She says she deliberately set the book in Alliston, hoping to ground it in the everyday experiences of women living outside major urban centres.<\/p>\n
Another reason for setting it in small-town Simcoe County\u00a0was due to the challenge in accessing health care based on where you live.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn smaller suburban and quasi-rural settings, it can be very difficult to access health care in particular. These things happen to women everywhere, but the ability to access health care varies greatly by region,” said\u00a0Bocknek.<\/p>\n
![\"04272026hotflashtohotdamnbookcover\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/04272026hotflashtohotdamnbookcover.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nDr. Amber Bocknek, who grew up in Barrie, recently released her book titled Hot Flash to HOT DAMN! | Image supplied
<\/p>\n
Bocknek has worn many hats over the course of her career, all of which she says have shaped the way she now approaches women\u2019s health.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve done clinical practice that’s office\u2011based. I’ve worked in emerg. I did about a decade as a hospitalist in Alliston, as well as in Newmarket and Toronto,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
And\u00a0throughout those years, she says she always maintained a \u201chealth and wellness\u201d practice in the background.<\/p>\n
In more recent years, as she\u2019s gone through the same life transitions that many middle-aged women experience, she says her interest in hormone health has only deepened.<\/p>\n
She also faced her own hormone\u2011related health issues, which she says took\u00a0her \u201cdown the rabbit hole of functional medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have one foot in both camps. I very much am a conventionally trained physician and wholeheartedly believe in all the good things that conventional medicine has to offer, but I’ve added to it,” said\u00a0Bocknek.<\/p>\n
She describes her current work as a \u201chybrid practice\u201d that blends both conventional medicine and functional approaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s like cherry-picking the best of both fields. That’s where I find myself now,\u201d Bocknek\u00a0said. \u201cWe do a lot of health and wellness around hormone health and trying to have the best kind of go\u2011forward health span.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bocknek also describes her new book as a \u201chybrid\u201d \u2014 part novel, part self\u2011help and\u00a0part how\u2011to guide.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a shared life experience, self\u2011learning advocacy book that has a companion workbook to do a lot of self-study and work on the side to help women advocate for their health,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That kind of advocacy, Bocknek\u00a0added, is especially important in a health-care system that is stretched to capacity and often struggles to manage complex or overlapping issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a difficult environment to navigate, so it\u2019s a combination,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve incorporated a little bit of my own personal story, plus clinical vignettes of patients, plus self-advocacy work for women who are going through the same life journey I am, to help them get the help they need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bocknek says the motivation for the book\u00a0comes directly from the same place that led her to incorporate functional medicine into her practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my own personal life experience,\u201d\u00a0she\u00a0said. \u201cI wish I could say I had enough medical foresight to have been interested, motivated and aware \u2014 to the level I am now \u2014 of these women\u2019s health issues before things happened to me. But I think so many of us are experiential learners.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Bocknek\u00a0began developing health issues that the medical system couldn\u2019t fully explain or address, she says\u00a0she was pushed to look further. Even with her training,\u00a0knowing the language of medicine and how to navigate it,\u00a0she found herself running into barriers she didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really made me keenly aware of how difficult this is for everybody,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s really where I thought something needs to be put out there to help people find their path in a quicker, more direct line than what I found on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n
She hopes the book will be a \u201cgood starting point\u201d \u2014 something that helps women understand what they\u2019re going through, gives them the language to talk about it, and points them in the right direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever your own experience takes you, you\u2019ll have some tools and evidence\u2011based information to guide you,\u201d Bocknek said. \u201cEvery woman is going to go through this. We’re all going to do it a little bit differently, but it’s a shared experience we all have.<\/p>\n
“I’m really hoping that the messaging at the end of the book leaves the reader feeling just more aspirational, more content in self and like there’s a a better, brighter future ahead that she absolutely should demand and go for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Every woman is going to go through this. We’re all going to do it a little bit differently,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[239956,49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-643991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-barrie-authordr-amber-bocknekbarrie-author-dr-amber-bocknekhot-flash-to-hot-damnhot-flash-to-hot-damn-book","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}