The Arc Woman Podcast

🎙️ In this solo episode I'm reflecting on the side of medicine most women know too well and why so many of us keep falling through the cracks.
🔬 I break down medical paternalism, how it's baked into the system, and why the profession actively attracts and rewards a god complex that costs women their health, their autonomy, and their money.
⚡ We get into the patriarchy's role in medicine, from the origin of the word "hysteria" to why your physical symptoms keep getting rerouted into anxiety diagnoses and the very real economic toll that takes on women.
📋 I also share ten practical strategies for navigating the system right now, because the system isn't going to fix itself and you deserve to know how to protect yourself inside it.
Woman To Woman Post: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
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Irene Lyon is a master somatic practitioner and nervous system educator who has spent over two decades studying the intersection of trauma, movement, and physiology 🧠✨
She holds a Master's degree in Biomedical and Health Science, is a certified Feldenkrais practitioner, a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, and one of the first people in the world to bring nervous system and trauma healing education online reaching over 27,000 people across 90+ countries since 2012.
Irene's approach blends three powerful modalities Somatic Experiencing, the Feldenkrais Method, and developmental trauma work into a framework she calls Neuroplastic Healing Sequencing. Her flagship program SmartBody SmartMind has been formally studied in partnership with the University of Victoria, and her YouTube channel has amassed over 12 million views 🎥
She teaches that trauma isn't an event it's what happens inside the nervous system as a result. And that chronic illness, anxiety, exhaustion, and feeling perpetually stuck are often the body doing exactly what it learned to do to survive.
Find Irene at irenelyon.com 🌿
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🫀 In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Ami Bhatt, a board-certified cardiologist, Chief Innovation Officer at the American College of Cardiology, and Chair of the FDA's National Digital Health Strategy a woman quite literally reshaping how modern medicine works.
📊 We explore why heart disease is the number one killer of women, why so many cases are missed, and how women's symptoms have been historically dismissed, misread, or attributed to anxiety rather than taken seriously.
💊 Dr. Bhatt unpacks how hormonal shifts across perimenopause change cardiovascular risk, what stress and chronic cortisol actually do to the heart, and why younger women are presenting with fatal heart attacks at rising rates.
📱 We also dive into wearable technology, AI in clinical care, and how the future of women's health research might finally be built around women's real lives not just hospital visits.
🌏 This conversation centres on one urgent truth: women have been underserved by medicine for too long, and the tools to change that are finally here.
💍 This episode is proudly supported by Ultrahuman. The biometric ring I personally wear and love tracking sleep, recovery, heart rate variability and more, right from your finger. It's one of the tools Dr. Bhatt and I talk about in this very episode, and honestly it changed how I understand my own body.
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🤰 In this episode I’m joined by Dr Melanie Jackson, a midwife and researcher who transitioned from naturopathy into midwifery to better support women through pregnancy and birth.
🧬 We explore the physiology of labour and birth, including the role of oxytocin, the Ferguson reflex, and how the body is biologically designed to bring babies into the world when supported rather than over-managed.
🏡 We also discuss the differences between hospital birth, home birth with a registered midwife, and free birth, alongside the research gaps and controversies surrounding these approaches.
💧 Dr Jackson unpacks common myths around water birth, explains how midwives support physiological birth, and reflects on how hospital policies and rising C-section rates are shaping modern maternity care.
🌿 This conversation ultimately centres on maternal autonomy, informed decision making, and what a truly woman-centred model of birth could look like.
Find Melanie and her incredible work at melaniethemidwife.com or on Instagram @melaniethemidwife 

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🧬 In this solo episode I unpack the growing hype around GLP-1 medications and PCOS, and why research headlines don’t always translate to real women’s bodies.
📊 I explain what the evidence actually shows, including reliable improvements in insulin sensitivity and androgen markers, alongside mixed and inconsistent findings for cycle regularity, ovulation, fertility outcomes, and ovarian structure.
⚖️ We look at the limitations of current research, most studies are short term and conducted in women who are overweight or obese, and why weight loss and metabolic improvements appear to drive many reproductive benefits.
📚 For deeper support, explore my PCOS resources: Heal PCOS The Infradian Way, The PCOS Masterclass & PCOS Symptom Solution Chart
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