What happens when a physician knows what care a pregnant patient needs—but providing it could expose that physician to criminal charges?

I sit down with maternal-fetal medicine specialist Dr. David Hackney, author of Impossible Choices, to examine what changed inside the exam room after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

We discuss how abortion bans affect far more than elective abortion. They can shape the care of women facing miscarriage, cancer, heart or kidney disease, severe pregnancy complications, and fetal conditions incompatible with life. Dr. Hackney explains the critical legal difference between an “exception” and an “affirmative defense,” and why uncertainty about the law can delay medical decisions when time matters most.

This is not simply a political conversation. It is a candid look at what happens when the law enters the exam room—and doctors and patients are left to make impossible choices.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/abortion-bans-high-risk-pregnancy-care/

What happens when your lab results are normal, but you know you do not feel like yourself?

In this episode, I sit down with Ann Konkoly, DNP, MBA, WHNP-BC, MSCP, a board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner and Menopause Society Certified Practitioner, to talk about the hormonal changes that can begin during perimenopause and continue through menopause.

We discuss why a single blood test may not tell the whole story and why symptoms such as disrupted sleep, brain fog, anxiety, joint pain, and changes in sexual health are so often treated separately.

We also revisit the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative and the fear of hormone replacement therapy that followed. What do we now understand about HRT benefits and risks? How do estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, timing, and personal health history affect the decision?

This is not an argument for or against hormone replacement therapy. It is an evidence-informed conversation to help women understand their options, ask better questions, and participate fully in decisions about their health.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/hormone-replacement-therapy-perimenopause-menopause/

You walk into a room and forget why you're there. A word you've used a thousand times won't come. And somewhere underneath the frustration, a quieter fear starts to build — is this menopause, or is it something more serious?

In this episode, Dr. Lori draws on decades of clinical work with dementia and midlife women to explain what brain fog during perimenopause and menopause actually is, what the research really shows, and how to recognize when a change in your thinking deserves a closer look. If you've been quietly worrying about your brain, this conversation is for you.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/menopause-brain-fog-or-dementia/

Why does sex become painful for some women? Why can orgasms take longer—or feel different—during perimenopause and menopause? And why are women rarely asked about sexual health after cancer?

Dr. Lori talks with Dr. Rachel Pope, a gynecologic surgeon and women’s sexual health specialist, about the physical and psychological changes women often struggle with privately.

They discuss painful intercourse, pelvic-floor tension, changes in desire and orgasm, the effects of estrogen and testosterone, and options for women recovering from cancer treatment.

This is an honest, medically grounded conversation about women’s bodies, relationships and the sexual concerns that deserve far more attention—and treatment—than they receive.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/painful-sex-after-menopause-cancer-treatment/

Pregnancy and postpartum can change far more than a woman’s body. Hormonal shifts can also intersect with anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, OCD and, in rare cases, postpartum psychosis.

But how do we know when what a woman is experiencing has moved beyond the expected exhaustion and adjustment of having a baby?

In Part Two of our four-part Women’s Health Series, Dr. Lori talks with Dr. Lulu Zhao, an OB/GYN specializing in women’s behavioral health and reproductive psychiatry, about pregnancy and postpartum mental health—and why this is a conversation for women and the people who love them.

They talk about why women can look completely functional while struggling underneath, what partners and families should know, PMDD, postpartum anxiety and depression, intrusive thoughts, postpartum OCD and psychosis, and the complicated questions surrounding psychiatric medications during pregnancy.

And perhaps most importantly, they look at a question many women find themselves asking: Is this hormonal, is it my mental health—or could it be both?

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/postpartum-depression-anxiety-psychosis-hormones/

Alzheimer's may be diagnosed late in life, but brain health is built decades earlier. And nearly two-thirds of people living with it are women.

In this solo episode kicking off a new women's health series, Dr. Lori breaks down why the line between mental and physical health has never made sense to her, what neuroscience reveals about the menopause transition, and why women have historically gotten only a fraction of the research funding despite carrying the bulk of the disease.

You'll hear the Lancet Commission's fourteen modifiable risk factors for dementia, and a hard truth about the millions of women quietly putting their own brain health at risk while caring for everyone but themselves.

This episode sets the stage for a series featuring real conversations on pregnancy and postpartum mental health, sexual health, and hormone therapy. Come back and listen. You owe it to yourself.

Show notes: https://drloristevic.com/brain-health-for-women-alzheimers-risk/

When I released the first SAVE Act episode with attorney Pat Schraff, I thought it was a one and done. We talked about names — what women have historically had taken from them, and what happens when your birth certificate no longer matches the name you have carried for forty years. The response told me we were not finished.

So this week I brought in Tera Coleman, counsel at Baker Hostetler, who practices in both state and federal courts and who has been turning this bill over the same way I have, trying to make it make sense.

I think it is fair to say that almost everybody agrees that fair elections are critical for our democracy. Only US citizens should vote (as it states in our constitution).

So why do we need the SAVE Act, when the numbers of non-citizens registering to vote are so very small but the risks associated with the the Save Act disenfranchising actual US citizens from voting is big.

We start the conversation with how elections actually work in this country. Who runs them. Where the states' authority ends and the federal government's begins. Tera walks through what is in the bill, and then through the part almost nobody is talking about — what it would ask of the people who work our elections.

Kansas comes up. So does the Department of Homeland Security. And the federal government having our personal voting data.

This is not a partisan issue-- the SAVE Act will effect all of us if it passes. Take a listen.

Listen to Part 1 with attorney Pat Schraff on what the SAVE Act would mean for married and divorced women.

Show Notes:

https://drloristevic.com/save-act-part-2-who-controls-your-vote/

It started with an offhand comment from my daughter: grown-ups need recess. We laughed — and then I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Because somewhere between the playground and now, the bell just quietly stopped ringing, and nobody told us we'd had our last one.

In this episode, I'm making the case that play, laughter, and curiosity are not the dessert of a well-run life — they're part of how human beings have always survived hard seasons.

I'll share why recess was never the same thing as gym class (and what an undiagnosed neurological condition taught me about the difference), what a real laugh actually does inside your body, why joy keeps showing up in hospital rooms and funeral luncheons, and three ways to bring recess back into an ordinary adult week.

No swing set required.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/power-of-play-for-adults/

What if the person who needs care is the parent who abused you, the mother you have not spoken to in years or the spouse you were preparing to leave before the diagnosis?

We talk about caregiving as an act of love. But that leaves little room for the person who does not feel safe, the person who feels trapped or the devoted caregiver whose own health is beginning to fail.

In this episode, I talk about the family history an illness cannot erase, why guilt cannot become the care plan and what resentment may be trying to tell you.

We will also look at the different ways care can be provided—because making sure someone receives care does not mean you must provide every part of it yourself.

Before we judge the daughter who steps back or the spouse who says, “I cannot do this anymore,” we need to ask what part of the story we do not know.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/what-if-i-dont-want-to-be-the-caregiver/

Why do you say yes when part of you already knows you mean no?

People pleasing can look like kindness, generosity, and being easy to get along with. But underneath it, there is often something else happening: the attempt to prevent disappointment, avoid tension, and keep the people around us comfortable.

In this episode, Dr. Lori explores why people pleasing becomes so automatic, how it can begin as a learned way to preserve connection, and why the relief of avoiding conflict rarely lasts.

The conflict does not disappear. It often returns later as resentment, exhaustion, emotional distance, and the feeling that other people know the agreeable version of you better than they know the real one.

This conversation looks at the difference between genuine generosity and self-abandonment, why boundaries can feel so uncomfortable, and how to begin telling the truth before resentment tells it for you.

Show Notes: https://drloristevic.com/people-pleasing-why-we-say-yes-when-we-mean-no/