(Peri)Menopause: Coming Sooner Than You Think
Laura Artigas is the co-founder and CEO of Hologram Sciences, a health and wellness innovation studio incubating new health and wellness brands. She was on the founding team that created the Phenology brand, the second brand concept launched by Hologram. Phenology is a woman-led initiative focused on women's health, redefining the areas of life that are often neglected by the scientific and medical communities, starting with menopause. At every stage, Phenology is improving women's lives by leveraging advanced diagnostics, nutrition essentials, and personalized digital tools.
Leslie: What led Hologram Sciences to create the Phenology Brand?
Laura: We saw a big opportunity in menopause because there is a one-hundred percent incidence women are going through menopause every day. If you live to be in your forties and fifties, you will go through menopause. We didn’t see as many brands or products meeting the demand. There are six hundred billion projected opportunities globally, and there is not very much market activity and investment dollars there. It’s not where venture capitalists are focused. When they are focused on women’s health, it tends to be more around the fertility and maternal space. Less than one percent of venture capital dollars are concentrated on the later stages of a woman's life.
Leslie: How would a person know that they are in perimenopause or menopause?
Laura: Universally, women don't realize they're going through the transition for the first year or two. You might be experiencing symptoms but not connecting the dots. One of the most common signs you can look out for in those earlier years is hot flashes. However, they tend to increase in intensity as you age, so you might be having mild hot flashes and not realizing it. A few other things to look out for are mood swings, particularly around your period, and unexplained weight gain. I have good news and bad news when it comes to menopause, when it starts, and for how long. The good news is that menopause lasts for one day. The bad news is that perimenopause can last from four to fourteen years. The technical definition of menopause is “the single day exactly twelve months since your last menstrual period.” However, our periods don't just stop one day, you go twelve months, and boom you're through menopause. Your periods tend to be quite erratic for several years coming and going a bit unpredictably before you finally have your last one, and you don't know it's your last one for a while. The 12 months post that last period is technically the day of menopause. It's perimenopause leading up to that. So if you are experiencing some of those symptoms and you're forty-one or forty-two, it might be perimenopause.
Leslie: You mentioned hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, and weight gain. Are there any other nuanced characteristics of (peri)menopause?
Laura: Those are the most well-known, certainly the hot flashes and the night sweats, but there are up to thirty-four reported menopause symptoms. Our study found that in over 30,000 women there were no two women experiencing the same symptoms. (Peri)menopause is a unique journey. We found all different unique combinations of those thirty-four symptoms. Although it’s helpful to talk with our girlfriends or join communities, it may not match your own experience with the combination of symptoms that your body might experience. Besides those symptoms that I already mentioned, you should keep an eye out for the occasional anxiety and depression. Some women who are having mental health issues related to menopause are misdiagnosed and sent to see a Psychologist when they need menopause treatments. Other prevalent issues are brain fog and a lack of sleep, which can also trigger additional stress, anxiety, and brain fog in the morning. These symptoms build on each other and prompt women to seek treatment.
Leslie: What can people do from a holistic standpoint, diet, lifestyle, or other approaches to kind of manage these symptoms?
Laura: Many women claim caffeine, spicy food, and red wine as trigger items for hot flashes. The first place I would go is trying to reduce or cut out these items as much as possible. It also helps to reduce stress, which I know is easier said than done. If you've been thinking about downloading one of those meditation apps or doing some cognitive behavioral therapy, meditation can help your menopause symptoms. As you reduce your stress levels, you also lower your cortisol levels, which helps reduce your symptoms.
Leslie: What’s the connection between (peri)menopause and weight management?
Laura: It's believed that hormones do help with regulating eating behavior, so it's very common that women will gain about 1.5 pounds per year after turning fifty without making significant changes. Therefore, you have to work a little bit harder as you get into your fifties to keep your weight down. The changes in hormones also mean that the weight we gain tends to be around the waist instead of the hips and the thighs where we want it. In addition, we tend to lose muscle mass as we age, which is true for men and women. Therefore, we can't necessarily keep doing what we've always done and have to make some diet and lifestyle changes to accommodate. One of the biggest things we can do is stay active and maybe add even more activity to try to prevent some of that natural muscle loss that would happen if we didn't increase our activity. I mainly just run, but I need to add in more weightlifting and strength training to help with that muscle mass. Additionally, because hormones regulate our eating behaviors, binge eating disorders can become more prevalent. One study found that up to thirteen percent of women over fifty had trouble with binge eating, which could be the result of anxiety, depression, and/or lack of sleep. It's all related.
Leslie: Are there diet aspects that people can be thinking about to combat the concern with weight management during (peri)menopause?
Laura: There's no one food that's going to help you balance your hormones and don't trust any websites that claim they will. I know we’re all used to hearing it but get more fruits and vegetables in your diet and generally eat less. The Mayo Clinic says after fifty, you need about two hundred fewer calories per day. Just take a look at your plate and maybe just make the portion sizes a little bit smaller than you used to because we don't need as much. Additionally, none of us get enough fiber in our diet. We've seen that upwards of seventy percent of women don't want to take a drug, especially in the beginning. They're looking for supplements, so that's what we launched as part of Phenology. They are all-natural supplements that help with hormone regulation. We formulated our Phenology gummies, and you can take them every day. We were the first market with a delicious gummy for this transition that is formulated with a patent-pending combination of genistein and saffron. We put saffron in our gummies because there’s strong clinical data supporting that a twice-daily dose of saffron can help with mood and anxiety symptoms. On the brain side of things, we have genistein, a phytoestrogen that helps stimulate the receptor cells. In other words, it allows your body to absorb more estrogen. Our product is all-natural and can be found on our website myphenology.com. In addition to supplements, many women are likely candidates for hormone replacement therapy; however, that's something you want to talk to your doctor about before, as you need a prescription. Although there were previous concerns, there's a pretty small group of women who are at high risk for potentially developing cancer as a result of hormone replacement therapy, but it's not the majority of women. If one determines that hormone replacement therapy is the best option, they may have to switch doctors because fewer than a third of OBGYNs get any menopause training at all. Therefore, you’ll need to find a GYN that does have that menopause training. You should also look at their profiles to see if they're a member of NAMS, the North American Menopause Society.
Leslie: If people are going through these changes and having trouble functioning with their brain fog, exhaustion, or other symptoms, can they ask for accommodations from their employer to help manage the situation?
Laura: Absolutely. The Millennials are the next generation to go through (peri)menopause and they have broken records in terms of women still remaining in the workplace by the time they've entered their 40s, 50s, and 60s. Now is the time to demand the kinds of accommodations that employers have been making for years in regard to fertility, maternal health, and parental overall. We have a generation rising up that is accustomed to getting benefits and having open conversations about everything related to pregnancy and childbearing while we're still in the workplace, but now we're going through something else that we need support for. It's absolutely something to bring up with employers and point out the imbalance. Step one is to just ask employers to provide content and education about this to their employees in the regular cadence that they do with other topics to promote diversity in the workplace. We need to raise awareness of one hundred percent incidence and some of the common symptoms to help destigmatize this transition period and promote more empathy among women's co-workers.
Leslie: If people are interested in learning more about Phenology and all the interesting products that you've talked about, where can they find you?
Laura: If you'd like to try our gummies or if you think maybe this applies to you, you can go to our website - myphenology.com. We have two gummy products. The first is a daily product that contains the genistein and saffron combination that I previously mentioned. We also have an evening gummy that contains a little bit of melatonin if you feel the need for a little bit of extra help falling asleep. Additionally, we have a few other rescue products on our site like a cooling mist and roller to help in the moment if you feel hot flashes coming on.
