around this person? Aren't paying attention to yourself? And then if you start getting healthy and of course, uh, I saw you the other day on Oprah's After Show where you were talking about people that come in that haven't loosened their belt. That comes to the er with abdominal issues syndrome, and we call it the DUMBLP disease dumb looped over. So that's that's when you're not paying attention to basic stuff. If you get yourself healthy. And then in the book, I talk about biodenical hormone replacement therapy and I talked about getting h if you decide to do this with your doctor and you don't have ulter risks like cancer and your family reproductive cancer, if you pay attention to your estra dial level, and there's four four forms invest dial which is human um, but the female hormone for gesterone female um the other part of estrogen. And then you might want to do a little testosterone, which is the male. It's an androgen, but also it's essential for a sexual appetite. The doctor that I go to does biodenmical I allude to this in the book. And you can take a little bit of a testosterone cream so that it's transdermal. Just put it on the inter aspect of your arms once or twice a week. Now, keep everybody happy you do that. Oh yes, uh, all right, So one more time for everybody to take a biodemical estrogen. What kind of progesterone do you take? I take? Well, let me let me get back to that, because I talked about it in the book now Here Again, I'm not a doctor. Um, you're a practicing woman, so it's okay. Who play one on TV. I'm just a woman who's sixty one, I say, sexy plus one. I'm very happy you take biodymical hormone replacement therapy because you're born with all the eggs you're ever going to have. It's a simple mass. By the time you hit fifty king, you're out of eggs. If you do all of your late once a month and you started age thirteen, okay, you're out of eggs. I came downstairs about eleven years ago, tell my husband, I'm out of eggs. He said, that's okay. I'll have cheerios. Um, so perceptive. I'm going through the Chaine. It's okay. I've got my poker money upstairs. So you start recognizing if you if you're a candidate again, if you don't have a family history of breast cancer, bvarian cancer and all that, and you haven't had a hysterect to me, and you want to do something that's exactly UM gonna mimic the estrogen that you're used to make, and estrogen is only happy equation. I take a little transdermal patch, what little anything about the size of a quarter. It gives me the lowest does, the lowest possible does of female bodentical estrogen. I'm so thrilled that the Women's Health Initiative blew the horn on this awful, awful, awful premarin which was conjugated. It was so slowly experided, it did not it was pregnant. And then I take every night, UM the most biogenical form of progesterone. Again, you have to have those to balance out. So I take biodenical hormone progesterone at night, and then once a week a little bit of the UM biodemical testosterone on the hand. So the only thing you take by mouth is the progesterone. Is that right? Yes? Jaomi Judd as always a word meister, a rich person in many ways, spiritually, emotionally, verbally, despite her emotional incontinence. I love you, it's it's it's You've got a standing invitation in New York that comes stay with us um, but I do encourage you to take a look at Naomi's Guide to Aging Gratefully