Bringing Needs & Wants of Women Ages 40+ into Focus

As the number of businesses devoted to menopause treatment and wellness continues to grow, global innovation focused on the health and wellness wants and needs of women ages 40+ grows as well. As we become more aware of the difficulties that menopausal women face on a daily basis, it is becoming increasingly important to understand these women’s wants and needs in order to help them in the most effective manner.

Our hosts, Dr. Dweck and Rachel, are joined today by Denise Pines, co-founder of the FemAging HealthTech Report and a woman whose numerous spheres of interest focus primarily on menopausal women and their inability to be heard, advised and treated properly. FemAging was founded in order to discover what women aged 40-65 truly require, and it is now evolving into something larger and more complex. Denise has also been involved in a number of other projects devoted to menopause health and wellness, and she is here today to tell us all about her personal journey through menopause, as well as the concepts and goals of her multiple projects and businesses.

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TOPICS COVERED:

• Meet Denise Pines, the co-founder of the FemAging Report.
• Denise is currently at the epicenter of everything that is going on, so she has come to share her vast experience with us.
• As Denise says, “It all started with a hot flash”.
• As she began to enter the women’s health market, Denise realized how similar these women were to her.
• Many women feel like they are the only ones going through menopause because no one is talking about it.
• Dweck feels that this story really struck a chord since she has many women in her office who are experiencing troubling symptoms and believe that no one else is.
• We learn more about Denise’s Hot Flash Tea: it helps put GABA back into our brains, which is essentially a receptor in the brain that regulates our sensation of heat.
• Rachel adds that she has frequently encountered women who had no idea what was wrong when the symptoms appeared and thought that nobody else on Earth was having them.
• Another point emphasized by both Rachel and Dr. Dweck is the fact that Denise learned about menopause from her mother, which is uncommon among menopausal women.
• Denise explains that she was aware of some of the symptoms prior to menopause, but she did not experience the same symptoms as her mother did.
• After experiencing hot flashes, Denise decided to launch WisePause Wellness, a recurring event where menopausal women can get information from qualified physicians.
• Denise created a survey to determine what menopausal women truly desired.
• Dweck brings up hormones because there is a huge divide between patients who are okay with hormones and those who are strongly opposed to them.
• Denise explains that women are still hesitant because they believe the hormones will harm them.
• Rachel genuinely admires Denise’s extensive experience and remarks that ‘her business card would be the size of a poster’, so she is curious about the goals of FemAging as another one of Denise’s businesses.
• We learn that FemAging will become a subscription-based platform where can learn more about the latest innovations and solutions in the field of menopause treatment.
• As Denise points out, only 5% of the physicians are OB-GYNs, and only 25% of them are menopause specialists, so some changes will be required in that area.
• Dweck adds that OB-GYN residents receive very little training in menopause, resulting s in a shortage of physicians who are trained to help patients.
• Rachel emphasizes the importance of individuals such as Denise and Dr. Dweck in assisting patients in realizing that doctors are not their enemies and in providing a safe haven for them.
• Denise brings up another important point: women don’t know how to communicate with their doctors and aren’t always honest with them.
• To learn more about Denise’s work, you can visit FemAging for the report, WisePause for the event, or Tea Botanics for the hot flash products.
• HOT FLASH: According to a small survey of US OB-GYN residents at Johns Hopkins, only one in every five residents receives formal training in menopause medicine.

 

QUOTES:

“I tell everyone this all started with a hot flash.” (Denise)

“You’ve literally mentioned a day in my life in my office where so many women come in with concerning symptoms and either think they’re having a heart attack or some sort of a neurological problem.” (Dr. Dweck)

“I wanted to commend you for asking your mother about her experience because we know from studies that your genetic propensity is going to explain a lot of your menopausal symptoms.” (Dr. Dweck)

“Most of the time we hear people say ‘I had symptoms and I had no idea what they were from or if anyone else on the Earth was having them’.” (Rachel)

“Consumers can react to things, they can tell you what they don’t like, but it’s much more difficult for any of us to communicate a solution or what we need for something we can’t picture or something we can’t experience or something we’ve never seen.” (Rachel)

“I find this huge dichotomy between patients who are hormone-positive and hormone-absolutely-never, and there doesn’t really seem to be much of a middle ground.” (Dr. Dweck)

“They are still extremely hesitant to use them and they really still fear that it’s going to harm them, that they’re going to get cancer.” (Denise)

“I want to do this menopause survey about the gap between treatment and management of menopause not to cast dispersion on physicians, but to factually reveal women’s experience.” (Denise)

“I just wanted to make a comment about how little training residents in OB-GYN get in menopausal care. I think it’s literally a couple of hours if we’re lucky.” (Dr. Dweck)

“We need to create more safe havens where patients feel like they can talk to their doctors.” (Rachel)

“If you don’t know the symptoms and you don’t have a healthcare practitioner and you don’t know the right questions to ask and you don’t have a vocabulary, you don’t know where to go.” (Rachel)

“Women don’t know how to have a relationship with their doctors. Even the patients who love you, there are probably some times when they’re not honest.” (Denise)

“I think the medical profession has some work to do in terms of really creating better access.” (Dr. Dweck)

“I think it’s a great time to take the wind beneath our wings and really make progress.” (Rachel)

FURTHER RESOURCES:

FemAging www.femaging.com

WisePause www.wisepause.com

Tea Botanics www.teabotanics.com

Denise @LinkedIn

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