Zibby chats with renowned orthopedic surgeon and longevity specialist, Dr. Vonda Wright, about her groundbreaking new book, UNBREAKABLE: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power. Dr. Wright shares her journey from working in sports medicine to becoming a leading advocate for women’s health, challenging the myth that aging means inevitable decline. She explains why women’s bodies age differently, how simple daily habits like walking and lifting can transform long-term health, and why mindset and self-worth are key to lasting change. Together, they discuss the empowering message behind Unbreakable: that women can remain strong, joyful, and resilient at every age.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome. We're talking about your book, Unbreakable, A Woman's Guide to Aging With Power. Congratulations. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay. I ate this book up. I am like your prime target for the book. I needed it so badly. I still need to now like listen to all the advice as opposed to just into intellectually take it in.

Um, why don't you start by sort of explaining how you became an advocate and your own journey, which you write about in the book. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah, you know what, so my primary training is as an orthopedic sports doctor, and so it's everything you think it would be like all these badges, sports fields, working with teams of various kinds.

But my research has always been in musculoskeletal aging because I refuse. To believe the societal myth that aging has to be this inevitable decline from vitality to frailty. And so I've been, I was churning along in my career with those principles until 2012 when I first read the data that women, people like you and me make 80% of the health decisions for everyone we touch, which puts us in the seat of control and.

Almost activism for our own health, but everybody we care about. But I found so many women didn't know that and didn't feel listened to and couldn't find the right information. So within my own practice since then, I've been really focusing on listening, validating, providing women with the ways that we don't have to end up.

In the hospital, like so many of the women I take care of, because I say often I am still practicing and I still take trauma call and woman, a woman comes into the hospital with a broken hip because she had bones that had disintegrated that we could have prevented, it makes me like stand up on chairs and shout from the mountaintops.

We can do better and we can help women remain healthy, vital, active, joyful. And yet, when I looked into the stratosphere of longevity and living longer and all that stuff we're hearing now. So popularly, you probably know what I'm about to say. It is a culture filled with information specifically targeted at men.

And I felt like based on my experience and the fact that we know that until 1993 women were not even required to be in studies and that women suffer silently. I just wanted. To turn a spotlight onto why women age differently and all the tools. 'cause there's, there's a lot of tools right now, but my women that I care for every day still are fuzzy about what to do.

And so in this book, unbreakable, it's a mindset that we do not have to go from vitality to frailty. It's hopefulness, it's building resilience biologically, mentally, and it's what I do with people every day. It's like the blueprint I use. So I'm excited about it, but I'm more excited about the powerful women that we're gonna train because of it.

Zibby: That's amazing. I mean, I was so struck you had this one image early on with what. If you like, a cross section of like, through your thigh and what a, what it all, the bone and the muscle and everything and how pristine it looked at the triathlete who was like 40 or younger and then like a 70-year-old sedentary woman, which if I keep doing what I'm doing is going to be me and then, um, you know, a 70-year-old triathlete or like somebody who keeps going and you don't have to sacrifice the integrity of the muscle and the bone at all if you don't want.

Dr. Vonda Wright: We don't, and you know, pictures like that or when I was being, when I was raised, you know, I would go to races in the seventies with my dad. Right. My dad was a runner and there would be that lone. 

Zibby: Yep. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Older woman. 

Zibby: Yep, me too. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: We're like, oh my God. The anomaly of that. Right now, more and more we're seeing every lots and lots of pictures and yet.

I think that's the bubble that I live in, probably you live in, because middle America, every people you know the population of America are still living in the time when aging means frailty. And I know it doesn't have to. 

Zibby: So in the book, you have a set of assessments that we can all do to track sort of how we're doing now.

So I took my resting heart rate. And it's not the worst, but it's like the second worst. And I was like, okay, I don't have to like jump off the couch in a panic and like scamper to a treadmill, but it was enough of a wake up call. Like, I can't even do the co the, the next trade, the next step of the testing.

Right? That was enough to be like, oh, but I was in shape before. I must be in shape now. But actually no. So what, what do you do when you get like a bad score, so to speak, on some of these measures? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So in the book Unbreakable, we designed, we took the top eight longevity measures that can be tested and I had my brilliant data scientist statistician weigh them according to how important they were.

And so it's number one, it's meant. Numbers are objective. They're not judgment. So many women, uh, when I put something out on the internet feel judged or take, and that is not how it's intended. I, the analogy is I can read that I have a hundred dollars in my bank account. One, Zero. Zero. It's not judging me I assign value to that, but, and that's what this is meant for, but what it does is what it did for you.

You're like, oh, I, and kind of, you know, I went through that too of, I was grinding so hard in my life, in my career. That when I hit perimenopause, it hit me hard and, and I am not in the shape that I was when I was 40, and what am I gonna do about it? And do I have to accept this or to lower my resting heart rate again, maybe I employ things like VO O2 max training once a week and build my cardiovascular engine.

So what I hope that the Unbreakable assessment does is doesn't stop us at a gate. But gives us hope that we know how to get back to ourselves. 

Zibby: So how though do you inspire people to actually take action, right? There's, there are multiple levels your book works on. Like one is education, one is fear at what could happen, right?

Like, if you don't do this, then why? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: Like, but how do you inspire the daily changes that have to happen to get us where we need to go? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Well, that's a, that's an excellent question. And you're right. I, in the, you know, I started my career as a cancer nurse all the way back in the nineties. So in the 30 years of working with people, I have to be honest with you, I have tried always to motivate people, like you've said, stories, information, fear.

Here's what I know, and then I'll answer your question. Here's what I know. Until a person decides that they are worth the daily investment. Then no amount of me shaking my crooked finger at them or any of the techniques will ever work because you have to know that you are worth it and important enough, and that for some people that's a mind shift change.

But the way I have, I do it practically for people is to realize. That you don't actually have to go from no lifting to heavy lifting in two days and that there's no judgment if it takes you a year or if people are literally starting off the couch, the first thing I ask them to do is take a walk after dinner because we've been walking since we were 1-year-old.

It's a core skill. We don't have to, uh, do anything different or, you know, and. I'm reminded all the time that not everybody is a walker, but if you're a wheeler, go out and wheel after dinner and get your skeletal muscles moving. Because number one, that is gonna work on your mindset that you are worth the investment.

But number two, on the sneaky side, contracting skeletal muscle is gonna push all that glucose from your dinner blood into your muscles, and make you the first step towards metabolic health. And you know what? Most of us couldn't do a streak of seven days. We can say, okay, every day after dinner for, or some day, sometime for seven days.

That's a streak. And after seven days, you're gonna be less likely to quit, and I'm gonna tell you for sure you'll feel better. And that's the motivation. You'll say, oh my gosh, I feel better even after seven days. I don't wanna stop now because I have found also the temporal disconnect, which is a banking term I learned a long time ago, meaning.

We will not invest today in something that we don't need for 20 years. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So that's why I like to bring it back to today. Can I make you feel better today? 

Zibby: How long a walk are we talking? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: You know what? If you can only do 10 minutes. Do 10 minutes. If you can do 20, do 20. But I prefer you do 45. 

Zibby: 45? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Oh yeah.

Zibby: Every day? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Oh yeah. It's just a couple miles because do you know how fast the grim Reaper walks? It's, it's kind of a joke. Studies have shown that you get the most, uh, long-term benefit out of walking at a pace of three or more miles per hour. So that's about a 20 minute. If you could do four, which is 15, which is that walk jog thing, but so three miles an hour, so in 45 minutes you'll get to something.

It's a couple times around a big loop to work up to, to have the metabolic benefit that we need. 

Zibby: So. Does it matter if it's a treadmill or outside? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: It doesn't, your body doesn't know the difference. It just knows that you're contracting. Now on a treadmill, if you wanna mimic outside, put the elevation up to two.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So you have that much resistance, but your body actually doesn't care if you're literally on a exercise bike or a stair climber, or you the number of steps between the first floor of your house and the second floor is usually 17. It is just standard for builders. You could do that for 45 minutes.

You could do chores up and down your stairs for 45 minutes and get some work in it's the movement that counts actually when we're starting out. 

Zibby: So, okay. Not to keep asking, not to keep,

Dr. Vonda Wright: I see that you're skeptical. I see that you're skeptical. 

Zibby: No, I'm not skeptical. I'm just, so, I used to think that I had to like, get my heart rate way up for that amount of time.

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah. 

Zibby: Now you're saying just the movement is gonna be beneficial. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So I'm glad you brought us to here. So if, if I'm saying, you know, what is the minimum, if you have one half hour a day, that's it. That's all we can do. I want you to walk around for your life, like do your life, and I want you to lift weights for 30 minutes a day.

That's what I want if that's all we've got, but if we get to do several things, then walking every day or lifting two to four times a week, walking every day, but twice a week, we're gonna get your heart rate up. Because they do different things. Walking is great maintenance. It's wonderful for long-term chronic disease management, metabolic health, but the act of sprinting, and now I'm not talking about Sha'Carri Richardson sprinting or Usain Bolt, I'm talking about whatever it takes to get your heart rate up, whatever apparatus for 30 seconds and then completely recover, takes me two to three minutes to get my heart rate to come back down and then 30 sec do it four times when you're completely warmed up. That kind of heart rate intensity at the top of the heart rate causes profound metabolic changes and helps with stem cell health and, and mitochondrial health. So you don't have to keep your heart rate up that high for 45 for a hit class or something.

Because high intensity interval training is about 70% heart rate. What I'm talking about is over 80, 80-85. So really intense, but for teeny tiny bursts. So that's how we really, uh, reconstitute our bodies and metabolism. 

Zibby: What percent of women do you think are, are doing what they should be doing for them?

Dr. Vonda Wright: You know, if we look at population studies and big data, we know 70% of all Americans do not invest in mobility or exercise at all. 70% of the United States is very sedentary, so I have to believe that in women outside the bubble that we live in probably are the same. 70%, given that 96 million people in this country have pre-diabetes.

96 million. That's from the American Diabetes Association. Pre-diabetes is the first step towards, you know, diabetes and Alzheimer's from sedentary living and poor diet. So the number is high. Depending on what the algorithm believes you watch, it could look like everybody's exercising, but we know that's not true.

Zibby: So what's your routine? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So I do the, this thing I described to you. I lift heavy two to four times a week. I prefer four, but I've got a life. So if I get two in, I'm really happy about that. And so the way I lift is based on power lifting. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Which means, uh, squats, dead lifts. Bench press and some kind of pull.

I can't do pull-ups. I'm working on that again, like, you know, you were talking about your heart rate before. I used to be able to do pull-ups and now I have to work on it again. It's okay. It's not a judgment, it's an observation. And then around those core lifts, then I fill in with the, the easier single lift.

So I do that two to four times a week. I walk every day. You know, I'm rarely sitting like this. I pace the hallways of my clinic, or I'm walking on this treadmill I have, but twice a week I sprint. And in my own Meno/perimenopause journey, which I describe in the book, it's the sprinting and the lifting that recomposed my body and made me even recognize myself again.

Yeah. Kind of remarkable how it does that. 

Zibby: So how, how are you not sedentary while writing a book and doing all these things that require like focus and sitting? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah. Well. That is a good point. When I'm writing a chapter, I'm totally sedentary, right? I've got the big stack of papers and I'm, 'cause I don't know how you work, but my brain needs a minute to get into the zone and then I can't be disturbed, right?

It just gushes out. So you're right. During that time for eight hours, I'm sedentary, but there are other hours in the day. My lifestyle is not sedentary. So those are the anomalies, not the norm. 

Zibby: Okay. You're giving me some hope. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Oh my goodness. Can you work on a treadmill? 

Zibby: No. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah. 

Zibby: I mean. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: It's hard thinking. 

Zibby: I could, I could maybe read.

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah. 

Zibby: But I couldn't like do an interview. I mean, but you know. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Oh, that's, that's true. 

Zibby: Most people can't like do their jobs on a treadmill, you know? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah, no, and thank goodness. 'cause I have been interviewed with, the host is on a treadmill and I'm going like. 

Zibby: No. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah. Watching them bump up and down the whole time.

I think I'm probably doing this too, so thank you for not. 

Zibby: Oh, you can count on me to be sedentary. Thousands of interviews. Oh my gosh. So you wrote the book. How are you gonna spread the word? You, you wanna shout it from the rooftops? How, how can this message really take off and keep going now that you've split the match, so to speak?

Dr. Vonda Wright: You know what, it's, to me, it's a book. But if by the end of. Talking about it in, in talking to people like you in being on social media on my Instagram page, or I speak from a lot of stages and I have a podcast called Hot For Your Health. All this 360 media that we have, my goal is to start a movement.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So that we begin to be a group of women that talk about being unbreakable, about aging with power, not. Not as with frailty to keep, to keep the two thirds of nursing home people from not being women, which it is, right? Because they can't get up, they've broken their hip. If I can stop the flow of frailty with a movement of women who see the future in a different way because they've read it or they've seen me jumping around on stage, which I do sometimes, uh, just to get the message apart, that will be work worth doing. Zibby. 

Zibby: And how did you, in addition to everything else, end up with like a million people following you on social, on Instagram alone? What, how, what happened? 

Dr. Vonda Wright: How did that happen? Well, you know, the truth is I was an early adopter of Instagram and I just plotted along like everybody does.

Until I said back to women, what women were saying to me, and I mean, I can trace the day. It was the day that I said, you are not falling apart and you are not going crazy. The musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause is real, and I knew that because without prompting, women come sit in front of me even today and they'll say, I don't know what happened.

I'm falling apart. I think I'm going crazy because my doctor told me nothing was wrong. And you know what? And this is the part that bothers me worse, Zibby, they say, but I didn't wanna come here today because I have a really high pain tolerance. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Because women buy, wear our suffering as a badge. So once I had enough people that I had to tell everybody that's.

We're listening. I see you. I know what you're going through. This is how you solve it. Instantaneously, people started listening, and I'm so glad because I don't mean to sound sadder than I am about it, but women are suffering. Women do not know that the, that the last 40 years in their lives can feel better than it does.

And so that's how it happened. I said that and then I expanded on that and I just, I still answer dms when I can. I mean, I don't have an automatic message. So, because I think that, uh, being an educator, I could have been a very happy fourth grade teacher. 'cause educ, educating people really excites me. So that's how it happened, because I listened to women enough to know what they were going through.

Zibby: And you said in the book that it's never too late, but is it like, at what point is it. It must be at some point too late. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: So I guess the question is too late for what the, too late to rebuild all your body muscle that you ever had. Too late to feel like you're 30 again. Well. Here's some examples. I have a friend who at 63 during COVID, started out at a hundred.

She's my, I'm, I'm only five four. She's my size. She had gotten up to an unrecognizable 181. She felt terrible. She was getting all the chronic diseases. She did macro counting, lifting heavy walking every day, and lost 50 pounds and now at at 67, she chose to become a a bodybuilding competitor. She started at 63.

The very first research that I came across in 2004 when I started my own research about what we were capable of when we were aging was in. 90-year-old men living in, living in nursing homes where they taught them chair exercises and by rebuilding their neuromuscular pathways started their muscles building and firing again.

So if we take those examples of 63 and 90 and all the ages in between that we see our bodies will respond? There's never an age or skill level. Is it easier when we're 40? To recognize it easier when we're 50. Absolutely. And I would rather start then with people. But if I start with someone who's 70, we're gonna make real gains if they believe they're worth it and we do it consistently.

Zibby: And do you accept like, patience if someone's listening to this and it's like, well, I wanna work with you, Dr. Wright. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Yeah. So, uh, my website allows you to write to me directly and so people can sign up to see me, they can write me a note and my staff sends them how I do it. I do, I am still practicing and happily so with all these other things.

Zibby: Amazing. Well, thank you for being an advocate for the rest of us to literally stay in one piece and, uh, it is so important and we all need the reminder and the way that you frame it in the book and how user-friendly it is and inspiring too, and like that these are the things like. Take the emotion out of it.

Like, here are the facts. Start with that is incredibly powerful. So thank you. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Thank you. I accept that compliment. Thank you. 

Zibby: Okay, good. You run with that. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: I know. 

Zibby: Okay. Thank you so much for coming on. 

Dr. Vonda Wright: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Zibby: Thank you. Bye.