When midlife and autoimmunity start to blur together 💫
“Your labs look fine.” If you’ve heard those words while your body was clearly telling you otherwise, you already know how lonely they can feel. 💫
The fatigue no one can account for and the fog that rolls in on a good day. The flares that come and go on their own terms. The sense that you are somehow both the patient and the only one paying attention.
So you learn to stop bringing it up. ✨
Those signals are worth a closer look. Because the story of midlife reaches wider than hormones alone, into the immune system itself, in ways few of us are ever taught to consider.
That is the kind of conversation worth having out loud, and it is exactly what Voices With Vigor (VWV) was made for. If you’ve spent time in our growing community, you already know the feeling. Once a month, we gather for honest, unscripted conversation on the things that matter most.
Each session introduces you to someone whose experience opens a window for the rest of us. Physicians and veterans, advocates and artists, thinkers and builders, each one carrying a story worth pausing for.
And every month we make room for the questions that connect us all:
What keeps us going through hard seasons. How we turn hard-won experience into something we can offer others. Where kindness fits in a demanding world. What it means to feel truly seen. 🌱
This August, I am honored to welcome a physician whose own story speaks to every one of these questions.
She holds four board certifications, is a mom to three, and lives with an autoimmune condition herself.
Her voice reaches from the exam room to the waiting room and back again. 💫
☕ Wednesday, August 19 (10-11 am PT): Morning coffee with Kara Wada
Kara is a quadruple board-certified physician in adult and pediatric allergy, immunology, and lifestyle medicine, and a Sjögren’s patient. After nearly fifteen years in academic medicine at The Ohio State University, she founded the Immune Confident Institute, a direct-care practice, and created the Immune Confident Approach along with the 4R Framework: Recognize, Reclaim, Rebel, Rise.
Our theme, “Inflamed & Confused? The Plot Twist of Midlife Immunity,” comes from something Kara and I both know as physicians and as patients.
We’ll talk about the way midlife changes and autoimmune conditions so often overlap and get mistaken for each other, why a sense of isolation tends to shadow both, and how symptoms that slip past a diagnosis pile onto the weight a person already shoulders.
We’ll take apart the concept of inflammation, which is far more complex than most of us are led to believe and too often made into a scapegoat. And we’ll speak from the physician-patient perspective, a seat Kara and I each know from experience.
➡️ REGISTER for this free, live, virtual event and explore the detailed landing page.
Dr. Baumgaertel provided a welcoming atmosphere and was clearly very well prepared as a host and guide of an extremely meaningful discussion. I felt her compassion, curiosity, nonjudgment, and support throughout the discussion, and I valued her contributions, which facilitated a deeply enriching dialogue. I am honored to have been a guest on Voices With Vigor. Thank you for the invitation and being an amazing host! — Jillian Rigert, DMD, MD, ACC, TIPC
Expect candor, warmth, and hard-won insight from a doctor who has been in both chairs, clinician and patient alike.
You’ll hear from someone who knows the particular ache of being told everything looks fine while the body keeps insisting otherwise…
And, as ever, you’re invited to bring your own questions into the room.
I would love for you to join us.
Let’s lift up a voice that helps the confused feel a little less alone, and see what becomes possible when midlife immunity is finally given its due. 🌟
P.S. There is a particular kind of relief that comes when someone finally puts words to the thing you’ve spent years trying to describe. I have a feeling this hour with Kara will be one of those moments, and I hope you’ll be there to feel it. ✨
