In this new episode, our discussion revolves around the imperative need to amplify women's health, particularly in the context of heart disease, which remains the leading cause of mortality among women.

I am honored to host the illustrious Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a pioneering cardiologist and the visionary founder and CEO of Adesso, a groundbreaking digital health platform dedicated to redefining preventative care for women's hearts.

Throughout our conversation, Dr. Steinbaum articulates the pressing necessity for a paradigm shift in how we approach women's heart health, emphasizing the distinct physiological and emotional challenges women face.

With over two decades of experience in advocating for women's health, Dr. Steinbaum highlights the importance of empowering women to take charge of their well-being through informed choices and innovative technologies.

We delve into her transformative journey and the creation of Adesso, which seeks to provide accessible heart health assessments and resources tailored specifically for women, thereby addressing a critical gap in healthcare.

Our Guest This Week:

Today we have a 🌟 Fierce Guardian of Women’s Health🌟 in our midst!  

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum is a pioneering cardiologist and the Founder & CEO of Adesso, a digital health platform redefining preventive care for women’s hearts. With over two decades leading women’s heart health programs at top institutions including Mt. Sinai, Lenox Hill, and Beth Israel, she’s long been on the frontlines of advocating for women to live—and lead—from the heart. As a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, Dr. Suzanne has become a trusted voice helping millions understand that heart disease isn’t just a men’s issue—it’s the #1 killer of women. Her book, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book, empowers women to take charge of their wellbeing across physical, emotional, and lifestyle dimensions. Through Adesso, she’s building a scalable, tech-enabled model to put the power of prevention into every woman’s hands—because as she says, “If not now, Adesso.”

Takeaways:

• Dr. Suzanne advocates for a paradigm shift in women's heart health, stressing that heart disease is not solely a male issue but a leading cause of death among women.
• The conversation addresses the unique physiological and psychological factors that affect women's health, underscoring the importance of personalized preventative care.
• The integration of technology in healthcare, as exemplified by Dr. Steinbaum's initiative, seeks to empower women through accessible health resources and tailored risk assessments.
• The dialogue highlights the importance of resilience and adaptability in overcoming personal and professional challenges, particularly for women in leadership positions.
• Listeners are encouraged to reflect on how they nourish themselves and their ambitions, recognizing that personal well-being directly impacts professional success.

Chapters:

00:08 The Emergence of a New Leadership Model

06:01 Exploring Women's Heart Health

16:53 The Journey to Preventive Cardiology

22:50 The Journey of Self-Discovery and Entrepreneurship

32:26 The Birth of ADESA: A New Approach to Women's Heart Health

47:47 The Importance of Collaboration Among Women

Burning Questions Answered:

1.What unique risk factors for heart disease do women face that men don’t?

2.Why is heart disease often missed in women?

3.How does emotional and life experience impact women’s heart health?

4.What can women do daily to protect their heart health?

5.What is the surprising stat about heart disease every woman should know?

Favorite Quotes:

“Don’t let anything take you away—you know who you are. Don’t lose it.”

“Sometimes you have to stop doing and start thinking. That’s the best advice I can give.”

Guest Offers & Contact Information:

https://adesso.health/

Heart Quiz: https://adesso.health/quiz/

Get MyAddesso™ and Your Adesso Heart Score™: https://myadesso.health/introduction 

Book:  Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/dr-suzanne-steinbaum-s-heart-book-every-woman-s-guide-to-a-heart-healthy-life-suzanne-steinbaum/577463?ean=9781583335420&next=t

Insta: @drsteinbaum and @myadesso

Follow the #WisdomOfWomen show for more inspiring stories and insights from trailblazing women founders, investors, and experts in growth and prosperity.

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Coco Sellman, the host of #WisdomOfWomen, believes business is a force for good, especially with visionary women at the helm. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, she has launched five companies and guided over 500 startups. As Founder & CEO of A Force for Good, Coco supports purpose-driven women founders in unlocking exponential growth and prosperity. Her recent venture, Allumé Home Care, reached eight-figure revenues and seven-figure profits in just four years before a successful exit in 2024. A venture investor and board director, Coco’s upcoming book, *A Force for Good*, reveals a roadmap for women to lead high-impact, high-growth companies.

Learn more about A Force for Good:

Website: https://aforceforgood.biz/ 

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FFG Tool of the Week: https://aforceforgood.biz/weekly-tool/ 

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Growth Accelerator: https://aforceforgood.biz/accelerator/ 

Welcome to the Wisdom of Women Show.

We are dedicated to amplifying the voice of women in business.

A new model of leadership is emerging and we are here to amplify the voices of women leading the way.

I am your host, Coco Zelman, five time founder, impact investor and creator of.

The Force for Good system.

Thank you for joining us today as we illuminate the path to unlocking opportunities and prosperity for women led enterprises by amplifying the voice and wisdom of women.

Today we have a fierce guardian of women's health in our midst.

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum is a pioneering cardiologist and the founder and CEO of adeso, a digital health platform redefining preventative care for women's hearts.

With over two decades of leading women's heart health programs at top institutions including Mount Sinai, Lenox Hill and Beth Israel, she's long been on the front lines of advocating for women to live and lead from heart.

As a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association Association's Go Red for Women campaign, Dr. Suzanne has become a trusted voice helping millions understand that heart disease isn't just a man's issue, it's the number one killer of women.

Her book, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum's Heart book empowers women to take charge of their own well being across physical, emotional and lifestyle dimensions.

She's building a scalable tech enabled model to put the power of prevention into every woman's hands because as she says, it's not now adesso.

Welcome Dr. Suzanne.

Thank you Coco.

It's great to be with you.

So tell us a book written by a woman that has significantly influenced your life.

I am riveted by biographies and stories of people's lives.

What fascinates me is the resiliency of women.

Tara Westover Story, Glass Castle, Jeanette Wells.

These are stories of women who had tough lives and overcame the potential of negativity and impossibility and figured out through that human resiliency how to really thrive.

I'm riveted by the people who survive and thrive.

I think the human condition is really that state of difficulty more than it is that state of joy and happiness.

Everybody has challenges and the question always for me is watching how people overcome those challenges.

That for me is the magical story.

And so these books during my own challenges really have helped me to say, yeah, I could do it, they did it, I could do it.

But the book that is the binding is cracked a lot and there's a lot of highlights was actually, you know, Viktor Frankl, the Search for Meaning.

Like spoke to Me and these women who tell their stories, it.

It speaks to.

To me because again, I think our challenges and how we deal with them are what makes up the essence of our lives.

I couldn't agree more.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a beautiful book and educated.

I just feel like you can relate to her condition, even though not her specific circumstances.

And Glass Castle the same.

And these stories where crazy, horrible, awful things go on, and yet these stories reflect upon how a person takes their power back.

Right.

Even though my circumstances are not at all good and they're outside of my control, I am still going to find the light.

Right?

You let the world define you, you let circumstances define you, or you define how you want to be seen in the world.

The meaning of everything.

When I talk about living from the heart, that's kind of what I mean, really.

It's this idea of how are you going to nourish yourself in a way that you can show up for yourself every single day?

And whether that is taking back your power.

Eating healthy, exercising, sleeping, stress management.

All of those things go into saying, I'm going to be the best version of myself that I can be.

It's not one thing, it's all of these things.

Those books remind me that there is a way to look at it, and I think that way might be the right way.

We just have to figure out what that means for ourselves.

What a great question for us all to ponder.

How are you going to nourish yourself?

That question, I think, is really powerful.

You work with your cardiologists and you've been doing this for a really long time.

I know from our time together, this is your passion.

Women have a unique experience with heart health.

And I'm sure when people discover they might have some risks with their heart, that's pretty scary.

How do you help people in those times?

We're going to start heavy on man Search for meeting.

It's interesting because I think this brings up a fundamental difference about how I approach the whole scenario.

When we look at risk factors of heart disease, there are fundamental basics that none of us are going to argue about.

There's blood pressure and there's cholesterol, elevated sugars, whether it's metabolic syndrome or diabetes.

We know that smoking isn't good and bad diets, not exercising and not sleeping.

Those are the fundamentals the American Heart association talks about.

We can go into the next level that are not part of that.

But we know family history matters, we know stress matters.

But what we also know, that's not part of the standard risk analysis is that some things matter to women that are not consistent for both men and women.

Those are things that only happen in women or have different appearance in women.

And those are things like adverse outcomes of pregnancy like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, things like that.

There's also autoimmune diseases like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

Those things happen more often to women than they do to men.

There are things like depression.

There's a twofold increase in heart disease in women who are depressed versus men.

Job satisfaction.

The Nurses Health Study looked at nurses and those nurses that had significant job stress.

There was a 35 increase in the risk of heart disease.

And this was a woman's thing.

So I used to.

Joe Brown, forgive me for telling this, I don't know if it's funny anymore, but I used to say men are very straightforward.

They get stressed out, they get diarrhea.

And women, I mean, we live from our hearts.

We get chest pain.

Everyone knows what that angsty chest feeling is.

That's a woman's.

We also get palpitations we feel from our hearts.

And if we don't really understand what this means from a physiologic perspective, this is the release of stress hormones.

Epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol and inflammatory hormone.

This is part of what leads to heart disease.

This is part of what makes our arteries unhealthy.

I look at women very holistically.

I think of this woman that came in in her late 40s.

She's perimenopausal.

It's interesting because we now talk about it.

We used to not even talk about it.

So there's a thing we can call this sort of purgatory of hormone insanity.

But she came in for a family history, and what we've really started talking about was how she grew up and that there was a lot of secondhand smoke and she had a really abusive, alcoholic father and he had early heart disease.

But was it the way he lived or is it genetic?

And this is not just high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hormonal.

This is like, what have your cells endured in your life?

And I guess that brings me back to why I find those books so interesting.

How are we not going to acknowledge all the places and ways that we were raised or where we came from?

Because we do have an understanding that that does have an impact on our cardiovascular risk.

And including some studies that say what happens in utero has an impact.

I haven't gone that far yet, but it's interesting data to look at.

I think.

That's fascinating.

Another great question you're asking is what have your cells endured in your life?

Right?

And I'm just picturing the idea of all my cells and like, whatever feelings I'm going through, whatever emotions I push through, whatever biochemistry is running through me, it's like my cells are experiencing all of that for better or worse.

Right?

I say the heart is the metronome of your life.

It carries everything.

It carries the stress, the bad times, the things that you push down, you didn't want to talk about.

And it carries the good times and the happiness, but it carries all of it.

If you think of it that way, if you really think of your heart as that piece, you're not going to treat it differently.

Needs to eat, be nourished by good food.

How could you not want to give it the best you can?

If it needs to have 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise to be nourished, how could you not do it?

Because that part is just truly the essence of who you are.

It's the only one that knows the truth, the full truth.

It's your heart.

Wow, that's powerful when you think about it that way.

Your heart is the one who knows the truth.

And you know, it's.

It's present.

It's your metronome, present for any shame, resistance or sadness, and your power, passion, love, commitment and determination.

It's all right there in your heart.

So, Dr. Suzanne, I'd love for you to share with us a few moments.

Three moments from your life.

It can be professional, it can be.

Personal, that share who you are as a person.

Three big moments that have shaped the journey of your life.

Maybe a moment where you encountered a hard thing and you rose up.

Maybe a moment where you said yes to something you love.

Or maybe a moment that you had to suffer a heartbreaking loss or a gift showed up.

Three moments that really stand out in your life.

Ugly Coco.

I can give you a lot more than it's three, Taylor.

I think getting back to how you live your life, I've pushed the envelope a lot.

And when you do that, you set yourself up.

And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

The first time that it happened, I did not know what I wanted to do.

I was in my training.

I just wasn't sure what kind of doctor.

But I love being in the emergency room.

I thought it was exciting and interesting and, you know, you never know what was going to come at you.

This was A time when women were brain brought in.

And I tell this story all the time, but I've got to tell the story because this was the thing.

53 year old woman, she came in, she was nauseous, she was sweating, she was really sick on the stretcher, holding her chest, holding her stomach, kind of uncomfortable.

She was evaluated by the doctors and she was put in the corner with the diagnosis of gastroenteritis.

She proceeded to have a heart attack in the emergency room in front of us.

And literally everything stopped for me, like if it was a movie.

The lights went dark, there was a spotlight on her and it was like this aha moment.

That Oprah's thing, that thing that I was like, I can't watch this anymore.

This is ridiculous.

It wasn't the first, but it was the one.

And I'm like, I need to do this.

This is what I'm going to do.

I am going to do a women in heart disease fellowship.

I used to run up to the floors to see what happened to these women.

They never did well and they weren't treated the same, they weren't given the same care.

It was just shocking.

So I stopped the chief of cardiology because I couldn't get a meeting with him.

And I'd follow him around the hospital.

Finally I got a meeting and I said, I want to do a fellowship in women and heart disease.

And he said, there's no such thing.

Wow.

And I said, okay, this was early, this was 25ish years ago.

And I said, I want to do a fellowship in prevention because if I do a preventive cardiology fellowship and I figure out how to do that, then women won't get sick.

The most amazing thing.

I was in the right place at the right time and I always say it was accidental, but nothing's an accident.

He was doing Dean Ornish's research.

Dean Ornish was on the West Coast.

He was the first one to do the Lifestyle heart trial and that looked at stress management in the form of yoga, diet and exercise and group support to decrease heart disease and atherosclerosis.

And it just so happened that in my hospital, my chief of cardiology was doing his research.

I got one of the first preventive cardiology fellowships in the country.

We got it CGME approved and I was doing Dean Ornish's research.

That's extraordinary.

Extraordinary, Amazing and unbelievable when I think about it to this day, it was just what I was supposed to do.

You know, everything just aligned.

And I worked in a cardiac rehab center in Beth Israel.

We were doing yoga in Beth Israel Medical center on a mauve colored carpeted floor with photographs taken by Richard Gere from Thailand on the wall.

It was magical.

But the most magical piece of it were the patients who were getting better and who were in group support supporting each other.

And we were using PET scanning, that's a very sensitive test to look at the regression of plaque.

And we were really seeing improvement.

It was life changing.

It was absolutely life changing.

And I did that before my cardiology fellowship.

So that was the first thing, that whole fellowship, that story.

The second thing was now I go through this preventive fellowship and I am in fellowship training.

There were 12 of us.

There were four each year for three years and one woman each year.

After doing this preventive fellowship, we each had to do a grand round which included all the fellows and all the attendings in cardiology.

I could pick out of the room the number of women.

It was very few.

It was us and two others.

And I got a.

To talk about preventive cardiology.

I used researched evidence based.

I went through how exercise impacts the lining of the artery, the endothelium.

The endothelium, which is the lining of the artery from head to toe, is the basis of heart disease.

If the endothelium stays healthy, you do not get atherosclerosis.

And that is what all my work is based on.

This is a biochemical analysis that I put up talking about things like L arginine and nitric oxide and endothelial in one nobody really cared about but me because they wanted to put stents in.

I'm up there explaining this, and this is the era when everyone got a stent and it was sexy and cool.

And I was talking about every way not to put a stent in and how stents didn't matter because they were Band aids and they weren't fixing the problem.

And I'm halfway through and everyone is rolling their eyes and no one's listening.

And all of a sudden, for some reason, on my slides, some of the pictures there were exes X's, like, you couldn't see anything.

Oh, my goodness.

And I was like, I'm going to talk through it.

I don't know what's going on with my sides, but let me explain.

And I just see everyone like, what is wrong with this quacky, flaky exercise chick?

Like, that's what it felt like.

And I got done.

I got off the podium and called my father crying.

And I said, dad, this is it.

This is not for me.

I'm quitting.

And my dad, he's a retired oncologist.

We got it.

And he goes, congratulations.

And I said, why?

What did you hear me?

And I'm crying.

And he said, congratulations.

That means you're onto something.

He goes, they didn't get it.

They didn't understand.

You're onto something.

You are in the beginning stages.

This is fabulous.

Keep doing it.

Keep going.

This means you've got to keep going.

Wow.

And I was like, I think you're crazy.

I'm not sure you heard me.

And I was like, but I'll think about that.

And I hung up.

And I was like, I'm going to go wipe my tears and say, how do you like what I said?

And it changed everything for me.

But during that time, I was really tortured, brought into rooms by doctors saying, is this a marketing strategy?

I started getting interviewed.

You want to be on television?

Is this for television?

And I was like, no.

And I would show them research.

And that's gone on for 25 years.

You know, that never really stopped.

But at least I got used to it early on.

I was like, this is what I'm going to do.

Here's the most amazing thing that happened from that there.

At the time, we were using nuclear stress testing, which is a stress test that diagnoses blockages in the arteries when they're 70% or greater.

It was considered standard of care.

You're injected with thallium or cesam nepi, which is a nuclear substance to trace the blood flow through your body.

Most heart attacks happen when the plaque is 30 to 50%, when it's soft and unstable, when it's 70%, oftentimes it's more calcified and it's less likely to rupture, less likely to cause heart attacks.

So in one of these grand rounds, right after this terrible experience that happened, I raised my hand and said, I don't understand why we're doing nuclear stress tests and subjecting people to nuclear substance.

When heart attacks often happen.

When plaque is 30 to 50%, it won't get picked up.

And the head of the cardiovascular institute, his name was Tom Killip, Dr. Killip, he was known, known for the Killip classification of heart failure.

A world renowned researcher on heart failure, that something was named after him.

When he retired, he gave me a portion of his patients.

Wow, need to take over.

And I was like, why?

And he said, you always ask the right questions and you've always told the story and worked harder because you believe in what you're doing.

So that I Hope goes into number two because it was bad and it was good and it was terrible and magical all at the same time.

Well, I love.

And it's like that, right?

These experiences when we can find, you know, how the hard stuff makes you stick to it.

And then somebody was listening to you even when you were drowned out by most people.

But this very wise, brilliant.

Yes.

Respected and amazing.

And then the last one is personal.

I went through a terrible divorce.

We were separated.

My son was two and a half years old.

It was miserable and acrimonious and awful.

And it dragged on.

When it started, in its misery, I didn't want to file for divorce.

I was just crying every day, like, it was awful.

One day you'll read about it in my book, because I do write about it.

I just woke up in the morning, went to the mirror and looked at myself in my puffy eyes and my puffy face.

And I just was like, what?

What happened to you?

And I thought about it and I was like, nothing.

Nothing actually happened to me.

I am actually the same person.

This is terrible.

But, like, I'm here, I'm still me.

And I thought, I want to write a book.

And I'm not going to write a book if he's going to get the book.

And I filed for divorce that day, started writing a book, and do you know what?

I got a book deal that paid for my divorce lawyer.

Oh, my goodness.

Well, congratulations.

Divorce is a hard thing.

I haven't been through it, but I watched it as it happened for my husband.

Took many years for him to resolve everything, and still it's part of our lives.

It's a wonderful thing to turn over that nothing happened to you.

Right.

Like, you are still there.

You get to have you.

It was unforgettable because things have happened since.

Yeah, the learning happened that day.

It was really here to me to say, don't let anything take you away.

You know who you are.

Don't lose it.

And trust me, there are times, even recently, that it's been so much that you get shaken up, confused, you feel like a victim, you feel terrible.

And then you just have to remember, I'm still here.

And what can I do?

The best of my ability to really make this okay, to make it perfect all the time.

No.

But, you know, as a founder, my mantra has always been, what's the next brave step?

What can I do now?

What do I have the power to do can move me forward?

And maybe it's not as far forward as I wish, maybe it's not the grand leap.

But there is always something I can do right now to move myself in a direction.

And sometimes it means just sitting quietly.

It can mean a lot of things, but you can show up for you.

We always have enough within us to take the next step, whatever that is.

I think the startup entrepreneurial life is challenging.

And I started it the same way I started my fellowship.

Really learning as I went, doing some really wrong things, understanding the right things.

I wish I could go back and start again the same way I wish I could go back and start my fellowship again.

Or the book, everything.

Because you learn.

The one thing that I would say that I learned this time, that I would tell every entrepreneur, doing it means you're going to sacrifice, period.

You're going to sacrifice.

You're going to sacrifice a little bit of quality of life, you're going to sacrifice a little fun time.

You're going to sacrifice.

Yeah, you have to figure out where that line is.

And you never cross the line.

I'm a sacrificer.

I cross it a lot.

And I wouldn't do it again.

I would actually hold to that line and say doing that is too much.

And what you brought up is one of the most important things.

When you feel like you're crossing the line.

Stop, pause.

I saw something so interesting by a professor from Stanford and I wish I wrote her name down.

The point between not knowing and knowing that uncomfortable place, that's the point.

You've got to slow down and be quiet and read and listen and think.

That's the point where you don't do anything.

And we tend to want to do more and fix it.

And that's what I did.

If I could do it again, I would just stop.

Just stop.

My biggest advice to everyone, listen within.

Because.

And then remember that you're there.

You're there.

I think, right, I'm here.

Are you going to iterate?

Are you going to push forward?

Are you going to do it a different way?

Do you need a strategic partner?

What can you do to move this forward without taking your own life?

Well, in crossing those lines that you don't want to cross, whatever they are with your own time, with your own health, with your own level of stress, with your own financial resources, with your relationships, whatever those things are, is sitting outside my door crying.

And so thank you for your patience with me.

There's a lot of wisdom there.

I mean, you just shared three really profound moments in your life.

And they illustrate exactly what we're talking about in terms of forging ahead, the challenges we face, how to look within and what the wisdom of women is about.

Right.

And as founders, what do we do in these moments of strife and stress and because you know, you've had a journey.

Right.

So tell us about Adesso.

What is Odessa?

How did it come about?

Why did you create it?

Tell us what this extraordinary platform is.

I'm so excited to share it.

I think one of the funniest things, we all have our VC stories, but in the beginning, I really did not know.

This was not my world.

And I had been speaking all over the country to all different kinds of people that women get heart disease, had people roll their eyes and all the things.

Right.

But like kept standing in my shoes and telling the story.

So Now I have VCs and I'm telling the same story.

So was built out of a 25 year career.

And when I had my first VC call, they said, wait, women get heart disease?

How do you know this works?

I almost felt like saying, okay, I'm done.

Shut everything down.

No, can't do this again.

Then I was like, yes, I can do this again.

This is so horrible.

But you know, how did Deso happen?

It didn't happen the day the tech was built.

It happened over 25 years.

I think that why it works.

I don't know.

A couple thousand patients, we'll talk about that.

But I learned that part of being a founder and part of being a CEO is when you know who you are, you don't actually have to tell everyone all the time.

That took me a minute because I really wanted everyone to know.

And I really say this in such an important place because I really think I didn't do well on my presentations in the beginning.

I was speaking as a cardiologist and not as a founder of a tech company.

And a very different world with different rules.

It took me a minute to learn the rules.

What I'm trying to say is I'm much more humble and gracious than I was in the beginning.

And my humility is there.

It's solid.

So really started.

And we go back to the beginning of this conversation.

I told you about these risk factors of heart disease.

When you go to your primary care doctor, standard of care is they put you through that risk analysis 50% of the time that misses your risk of heart disease.

It doesn't ask the questions.

So I wanted to ask the questions.

And Edesso starts with a heart score, which is really asking the right questions to get an understanding and analysis of what your risk of heart disease is.

It goes through things like Adverse outcomes of pregnancy stress, job insecurity and job stress.

Pcos.

Guess what?

Hot flashes increases your risk of heart disease.

Everyone's talking about menopause right now.

Let's connect the dots.

Women need to connect the dots.

Women haven't been treated the right way.

But DASA was created to give women a shot to get treatment over the past 15 years.

And I guess my.

My fifth story, if I was going to say Juan, is when I left the hospital, my last position I decided to leave it was during COVID two months after I left.

It was the first time I sat down.

This is why Odessa was born.

I sat down and wrote a 90 page manual on how to prevent heart disease in women based on all of my research.

I got it copyrighted by the Library of Congress and I called some people, found a tech company.

I said if I could put this on a platform, I can offer preventive strategies that I've been doing and researching to women across the world, independent of location, socioeconomic, state, education, anything.

It would standardize access of care.

That's how ADESA was born.

It's been a journey of understanding.

How do you launch a SaaS solution which is a clinical care model.

Do I need FDA approval, HIPAA compliance, marketing, go to market?

All of the things that we're all doing wasn't as simple as it was, you know, in me and my computer and figuring it out.

I know I figured it out.

Now getting it out there is really what I'm trying to do.

So adesso means now in Italian.

If the time is not now to change the stats, number one.

But what's your now?

What is your reason for wanting to be healthy, for wanting to make an impact on your life?

Desa was born out of 25 years.

One book, one divorce, a lot of people screaming at me.

But it was created for women with the intention of addressing issues that matter the most, to really prevent heart disease in a very holistic perspective with accurate risk assessment, with accurate diagnosis, through advanced blood testing.

Not just the standard lipid analysis, but other blood tests that show metabolism and genetics.

What is plaque forming and cardiopulmonary exercise test that's queried in the way.

I'm going to bring up this word again.

That endothelium that I was studying all in the beginning to make that endothelium so healthy that women don't get heart disease.

And that's been the entirety of my career.

And now it's on a software solution for primary care doctors and gynecologists that they can really prevent heart disease.

You don't have to go to a cardiologist.

You don't have to find a doctor in New York City or go to a city you can find help near you.

And it's really easy to do and execute.

And it's on an app and it's in the App Store.

It's so cool.

What I love about it is you're bringing it to primary care physicians and gynecologists, which most of us see.

We don't always go see a cardiologist.

Right.

When we see our gynecologist or our primary care physicians, they don't have these important tools.

They don't have an assessment and a structure because they just don't know.

Right.

You're giving them a tool that empowers them to screen better and to learn about women and heart health without making it a bitter pill.

Right.

I think the other piece that you bring up, which is really part of the design purposely, is that there's an algorithm for treatment.

It's designed for men's hearts.

Of course, women are missed about 66% of the time by the standard of care.

That's a lot.

This is an algorithm, a step by step algorithm for diagnosis and treatment that can be done in a primary care doctor's office.

The hardest part of this build was the robust decision making engine that I drew on four walls with a marker and took pictures of for a tech team to put on a decision making platform.

And that took a year and a half to build.

It's so complicated in the background and really easy for the doctor to execute because of that.

Well, that is extraordinary.

And so now that's a big part of what you're doing, right?

You're getting it out to all these different primary care and gynecologists around the country and providing them these tools that they can then use.

And so when somebody comes in and has their regular visit, they'll have this assessment and then they'll see what are you, what's.

What are you finding out?

As people are out in the world using this assessment and the other providers are using this assessment tool, I think.

One of the coolest things I keep hearing is that the women love it, which makes me really happy.

And what I'm finding from the doctors.

There's one story I have to tell you.

Northern Arizona, first pilot in Navajo County.

The nearest cardiologist is three and a half hours away.

And it is rural health care, you know, its finest.

And I say that because rural healthcare is so tough it is challenging on every level.

Transportation and can people use cell phones?

Do they have cell phones?

Is there a tower?

I mean, are they getting food?

You know, it's just the basics.

It's not talking about, you know, let's go to the gym.

That is a whole nother level of what we're discussing.

This one story of a 51 year old woman who was adopted.

So we don't know her family history.

And she was complaining of fatigue.

She is obese and hypertensive and for months they kept telling her to lose weight and exercise.

So Adesso was put in their office and they put her on her testing modules.

Through the testing, it flagged that she probably needed a more invasive study.

They had a CAT scan angiogram across the street.

So there was a radiology center.

They sent her immediately across the street and it showed the blockage greater than 70%.

They weren't sure.

She went to the cardiologist immediately and had an invasive procedure, an angiogram.

It was 99% blocked.

This is the woman who would have died in her sleep.

And that would have been like, nobody would have known why.

And she had a stent.

Her life was saved.

The husband called, the doctor called.

There was a lot of excitement around it.

What we're navigating now is the changes in the insurance company and healthcare.

Everything's changing and it's changed since January.

It changed before then.

I'm writing this to understand where to land.

The good news is some of it hasn't changed.

Some commercial insurance is the same, concierge is the same.

But when we look at Medicaid and Medicare, the people that need it most, we're having a little trouble.

And I'm going to tell you personally, this is one of those moments.

Talk about the stop and pause moment.

To be successful, sometimes you have to do things first before your vision is fulfilled.

My vision to give access to all is not going to happen unless we move forward.

We're moving forward in giving access to all, but we're starting with a population that can afford it and then we're going to go to the population that can't.

The other thing I learned in my career is when you want to make big changes, it happens from the top down, not from the bottom up.

And what I mean by that is I've spoken to thousands of women across this country.

I've spoken to thousands of companies across this country.

When I talk to human resources right now as a CEO of a tech company to consider employee help, they say, is it cost effective.

So all those thousands of things that I did over 25 years did not make an impact on the decision makers.

And that's what I mean.

If you really want to make change, you've got to make change on the decision makers, the stakeholders.

And that trickle down concept, as challenging as it is for me to think about, because I think when I think women are so powerful in making change and we're seeing that in the menopause space, but unless we can get these things covered, get access and insurance, it's for a select and it's not for all.

My vision is really to change healthcare for women, for all women.

What you're talking about is extremely strategic and important.

If you want to see through your vision, sometimes you have to go a path to make sure that you can demonstrate that it works through concierge or through people who have Blue Cross, Blue Shield and then get to the folks who have Medicaid.

Because if you set it up that you will only do it if everyone has access, then you will go broke.

Then you're stuck in trying to fight with payers and so forth.

I am in healthcare.

So you have to pick a path.

And it doesn't mean that you avoid that you let out all these other people who don't get access, but you have to prove along the way so that you can expand access.

So Coco, this is the only time you do not live from the heart.

You've got to become more strategic.

You're heart centered in what grounds you, but you've got to be strategic in how you do that.

And so that's one of the things I had to learn the hard way, you know, really are and listen the hard way.

I really am telling you all the things that I wish I knew before.

You know, I've been in it now.

And so when you have advisors that come on board, make sure your advisors advise you.

And there are a lot of people getting paid as advisors that took me down the wrong route because whether they didn't understand or whatever.

So that's another thing I would really suggest.

Absolutely.

Being a founder, especially as you're getting it off the ground, viable, sustainable and profitable, you need help advisors and you also have to listen to yourself.

You need to have your purpose and long term vision and you have to do the things that make sense.

You can stay live long enough to get to the long term vision.

The number one reason businesses fail is because they run out of money.

And you know, until you get to that place where there's enough scale and profit to Keep you going.

You are vulnerable.

So you have to be sequential and strategic, which you are.

And what I believe too, is that we're always learning and doing our best.

I think the only time we fail is when we don't listen to ourselves, learn and adjust.

I think for the quiet moments where you stop doing like I was doing and you can't.

You just have to stop doing and start thinking.

Sometimes I think that's the best advice I can give.

I love that.

So we are going to move into our fast fire round of five fun quick questions.

And you have a quick response.

And so first question, morning ritual that.

You never skip shower?

Yeah, it's like my meditation time.

I am in the shower and I do have some skin care makeup routine.

People think I'm bananas.

Like, why are you dressed for the day?

I don't even realize I'm doing it.

I'm in this meditative space.

It's when I really can get my thoughts together.

It's the time where I just want to be left alone and do my thing.

I might come out looking a certain way, but that's not what's going on on the inside.

So great.

Your morning ritual.

I love it.

Most surprising heart fact.

That heart disease is the number one killer of all women, more than all cancers combined.

I think that a lot of women feel like it's breast cancer.

It is just more than all cancers combined.

And the scary stat is that it's increasing for women less than 55 years old.

Those women that are thought of as being really healthy and in great shape, they're protected by estrogen.

So they're in the healthiest time of their lives because of their estrogen.

They're protected.

I. I'll tell you that Covid has changed the game and it's changed on multiple levels.

It's affected the endothelium.

And because of that, we have a different disease process.

And younger women are really suffering.

Wow, that is surprising.

I didn't know that.

So what makes your heart race in the very best way?

I love doing physical things.

I love downhill snow skiing.

I'm a sailor.

I love racing my sailboat.

I high adrenaline physical activities.

When I think of being on top of a really steep mogul field, that is my happiest place.

Happy place.

Wonderful heels, sneakers.

Barefoot.

Even my sneakers have healed.

Love that.

And what do you know for sure about women?

We are all very similar.

There is a commonality to woman, the state of being a woman that is so fascinating.

And I actually believe if women realized their places where they actually can relate.

I think we'd be better off.

There is an interesting space in being a woman.

There's a competitiveness to it that's gone on for a long time.

There's one spot for that one woman.

There is this idea of there's just not enough for us to go around.

2 to 3% of VC dollars go to women.

Founding.

We are fighting each other.

In some ways it's terrible.

And I think that if we realized we're actually not, that story would change much faster.

I think that women would stop the competitive and start more of the collaborative.

And once we collaborate, listen, men, they just help each other.

They hate each other and they'll help each other.

We'll be fighting and be like, hey, I'll call that guy for you.

If a woman says to me, I'll call someone to help you, it's notable.

Guys are not like that.

They don't care.

I think that we're set up in a really interesting way because of the structure of society.

And I really hope that changes.

Well, we are very.

I know we're very similar and we can help each other so much if we choose to.

Yeah, so.

So I would love to know, and I'm sure our listeners would too.

How can our listeners learn more about you and Adesso?

Tell us how to get access to your program and you.

So we have a website, Adesso Health.

We have all these advisors, all these women that I've been on my travels with me that I spotlight on the website who.

Who are doing brilliant and wonderful things.

You can get tons of information about other things and ways to support your heart.

There is fashion, beauty, exercise, spirituality.

It's really cool to have those women on the platform.

We also have what I call a Cosmo quiz.

That's just a super fun quiz to take that really gives you an insight into your life.

There's a link you can get Adesso my Adesso in the Apple Store if you're interested.

That gives you your heart score.

It syncs to any device.

You can start tracking to improve your heart score and make things better.

That's Adesso Health.

I have my own website, drsusansteinbaum.com My book is on there.

If you're interested in reading more about how my Adesso is built because it tells a lot about the science around that.

Come on social media because I'm trying to get more active there on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Dr. Steinbaum, my.

And I think it's a fun place.

To meet No, I love that.

So let's all make sure to go to Adessa Health, take the quiz, get Adesso on the Apple Store and download it and find out about your health and pick up Dr. Suzanne's book.

All of this good stuff is in the show notes that you can find below.

Thank you.

Dr. Suzanne, thank you for joining us today in the Wisdom of Women Show.

Thank you for illuminating the path to unlocking opportunities for growth and prosperity for women led enterprises.

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