From Vitamin D Deficiency to Fibroids: Closing the Gap with Lauryn Walker

What if something as simple as vitamin D could unlock deeper conversations about health equity, research gaps, and advocacy? In this powerful episode, Dr. Shawna Gann and Season 6 cohost, Marcel DeJonghe, are joined by Lauryn Walker, a patient recruitment associate in clinical research, who is passionate about translating science into real world impact. Together, they explore the link between vitamin D deficiency and racial health disparities, including the disproportionate prevalence of fibroids in Black women and the gaps that still exist in research for mixed heritage populations.

Lauryn shares how her academic journey led her to uncover critical insights about vitamin D and fibroids, and why awareness is still so limited even within medical spaces. The conversation expands into real lived experiences, from being dismissed in healthcare settings to the importance of self advocacy, representation, and rebuilding trust. This episode is both eye opening and empowering, offering practical ways to advocate for your health, ask better questions, and support the people in your life.

Lauryn Walker is a patient recruitment associate working in clinical research with a background in medical physiology. She is deeply committed to educating her community about vitamin D deficiency and its broader health implications, while promoting more inclusive and representative research practices.

Connect with Lauryn:
Instagram: @thesunnyvitamin

Don't forget to check out Dr. Gann's new book, Mixed Signals: A Multiracial Window into Civility and Belonging at Work available in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audiobook. 

If this is your first time with OTC, check out  EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram

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Transcript

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Marcel  0:07  
Hello and good afternoon for you, Shawna,

Shawna  0:25  
it is afternoon.

Marcel De Jonghe  0:26  
Yes, yeah. Good afternoon. Are you experiencing this bloom of spring and sun?

Shawna  0:33  
The Bloom indeed blooms so much that the yellow pollen has already rested on all of our cars and the sneezes have begun, but it is a beautiful spring green, and it's fantastic. We just get a

Marcel De Jonghe  0:44  
bit of blossom over here in the UK, and then the moment it hits probably above 15 degrees, people decide it's picnic season. Wait. I got to figure

Shawna  0:55  
out what 15 degrees is. What's that? Oh, god, yeah, we had this problem. I have my little converter here, temperature 15, oh, oh, that's not bad. I don't think I'd be having a picnic, though. Oh, no, we

Marcel De Jonghe  1:09  
were British. We're out there. Ooh, in T shirts,

Shawna  1:13  
I was gonna say jackets. That feels a little ambitious to me.

Marcel De Jonghe  1:19  
It's because we don't generally gets the sun, so use what you can get. Okay, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So I'm looking forward to going from my arctic fox coverage of melanin, from being quite pasty, to when the sun comes out, going a little bit more browner, and especially my freckled coming out more. So I refer to myself as an arctic fox. So in the winter I'm white, and in the summer I'm more brown, and you can probably tell that, oh, that boy's something, something.

Shawna  1:55  
Yeah, yeah. You know, since covid, I don't go out that much, and so I don't know if my melanin comes in much, much more in the summer months than usual, but I was noticing that I'm like, my husband, who is a white man, is looking tanner than me. I'm like, okay, hold on a second. I need to get outside more.

Marcel De Jonghe  2:15  
It's embarrassing when I do have people who are white come up to me and go, I am browner than you do.

Shawna  2:21  
They put their arm up to you, yeah, it's like,

Marcel De Jonghe  2:25  
how is my arm browner than you? I don't know, genetics. Okay, it's got nothing to do with me. And honestly, I don't particularly like going out in the sun too much, but I like getting hot, okay?

Shawna  2:37  
I don't like getting hot, but I do love the sun, plus my doctor says I need it. The vitamin D is super important.

Marcel De Jonghe  2:44  
Wow. Talk about vitamin D. Yeah, that's a segway. I guess today, I met back in October last year at bourbon City Council's Black History Month. Yes, right. We have black history in the UK in October, not February. You've only got 28 days of black history. We've got 31 we have more black history month than the American another competition, because you would lose. But therefore, I

Shawna  3:14  
didn't know it was gonna be that kind of episode. Okay. SG, I Well, you know what Leap Year we get close to you. We get close with 29 then she's as good as a mile.

Marcel De Jonghe  3:26  
Thank you. I said. Met this amazing person who came along and silenced a room with the information she was sharing, the knowledge she was dropping. And you saw the faces of all the women in that room suddenly pay attention. They were locked in. So today's guest is Lauryn Walker. Lauryn is a patient recruitment associate working in clinical research, where she recruits patients into clinical trials testing new medications. She has an educational background in medical physiology and a strong interest in translating science into meaningful real world impact. She is particularly passionate about educating her community on the link between vitamin D deficiency and racial disparities, with a specific focus on the disproportionate prevalence of fibroids in black women. Through her work and advocacy, she aims to promote informed participation in research and improved equity in healthcare. Welcome, Lauryn, hello everyone. Hey. I'm so excited to have you. You started off on a good foot there.

Lauryn W.  4:33  
Lauryn, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a really great opportunity speaking at the City Council and talking just to women and whoever's in the room really about vitamin D deficiency. These conversations are for everybody, whether it's women's health, Men's Health, whatever health it's for everybody in the room. So it was a really good opportunity to share a little bit of information for people to take away, especially with vitamin D being something that is so common. And it can be taken with a tablet, and, you know, can be tested by a blood test. It's really quite, you know, accessible to understand your levels, yet something that people don't really understand the impact of in their bodies. So I think so it's really important to be able to translate that information. When I first

Marcel De Jonghe  5:17  
met you, I literally hadn't met you properly until you stood up and you would speak into a room of about 150 people, and you had, I think probably quite easy to say, everyone in the palm of your hands, understanding what you were talking about for that time was exceptionally important. I think one of the key things is you had black women there. You had a few Asian women, but you also had mixed heritage women there. They were really trying to understand where they fitted into this, what assumptions tend to get made about people with from a mixed heritage background?

Lauryn W.  5:50  
Yeah, I think with mixed heritage is such a wide capture term when you when you fill out forms, it's either mixed heritage standalone, or it's white and something else. And I think people forget that you can have mixed heritage. You can be Ghanaian and Jamaican, you can be polish and Swedish. It's just mixed. It's more than one heritage. I think in the scientific environment, the assumption made is usually it's white, and that's usually what's seen on forms. Or I think typically it's black and white. I think is the usual assumption as well. And I think that can be quite dangerous in terms of when it comes to research, because if you see mixed heritage, you might think, oh, that's applying to me, but you might not have been considered or represented in that research. So I think it's a very wide umbrella, and I don't think we've even hit the scrape the surface with research in the black community anyway, so then when you start kind of getting these branches, it's going to take a while. So I think being able to have these conversations and raising awareness of that is hopefully, you know, a step in the right direction, or something that will be long term. It can mean anything. Can anybody ever really provided of what that means or who was included in that mixed heritage group. So again, it can be very difficult to discern whether you were represented in that research. I suppose

Marcel De Jonghe  7:11  
there's a question to be had here which is quite difficult for you to answer. But if you were to fix this, how would you go ahead and try to expand that term for especially in the medical format,

Lauryn W.  7:26  
yeah, I think in terms of my responsibility, it goes above my pay grade at the moment, but I think

Marcel De Jonghe  7:35  
at the moment,

Lauryn W.  7:37  
at the moment, I'll get there. I think at the moment, it's having these conversations and raising awareness generally, and being able to trans like have these conversations within the workplace, if you are in a medical clinical profession, being able to have these conversations with those who will have more influence on those decisions, and being able to include more inclusive language, more inclusive recruitment into research in the medical field, and having a representative sample and Representative population, when you are looking at research and looking at a patient group or the sample group, having more than just one term to apply to somebody or other is another option. So you know, having, having, having more than that. And I suppose it's kind of emphasizing the importance of why we're asking for that. It's not just because of, you know, I just want to have something to select. It's actually important in representative research, because something that could work for someone that's a mixed heritage of other ethnicities will have obviously different genetic makeup of someone with another, mixed heritage, ethnicity. So I think that's the to emphasize the importance of why we're asking for it. It's not just because I want to tick a box.

Shawna  8:50  
How do you make note of the different backgrounds whenever you're collecting information, to be able to later say here's who is represented, and how do you use certain categories? Do you just list how they describe themselves?

Lauryn W.  9:05  
Yeah, my current workplace, I do ask whether it's whether people are comfortable to provide that information. Obviously, they're not. They don't have to. They don't want to.

Shawna  9:12  
Well, it's a start, at least

Lauryn W.  9:17  
be, you know, collecting that information because it's even good for me. You know, when I'm doing the work outside of work that I do, knowing how many people are kind of signing up to research and who are more likely to continue with research? And just for myself, I think it's quite interesting to know, but yeah, it's a good step. It's good that is being collected.

Shawna  9:36  
Well, I ask that because I have a personal story. This is the first time I've told this story on here, but it is in mixed signals, y'all, so you'll get a little preview here. So I'm just gonna go ahead and disclose a little something about me. And I have high blood pressure, and so my physician has me take medication for that, but when she first prescribed medicine for me, she prescribed Lisinopril. And one day, after about two weeks of taking it, I woke up and my lip was, like, a little numb, and then I was looking in the mirror, and I was like, I got myself a little pouty. I was feeling kind of sexy actually. Let me put some lipstick on. Got some pouty lips. An hour went by, and they were a little too pouty. And I'm like, Okay, this is kind of weird. Another hour and my face was so swollen, my husband was out somewhere, and I texted him and was like, yeah, don't panic. I'm going to the emergency room because my face is blowing up. I don't know what's going on. I suspected it could have been a medicine, but I didn't know because it was still fairly new. I walked into the emergency room and the tech who, like, basically signs you in. This was during, like, covid Mask time, right? So I was masked up. They couldn't tell until I pulled it down. I was like, oh shit, you know, like, my face is all swollen. And the guy, he was like, Lisinopril. I was like, yeah. Like, how did you know that? And he goes, because that's a reaction that happens in a lot of black people, which first of all, I was like, he saw me as black. He saw that there that I had black heritage. But my doctor didn't, I guess she didn't think, like, oh, maybe this isn't a safe med for her. So there are some instances where it's important to know, like, whether you're mixed race or not, like, if you have certain traits or background, like, that's part of medical history too. I could have died because, you know, I went to the emergency room, but that could cause, yeah, yeah. Thank God I went and they took care of me. And they were like, never, ever, ever, ever, ever take anything with Prill in it again, because it could happen faster next time. This time, I had some hours, but I thought, wow, how interesting that I walk into the ER, the tech sees me and like sees me and says, I can tell that this is happening to you, because I can see you that you have black heritage, or my doctor, I guess, after the years of being with her, had not, I'm not sure it's ever a conversation that came up, which, in some ways you're like, why would that matter? But in other ways, it needs

Lauryn W.  12:09  
to matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time, yeah. I think that just kind of highlights the importance of these conversations. Like, it's disparities. That's how we see, you know, these racial health disparities, because there isn't an acknowledgement of ethnicities and how well, there isn't enough research in general to identify different reactions or side effects in different groups. But I mean for yourself, the Center for had already been identified. So it's been it's having those conversations in the medical fields with medical doctors and raising their awareness and stressing the importance of how different medications work for different people, and just having that knowledge. I don't know if those conversations are had. I'm not sure, but they need to be had, for sure.

Marcel De Jonghe  12:55  
I think I've shared on here before that, when my partner and I decided that we wanted to have a child, first thing I said is I need to go and get checked for sickle cell. Though, so many people in the UK still don't think of that from a black ethnicity, and probably wouldn't even consider it if they're mixed heritage, because it's not spoken about enough. I am beating a drum over in the UK, especially in Birmingham, to talk about donations of blood and plasma and bone marrow. And think I was telling you that you know Shawna, that I went to give plasma. And the fact of the matter is that the black Asian community mixed heritage as well, we just have an issue, generally, an historic one, quite rightly, to some extent, with medicine and the whole medical experience, and, yeah, so you know, how would you handle having those conversations? I know, obviously, being in the medical industry, how would you encourage people to get the support they need?

Lauryn W.  13:54  
Yeah, to be honest, I'm actually in my organization started outreach to have these conversations with communities, South Asian communities, black communities, about like, research, representation and like, that's the long term goal. Is addressing the historic mistrust and yeah, and being open and understanding the barriers that people feel are in place for them when it comes to healthcare and research. So I think it's, it is a long term goal. You can't just fix, you know, decades and decades worth of being misused, mistreated and misdiagnosed, and so it's a long term conversation. But I think it's being honest and having, like, transparent conversations of, what do you feel like your barriers are to healthcare, to research. How would you want those to be addressed, and then taking that back to your organization and trying to advocate for these communities. But I think, yeah, just in terms of the mistrust as well, I think it helps to have someone who looks like them to talk about it. And so, you know, being open. And first, I. Knowledge. And we know that there's mistrust. How would you move forward? Or how do you want to move forward? Or how do you see it moving forward? And I think vitamin D deficiency just communicating the risk of vitamin D deficiency for those who are black and of mixed heritage, and then what risk you're at of other conditions by being vitamin D deficient. So I think knowledge is, you know, knowledge is power is, you know, obviously a very common saying, but it's really true if you have that information and you have it in an accessible format as well, I think that helps to address the mistrust.

Shawna  15:31  
I really appreciate you talking about representation and addressing this issue of mistrust. Over here in the US, we're going through all kinds of stuff, partly having to do with rights like healthcare rights women have in our healthcare system. I saw recently a social media post like a reel of this woman. She's a black woman in labor needing a C section. She you saw this? Marcel, yeah, they literally had a judge contact her, she's in the hospital in labor, to have her explain why she thinks she should have a C section because it could hurt the child. And she's like, by the way, I'm a mom. I have two other kids at home, so if I die, who's gonna take care of them? Are you guys gonna take care of them? No, you're not. And then at one point, she was like, is there anybody else here that looks like me? Is there a doctor that looks like me? And the judge goes, I don't see why that's important. And she said, it is, trust me, it is, yeah. And in the end, he Oh, I'm air quotes. Y'all allowed her to have the C section, but imagine that that you have to get a court order to permit you to have the medical care that you need, because they were so much more concerned about what could happen with the baby than her overall health. And she was very informed. She was like, yeah, she absolutely did. She was like, women die in childbirth, and the babies can die during childbirth. This isn't about me trying to make a decision morally. You know, also, the woman's in labor right

Marcel De Jonghe  17:05  
now, it wasn't she, she was in her

Shawna  17:09  
in the hospital,

Marcel De Jonghe  17:11  
and I think she turns around. And I think my favorite line from that is where she turns out, and thanks the room, the digital room, for allowing her to have control over her vagina, which I thought was a sort of not, you know that this is her body, her choice, and she is a black woman, so she understands the higher risk of complications or death in pregnancy. And they, like you said shoulder, there was no one in that room to understand that, see,

Shawna  17:39  
yeah, what she said, Is there somebody, like a black doctor, or somebody that looks like me? And then the judge was, like, that has nothing to do with it. She's like, it has everything

Lauryn W.  17:47  
to do with it. It does. Because I think when you we know that in like maternity like the death rates of black women are so much higher in childbirth and then complications, like gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, there's much higher risk anyway, so having that lack of understanding, we know that that it's embedded, isn't it? Just racism is embedded in healthcare, and we see that in the statistics, in terms of, like, the, yeah, the being dismissed, black women being told they're not in pain, or, you know, they don't need epidural, they don't need any pain relief, they're okay, and I think it's just a really widespread, obviously, issue, again, will take a very long term time to address, and that's why, again, we just have to keep having these conversations and putting a spotlight on people's experiences, on the statistics. And I think it just shows as well, like the importance of having your community. When you're going into appointments or going into hospitals, it's important to have an advocate for you. I think I've seen a difference. Obviously, I've learned things for myself, and I advocate for myself in appointments, but I go without my family members, and I'm very quite stern if I need to be, because the statistics are there. And I think unfortunately, at this point, you do need someone to else to advocate for you as well. And also, to be quite stern with it, state the statistics if you are being dismissed that knowledge, and say you are dismissing me, because I think then they go, oh, you know, I need to change how I'm speaking. Or, you know, I think that's the point where we are at at the moment, but shouldn't have to. Should be able to go to hospital doctors, and they are your advocates. But you know, you can't paint everyone with the same can't find everyone the same brush, every single doctors. I don't know, but thanks to general experience, unfortunately, a lot of people are dismissed and not taken seriously.

Marcel De Jonghe  19:37  
Do you think there's a hole for this. You know, we understand the complications of pregnancy and how for say women, and we know, especially now, like I said, it's being brought to the front of general public knowledge about black women, but about mixed people. Do you think it's because there's a vacuum? They're not one or not the other. Do you think that that's a risk, potentially?

Lauryn W.  20:05  
Yeah, I think there's like a bubble underneath the you have, you know, black women, and then there's like a mixed heroes, like you just kind of become under it. But it's not really addressing you at the same time, because, again, everyone is different. I think it's like, kind of, it seems like it's to address the wide scale issue first, because I think, again, we're only just getting there now, like we're only just scraping the surface of this now as then again, when you come with, like, there's branches from black women umbrella, and there's, you know, your branches, we haven't, like, gotten there yet. So I think there is that gap, as we see the gap in like research papers, I don't usually address that mixed heritage and what mixed heritage means in that research. So for me, mostly that black women are risk of XYZ. I just take that. That's for my that'll have nothing else to go by. That might not necessarily be true for me, but there's nothing else for me to go by. So I can't go by white. Statistics. I'm not fully white, so I have to go by like black women are at risk of, you know, this, this, that whatever I have to adopt, that you know, everyone else has to adopt, that which I suppose is safer than not. I'm not sure, but I think

Marcel De Jonghe  21:21  
for the worst, hope for the best, right?

Shawna  21:23  
It's better to be safe than not. Like I had no idea, right? Like, if I had known that that was something that was a side effect, specifically in black people, then when it was prescribed to me, I would have asked a question. So I think some of it is also knowing more about well, what am I susceptible to? So that I can have enough knowledge to ask the right questions for people who don't even consider me in that way?

Lauryn W.  21:49  
Absolutely? Yeah, definitely. I think it can apply to vitamin D deficiency, because I had those questions as well. Because I suppose a vitamin D deficiency is based on melanin, so kind of the more melanin you have, the more melanin absorbs the sun that's needed for the vitamin D synthesis in your body. But there's no hard copy number statistic of what it is for mixed heritage compared to those who are who are black, so it's a lot of question marks, I think

Marcel De Jonghe  22:25  
you What led you to stand in front of, like said, 150 odd people to talk about vitamin D deficiency?

Lauryn W.  22:33  
Yeah, this all started at university in my final year of preparing for my final year to have our dissertation, and, like, in that summer before my for my last year. So, you know, what should i What should I do? And sometimes it's actually my mom. He was like, Oh, what about fibroids? And I was like, because there's a lot of, there's fibroids in my family for myself. So there's, it's something. I was like, actually, yeah. Why is it so common? Like, why do all my aunties and, you know, my family friends, like, Why does everyone have them? So I started looking into that. And then I think I was reading a research paper, and I thought, I don't know if I can't remember if I read something or if it came from my own brain. I don't know, but I can't remember, to be honest with you, a few years back now, but then looked into the role of vitamin D in like growths, like tumors. And so obviously fibroids are non cancerous tumors, growths, and looking at the role Vitamin D plays when it is at sufficient levels. So then I started seeing researching, maybe, to me, D is deficient. Has that been associated with people who have fibroids? And there was that association. So now I did my final year projects on that. So I was able to, I really deep dived into, like, the role of vitamin D, how common vitamin D is. But again, a lot of those research papers were not UK based, so it really highlighted a gap in UK research when it comes to such a common gynecological condition. So that's how I got onto, onto that. And then I realized that even though vitamin D, again, is so common and so easily fixed as well, but no one knew the link between vitamin D and fibroids. So then, as part of my project, I did a couple of talks like mixed audiences. So I had like, nurses and medical students in the audience, and they're like, I never heard this before. And I was like, That's not like, good, but then also you should know, like, if you know as well, but, but you wouldn't know because it's not advertised, it's not pushed, it's not prioritized. So I was like, this is there's a gap here. There's a there's a knowledge gap, there's an awareness gap. And so that's what motivated me to start pushing it and delivering talks, trying to deliver talks to groups, different types of groups, anyone who will listen. Because, as I said, it's for everybody. There's no particular group of people, age, gender, whatever everyone needs to hear. So that's what motivated me and ended up at the City Council.

Marcel De Jonghe  24:59  
So I. When you were presenting at the council, you spoke about how to potentially make amends for your vitamin D deficiency, yes, the healthiest way.

Lauryn W.  25:12  
Well, first, I'll say, go have a blood test. You can't make any decisions without knowing. That's knowledge really just knowing if you if you need it, so you can go to your doctors and get a blood test. There's also, like, a rapid vitamin D test sold in boots stores,

Shawna  25:30  
pharmacy and, yeah, thank you. I was gonna say, like our Walgreens CVS.

Lauryn W.  25:42  
Yeah. Drugstore, slash pharmacists. And then they sell these, like little package rapid test kits. So it doesn't tie your specific levels, but it'll tie you for deficient, sufficient or insufficient, sufficient, it usually means, like 15 animals per liter. And above is what you'd see if you had like, a blood test result back. So anything below that, you kind of want to start supplementation, but again, to seek your GP, to know what kind of supplementation you need to be on and for how long follow up blood tests. Because some people just start taking vitamin D too high. It can start it's actually quite toxic for you, just because vitamin D and calcium have a relationship. So too much vitamin D then leads to too much calcium in your blood, and because get headaches and you know, different symptoms like that. So it's important to, you know, have those follow up tests as well. But in terms of how to fix your vitamin D, to raise your vitamin D levels, if you are deficient, but most of our vitamin D is is made from the sun. Obviously, us in the UK, we don't get that much. So as well said, 15 degrees we're like celebrating. So we don't get that much, unfortunately. So we kind of have to fix that with supplementation. So again, it's seeking advice on what level, what doses you need, and for how long, but you can also implement it into your diet. So around 10 to 20% of our vitamin D comes from our diet, so like oily fish, red meat, egg yolks, mushrooms, if they've been under UV light, tanned

Marcel De Jonghe  27:16  
mushrooms, yeah, you can have a foods

Lauryn W.  27:21  
called fortified in the UK, like fortified foods, meaning like Vitamin D has been added in. So you can see those, like cereals and so you could just check the labels on things. If you focus on not having a Mediterranean diet, you probably having more vitamin D.

Shawna  27:34  
Can we just go to the Mediterranean? Because then we can have the diet and the sun. I'll be happy. I wish that a doctor would prescribe that for me, Sean, I'm gonna need you to go to Italy for a while. Yeah, right, yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  27:54  
So obviously you say that, and you've been discussing about how fibroids are specifically prevalent in people who come from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds. How do we, since we now know this, how do we encourage those individuals, especially women, to advocate for themselves in a medical space, which, as you found out, we went to see doctors, nurses and spoke about this, no one knows about it. How would you encourage women to be standing up?

Lauryn W.  28:23  
Yeah, it's very practical to take into your appointments. There's a document that you can find online for fibroids. It's called U, F, S, hyphen, Q, o, l, it's like uterine fibroid symptoms, quality of life questionnaire. So it's a questionnaire asks you these questions based on quality of life, how your symptoms are affecting you. So like, if you are if you do believe you have fibroids, or you know you have fibroids, and you go through these questions and you see that a lot of them are, yes, you can take that into your appointment. I think that's something that's physically quite like. I've filled out this questionnaire, and it seems like it's affecting my quality of life. And I think it can help to have that document to advocate as well, because it's not just you making it up, you know, you've gone through this, and I think that can help. And then, as I said earlier, I think it really helps to have someone with you in appointments at this point, because I think when you're the one explaining your symptoms, or is it can get a bit nerve wracking when you're is, you're the one in the hot seat in the doctor's appointment. And when you have someone with you, it can help you just articulate words and articulate your experience. And they also, they know you, they know how it affects you as well, and they may remember things that you may have forgotten. So that definitely helps. And then, if you know that you are at risk, you're a higher risk of having fibroids or another gynecological condition because of your heritage. That's something you can say in those appointments. And again, I think it can sometimes take medical professionals aback, is that, Oh, they've researched. Sometimes doctors don't really like patients that do their own research, but I think as a patient, I think you can be. Confident in that, and he can say, you know, I know I'm at risk of this because of my heritage. I don't want to be dismissed. Please. Can look into this. And I know it's as simple as that, and it is having to keep going. Sometimes for myself, it's years long of appointments, like years long from a teenager and almost 24 now it's a long time, still, still, still nothing, but we keep trying. So you know, still is still going and again, just increasing your unfortunately, at the moment, it is on us. It is on you as a patient, to find the information out there and to take that into your appointments and say, I know I'm at risk of this. This is what I'm feeling. I'm not being dismissed today, so you kind of have to do something. And I think again, in I don't know what it's like in America, but I know here, when you go with a gynecological condition, same appointment, like contraception, like, you know, minute in SG, and contraception, it can start that day or the next day, and that's addressing symptoms, sure, but it's not addressing the root cause, if there is a condition there. Happened to me, I was like 16, had no scan, no blood tests, nothing, just contraception, you know, and there's underlying things there. And I think if I knew what I knew now, then, you know, I think it would have helped speed up the process. So it is really important just to at the moment, it falls on, unfortunately, falls on you to increase your awareness of your risk and what's out there. But hopefully we'll move to a point where it's no longer the patient's responsibility to do that. But I think that's where we're at at the moment.

Marcel De Jonghe  31:37  
So Laura, I have to ask the question, you know, being male myself. Do you find that this is compounded? The problem is compounded when you also get a doctor, especially working, say, chronological care, who is male? Do you feel that you get a better result from a female doctor, and especially one who is of a minoritized background? In my

Lauryn W.  31:59  
personal experience, I haven't actually experienced a difference. I've been to quite a few gynecological gynecologists. The one I referred to when I was a teenager, and quite dismissive, was, yeah, minoritized ethnicity and a female doctor. And then I've had a similar experience with a male but then I've had a good experience with you know, it's it. I think it's different. I just don't think there's any difference from my experience. Obviously, I'm not sure how other people have experienced that for themselves, but for me, I actually haven't really noticed a difference. It's, it's kind of the confidence that I've come with now and kind of been able to again state what I know I'm at risk of and my concerns. But yeah, in my personal experience, actually hasn't been a difference. Yeah, a difference, which I think is a bit of a shame, actually. Again, I think when you go in as you know, as a woman, you've you find comfort and come out, they'll understand. But I think it's a case by case.

Marcel De Jonghe  32:53  
Think there's an importance, though, that this isn't just a conversation then, for for women to be having. This is a conversation that men need to be made aware of. So imagine you're a male listening to this podcast and knowing that their partner's black or mixed or South Asian, or say black Asian, minority ethnic. What would you say to that male audience right now? Say like, how can you help your partner?

Lauryn W.  33:16  
Well, I think it's everybody's responsibility. It's not just for your partner,

Shawna  33:21  
daughter, yeah,

Lauryn W.  33:26  
friend, like you are, like you have those connections with so many people, and you receiving this knowledge and this awareness can really help their quality of life. So being able to share that with them. I would assume you want to see them have a better quality of life and do it with them, like, do it together. Like, okay, let's look at some research together. Let's have a look together, going with them to appointments and helping to advocate for them. Everything is harder when you do it alone. I think it can be very fatiguing, like, just the actual pain of things and then just a constant like battle. So I'm

Shawna  34:03  
really glad you asked that question, because I think about how much more powerful advocacy could be when a man could come in and advocate for a woman in his life, especially when it is a doctor that's a man that wouldn't experience these things anyway, and only knows, can only know things theoretically, for another man to come in and say, No, listen, you need to really pay more attention to this. Don't just dismiss with short term band aid. So to speak, right? And so I appreciate you asking that. That's why I was like, or daughter. I'm thinking about, you know, my own daughter or like for for her to have advocacy.

Marcel De Jonghe  34:42  
I'm thinking there's a sound bite we could ask you Lauren to say, like a couple of lines, which every woman from a black, Asian, minority ethnic group can take to their doctor and say, just listen to this. 30 seconds. I won't speak. Listen to Lauren. She's going to educate you. Dr. So far. Forth on why you need to take this seriously. What would you say you got 30 Seconds to convince

Lauryn W.  35:05  
that doctor? Okay? So I would have already written my symptoms down and my dates and times. So first thing I'd go in, I'll say this is what I've experienced since. Whenever I am mixed heritage, I might even go to the extent of what I am mixed with, and I know that I am at risk, if it's for fibroids. 80% of black women in the UK experience fibroids. Almost a quarter of black women aged 18 to 30 experience fibroids, compared to 6% of white women. I know in my age bracket and my heritage, I'm at higher risk of fibroids. The symptoms that I have are aligning with what's on your website, NHS website, if you're from the UK. So I would like to have a blood test because and I'm also at risk of vitamin D deficiency. Also there's any inflammatory markers as well, because it's inflammatory and can cause inflammation in the body. I'm about to have a scan as well to see if there is any evidence of that, and then follow that up before you put me on any hormonal treatments. If you don't want to be on hormonal treatments and for that to be expedited, please.

Shawna  36:09  
Okay, keywords, here's what I heard, highlight, underline, bold print on your website. So don't be coming at me with nothing, because y'all, it's on yours, expedite it, do the scans everything before you try to just treat with hormones. Those are the top three things I heard. Wow, hard to argue with something when it's on their own website. That's it,

Lauryn W.  36:35  
and they list that being black is a risk. So literally, like that,

Marcel De Jonghe  36:58  
I know we were going to be running out of time very soon. But there was one thing which you mentioned, which I think really hit a large amount of the women in the room, and that was about hysterectomies, about vitamin D, fibroids, how, especially black women, have medical hysterectomies, far higher than any other ethnicity.

Shawna  37:19  
That's been in the news quite a bit. Lauryn, I'm very interested in what you'll say about this.

Lauryn W.  37:25  
It's just the how much more they're offered the hysterectomy, the figures, right? I believe black women are four times more likely to undergo hysterectomy, and then the complications associated with hysterectomy that they're more likely to need, like blood transfusions, or higher risks of, like, mortality, and then there's complications from surgery as well. So you just see this, like, line of like, just see what everything linking together like from the beginning to the end.

Shawna  37:53  
So I have not just this one,

Lauryn W.  37:55  
yeah, it's not just an isolated thing you see like in each stage of it, which I think is that's what's really important to address. Like, there's, you know, high risk of the actual condition itself, and then a higher risk of being offered a complicated surgery, and then a higher risk of having complications from that surgery. So what's feeding into all these different, you know, the stages?

Shawna  38:17  
It doesn't even have to happen, because that was part of what I read, too, is that sometimes it's like a solution that's given and it's not even a necessary one.

Lauryn W.  38:24  
And I mean at younger age of being offered hysterectomies, like at childbearing ages, and then, you know, fire boys itself is a cause of, you know, one to 2% of infertility. You know,

Shawna  38:36  
just to circle back to what you said about having trust and trust issues, like there's a history here in the United States of black women being used for medical exploration or being sterilized as part of trying to further white supremacy in this country. So the relationship that black women have with the medical space is tenuous. We can't forget the history, intent or not, impact is impact, and it's something that we've learned to think about. And so it's like, I would also say, you know, I'm not in the medical field, but if practitioners could please communicate with their patients that transparency, as you said, like that, is so very important, but you have to also know that many of us know the history, yeah, and it's like, we're not going to just be okay with anything, because it's there is a trust issue there.

Marcel De Jonghe  39:30  
I thank you for doing this work and connecting the dots and saying, Hold up something which is so easy to get hold of. I think you mentioned, like, for less than 10 pounds you can get in the UK, a year supplement of vitamin D, but yet we're so quick to cut someone open or do something else, it's a scary proposition.

Shawna  39:51  
Yeah. Thank you for the information.

Lauryn W.  39:53  
Thank you for giving me the one to share. You.

Marcel De Jonghe  40:17  
As I've been given the power for this podcast, which I'm sure Shawna will never give me again. It will be relinquished from the immediately I get the opportunity to introduce not something which I've created. Shawna has created this phenomenal little box you've got, which is called mixed messages. Yep, the mixed messages archive. So we don't know what you're going to get. Normally, it would be myself, who and the guest. But this time, I was like, you know, I'm flipping this. Shawna has to answer it along with yourself or him. So these is questions or statements which have come up through your research, hasn't it?

Shawna  40:58  
Sure? Yeah, yeah, from my participants in my research, but also guests on the show, previous guests. Lauren, I don't know if you know, this is the sixth year of our true colors. So yes, in this box I have about this isn't even all of them. Girl, there's about 150 to 200 quotes. So I what I do, I'm just going to reach in. I'm not looking randomly pick one. This is why he wanted to put me on the spot, because you don't know what. And then I'll read the quote, and I'll invite you to respond first, and then I'll respond. Doesn't have to be something that you have experienced specifically. You just want to know what comes up for you that one, that's what it says. Let me put this down. Okay, it says constant questions always remind you that you don't fit.

Lauryn W.  41:48  
Constant questions remind you what you do, but I feel like you get flashback into school. I don't know about your heritage. And why is this like that? Why is your hair like that? I remember got asked one time, Jim, I wish you had hair like mine, and questions in our food and like your party, you know, family functions, and I think especially in my school, as I was, you know, one of few you already feel like you're not in a space that you belong, sort of thing. So those sort of questions, that's what has taken me back into school. You know, they make you think, okay, like, I'm just really a rare breed here. Like, it's not, not common, but, you know, I think it builds character be very confident in in my culture and who I am. So I think it shines more positively. And I felt like even at that age, you can stand up for yourself and like where you're from, and feel proud of, like, where you come from and who your parents are and who your family are. So I've got, like, a sense of pride actually, from that. Yeah, nice.

Shawna  42:50  
Well, what's interesting about my situation is I'm not biracial. I am multi generationally mixed, so I didn't grow up with two different sets of parents in terms of one being black or white or whatever, I grew up identifying as a black person. I didn't identify as being mixed race until maybe, like three years ago. Even though I've done this show for six years, I originally started it as focusing on racial ambiguity, just the unknown, but this, this quote, constant questions always remind you that you don't fit. Really plays into the racial ambiguity of it all, too. And I think immediately I went back to school too, actually, because, and I've told the story a lot where I used to ask my mom, like, I'd be like, Mom, the kids at school keep asking me if I'm mixed, am I mixed? And she'd be like, No, Shawna, you're black. But that's because in the US, our history goes to the one drop rule, because literally, what you were legally allowed to do or not do had everything to do with your whiteness, your proximity to whiteness, and if you had even just a drop of black blood, they would say you're black. All of you is black period. You were treated as such, and so to feel like, well, I'm supposed to be black, but I don't really match that. But now I'm not also I'm not mixed, I'm not biracial, so I don't match that. Like, where do I fit? I didn't really feel like I fit anywhere. Also, the idea of the constant questions is this reminder of you being so different, different can be cool, but it's only cool when you do have that confidence. I think there's a lot of little kids that I hope their parents instill in them pride so they know what to say and know how to answer, so they can have that pride. So Marcel, how'd I do? That's what I got. We know Lauren's a star. She did. He wanted to see how I would do. Y'all he's rubbing his hands.

Marcel De Jonghe  44:43  
I'm just thankful that you, you were trusting enough to allow me to take lead on this. But yeah, I'm really grateful, Lauren for you sharing your knowledge, and even if it helped one person, which I'm sure you're going to help many through this, this conversation is more machine to. To be probably repeated multiple times. I know I've spoken to various people about, hey, do you know about vitamin D?

Marcel De Jonghe  45:13  
Yeah, I'm gonna go around with like, vitamin D stickers

Lauryn W.  45:18  
and shines, yep, yep. Yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  45:42  
You normally this opportunity where we say, certainly, you'd like to promote about yourself. How can people find out more about what you do while you do it, and how can they engage with you?

Lauryn W.  45:53  
Wow, I recently started an Instagram page. It's still growing in the early stages, but it's at the sunny vitamin I mainly focus on gynecological health and prostate cancer and just like just facts about vitamin D deficiency. So find me there, and like more information about the role of vitamin D deficiency in racial health disparities. Any questions you know, I will try to answer. I would always, you know, advise you to go seek your GP medical doctor, but you know, can point you in the right direction.

Shawna  46:27  
Excellent Archer colors. Podcast will be following you, and everybody else should too. This was so great. Thank you so much.

Lauryn W.  46:35  
Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. You

Intro  46:47  
You've been listening to our true colors. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai