File 43: Recorded before a live audience at the Goodwill Opportunity Center in collaboration with LeadWell, File 43 of the Workforce Therapy Files features nurse practitioner Gaby Jaggers discussing the critical intersection of women’s health and workplace retention. Jamie Johnson introduced LeadWell’s mission to destigmatize topics like burnout, the sandwich generation, menopause, and fertility in professional settings.
Gaby debunked prevalent health myths regarding severe period pain, postpartum recovery, and menopause, noting that 100% of women experience hormonal transitions that directly affect their productivity and well-being. She urged business leaders to take accountability by actively asking employees what they need through anonymous feedback rather than allowing chronic stress to drive turnover.
Through integrative medicine, Gaby advocates for discovering root causes of symptoms rather than relying on quick pharmaceutical fixes. Essential interventions discussed include comprehensive lab testing, whole-food nutrition, and targeted supplementation with magnesium, vitamin D, and methylated multivitamins.
Additionally, the episode stresses that executive leaders must model healthy boundaries and enforce real PTO usage to foster sustainable organizational cultures. All ticket proceeds from this live recording were donated directly to support the Goodwill Opportunity Center.
File Transcript:
Molley Ricketts:
Thank you all for coming in, getting your breakfast. I hope it was delicious. The folks at Black Coffee put amazing food together and their coffee is spot on. So we’ll let everybody get their seats and then we’ll kick off.
Jamie Swaim:
Molley, before we do that.
Molley Ricketts:
Yeah?
Jamie Swaim:
I have a confession. This is also my first live podcast recording, so we’re going to get this unlocked together and I’m excited about that, but I’m a little bit nervous about it. I don’t know about everybody else. This is an ad hoc conversation. If you ever spent any time with us, sometimes we spitball…
Molley Ricketts:
And wing it? We’re not going to wing it though, once we start.
Jamie Swaim:
We actually had one recording where we had to start over. So that could happen today too because whenever we’re together, we like to laugh and sometimes we need to edit that out. You know what I mean?
Molley Ricketts:
Because the laugh’s a little too much.
Jamie Swaim:
That’s right. So there might be some things that we need to do that today. We’ll try not to, but…
Molley Ricketts:
Yeah.
Jamie Swaim:
Alright.
Molley Ricketts:
Okay.
Jamie Swaim:
Everybody’s taking a seat.
Molley Ricketts:
Good morning and welcome to the LeadWell Live Audience podcast recording with Ms. Gaby Jaggers. Yay. We are so excited that you’re here. And before we kick it off, I would like to introduce a dear friend, Ms. Jamie Johnson, and she’s going to let everybody know a little bit more about LeadWell and how this all came about.
Jamie Johnson:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to hear the conversation today, because I think this is much needed. So LeadWell was really started about a year and a half ago. There’s a group of seven women that we came together and decided that there’s things that we need to talk about that are not discussed in the workplace. There’s a lot of things that women have to deal with that men do not. There’s the burnout, the mental load of taking care of everyone else. There’s the sandwich generation right now where a lot of women are not only taking care of their own kids, but their parents too, and how that affects us showing up to work. Menopause, fertility issues. I mean, the list doesn’t end.
So we just wanted to create a safe space where women could come together and talk to each other about what’s going on, find solutions, and really just empower you to know that you can still show up to work, be your authentic self.
So we’re excited today for the women’s health conversation because that is one piece that I think is not talked about a lot at work.
Molley Ricketts:
I agree. I think we can all agree with that one, right? So before we kick off in our interview with Gaby, I’d like to give a special shout out to a few of our sponsors and one in particular today, our presenting sponsor, She Knows Best. We’ve got our table set over here in the room, the international bestseller that I’m so proud to have been a part of with another group of amazing women that I have in my circle. And that’s truly what it’s about. It’s lifting your circle for that next season of life that we all tend to find ourselves in.
And here’s the other page. It’s on the other side. Nothing like live audience for that. Many of our sponsors such as Junior League of Louisville. So grateful for your commitment and the support of this community that we’ve had from Old National Bank, V-Soft, United Healthcare, Humana, USI Insurance.
We appreciate you investing in these critical conversations because like all of us in the room, the more we know, the better that the workplace culture can be. So looking forward to prioritizing women’s health and the life that we lead.
As we’re also going through our in-kind sponsors for today’s event, obviously we’re in this huge, amazing Goodwill Opportunity Center here off of West Broadway. It is an incredible space. If this is your first time here, I highly encourage you to take a tour, learn more about the facility. It’s a great space to be and hold events just like this. The Print Refinery for all of the paper that you see and the signage that we have, they’re a great partner for us. The florals, these are incredible.
Jamie Johnson:
I could have never done that before.
Molley Ricketts:
No. I though it was fake.
Jamie Johnson:
Yeah, it’s real.
Molley Ricketts:
That’s incredible.
Jamie Johnson:
I didn’t know that was part of the event. That’s gorgeous.
Molley Ricketts:
It’s great. Yeah. And Robin, she’s around here shooting her camera. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So for this live podcast experience, are we ready?
Gaby Jaggers and Jamie Johnson:
Let’s do it!
Molley Ricketts:
And now I love that. That was great. That wasn’t planned. That wasn’t planned. All right, so without further ado, I’m excited to kick off today’s podcast in front of a live audience and introduce our special guest and a great friend of mine. I’m so stoked that she’s here. Today’s topic, women’s health.
Unfortunately, we only have about 30 minutes to talk, but I know that this is going to create so much curiosity for all of us to continue to learn more. So with that, women’s health isn’t a moment. It’s literally a span of many, many careers. Workplaces should be treated based on retention, performance. Leaders can’t afford to ignore the opportunities that we have and that we need today, right? So I’m excited to introduce Gaby Jaggers.
Gaby Jaggers is a nurse practitioner with nearly 20 years of nursing experience, passionate about helping individuals optimize their personal health from inside out.
Gaby specializes in integrative and functional medicine, hormone health, wellness optimization, and aesthetic treatments. She believes true wellness begins with intentional living, and I can say as her friend, she really does. Real food, movement, mindset, spiritual wellbeing, and creating conditions for the body to heal and thrive. All right.
Jamie Swaim:
Welcome, Gaby.
Gaby Jaggers:
Thank You. I’m so happy to be here.
Jamie Swaim:
Yes. Well, I like to kick this off because we are going to get to know all kinds of things about you while you’re here, but we’re going to play a little game called Fact or Cap.
Gaby Jaggers:
Okay.
Jamie Swaim:
Cap is what the kids are saying for “lies”, or they were at least five years ago. I don’t even know if they still are using that one.
Gaby Jaggers:
Define this for me earlier because I had no idea what Cap meant.
Jamie Swaim:
Well, let’s go back and call it something that might be more generationally appropriate. This is myth-busting.
Gaby Jaggers:
Okay.
Jamie Swaim:
How about that?
Gaby Jaggers:
I got that.
Jamie Swaim:
Okay, great. So I’m going to throw out some statements that I believe there are still some people that anchor really hard to, and I want you to tell me whether or not they should or whether or not it’s cap.
Gaby Jaggers:
Okay.
Jamie Swaim:
Okay. So the first one is severe period pain is just something women have to deal with.
Gaby Jaggers:
Cap. Definitely not right. You don’t have to deal with it.
Jamie Swaim:
Even through your different phases.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yes.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah.
Gaby Jaggers:
Totally.
Jamie Swaim:
I think it’s one of those things where people don’t really know that those things can change throughout your life and how, hey, if it starts feeling really hard, you don’t necessarily have to work there.
Gaby Jaggers:
I think that people, women in general, we think that we are supposed to be dealing with certain things and that it’s just normal for us to be fatigued or in pain or just feeling totally awful all the time. And I don’t think that that’s true.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah, because Jamie gave this amazing list of all the things that women navigate. I think the part that I would add to it to complement that list is that, and you have to get up at 8:00 AM and act like it’s not happening.
Gaby Jaggers:
Oh yeah.
Jamie Swaim:
Right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Number two, menopause is basically just hot flashes.
Gaby Jaggers:
No, definitely not cap.
Jamie Swaim:
Cap.
Gaby Jaggers:
I forgot. I’m supposed to say cap.
Jamie Swaim:
You supposed to cap. Okay. Yeah, cap. Yeah. So tell us more about some of the things that might impact how women work going through menopause.
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, menopause is not just hot flashes or night sweats. I mean, we all, or if you have not gotten there yet, I think we’re all kind of in that place in our life. We’re in that perimenopause place. But it can be fatigue, weight gain, intimacy issues with your spouse or your partner, just the way you feel. You don’t feel like yourself anymore, and that is all just part of it and you don’t have to deal with it. You can actually come back from that and feel better.
Jamie Swaim:
Okay, that’s very helpful. All right, number three. After having a baby, you just got to tough it out. It’ll all kind of fall back in place.
Gaby Jaggers:
I mean, cap? Cap. I mean, things do kind of fall back in place. If you get with the rhythm of having a new baby, you just burst this thing that you now have to care for 24/7. A lot of us, if you didn’t have any children before, it’s totally different. You lose yourself a little bit.
Jamie Swaim:
1000%.
Gaby Jaggers:
So, getting back into the rhythm of your new normal, I think is something that we all go through.
Jamie Swaim:
At one employer that I had, there was a general manager that I worked with that I credit with both teaching me how to be a mom and also teaching me how to use the F-word in a lot of different creative ways. But I didn’t even know how to advocate for what my child needed because I’d been a professional for so long when I decided to have a child. And some of these are kind of tongue in cheek, obviously, but it’s also because it feels like this is what you’re supposed to do in certain professional settings, right?
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah, totally.
Jamie Swaim:
Alright, so here’s another one. If your labs are technically normal, you must be fine.
Gaby Jaggers:
There’s a meme that I brought with me today, and I think it says a lot about how we are told constantly that we are normal. I go into the doctor and I say, “I feel really bad and I have all of these different symptoms.” And my doctor looks at the labs and says, “Well, your labs are normal,” and that’s all they have for me. It’s like, “I know I don’t feel well, but you honestly have nothing to give me.” And oftentimes they’ll hand you your handy-dandy antidepressant. “Here, take this in place of actual care or validating how you feel.”
Jamie Swaim:
The list of the panel they put you through wasn’t even the complete panel they should have.
Gaby Jaggers:
I can tell you 100% as an integrative provider, it’s not. I get people’s labs and I’m like,” Oh gosh, I wish they’d just drawn a little bit more here. And I give people lists all the time. “Take this back to your doctor and ask them if they’ll draw this for you.”
Jamie Swaim:
Yes.
Gaby Jaggers:
And a lot of times they won’t. But, it’s not even anything crazy.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah. Molley, didn’t mean to step on your words.
Molley Ricketts:
No, you’re good.
Jamie Swaim:
What’d you say?
Molley Ricketts:
Now I can’t remember.
Jamie Swaim:
Okay.
Molley Ricketts:
I didn’t write it down.
Jamie Swaim:
I know a good nurse practitioner.
Molley Ricketts:
It’ll help with memory.
Jamie Johnson:
Brain fog.
Molley Ricketts:
Yeah. Brain fog is real.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah, it is real.
Jamie Swaim:
But to that point, if you go back and listen to prior episodes of the Workforce Therapy Files, you’ll hear that I reference social media reels and clips with an unhealthy obsession, if I’m honest. But there was one that I saw about women’s health that was a biopsy, a cervical biopsy, but they used it with the tool and then had an orange and it was talking about the lack of anesthesia and showed the process. And I was furious after watching it and being like, “There is no way.” So I can only imagine the kind of stuff that you see regularly around how women are treated in the healthcare settings at times.
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, I just feel the fact that we’re not really validated for our feelings. One of the things that I tell my patients all the time is, “I believe you.” And I’ve had people just burst out crying in front of me when I just say, “I believe you. Whatever your symptom is, I believe you.” Because so many people go to the doctor and they’re telling them, “I feel like this, I feel like this. I feel all these symptoms.” And they’re just like, “Well, your labs are normal.”
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah, so it must be in your head.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah. All right. So our last one for Fact or Cap or Myth-busters, whatever you choose, is women’s health benefits are nice to have, but they don’t really affect the bottom line. And I feel like this is the one that kind of gets us into the rest of today.
Gaby Jaggers:
I mean, I think that employers could be doing so much more for us just in general. I worked for a major hospital system for a really long time, and I was an educator at that hospital for a while. And I remember going into leadership meetings and just saying, “We need to do more for these nurses.” It’s not so much to expect that these people can do a better job if we just give them the tools that they need or some relaxation.
I mean, nurses in the hospital are taking care of so many different patients. It’s literally life and death, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we brought in a massage school and asked them to do some of their clinical hours on our floors, just come circulating the hospital, moving to different floors and giving people a 10 or 15-minute massage or having them set up downstairs or something like that just to show them we know you’re really working your butt off and this little thing is just a tiny little thing, but I think it will just add to your day and help you get through these hours.
And so just investing in your people, giving them a little bit extra or just telling them you hear them.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah. I feel like the pandemic, if we were to say that there was anything positive that came out of it, it was almost like this giant spotlight on everything that you just said, that there were all these women that were in these critical roles and also playing double duty with now a teacher and somebody that’s planning all of our meals, not just dinner and breakfast. Some people do breakfast. I don’t really do that part well. But anyway, there was all of these things that were happening and now all of a sudden companies had to make adjustments that they had never even considered, right?
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah. Well, we were talking about this before starting this taping, that I was a nurse in the hospital during COVID, and COVID was the first time that when you ever called in to the hospital, you have to talk to the house manager and the house manager would routinely say, “Well, what are your symptoms if you called in before the pandemic? What are your symptoms? Do you have a fever?” Justifying, “Can you come to work because we’re really short, we need you.”
But once the pandemic hit, all of a sudden you called and you said, “I have a fever or I have a cough or I can’t taste anything or anything like that.” And they were like, “You need to stay home.” And it was just relief for all of these nurses in the hospital because finally we didn’t have to justify the fact that we actually felt bad and we needed to stay home and it was the first time.
And that sounds crazy. I know people always thought that was kind of nuts that nurses are calling to say, “I’m sick,” and they’re coming in to take care of people who are sick, but they’re like, “We really need you. You have to come in.”
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah, you would think that would be the company that would do it better.
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, the shortages, I guess, just makes it really hard.
Jamie Johnson:
Yeah. One thing I like to think about too, I mean, when companies are not willing to add benefits or things like that that are going to support these issues that we’re talking about, 100% of women will go through perimenopause and menopause. Is that correct? Yeah. Fact? Yeah. Okay. So why are we not building those benefits and that education into the platforms that we already have in place?
Jamie Swaim:
Especially when you think about the period of time where individuals are going through perimenopause and menopause. I mean, it’s when you’ve collected the largest amount of work experience, where you’ve learned the most efficiencies, where you’ve built the strongest networks. I mean, when you get into 20 years plus of your career, presumably, then you know how to do it better than you did whenever all of the things worked easier.
Jamie Johnson:
Yeah, absolutely.
Gaby Jaggers:
And it spans an amount of time. I mean, you can be in perimenopause and menopause for 10 years, so…
Molley Ricketts:
That’s fun.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah, don’t suffer through it, you guys. There is help.
Jamie Swaim:
I think you just had a lot of people sign up to see you. Did you bring an appointment book?
Gaby Jaggers:
I didn’t, but you can contact me.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah.
Jamie Johnson:
So I am monitoring questions, so feel free to keep scanning the QR code. There is one that I was going to ask since it feels like the right time.
Molley Ricketts:
Okay.
Jamie Johnson:
Why is perimenopause still such a mystery? Why do even health professionals not know how to advise women on their wide variety of symptoms?
Molley Ricketts:
Preach.
Gaby Jaggers:
I wish I knew the answer to that. I really do, because it’s not rocket science. We all go through it. We’ve been going through it since the beginning of time, but when you go to talk to your gynecologist about your symptoms and that you need help, for whatever reason, this person who’s supposed to be the expert in the field is like, “Well, we all go through it. Just suffer through it. Suck it up.” They don’t even offer you anything when you don’t have to be that way. You literally can have treatment. I mean, hormone replacement therapy is lifesaving if anybody has ever gone through any hormone replacement therapy.
Molley Ricketts:
Amen.
Gaby Jaggers:
You can tell that it changed your life. It brought you back to your relationship with your spouse. It made you stop yelling at your kids. It allowed you to sleep. That’s one of the things that everybody always talks about when they see me is I just want to sleep. And it’s like, you can, we can get you back to this place.
So I don’t have the answer for why they don’t know how to treat you or don’t look into how to treat you, but there are a million books and there are providers out there that are educated in this field and are willing to help you. And I would just say seek help elsewhere. Whenever you don’t get an answer, be an advocate for yourself and definitely check with somebody else. Get a second opinion.
Molley Ricketts:
So Gaby, what’s one thing that you wish women knew 10 years earlier?
Gaby Jaggers:
That you don’t have to suffer, that there is a solution or we can be working on that solution. I’m not going to say that you’re going to come and see me and all of your problems are going to be completely gone, but I will work towards that. Let’s find the root cause. Let’s not just treat the symptoms because a lot of times we’re giving a pill for this, a pill for that, and those two pills is causing another symptom. So I think there is help out there. And like I said, if you don’t have a provider that is listening to you or that you feel has given you an answer or that you’re not starting to feel better from what they’re offering you, then seek help elsewhere.
Molley Ricketts:
So what are you hearing women say over and over again? And it’s just making you stop in your checks and think, “We’ve got to start talking about this.”
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, there’s a lot of things, but one of the things that came to my mind as soon as you said that was that they don’t have an intimate life anymore and they’re young. I have taken care of men and women and they will come to me in their 40s or early 50s and I’ll ask them about their intimate life because I like to get into people’s lives and really find out about that. Intimate lives are very important and they’ll say it’s just more hassle than it’s worth. And I think that that’s really sad because sex is great, orgasms are great. I think everybody should be having them. And I feel like that’s one of the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause is that things feel different and sometimes things hurt and maybe you don’t even feel like you want to get into it, but I feel like there is help for that.
And I do see patients in my hormone therapy business where I have a 75-year-old who comes to see me, an 80-year-old who comes to see me and gets her pellets, and she has a very active sex life, and I love that for her. So I think that is one of the things I think about. And intimate life really should be something that you can enjoy for a long time.
And the other thing I would say is stress. We get so used to chronic stress and stress causes inflammation and inflammation causes everything bad and that we have to be treating stress like it’s going to cause cancer or that it’s going to lead to unhealthy outcomes because it is.
Jamie Swaim:
For a live recording, there were a couple of little bullets there that I’m surprised we had no reaction to. Nobody wanted to give it up for the 80-year-old lady.
Molley Ricketts:
I wanted to clap.
Jamie Swaim:
You see what I’m saying?
Molley Ricketts:
Goals!
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s true.
Molley Ricketts:
So what do you think employers should be doing to recognize their culture or their shortfalls when it comes to women’s health? Because oftentimes, much like at the doctor, it feels like you’re here, take a pill or get over it and manage through this, read this book. What is it that employers really need to do to take more accountability for the folks on their team that maybe need some extra attention?
Gaby Jaggers:
I think they could just ask. They could ask their employees what do they actually need to do the job well? What do they perceive as a problem? Like an anonymous questionnaire that really just allows people to tell them what they need. If we had asked the nurses in my hospital, I bet you they would’ve said that they feel burned out working the job of three people. And we see that in workplaces all the time where just because somebody can do the job of three people doesn’t mean they should be doing that job because it’s causing them to be burned out. They quit, they have frequent call-outs, they have chronic pain. They have a lot of different things that could be benefited from the fact that if we just ask them what they need and then try to provide that.
Molley Ricketts:
That’s a revelation. Ask.
Jamie Swaim:
Ask.
Molley Ricketts:
When you think. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Jamie Swaim:
Well, because Gaby may not know this. But in prior episodes on Workforce Therapy Files, if there are individuals that are listening that would like to understand ways to ask, we have done episodes on the use of employee surveys. We’ve done episodes on benefit construction, and we’ve done episodes on just overall employee engagement and how do you advocate for your people in order to be able to enable your work. So I would encourage you to go back and listen to some of those because I think that there might be a deeper click, a double click?, that sounds better, into some of those topics. Yeah, I think that’s really good.
[Sponsor Message – Junior League of Louisville]
Molley Ricketts:
You’re up next.
Jamie Swaim:
Okay. So I’m an HR person, career. I’ve been in HR now for more years than feels normal to say out loud, and HR people love programs. So if you had $100,000 that you could dedicate to a program for an employer that would improve?
Molley Ricketts:
$100,000?
Jamie Swaim:
You can put whatever number. I don’t even. You want me to be like Dr. Evil? $1 billion that you can use for improving women’s experiences, women experiences in the workplace. What would you use that money for?
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, as an integrative provider, I think that maybe we should put an integrative provider in there. We should allow for time for people to have mental health days without being critical of when they call in with those. I know a lot of places do have so many allotted mental health days, but it seems like you’re afraid to call in with a mental health day or they will make you justify what that mental health day, why you need it. I still think we should have masseuses at the job. If we have this endless billion dollars, then I would love to have some kind of little lounge for your employees to go in, take 10 minutes. They maybe have some aromatherapy in there. Even a massage chair, like one of those ones with the leg things that’s like you’re just kind of trapped in that thing, but it’s massaging you so well.
That would be good.
Jamie Swaim:
That’s why I have my Planet Fitness membership, just so we’re clear.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
Jamie Swaim:
Shout out to Planet Fitness. Massage chair!
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah. No, but I mean, just taking the time to give people the time they need. And with the integrative provider, I think that I feel like when you talk to an integrative provider, they’re listening to the things that you’re saying and then are genuinely trying to find what it is that’s causing those things to help you.
Jamie Swaim:
We’ve talked about this before as well, but I’m going to punctuate this because I think it goes with this. I would also caution employers to think about the fact that what you offer, you also have to enable people using it.
Molley Ricketts:
Right. Judgment free.
Jamie Swaim:
The culture has to be there for people to use it. It can’t be one of those like, “Hey, we’ve got the ping pong table so you can get a brain break,” and then be like, “Dude is always at the ping pong table.” You have to balance. If you’re going to offer mental health days, you can’t be like, “And they always use their mental health days.” It’s got to be a space where it’s okay to take advantage of those benefits.
Gaby Jaggers:
You might even incentivize them to use said days. How about that? Let’s give a shout-out to the person who used five mental health days this year because that person is taking care of themselves and therefore they’re a better employee.
Molley Ricketts:
That’s right.
Jamie Johnson:
You’ve got to have leaders that are leading by example. Especially us women leaders in the room. Take the break for yourself. Show your teams that you are taking the break and you’re taking care of yourself so that they feel more comfortable doing that.
Molley Ricketts:
So speaking of leaders in the workplace, I have a question that in discussing benefits and how culture and environment work within the workplace, a CEO says, “I care about my employees, but their health is personal. Why is this my responsibility?” What would you say?
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, their personal health information is personal, but you caring about how that employee shows up and how that employee is feeling so that they can show up the way you want them to, I think that is important. That’s why they should care because somebody who’s overstressed, overworked, feeling having an upset stomach or migraines all the time because they’re working too hard and just feeling totally overwhelmed and they’re calling out all the time, that’s an issue for them. So when we put into our employees, then they’ll give us more.
Jamie Johnson:
We also spend a third of our life at work.
Gaby Jaggers:
Totally.
Jamie Johnson:
So why shouldn’t our employer help us if we’re going to spend so much time there?
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah, they really should. And those places that do care about their employees, the people who work at these companies, they feel so much more loved, validated, heard. I don’t know a whole lot of them because it seems like there’s not a lot of jobs out there that have this kind of stuff, but imagine the utopia that it could be when you’re spending so much time at work, you spend more time at work than you do with your family. I mean, it should be a place that you actually want to be at.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah. One of the things that I think works well from a wellness perspective, but also actually has a bottom line impact as well is the ability to require individuals to take a minimum amount of PTO. So it helps from a burnout perspective, but there’s also other things you find when people take PTO. You find out whether or not the rest of the team is capable of picking it up when someone’s out.
Molley Ricketts:
Exactly. It’s not just about the time off sometimes.
Jamie Swaim:
You get to see what kind of controls you currently have in place and whether or not those controls are working, and those kinds of things in different environments are actually really important. It’s when you find out that, “Oh, well, we can’t do that because Gaby’s the only one that knows how to work that, so you can’t take PTO.
Gaby Jaggers:
That’s a bad thing.
Jamie Swaim:
It’s a bad thing.
Gaby Jaggers:
Gaby could be hit by a bus tomorrow, and then what are we all going to do?
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah. Or Gaby wins the lottery. Let’s give her that kind of thing.
Gaby Jaggers:
Oh, that’s even better. Here I am thinking of the bus and you’re thinking of the lottery.
Molley Ricketts:
I’m thinking of the Bahamas for the rest of my life.
Jamie Swaim:
Lots of reasons people leave a job. Yeah, lots of reasons.
Gaby Jaggers:
Be the employer that nobody wants to give the middle finger to when they’re leaving, because it seems like a lot of people talk about that. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d be like,” Boss, eat it.” But you could be the person that’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I’m so sad I have to leave here because I love you guys so much.”
Jamie Johnson:
Maybe I’ll stay.
Gaby Jaggers:
Right. Or maybe I’ll just come see you guys.
Molley Ricketts:
Maybe they can come visit me in The Bahamas.
Gaby Jaggers:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
[Sponsor Message – Old National Bank]
Jamie Johnson:
We talk a lot too about multiple generations in the workforce right now, and I think this is something that when an employer is showing that they care about your health as an individual, no matter your age, that’s something. We’re all humans. At the end of the day, your employees are humans who want to feel respected, heard, and understood. And so if you’re giving them these resources and this flexibility to be able to take care of themselves, that goes a long way.
Jamie Swaim:
That’s really good.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah. And I definitely do think that when whoever said it before, we should be encouraging people to do the PTO, take their PTO. America is one of the worst places for work-life balance, but you go anywhere in Europe and they take it seriously. Why shouldn’t we be like that?
Molley Ricketts:
Because in some organizations, they’ve got PTO policies. Real quick, for questions, don’t forget to scan the QR code. Jamie’s watching them. I think sometimes it’s a badge of honor. If you have PTO policies and it’s use it or lose it, I think that encourages people to take it. But then there are some that they still don’t. They’re like, “Oh, I still have two weeks left, and I’m not going to use it.” I don’t have that problem. I do know people that suffer from that, but I’m not one of those. So thinking about how you encourage people, to Jamie’s point, you as a leader take the time. Show, lead by example. Because when you come back fresh, I know when I come back from vacation, my team isn’t really excited because I come back fresh with 10 new ideas and they’re like, “What? Now we’re going to do what?” But they’re brilliant. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but they’re brilliant.
Gaby Jaggers:
Rest and relaxation. That’s how that happened. You come back.
Molley Ricketts:
Brain fog.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah.
Jamie Swaim:
One of the most amazing experiences I personally had with a leader that demonstrated that was it was a holiday, and I’d come from an employer who had never heard the word holiday. So when I came to this employer, it was one of those new words that we were learning together. And she had sent a message It worked well for her to send that message. And I responded immediately to which she responded, “Why are you checking your email? It’s a holiday.” I’m like, “Because you wrote an email on a holiday.”
But what was cool because we ended up chatting whenever I came back to work from the holiday to say, “How should we do this?” Because neither one of us wanted to do. She was like, “Well, when I send an email, I’ll let you know if I expect an immediate response or if I need an immediate response.” And I was like, “Okay, so if something comes through, I can just ignore it on a holiday? Let me check and double check and triple check that.” Because I didn’t want to not seem committed or responsive. And having a leader be explicit about what was okay to do was very empowering and actually set a model for me for everybody I’ve led since.
Gaby Jaggers:
I think that’s a good thing that leaders could do. They could set that expectation. When I sent out an email on a holiday, I really am just wishing you well. I am not expecting you to email me back. So setting that up and saying, “I expect you, when you come in as an employee, to take your PTO, to take every three or four months, I want to see you off for a long weekend. Get out there, enjoy your life and come back rested and refreshed and ready to do the job even better.”
Molley Ricketts:
So one thing I want to mention to that is I am dedicated from noon on Sunday until noon on Friday. I had to give myself permission to not work from noon on Friday until noon on Sunday. You say, “Well, why Sunday?” Well, me, because of the way I’m twisted, I have to be ready for Monday on Sunday. So I don’t go in on Monday morning thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m already behind.” That’s me.
So in my email on my signature, it says, “Feel free not to respond if you receive this not during your working hours.” But one of the things that I’ve also done intentionally is emails that I send out to my team on Sunday, I wait for that send. I postpone that send till Monday morning because I don’t want them to think, even though I’ve told them, you don’t have to respond, that they’re behind.
Jamie Swaim:
That schedule send feature is a gift.
Molley Ricketts:
Oh my gosh, I love it.
Jamie Swaim:
Absolutely.
Molley Ricketts:
And then they don’t know that I’m really whacked out when I’m sending emails at 3:00 in the morning. I’m like, delay till 7:03. Yeah, that’s my time. Exactly. Because it’s 3:03, so four hours later, right? Yeah. Sorry.
Jamie Johnson:
It’s all right. We’ve got some really good questions coming in. Is it okay if we pause for some questions? Okay. Can you address at a high level the concerns or worries around HRT?
Gaby Jaggers:
Well, recently the black box warning has been taken off –
Molley Ricketts:
What’s HRT?
Gaby Jaggers:
Hormone Replacement Therapy. Thank you. The black box warning has been taken off, which thank God, hallelujah, it should have been taken off a long time ago. But so many people were scared off of hormone replacement therapy back when the Women’s Health Initiative came out. And it was wrong in a lot of ways because it talked about certain types of hormone replacement therapy that weren’t necessarily bioidentical. It used a synthetic form of progesterone, progestin. It really scared people.
And as a result of that, we have seen a rise in osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s and so many different things because all of these women got kicked off their hormones and all of a sudden they felt terrible and it lasted for 20 years. So we know that hormones do not cause cancer. Bioidentical hormones do not cause cancer. Some of us, one in eight of us is going to have breast cancer. We know that already. With or without hormones, exogenous, endogenous, we are going to have cancer, somebody.
So keeping up with those screenings, living the healthiest life that we can, hormones are not going to cause us to have cancer and certain cancers are fed by estrogen. So just knowing what our risks are of that, but certainly not saying that we can’t have hormones just because we’re afraid of something. There are certain things that we’re all willing to accept risk with. I mean, if you listen to commercials on TV at all and from the mouth of babes, children, they are listening to these things.
One of my children was listening to one of these commercials and he said, why would anybody take that? Did you hear that list of side effects and death? I mean, we’re willing to go ahead and take that for eczema or different things like that instead of looking for the root cause, might I add, but we are not willing to take a risk and try using something that does not have an association with causing cancer to have relief of all of these symptoms that all of us are going to feel at some point.
I don’t know if I answered that question appropriately.
Jamie Johnson:
I think so. Yes, absolutely. And I think something that goes along with that, what are some supplements or nutritional choices we could make during perimenopause to lessen symptoms or just help our bodies in general? Some natural remedies.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah, yeah. My favorite. So everybody is different, but for the majority of people, most everybody should be taking a comprehensive multivitamin with methylated B vitamins in it. So just making sure that we’re getting that foundational stuff to support our body and our thyroid. Our thyroid is such a big deal. So many people, there is actually a statistic that 50% of people are walking around with undiagnosed thyroid disorder, and I see it every single solitary day, but let’s support our thyroid by getting –
Jamie Swaim:
But the panels came back clear. I’m healthy.
Gaby Jaggers:
They didn’t even test the whole panel. By the way, a TSH is not the only thing that we should look at to determine whether or not somebody has a functioning thyroid, and I see it every day. A TSH, a T4, those two things are not the end all be all for thyroid health. And I manage people’s thyroid every day. But a comprehensive methylated multivitamin, I think. Magnesium, none of us are getting enough magnesium. Magnesium is like a wonder drug. Vitamin D, a lot of us are vitamin D deficient. I see people come in in the teens. The optimal vitamin D is 60 to 80, so they’re way off and your thyroid’s not going to function well and you’re not going to feel good and your gut health is going to be down and you’re going to be depressed and that’s all vitamin D.
Jamie Swaim:
And you’re going to lose your hair.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah. Iron, another one. Iron level.
Molley Ricketts:
This list is worse than the side effect list.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah.
Jamie Johnson:
Take all the vitamins.
Gaby Jaggers:
Not everybody needs to take all of these things, but I would say most everybody needs the multivitamin. Most everybody needs the vitamin D, and most everybody needs the magnesium. After that, we got to individualize. So just making sure that we’re looking at your labs, a comprehensive panel, not just the standard CBC, CMP, TSH, but looking at a comprehensive panel and making sure that we get to the root cause of what’s going on with you and listening to you and detailing all of the symptoms that you’re having and then trying to figure out what is it that’s actually causing this, not just patching it with this pill and this pill and this pill and this pill.
Jamie Johnson:
So to that point, if we feel like our current providers are not doing a deep dive into our blood work and we don’t really know where to go, where would you suggest that we start? What do we research? How do we find a provider that will listen to us?
Gaby Jaggers:
So I obviously love an integrative provider because I think that they are looking to get to the root cause of whatever is going on with you. We’ve never had a time when there has been so much information and I have so many people coming to me and telling me they watch this influencer talking about this and this influencer and functional medicine, integrative medicine is huge. People are talking about everything.
So just doing your research and trying to find yourself an integrative provider or I do know of a couple primary care standard people that really do care and get deep diving into labs and looking at your symptoms and not just trying to patch everything. So just asking people about who they go to see and do they feel heard and finding that person and then praying to God that they are still accepting patients. I wish, and I’m not going to get on my soapbox since I know we only have a little bit longer, but I wish that insurance would come to the table about what we need because an integrative provider, we don’t take insurance unfortunately.
And I too spend a fortune on insurance a month and it really does absolutely nothing for me. But I wish that it was something that they would allow us to do is use an integrative provider, pay for comprehensive labs because I just feel like we’re not getting anything but the pharmaceutical runaround when you go to your primary care doctor because that’s all they have.
Integrative providers are looking to prevent disease and we can see disease coming from 10 years away if we’re looking at the right thing. So the idea is to prevent. And I see people all the time and they’ll tell me they went back to their primary doctor and their doctor was like, “Well, this isn’t a problem.” And I was like, “That’s because they’re waiting for you to have disease.” I’m trying to prevent disease, but I can’t really fault them because they only have a couple tools in their toolbox and it’s surgery or pharmaceuticals.
And until you need one of those things, they really can’t help you.
Jamie Johnson:
I talk to employers all the time about encouraging preventative visits. That’s the only thing that can really help to control the spend that we have. I mean, the cost of insurance and healthcare in general has gone up so much because people are waiting until they’re sick to go get seen.
Gaby Jaggers:
Right. Or you go to these preventative appointments and they still don’t really tell you anything. It’s really frustrating for me as being in medicine as long as I have been and choosing intentionally to go to integrative medicine instead of working in the primary care regular way of practicing. It’s because preventative medicine, you go to talk to them and they really don’t have anything for you.
I will tell you the secret to health is a hundred percent diet and it sucks because we are Americans and the standard American diet, acronym SAD, not an accident I don’t think, is sad. And you really are what you eat, garbage in, garbage out. So we really need to be intentional about what we eat. And in functional medicine, I always say if it grew out of the ground or it had a pulse, it’s probably good to eat, but to stay away from bags, boxes, cans as much as possible, drive-throughs, just trying to eat things that actually look like food.
Molley Ricketts:
Sugar. Sugar is my…
Gaby Jaggers:
Everything in moderation.
Molley Ricketts:
Well, what’s moderation? Is that individualized?
Jamie Swaim:
It does. It feels relative to the person.
Molley Ricketts:
Yeah, I think so. I’m going with that.
Jamie Swaim:
One of the things that hearing you talk that I have a question about is access to integrative medicine. It feels like, and I’m just thinking about the broader population, I already spend what I can on insurance if I have insurance, and then the expense of the things insurance doesn’t cover may take all of the discretionary income towards these types of choices. So I’m curious, I know that your practice and practices like yours offer various types of options. So what would you tell our listener that’s like, “That’s just for the rich folks.”
Gaby Jaggers:
I hate that, and I completely understand it. I wish that the system would just collapse already so that we can start over from the ground up because we have been slowly circling the drain in healthcare, I think, for a long time. I wish I had a better solution for you.
I know there is a practice that was in town that was in an integrative practice and they were accepting insurance, but it wasn’t actually allowing them to keep the lights on, so they had to go back to a cash model, which is really unfortunate.
But I keep trying to convince my husband to cancel our insurance and just go to a catastrophic plan, which is not for everybody and he won’t do it because he’s afraid. But I mean, if I put that $1,400 a month into a savings account instead of putting it into my insurance, because I still have a $5,000 deductible, so when I get my thyroid labs, which I have a diagnosed thyroid issue and half of the thyroid, they still are making me pay a fortune for my labs and then are making me justify why I need this medication.
So I wish I had a solution for you.
Jamie Swaim:
It sounds like pay for it now or pay for it later. Is that where you’re heading?
Gaby Jaggers:
Pay for it now or pay for it later. Yeah. Thank you for putting that into words for me because that is truly it. If we don’t take care of ourselves now, we’re going to be paying for it in the medications that we have to take later, the surgeries that we have to have, the nursing homes that we might end up in. I mean, I know there’s nothing scarier than thinking about ourselves with dementia or in a nursing home or anything like that. So trying to do our best for ourselves now when we can.
Jamie Swaim:
Yeah. We are at a place where we’re going to wrap up this episode. Jim’s given me the four behind the camera, but there are a couple things we like to wrap up with, and we will put this information in our show notes for anybody who’s listening, and then we can continue the conversation locally because that’s the benefit of coming to one of our live events. But how can people reach you if they were like, “You spoke to my soul and the only person I trust with this conversation is you.” How do they find you?
Gaby Jaggers:
I work at Center for Beauty, which is in St. Matthews, and you can call us there. I would love to see any of you, any of your friends or family. It’s definitely a passion of mine. I love to look at labs, good comprehensive labs. We are developing an –
Molley Ricketts:
She does geek out over it.
Gaby Jaggers:
I do. I really do. We are developing an integrative wellness program, individualized precision wellness is what we’re calling it. And I hope that speaks to all of you because it really is about what we see about you that makes us guide our care. So Center for Beauty.
Molley Ricketts:
Jamie, do you have one last question from the audience?
Jamie Johnson:
I’m going to ask one more to wrap up. If you could recommend one book or podcast to learn more about perimenopause, do you have one in mind that you could recommend?
Gaby Jaggers:
I don’t have a one. I’m a geek and I read books all the time, so I cannot help myself. I couldn’t even direct you to just. I can give you a list of them later, but I would just seek out anything that you can find really about integrative medicine, functional medicine, because that’s going to be leading you to a holistic approach. And there’s so many different podcasts out there, so many different people talking about integrative and functional medicine now, but that really is the trying to get to the root cause of what’s going on with you. So I’m sorry I don’t have an answer for you on that. It’s just too many.
Jamie Johnson:
That’s okay. We usually send out a post-event kit, so you all will be receiving an email. We’ll try to include some links in there. Maybe we’ll list a few of your favorites. And there were some other really good questions in here we didn’t get to, so we’ll try to address those in the post-event kit as well and make sure that you all know how to reach us with additional questions.
Molley Ricketts:
So with that, just one final huge shout-out to the Goodwill Opportunity Center and so that all of our guests here today know, all of the ticket sales from today are going to be donated to the Goodwill Opportunity Center so that will hopefully give them a little bit more to continue to invest in our community the way that they are, and it’s really fantastic. If you don’t know, I definitely encourage you to take some time to learn more.
Jamie Swaim:
This is my first time here.
Molley Ricketts:
Is it?
Jamie Swaim:
And I would just like to offer a couple of supplemental shout-outs, because driving down the road that’s right here beside the parking lot and seeing the barber college and seeing the bank and seeing all of the different places that have such an opportunity to integrate services and talent and support, it is inspiring to see how many companies have come together to make this beautiful location.
Jamie Johnson:
You got the Norton West Hospital right here, too.
Jamie Swaim:
Norton West Hospital right here, too.
Jamie Johnson:
Beautiful hospital. Yeah. It’s gorgeous.
Molley Ricketts:
And speaking of which, they’re right across the hall. So if you want to grab your free screening before you head out, might want to run over there. It’s pretty quick.
Jamie Johnson:
No excuses. It’s right here.
Molley Ricketts:
What are you going to say now? I got to go. Gaby, thank you, friend. Love you.
Gaby Jaggers:
Yeah. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Molley Ricketts:
Thank you for all your wisdom.
Gaby Jaggers:
Really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Jamie Swaim:
All right, Jim, let’s close that file.
To Contact Gaby Jaggers:
Website: www.MyCenterForBeauty.com
Clinic Phone: (502) 897-7546
Gaby’s Book Recommendations:
- Estrogen Matters – Avrum Bluming – Amazon Link
- The Miracle of Natural Hormones (3rd Ed.) – David Brownstein – Amazon Link
- Outlive – Peter Attia – Amazon Link
- Good Energy – Casey Means – Amazon Link
That’s where we’ll leave the conversation for today. Before we close the file, we invite you to reach out to us with questions, suggestions or other comments. We’d love to hear from you.
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