Embracing Menopause: Thriving with Holistic and Nutritional Solutions
Jack is a pro-aging champion. She promotes normalizing aging for women through curated content and women-driven brands. With over sixty Kuel Category Thought Leaders and forty women-driven brands, Kuel Life offers women an opportunity to ‘Share, Learn, Shop, and Play with Our Second Sisters!’ Having earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, Perez carries a hard-nosed business understanding of the entrepreneur world. Jack’s passions include: spending time with her son and traveling to exotic, off-the-beaten-path places, such as Cuba, Jordan, Zambia, Bolivia, and Zanzibar. An endorphin junkie, Jack is an avid jump roper, Peloton-fanatic, and a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo.
Leslie: Tell us about your platform and what led you to create it.
Jack: What led me to create it was a personal issue. I think a lot of us in the entrepreneurial world start something because we are suffering, right? To be honest with you, menopause ran me over. You name it, I had it. I had belly fat, night sweats, and anxiety. I couldn’t control my emotions. I was a horrible version of myself. I wasn't a good partner, friend, or mom. I’m in my early 50s and thinking, “My goodness. I could potentially have 40 years left. Is this how I'm gonna spend them, being miserable and not myself? I'm not signing up for that.” Then, I started looking for solutions for myself. While I was doing that, what occurred to me is, “If I can't find solutions, if I'm suffering, if I can't find the answers, then what are the chances that other women are having some similar problems and some similar roadblocks?” And that's when the ‘aha moment’ came in, and I thought, “I need to be a part of the sea of change. I want to be part of this paradigm shift of the way women are experiencing midlife and beyond.”
Leslie: No, that's great. And you're so right about most entrepreneurs coming from a personal problem. I started Vitaminis because I wanted more nutrients in my diet. I believe in that, but I didn't love supplement pills and gummy vitamins, I knew liquid was the best format, and I did not see any kind of real food and beverage-based delivery mechanisms. Tell us about your platform. What did your company do?
Jack: I believe that the more we understand about all of the opportunities and challenges that start to come up at this stage of life, the more power we have to manage our lives. When I went out there, I couldn't find information on the aging process, menopause, or bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. I couldn't find information on anything. And so I thought, “I want to build a trusted resource for women, so that they know they can get the latest and greatest advice on life from experts”. Now, that begs the question, “Where are you gonna get the experts?” At the beginning, I was nobody. I had built a website that was put together with gum and band-aids and a lot of tears, and I was the sole provider. I'm not an expert really on much of anything, but I knew that there were women out there already.
Leslie: That's so true, and it's funny that Vitaminis kind of just stumbled on the menopause market. We have zinc and magnesium in these shots, which are made for immune support, but, we have a lot of premenopausal women taking Vitaminis because of the hormone regulation aspect of zinc and magnesium. I'm forty-two, so I'm kind of entering into that premenopausal time of life. I didn't know anything about it, but, as I'm learning, I'm like, “This is a huge issue for so many people.” So, can you tell us what hot flashes are for those of us who might not know?
Jack: Okay, hot flashes. You’ve probably heard of those. Imagine you're minding your own business, living your life, and all of a sudden it is like someone turns up the furnace inside of your gut and in your chest. All of a sudden, you're just sweating, and you want to rip your clothes off, and it’s just uncomfortable. Honestly, while it's uncomfortable and embarrassing, it wasn’t the symptoms that made me insane, it was the anxiety and lack of sleep. Those are the things that led to the weight gain. I weighed what I weighed the day I delivered my baby. I've dropped forty pounds in the last three years, and it's interesting because it wasn't like I was obese. I was just a bigger version of myself, but I didn’t feel comfortable like that.
Leslie: What sort of solutions are there for these kinds of symptoms that you had, and how did you deal with them?
Jack: For me, I was estrogen-heavy and that's what was causing all of the mid-belly fat. That's what causes it, and it doesn't matter what you do. You can work out less, stop drinking alcohol, drink more alcohol, sleep more, sleep less, or eat less. It does not matter because your body has a completely different agenda. Due to hormone regulation, it doesn't matter what lifestyle decisions you make. And while health is 70% lifestyle, if that 30% is off– it's still an important 30%. You just don't realize how important it is until it's off. Some women go holistic, and I did everything you could think of holistically. Any supplement, I tried it. I ended up going the bioidentical hormone replacement therapy route. I don't know what you would have said for me to give it up. Even if you said to me, we're taking away ten years of your life, I'd look at you and say “Okay, that's fine,” because life wasn't worth living the way I was living it before.
Leslie: Is there anything inspirational that you can kind of tell us about what you've seen for those struggling?
Jack: I don't know as much about the science behind red light therapy, so I don't feel comfortable speaking to that, but it works for me. It helps with the inflammation in my arthritis. I have a lot of arthritis, but I'm also a very, very active human. Those two things sometimes conflict, especially if I'm working with heavy weights. My hands have a really hard time holding dumbbells that are thirty pounds, not because my body can't handle the weight, but because my fingers have trouble handling the weight. However, it helps with inflammation, which is why I enjoy doing it after a workout. If I work out really hard, red light therapy really helps.
Leslie: Are there any other treatments that people could try?
Jack: I know personally at least 20 women that now are on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, directly because of conversations with me. I encouraged them to find the right medical professional who could speak to them about the pros and cons because there's a lot of misinformation out there for women, and there's a lot of medical misogyny that we need to be highly aware of. I get cards in the mail, sometimes, from women saying “Thank you for what you're doing, you're making such a difference in my life”. I actually have a personal story about coming back from a terrible skydiving accident where I broke my back in three different places. When I landed and heard the noise that my body made, the idea that popped into my head was, “You’re 58, and you've just paralyzed yourself. You just paralyzed yourself”. However, I didn't and wholeheartedly believe that I did not require surgery or pins or back braces or anything because of how physically fit I was going into the accident. If you are thinking, “I'm not gonna jump out of an airplane, so I'm fine. I mean, that's just not gonna happen to me.” We can all break stuff– walking the family dog, going off the curb. As you get older, it becomes a bigger issue. It's not an uncommon story. The better prepared we are for when we fall, ladies– because it's going to happen– you're more likely to survive it.
Leslie: Thank you so much. Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to leave with us?
Jack: Right now, I have sixty-five women from around the world and I'm onboarding. I think we're gonna be close to a hundred, and we have them from New Zealand, Spain, the UK, Canada– everywhere. We don't have anyone from South America yet, but I'm working on it. These women from all around the world offer up their wisdom and expertise. If you are struggling and you’re resonating with one of the thought leaders and she's got either a coaching program or a book or a product that resonates with you, then you can feel comfortable pursuing a relationship with that provider and getting to know her. My goal is to establish a trusted resource, so women can go get information and also shop for women-driven brands. They need to know that they're being served, but that they're also providing money in the pocketbook of a woman. They’re purchasing with a purpose, not just randomly spewing their money all over town, but actually purposefully allocating their resources. If we all get together and combine our pocketbooks and our voices, we can't be ignored. We're the majority of the people.
