Have you ever felt like a mere statistic in the vast expanse of the healthcare system, especially when facing a condition as complex as PCOS? Rachel Blank, the visionary CEO behind Allara, joins us on the Selfish Mom Podcast to change that narrative. She opens up about her own battle with PCOS and how it propelled her to pioneer a healthcare revolution with Allara’s telehealth platform. Rachel's story is not just one of personal triumph; it's a roadmap for empowering women's health across the globe. We dive into the heart of what it means to provide a holistic approach to treatment, breaking down barriers and crafting a future where every woman's health journey is validated and supported.
The conversation turns a corner as we explore how Allara is seamlessly blending top-notch healthcare with the ease of technology. Say goodbye to the days of healthcare being out of reach; Alara is making a previously unimaginable level of care accessible and affordable. With a unique model that leverages a platform fee to unlock a suite of services, we examine the novel ways Allara is making strides in women's health. From an extensive blood panel that goes beyond the basics to personalized supplement plans, Rachel and her team at Alara are redefining what it means to be cared for as a patient. And for those who want to continue the conversation or simply seek advice, Allara isn't just a healthcare platform—it’s a community, with a vibrant online presence and an open invitation from Rachel herself to connect and engage.
Have you ever felt like a mere statistic in the vast expanse of the healthcare system, especially when facing a condition as complex as PCOS? Rachel Blank, the visionary CEO behind Allara, joins us on the Selfish Mom Podcast to change that narrative. She opens up about her own battle with PCOS and how it propelled her to pioneer a healthcare revolution with Allara’s telehealth platform. Rachel's story is not just one of personal triumph; it's a roadmap for empowering women's health across the globe. We dive into the heart of what it means to provide a holistic approach to treatment, breaking down barriers and crafting a future where every woman's health journey is validated and supported.
The conversation turns a corner as we explore how Allara is seamlessly blending top-notch healthcare with the ease of technology. Say goodbye to the days of healthcare being out of reach; Alara is making a previously unimaginable level of care accessible and affordable. With a unique model that leverages a platform fee to unlock a suite of services, we examine the novel ways Allara is making strides in women's health. From an extensive blood panel that goes beyond the basics to personalized supplement plans, Rachel and her team at Alara are redefining what it means to be cared for as a patient. And for those who want to continue the conversation or simply seek advice, Allara isn't just a healthcare platform—it’s a community, with a vibrant online presence and an open invitation from Rachel herself to connect and engage.
Welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast, a podcast for you so you don't get burnt out like a mother. I'm your host, ali K, and this is the Selfish Mom Podcast. Learn to prioritize your mental and physical health first, so we can thrive and not just survive. Let's take action, become our best selves together and redefine selfish as the most selfless thing we could do. Alright, alright, welcome to another episode of the Selfish Mom Podcast. I am your host, ali K, and on today's episode, I am so excited to have on Rachel Blink.
Speaker 1:
Now she is the CEO and founder of Alara, which is a virtual care platform built for the millions of women living with complex chronic conditions like PCOS. Alara makes expert healthcare accessible by connecting patients with specially trained and highly empathetic doctors and registered dietitians who treat patients from a whole health perspective. Rachel founded Alara following her own experience struggling to get a diagnosis and trusted treatment for her own PCOS. This episode is so informative, especially if you aren't aware of chronic conditions like PCOS and the treatment that is out there for you. So stick around for this episode, rachel. Welcome to the Selfish Mom Podcast. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:
So tell me a little bit about you, your background and what kind of led you on this journey. To start Alara.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I'd say, at the end of the day, I am really just a frustrated patient who found that there was nothing in health care for me and so I just had to build something myself. It's really kind of my founding story in a nutshell. So I, about 12 years ago, I was diagnosed with a condition called Polycystic Overy Syndrome, or PCOS, which I'm sure a lot more people are familiar with now than we were back 10, 12 years ago when I was first diagnosed. But it's an incredibly common condition, affects anywhere between one in five and one in 10 women. And yet what I found for the past 10 plus years was that I really had nowhere to go for this condition. And the thing that was so crazy to me is my dad is actually an OB-GYN.
Speaker 2:
I grew out in a healthcare family and so, even though theoretically I could have gone to the best of the best of any provider, I got diagnosed through my dad's office. Like I had so many advantages, there still just was nobody for me to go to, and I think that's because in women's health and in the traditional health system we don't really have this concept of treating you from a whole health perspective for a condition. So if you have a condition like PCOS, historically you'd have to go to a bunch of different doctors like you'd go to the dermatologist for acne and you'd go to the OB-GYN for your hormones and all these different places and so it just felt to me like we needed something better to bring everything into one place, and that is really what we're building with. Alara is a chronic care management platform for women with complex hormonal health conditions like PCOS, like endometriosis, like hypothyroidism, to really help take the burden off of them and put it onto us and have us help them navigate the healthcare system and deliver care from a whole health perspective for them.
Speaker 1:
I love that. I love that you are the go-getter woman. You take matters into your own hands, and I love being diagnosed with something as PCOS and turning it into such a positive I think is so inspiring. But I want to back up. So it's so interesting. I just turned 35, and I feel like I just now started learning more about hormones, how hormones affect my everyday life and, just like you said, pcos is something that we didn't really hear about 10 years ago. Why is that? Why do you think we kind of overlook these things and now it's becoming more mainstream? What's going on?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think it's a few things kind of all coming together. I think, first of all, if we look just at women's health in general, it's been a really ignored section of healthcare. Women's health conditions like PCOS, like endometriosis, get almost no research funding. They, I think, for a long time really got ignored or dismissed. And I think, even more importantly, I think for a long time, women's health was seen as a pregnancy issue. It was kind of like it was all about are you able to get pregnant, are you pregnant, are you having a healthy pregnancy? And we didn't really worry about anything beyond that. And I think we as women got frustrated, like we're more than just baby-making machines. We have whole bodies and whole health to worry about. And so I think partially it's been moving beyond just thinking about women's health as a pregnancy issue and more thinking about it holistically.
Speaker 2:
And I actually think social media has had a huge, huge benefit here.
Speaker 2:
I think what I've seen is, as women have become frustrated with traditional health, as they've kind of not found answers there, they've really been more and more turning to community, turning to each other, and I think, as we've seen platforms like TikTok, like Instagram, like Facebook groups grow over the last five-ish years it's been a lot more avenues for women to talk to each other, to compare their stories, to share notes, in a way that they felt like they weren't being served in traditional health. So I actually give. I think social media has a lot of drawbacks, but I think when it comes to women's health care, it's actually been really beneficial in terms of just making people more aware. We've had more celebrities come out talking about their conditions. We have everyday women talking about it and I think it's just really lowered the stigma around it. I think there has been a lot of shame, but the more we've all kind of talked about it, the less stigma there's been. I think the more comfort people have been. So I actually really give social media a lot of credit for this.
Speaker 1:
I agree with you. I think there's definitely a lot of cons with social media, but, if anything, I mean it's definitely one way to get the information out. And also, specifically women, to say, hey, I'm not alone in this. But I also feel like as a woman, as a mom, I almost have to advocate for myself. When I go to the doctor, you know, and almost be like, no, this is seriously what's going on. You know and I think it's also great with Alara, like you're a woman that's founded this platform, talk a little bit about that. Have you seen this as well in healthcare? As far as, like women, kind of just be like gaslighted, almost.
Speaker 2:
Yes, I will say. For example, I have been rediagnosed with PCOS three times at this point because I don't look like a textbook PCOS patient, right Textbook. Pcos patients tend to be more. A lot of them tend to be overweight or obese. A lot of them tend to struggle with prediabetes. There is actually huge misconception is that if you are half PCOS and you're thin, that you don't have the same metabolic health concerns as somebody who has PCOS and is overweight. And it's actually not true at all.
Speaker 2:
So I think, because I don't look textbook PCOS. I actually had to advocate for myself and I'll have doctors say like well, you don't look like you have it, or if you're not trying to get pregnant, what should I do for you? And I'll say, like, run the tests again and they'll show you. It's all my tests show. It's like test. That's wild, and I think I hear that all the time.
Speaker 2:
Either you don't look like you fit a certain mold of a condition or the opposite. You're struggling with your weight and so you're dismissed by doctors and being told things like just lose weight. We know that on average it takes someone with PCOS about three doctors and three years to get a diagnosis. And that's not because it's so hard to diagnose. We can diagnose through what's called meeting the Rotterdam criteria. So if you meet two of the three criteria which we can see with, frankly, blood work, history of your symptoms and maybe an ultrasound not even everybody needs an ultrasound, but it's how do you find a doctor who will run those tests for you, who will actually look into it?
Speaker 2:
And I think that's something that's been really missing in healthcare, for women has been either we've just been completely, you know, gaslit, or ignored, or told that things are in our head or again, I think, equally dangerous. It's been all about well, can you get pregnant or not, and not looking at other issues like, for example, I actually am insulin resistance and I've never been tested for insulin resistance before by any doctor because I'm not overweight, until I got to a Laura and they said, well, you have PCOS, we should test you for insulin resistance. And I do have that. So you know it just goes so far beyond pregnancy and you know those kind of women hormone. It's really is about your whole health and I think today's been really hard to find a doctor who will look at your whole health for you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and it's frustrating, and I know women in general, we put everything and anything before us. You know we always come last our mental and physical health. We put it on the back burner and a lot of women give up. I can only imagine like you go to a doctor and they don't diagnose you right away or they turn you away. A lot of women are like well, I don't have time, you know, like this is just my new normal, I'm going to live this way, and that's really frustrating, especially in the world that we live today. No one should suffer like that. You know, I want to talk about a Laura and this amazing platform that you have created for women and the convenience of it as well. You know so women really do have the opportunity especially moms who are busy that they can prioritize themselves. So walk us through it. How does a Laura work? How do you get a diagnosis? If you think, what's the treatment like? Give us all the details.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so our goal with Alara is to make specialty women's health care accessible to women all across the country. So, regardless of who you are, where you live, you're able to get really highly specialized, expert care for your hormonal health needs. And so the way it works for patients is it's all video based, so it's super convenient. We do as much via telehealth and online as possible, so when you first join us, you would have a 30 minute video visit with a medical provider Generally it's an OB-GYN or it could be an endocrinologist, depending on your condition. All of them have been very much vetted by us, not only for expertise in these conditions, but also, frankly, for bedside manner, for empathy, for listening skills all of those things that we all felt like we needed at the doctor's office when we weren't being taken seriously. And again, in that 30 minutes, you have so much more time than you might have in the traditional doctor's office, where you're maybe getting rushed out within less than 10 minutes, and so you go through your home medical history. You go through off your background. Some patients come to us with a diagnosis already, some don't have a diagnosis and they want to dig into what's going on. Either way, we can help you.
Speaker 2:
We then send you out for very, very extensive lab testing.
Speaker 2:
So we're looking at 30 plus biomarkers, everything from your hormones to fertility markers to, again, metabolic health measures your cholesterol, your insulin, your inflammation levels like really the full gamut of your kind of whole health picture.
Speaker 2:
Then you have follow-up meetings with your medical provider. They'll do medication management for you and again that can kind of run the gamut from helping you with your acne to helping you with your insulin resistance and weight management, and we also, on top of pairing you with a medical provider, pair you with a registered dietitian. And that's really important because for so many patients having just medical therapy isn't enough. It's really again, how do we think about your whole health from a whole body perspective and not only treat you with prescription medication but also think about lifestyle changes, supplements, all of the things that we know are really important in supporting a healthy lifestyle. And then again, part of the way we make it accessible is for most patients that are able to use their insurance to pay for our services, and so our goal again is to have this really high quality, really specialty, expert care but make it as accessible as possible for patients.
Speaker 1:
I love that. Is it a monthly subscription or how does that work with insurance?
Speaker 2:
So if you're on insurance, there's like a platform fee that gives you access to our app, to our concierge care team, which helps you not only navigating our care platform but navigating outside referrals, lab testing, all of those things. That's about $180 for the whole year. It covers, again, messaging in between visits, kind of all these add-ons that insurance unfortunately won't pay our doctors for, and then each of your visits is just billed to insurance. You're just responsible for co-pays for each visit. Same thing with labs. We partner with lab networks like Quest that are in network with your insurance, so the labs are generally running through insurance as well.
Speaker 2:
Again, we just want to make it kind of as affordable, accessible as possible for patients and it's also interesting you're kind of talking about like busy moms and it really being convenient for them. I think on the other side of the coin, that's something really exciting I've been seeing has been a lot of our doctors, our OBJYNs, who are moms, who maybe aren't able to work in a traditional practice setting where you're taking call every few nights and you're working crazy hours, and so as much as it's been helpful to the patients, we've actually seen a ton of providers on our platform who are so excited because they can be working moms delivering really great healthcare but not having to sacrifice so much of their time with their kids as they would in traditional practice. So it's been really great for kind of women on both sides of the platform.
Speaker 1:
I love that. I just love that it's convenient, because now it's like, as women and busy moms like myself, there isn't any excuse not to seek treatment and the fact that it's affordable. And I just want to go back to the biomarkers of blood. That was another thing that I've realized with my doctor. I come in annually and they give my blood work but they're not testing for all the things unless, especially like thyroid, there's so many biomarkers that you can test for that that can coincide with hormone issues and all that. So I love that you know Alara you are doing. How many biomarkers? Did you say over 30? Over 30.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
And that's.
Speaker 2:
Oh sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say and again, it's really a wide gamut of everything from hormone health to metabolic health and things that a lot of times your primary care doctor won't test you for yeah, and I think what's interesting.
Speaker 1:
So another thing is I started really getting into supplements. You know, I listen to all these different podcasts. I'm like, okay, I need to get my omega-3s, I need to get my multivitamins, my magnesium. But also what I've learned is you know you have to find out what your blood work is telling you in order to know what type of supplements that you need to take. So that's another thing. Talk a little bit about like the supplements as well that Alara kind of offers.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's a really good call, and I think that's where combining the medical treatment as well as the therapy for registered dieticians is really key. Because, you know, if you think about dieticians in a traditional practice setting, where they're not paired with doctors, they can't order lab tests on their own, they can't order their information that they're able to have when they're giving you nutrition therapy, when they're telling you about supplements to take, it's a bit limited based off you know what doctors will order for you. And that's been a huge unlock for us has been actually having the doctors and the registered dieticians work together. So, for example, when we have our full blood plan, all that wasn't just the doctors deciding what to run. The registered dieticians also had input and said, you know, told the doctors like, I know you wouldn't normally run this, but here's why running vitamin D, here's why running CRP, which is an inflammation test, is really, really important. And we got feedback from the doctors of like, oh my God, I didn't even know about these. Things like this is so incredible to know about from the dieticians.
Speaker 2:
And so having again that combined medical therapy and nutrition therapy is a really, really huge unlock, because there's so much that each of those provider types can add value to a patient for, but if they aren't working together, it can be hard for either of them to maximize what they're doing. And so, for example, our registered dieticians they're not just working off of what you say. They actually have access to all of your labs. They can ask our doctors to run specific labs if they need more in-depth testing for your nutrition therapy, and so it really gives them a much, you know, more precise way of being able to recommend things like nutrition options, like supplements. That can be really valuable.
Speaker 2:
And it's also been really interesting, I think, pairing them, because there are some cases where we've seen in the data that supplements can be as effective as prescription medications. So, for example, insulin resistant patients. There's now some data showing that NAC, which is a supplement, can be as effective as Metformin, which is a prescription medication. And I'm seeing our doctors now telling patients like do you want to try the supplement version? Do you want to try Metformin? Which I think in a traditional practice setting wouldn't happen. A doctor would just say here's Metformin, here's a prescription, here you go, whereas now we really can give patients more options whether they want supplements, medication. Again, that only gets unlocked when the doctors and the dieticians work together.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I don't think you see that collaboration in traditional healthcare and I think just the fact that you have, you know, a nutritionist, a dietician, working with the doctors a lot of the times, you know, diet is everything. You know there's so many disruptors that comes with what we put in our body and it's amazing because you go to the doctor and very rarely do they say, hey, what is your daily like diet? Look like, tell me about the foods you're, you know, putting into your body. It's kind of neglect, like they don't really talk about that. And then they then they prescribe you something. So I love that collaboration that you offer. I don't think you find that in the everyday healthcare.
Speaker 2:
No, and that really was, frankly, like my big thing for building a Laura was I don't want to have to go to 10 different places to get the care I need. I want to be able to go to one place. Why isn't there a place that has a doctor and a nutritionist together, like this should exist? Why aren't they talking yeah Right, exactly it. Just it seems kind of like so obvious that I was like why why?
Speaker 2:
Why isn't this existing more and again? That's the thing. Like I really built all this really just based off of what I felt like I needed. As a patient, I wasn't getting.
Speaker 1:
So back to PCOS. Is that something that you're going to live with for the rest of your life? What kind of happens when you do start treating your symptoms? Do you see your symptoms dwindle? What can someone expect once they start receiving treatment?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, so PCOS is a lifelong condition and there is no cure for it. Crazy enough Again, going back to, like the lack of research in women's healthcare, there is actually no on-label medication for PCOS. There is no FDA approved medication for PCOS. Even we just have to kind of treat your symptoms. It's really crazy. We don't even know really what causes PCOS.
Speaker 1:
Is that just because of lack of funding, or why is that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean PCOS as a condition gets like less than half a percent of All funding, even though it affects up to one in five women. Same thing, by the way, for endometriosis Really debilitating disease effects one and ten women gets very, very minuscule amount of funding and research. We are seeing more Therapeutics being worked on in PCOS and endometriosis, so things are changing a little bit. But yeah, at this point they're all just kind of conditions that you would need to manage over the course of your life, as opposed to say sure. And there are really two things we think about when we think about management. I think one there's kind of what a lot of us think about is the day-to-day of like, how do I manage the symptoms that are bothering me? So how do I manage?
Speaker 2:
You know, for a lot of patients with PCOS they're dealing with things like acne they might be dealing with, like male pattern baldness or excess facial hair, all things that tend to go with the excess testosterone that we tend to see in PCOS patients. Again, because of that excess testosterone, you tend to have a regular periods. You don't tend to ovulate regularly, so if you're trying to get pregnant, that can make it a lot more difficult to get pregnant, and also it's just not healthy for your body to not have a period regularly. That can actually really increase your risk of Endometrial cancer if you're not shedding your uterine lining regularly. And also weight weight management is huge for patients. One of the again, as I mentioned, a lot of patients with PCOS are also insulin resistant, and so it can be really hard for them to maintain a healthy weight, to lose weight, not because of any fault of their own, but just because of the hormones and the biology going on in them. So those are kind of all of the things that, like generally, patients will come to us complaining about. You know they want help with their weight, they want help getting pregnant, they want help with their acne, and we'll deal with all that.
Speaker 2:
But the other thing we do that's so valuable that a lot of people don't think about is when you have a condition like PCOS, you actually are at a lot of health risks for downstream Confliction. So a lot of patients with PCOS will be at a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. They'd be a higher risk of high cholesterol or heart disease. You're at a higher risk of pregnancy complications, and so these are all the things that, like you might not be coming to us thinking about, but we're gonna test you for all of them. We're gonna think about all of your risk factors because, again, it's not just about you know it's both feeling better today but it's also about how do we help have you live a healthier life for the rest of your life. And I think that's again what gets missed with a lot of these conditions is they really can be so impactful to your health and it is really important to deal with them and to manage them.
Speaker 1:
Yes, and you're making it convenient. So thank you you. You are so inspiring. I think you're definitely you're making a difference in health care and I think you know it's health care obviously a man, a man's world, like a man's dominated field. So I just want to commend you. I mean, I can only imagine how many women that you are helping and I'm so thankful that you have been on the show. Tell us where we can find Alara Health. How do we get more information and give us all the details on that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so you can find us at AlaraHealthcom or on Instagram or TikTok. At Alara Health that's a l l a? R? A health we post a ton of content, both fun content, educational content on TikTok and Instagram you can find me at Rachel H Blank and I'm always happy to like answer questions, be helpful. Again, I relate to start all this to help other women like me, so I'm also happy to chat anytime if anyone wants to send me anything. But yeah, alara Health is probably the best place to find us.
Speaker 1:
Yes, well, thank you, rachel. So much, this has been another episode of the Selfish Mom podcast and I will catch you next week.
