Reimagining Midlife and Menopause Wellness with Amita Sharma

Amita Sharma is the founder of Nourish Doc,  an online platform for menopause wellness resources. Amita shared her story and struggles of perimenopause and menopause amidst a corporate world that barely acknowledges its existence. She created her platform out of what she saw as an unmet need 

Amita's mission with Nourish Doc is to empower middle-aged women and bring much-needed awareness to the forefront. Our open exchange threw light on 

• the taboo subject of menopause, discussing its impact on women's professional lives, and the dire need for resources and understanding in the workplace. 
• the incredible potential of diet and lifestyle choices to maintain hormonal harmony.  
• the serious implications of gut health, mental well-being, and the profound influence of modalities like yoga and Ayurveda on menopausal symptoms.
• menopause as a movement that's gaining traction in spaces like big corporate and beyond, where menopause awareness in the workplace is finally being recognized as a pressing issue. 

Amida shared the exciting news of the Nourish Doc app, a beacon of support for women navigating this natural, albeit challenging, life stage. From acknowledging the cultural nuances of menopause to advocating for necessary accommodations, we underscored the importance of creating an inclusive environment where every woman can thrive, free from the shackles of silent suffering.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:40

Hi everybody and welcome back to Real Food Stories. Today I am with Amida Sharma, who is the co-founder of Nourish Dock, which is a holistic wellness platform and app that's focused on empowering women in perimenopause and beyond. The app is in the process of getting developed. I think by the time this goes live it will be up and running. It was developed to be culturally sensitive, affordable and with a focus on self-care. Now Amida brings her own personal struggles of the perimenopausal women in corporate America and challenges she experienced in the workplace, which were basically a lack of resources at the time. So welcome, amida.

Speaker 1: 1:29

I'm really glad for you to be here today, because I wanted to start out talking about women in perimenopause and menopause in the workplace and just hear your story and how that inspired you to then create a platform called Nourish Dock and how that can help women, because the topic of perimenopause and menopause is getting to be big and I'm all for it.

Speaker 1: 1:58

I'm here for it and I'm ready for it, because I know my own personal story. When I went into perimenopause in my 40s, I was clueless I mean, I was literally clueless and my doctors were clueless too. No one told me about perimenopause and it was a real struggle. So why don't you just tell me a little bit about your story, just being in corporate America, I mean, so not only are you in perimenopause, but you are like in corporate America, which I know, that even though half of the workforce is women, it's so male dominated, with its focus on menopause being taboo. Can we safely say that? So why don't you just tell me about your story, and then we'll sure this will spark a lot of conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:53

Sure. Well, thank you so much for inviting me and talking, opening up on this taboo subject. So you rightfully mentioned that we know about menopause because we are taught in the biology but nobody talks about or educated enough about the perimenopause. So perimenopause, even if you go to the doctor or you talk to, I've talked to so many hundreds of women and they say what do you mean by perimenopause? So the definition of perimenopause is something that needs so much awareness. Forget about the work list. If we women don't even understand perimenopause, how do we expect our male counterparts at the work list to understand that? So I'm not going to say oh my God, I did not get any support and there was no awareness because nobody knows about what perimenopause is.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Much less ourselves, right, exactly, we as women don't even really know a lot about it.

Speaker 2: 3:55

Yeah. So how do we expect that someone's going to support us if we are not going to go raise our hands and say, hey, by the way, this is a problem. So the first step is for all women to understand that perimenopause is a stage that can happen. That can hit you 10 years before you hit the menopause button, the pause button of our periods, within 51, 52, that being the average age and you can start experiencing the symptoms in 40,. Then that's exactly what happened to me and I'm absolutely clueless. Suddenly, hot flash, happening in the middle of a corporate meeting.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Things like embarrassing moments for women can happen, and then you are thinking something is going wrong with you. You're not able to focus, you're not able to concentrate. Sleeping becomes an issue at night, and if you're not able to sleep well, guess what's going to happen the next day? You're going to be cranky and disgruntled, not able to present yourself well. All these are real problems that we women don't. We think, oh my God, someone's going to judge me, oh, behind, being a superwoman, kind of a whale here, without asking for help. And that's exactly what. I did not ask for help. I felt embarrassed. I said, oh my God, if I go talk to an HR or talk to anyone, they're going to start judging me that I'm getting old. So I think these are the fear any women millions of women face working in corporate America. So I think the thing is that my experience led me that, oh, why aren't we not even talking about it? This is so taboo. People are so scared to talk about it. Oh my God, what if I get laid?

Speaker 1: 5:39

off.

Speaker 2: 5:39

All these and I'm sharing my experience that I felt if I go and talk to someone, they're going to think, oh, I can do my job properly, maybe the next layoff happen, I'll be the number one person to get laid off. So I wanted to create something that is self-care. Self-care is so important for women that's affordable that they can at least be aware, step number one and start taking care of themselves before they go to a gynecologist or any other medical professional. So that was my inspiration and that's what got me going into this whole area of being in a tech industry, being a product manager, to becoming like a champion of the holistic wellness for mid-aged women.

Speaker 1: 6:28

That sounds that's amazing I mean just coming from your own personal experience and then creating something that can be so life-changing, I know.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Just going back to the employment, I know that there's been research done that says at least 10% of women, in going through perimenopause or menopause, actually leave their jobs. They end up leaving their jobs because they're just struggling with physical issues and they pass up promotions and they ended up leaving. So perfectly well-qualified women who are smart and well-qualified to work are actually leaving because they're not getting supported. And I know my husband is an attorney, is an employment attorney, so I've talked to him a lot about the legal aspects of just like work, the workplace and menopause, and there's no legal protection for menopause symptoms, perimenopause or menopause symptoms. So no wonder women are just frustrated and end up actually like losing a significant part of their lives, leaving their jobs because they're just struggling. So you then in turn decide to take it a step further and take action and create something called nourish doc. So tell me a little bit more about that. How did you? Well, tell me what it is and how it helps women.

Speaker 2: 8:05

Yeah, absolutely so. I think the first question we have to ask ourselves is why do we need to take care of ourselves in perimenopause? Lot of women don't even understand and they end up leaving Because then suddenly they start getting hot flashes. We talked about that with some of the symptoms that are debilitating. They can't concentrate and they said, oh my god, they don't go into the next detail of how can I help myself or how do I do it. So the idea is that during the perimenopause the research says approximately 34 to I don't know, maybe more symptoms are recorded a woman can go through. Can you imagine being bombarded?

Speaker 1: 8:43

with so many symptoms. I am in menopause right now, so, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 8:53

It's crazy, right. So you feel like, oh my god, suddenly an atomic bomb is hitting me every single day, no matter what I do, whether I lose weight or whether I do this, nothing is helping me. So step number one for women to understand is why that is happening. Right, and in perimenopause, what is happening is we need to understand the hormonal imbalance that starts happening in all of our bodies as soon as we start hitting perimenopause.

Speaker 2: 9:19

This hormonal imbalance starts creating all these strange symptoms of mood swings they say, oh my god, I can't remember anything right Brain fog and then heart flash and fatigue and the stress and all those things start happening because of our hormonal imbalance. So we need to understand. It's like some you know, when, at the beginning, we have two female hormones that are contributing to this hormonal imbalance and the stage number one is the first one goes down first, the other one starts going down after some time. Now it's the balance between these two hormones is creating all these strange symptoms and if we don't take care of ourselves during this phase, there is research that correlates that women can have possible to have chronic conditions like osteoporosis.

Speaker 1: 10:12

I wanna just pause for a second. You're talking about estrogen and progesterone, right? I just wanna get clear on that so people know yes correct Estrogen and progesterone.

Speaker 2: 10:20

The progesterone goes, keeps going, starts going down first and we could have women could have estrogen dominance and if the ratio properly is not maintained, the estrogen dominance. There's enough research that correlates estrogen dominance to probably breast cancer, to some of ovarian cancer, also to lack of it could be osteoporosis, your onset of dementia, your diabetes, your heart disease all these hormonal imbalance. So it's very important for women to understand why the heck do we need to take care of ourselves and perimenopause it's so important. Don't just leave the work, seek help or go on the rooftop and start saying, hey, this is a natural phenomenon, there's nothing to be ashamed about. Why are you quitting? This is gonna happen to each and every woman. So we just need to understand and that's what at Nourish Talk we are trying to make women understand is that based on the symptoms? How do we start giving them different holistic therapies?

Speaker 2: 11:26

Starting at the diet. You are an expert in diet and you teach people how to cook right. So changing your diet is number one that we all have to do. I mean, you can speak volumes about it rather than me going into this topic. Exercise, different type of exercises. We have to incorporate that Breathing to calm ourselves, learning how to deep breathe, it's so important. So all these things we have put it in the app aeromatherapy, hypnotherapy, different type of herbs, different type of Ayurveda, daily practices. So we bring all these holistic therapies, sort of like, put it in like a juicer and give you bite size information based on the symptom in the app, so that at least you start understanding why, what are the symptoms, what is happening to me, and then what is it that I can start doing by myself. That's the intention of this app, which is going to be super affordable less than $10.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So it sounds like the app. It's very comprehensive and touches on I think I'd also read that it's not just diet healthy eating, sleep relationships, physical activity, stress and behavioral risk, to like alcohol and smoking right. So these are your pillars.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Is that correct? Absolutely, absolutely. Like some of the things, is that alcohol? When we were younger, we could take all kind of tequila shots up at 2 am and no problem, those girls night out with tequila shots. We need to just cut it out as an example.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Yeah, I have my own whole take on that. We can maybe talk about that. So Nourstock is, it sounds like it's focuses on holistic and alternative treatments, right, you're not focusing on, like the medical, the traditional medical model of maybe giving hormones. Right, you want self-care. This is about self-care and it comes from learning how to take your own health in your own hands. Is that safe to say?

Speaker 2: 13:36

It's safe to say. But also we are giving a natural alternatives to hormone therapy. We are not against hormone therapy. We are trying to teach people self-care first. But then the next step is if someone needs that personalized, individualized consultation, plus testing, plus some herbs and supplements before they go for hormone therapy, then we are gonna make it available. That would be personalized consultation, which is probably a naturopathic doctor or a functional medicine doctor. So we are going medical, but the medical part of it would be all integrative and functional medicine or a naturopathic medicine in the second phase. And then if someone needs a medical HRT, we don't offer it. We are giving the self-care and the natural alternatives to HRT at this time.

Speaker 1: 14:29

So this is perfect for women who are maybe don't wanna go down the traditional medical route right, there's a lot of women that I know who have either they can't take hormones or they have their own feelings and beliefs around taking hormones and absolutely wanna try everything natural and alternative first before they lean on that. So that sounds like it's a really comprehensive model of looking at perimenopause and menopause. So let's talk about these pillars a little bit and we can start with diet, because healthy eating, because I know you mentioned that. Yes, I do specialize in healthy eating and I cook for a living and my whole deal is to get people really back into their kitchens, get them comfortable cooking, because your food is one of your most important assets for your health. What do you prescribe in the world, Like on through your app or your beliefs? Besides, you know we could put under healthy eating, but is there, do you have a philosophy on eating that goes along with your? You know your platform.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Absolutely, and, like I said, you are more of an expert like my, you know, than me, but on a high level cutting out the processed food, you know, all these fried foods, alcohol, women have to cut out their triggers, all the triggers right During this, the hormone imbalance we talked about earlier. So so eating clean, plant-based is what we are, we are talking about. We are not saying become completely vegetarian or vegan, you know. But if you're eating meat, you know, limited to to to, to avoid the red meats. You know, focus on chicken and fish, but basically load up on your plants plant-based veggies and fruits and within the veggie, you know, family focus on you know, we focus on foods that have natural phytoestrogens, because we talked about earlier the estrogen and progesterone are hormones kind of going rock and roll here.

Speaker 2: 16:49

So focus on some of the Breastica family, like cauliflower, brussel, brussel sprouts, broccoli, these kind of foods. Some bitter foods you need, you know, bitter gourd, even daikon, or some of the other bitter foods, to make sure your digestion is good, your gut health is good, because your gut health is very important. Your gut health is now we already know is directly connected with the vagus nerve, to our mental health. So these are the things that you need to, you know, load up on like healthy fats, nuts and seeds, protein in the mornings to give you an energy, and then you know all these things like Ghee. Ghee is another we say talk about Ghee, avocado, and Ghee is like a clarified butter readily available everywhere now. So these are the things we talk about when the diet part is coming is that completely get rid of all the processed foods and make sure the sugar, the white stuff you know the standard stuff we're talking about and plant based diet.

Speaker 1: 17:53

Yeah, I that. That's definitely when, when I teach women how to focus on food as a way to help them with hormone balance. Definitely, of course, right processed foods. Let's I like to use the word crowd out, so we're not saying you have to eliminate everything, but let's just push it over there and give it and so then you can get, have space to add in, you know, some of some healthier foods.

Speaker 1: 18:25

I definitely crowding out alcohol and eliminating alcohol is my ideal for most women. I don't think it serves us at all physically, mentally, so it's, you know, that would be. That's an easy one to try. I mean, I mean, easier said than done, some for some people to to get rid of alcohol. But there's some foods that I always promote to, like tofu, flaxseed, macapowder, right, these are high in phytoestrogens. These are natural estrogens that can help boost up your, your estrogen, and we want our estrogen to be a little boost because once it dips in perimenopause and manopause, that's where, like, we get the firestorm of hot flashes. And it could also, you know, on a you you mentioned this quickly before but heart disease, diabetes, I mean it can, it can. Estrogen is responsible for so much in our bodies, so we really want to be supportive of, of getting you know, replenishing our estrogen. So if we can do it in more like natural ways, through food, that's fantastic.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Absolutely. And you know our body produces three types of estrogen. So the one type of estrogen is still being produced when we get postmanopausal. The other two diminish quite a bit. But the other two are more responsible for reproductive health, you know, when we are pregnant. So nature has a body, has a beautiful way to let it to switch off the reproduction part of the estrogen which which is being produced when you, when we are younger, and then still keep some estrogen, the third part, part of the estrogen, alive. So it's not like it's dead completely, but on the other hand it's it's very low and that explains the reason of why the reproduction has gone down now and, like you said, up on the phytoestrogens, the natural phytoestrogens, so that you know our body still keeps it nice and subtle, you know, nice and supple, right?

Speaker 1: 20:32

Yeah, yeah, I know, I mean estrogen is just responsible for our skin, our hair.

Speaker 1: 20:38

I mean just yeah, just so much. So anyway, we can support that. I know you mentioned a couple other things in self care that you promote yoga, hypnotherapy even. Yes, tell me a little bit about I don't, because I'm not that familiar with the relationship between yoga and menopausal symptoms, or I mean I know I know the overall theme of just getting our stress levels down is so it's vital, right. So just relaxing, breathing you mentioned before. Is there research on yoga and menopause?

Speaker 2: 21:23

There's a lot of research on preneama, which is the deep breathing and symptoms of so. Stress is a huge symptom, right Of menopause Sleep. We know that sleep is chronic fatigue. All these are symptoms. Sleep is huge, right. We can't sleep at night. So some of the yoga postures and even breathing exercises can help us calm down and also help us sleep. For example, I'll just give you an example of one breathing exercise. It's called B-breath. B-breath is nothing but you take your these thumbs and you close your ears, close your eyes and then you chant O-m. Chanting O-m will help calm down your nervous system and help you sleep. So simple breathing exercise, if women can do at night, in a few, an hour before, and you notice the difference. It has direct. It has research evidence, all that.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Another practice I will share with you, an Ayurveda practice which obviously we cannot do by ourselves at night, is that when you lie down, it's called shirodhara. So what they do is they pour lukewarm or hot oil onto your head, right here, on your forehead in fact, not on the head right here. This is the chakra, if you know the chakras. So this right there they're pouring the hot oil for like 45 minutes and it has direct correlation with calming our nervous system, helping us sleep. In fact, they prescribe it for people who have issues with insomnia and sleep issues. So these are simple therapies that I don't think a lot of women know about.

Speaker 2: 23:17

These therapies that I'm talking about, that we can start incorporating the certain yoga asanas or pastures that can help us calm down. For example, yoga nidra is another one. You're neither sleeping, you're not awake. It's basically guided meditation. You can say that right, yoga nidra. So that's another one. Yoga nidra is very easy to do at night or whenever you feel. For 10 minutes you turn on the yoga nidra. It'll help you calm down.

Speaker 2: 23:45

And some of the other yoga pastures are weight bearing. Right, we are using our body weight, if you think about it, like you know, downward dogs, upward dog, all those dogs, right. So imagine when we're doing downward dog, right, everybody knows downward dog. So the blood flow is happening towards your head and wherever the blood flow is there in our body, that part of the body gets accentuated, helps us calm down. It's a grounding pose. As an example, surya, namaskar, sun, salutations is composed. It has over 12 poses. You know. It's almost like a complete exercise. So yoga is great. It has so much research. Oh my God. It's like ton of research on breathing exercises that I talked about yoga pastures. In fact, a combination of yoga pastures with the breathing exercises and the meditation practices can certainly help the menopausal symptoms. There's a ton of research on that and I'm happy to share it after our podcast as well.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Sure, yeah. Well, you'll be happy to know that I'm actually going to a yoga nedra meditation class tonight.

Speaker 2: 24:56

Oh, okay, and I haven't got it a long time.

Speaker 1: 24:58

So I'm really happy to be going, really looking forward to it, but I think my point is that once it goes out of my radar, the holidays were just here, and once it, I mean, I'm the first to admit I don't have a regular yoga practice.

Speaker 1: 25:17

I know it's so beneficial, though, and so my question too, and maybe this is just.

Speaker 1: 25:24

I don't even know if you can answer this, but you did mention being culturally sensitive. So I know, in this country, in the United States, I mean we are so busy, right, we were like women, we were like busy as like a badge of honor, and so we're just running from here to there and no one who has time for yoga, and like even 10 minutes before going to bed, yoga like might feel like too much because you're on your computer and on your phone and so so tell me a little bit, I mean. So it's just a good reminder, just to like, you know we have to slow down, really have to like that's probably the most important thing that you can do, you know, while you're in perimenopause, and menopause is slowing down and just breathing and just relaxing a little bit. But talk to me about this like culturally sensitive a piece of your app, because I know you've mentioned it once or twice. I saw it when I was looking up the app, so tell me a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2: 26:35

Yeah, so most of us think that perimenopause is one size fit all. It's not like that. First of all, it's different for each and every woman. But then the other thing is, depending on your ethnic background, perimenopause symptoms and the age of the menopause, when you reach menopause, could be completely different. So I'll just give you an example. For example, latino and Black women. They reach menopause in 47, 48, average age I'm going to talk about average age here Earlier than most of the Caucasian women. The average age is 51, 52, but Latino and African-American women reach around 47, 48 could be their lifestyle is attributed to. That could be their obesity levels are a little higher on these women. These women also have higher rate of chronic conditions, which we earlier talked about. Some of things could be. You can see that their hormones are getting depleted earlier than it should be, so that also could be a factor. I mean, the research hasn't found a direct correlation, but there is enough research as talking about the chronic conditions are higher in this segment of these two ethnic groups in United States. That is one of the example.

Speaker 2: 27:55

I'm talking about the cultural sensitivity. Now, if you talk about some of the Asian women, south Asian women, the Japanese women because you talked a bit about soyers. They have soy in their food, they eat tofu and so much soy that they grow up with. Now they don't have as severe symptoms as some of the other women we are talking about. Because of their lifestyle and other things, their symptoms are different. Their symptoms are not necessarily heart flashes. Heart flashes is one of the key symptoms for African American and Latino women. It's not so in the Japanese women, as an example.

Speaker 2: 28:35

Now, if you talk about Indian women in India, not necessarily here. I don't have the data for United States of all the ethnic groups because it's very hard to find. Most of these data is coming from Japanese women in Japan, like I talked about, but Latino and African American are here in United States. Indian women in India reach menopause in mid 40s, like 45, 46, that's like, oh my God, six years before an average age. Now they are more at the risk of early menopause. 10 percent of these women are reaching early menopause in the late 30s. That is alarming and scary because now the rate of the chronic conditions we talked about is going to be higher.

Speaker 2: 29:19

Now, if you look at the United States data, here, 80 percent of the women over 55 have one chronic condition. One chronic condition 80 percent of us. Can you imagine living if you're 55 years old and you're going to live until 85 and you're going to be in the rest 30 years not enjoying your quality of life but thinking about your chronic condition all the time and you can't work? Now, what kind of quality of life are you going to have? You talked about? We have a badge of honor. We'd like to be busy, but we don't want to be busy thinking about our chronic condition after we reach a certain age. That's what the data says 80 percent of us have one chronic condition.

Speaker 1: 30:10

That's a great way to look at it. I didn't even consider that. But especially from the cultural standpoint, that the different ages, that women, depending on their ethnic background, go into menopause, and then that opens you up for even more years of dealing with chronic conditions.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Yeah, and cancer women who are, unfortunately, cancer survivors. They have a forced menopause because of they have cancer. Now they can enter into menopause earlier and they're 40s if someone has breast cancer or any kind of cancer. Now you have to live more using living with cancer and then you need a natural alternative to hormones, which we were talking about earlier, because they probably cannot take hormones, especially the women who are cancer survivors. They need natural alternatives to hormone therapy. It's actually very complicated, much complicated than when I started working on it.

Speaker 1: 31:20

I imagine that you probably had a good idea of just having the self-care app and then things probably unfolded the more you can go down a rabbit hole of just all of the things. But this is something really interesting to think about is just the different ethnicities and the different rates of menopause, which then opens you up to chronic conditions. So I'm curious. I mean I happen to be a fan of hormones, a hormone replacement. It's helped me a lot and I know that the research now shows that there was that study done back in the 2000s that showed hormones were supposedly dangerous. That's been debunked.

Speaker 2: 32:14

Yes.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Yes, do you feel and I'm just asking your opinion that hormones have a place in the menopause transition?

Speaker 2: 32:30

Absolutely, yes, absolutely. If you talk to medical doctors. I was interviewing one of the medical doctors and he explained the exact same logic that we are talking about, that how the hormone depletion is leading so many women into nursing homes, the fall they have as they grow older, the bone mass is going down and they can't walk.

Speaker 2: 32:54

They can't walk, and all the assisted living. I mean, he had this whole idea of hope he can eradicate this assisted living industry by giving hormones to every single woman, right? So absolutely yes, hormones have a huge, huge place. It's just, I think there are so many different type of hormone therapies that are available so you need a very highly qualified person. Not everyone in the medical industry understands the hormones. So different type of hormones, so different hormones, like a regular hormone therapy. Then there is bioidentical hormone, then there is body identical hormones.

Speaker 2: 33:40

There is so many layers with the hormone therapy that we haven't reached there. Absolutely. There is a place we are just now on self-care and then we are reaching to the next level of the personalized herbs and supplements and then after that, once we come here, we want to offer the right type of hormones, not the hormones that are produced in the lab. We want there are hormones that are used. You use yams to produce the hormones and their body identical hormone cells, so they don't have the issues that when the study came out in 1970s that the hormone therapy can lead to cancer, for example, and at that time also remember we talked about the ratio of the estrogen and progesterone. So that is also when it's getting administered.

Speaker 2: 34:30

It's very important that we maintain that balance. In other words, you just can't take an estrogen patch and say, oh yeah, I'm cool. So there's a lot of nuances to the hormone therapy and we as a company haven't reached there. That's all I'm saying. We are still in the phase one and then we are finishing the phase two. We haven't reached. When we get to the hormone therapy, we want to make sure we go deep into it and offer the right type of hormones.

Speaker 1: 34:59

Yeah, that sounds great. I mean, there is so much misinformation. This doesn't even misinformation from the medical community. I mean, like I had originally said that when I first started having symptoms perimenopausal symptoms in my 40s, I mean, my doctors really were clueless. No one said the word perimenopausal to me. No one said let's talk hormones or your hormones no one. So I was very confused for a long time. So there is a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of women who don't want to get traditional hormones. Bioidentical feel safer to them. So, yeah, it's building. I think the recognition of just menopause in general is definitely becoming more into the mainstream. But what you're doing, focusing on the self-care, is still that's always going to be at the base of everything. Hormones are no miracle cure.

Speaker 2: 36:09

Yes, they're not a miracle cure.

Speaker 1: 36:10

They certainly can be helpful, but they're not a miracle. So we have to hit it from all these angles right the diet, food, what we eat, how we sleep, exercise, all of that.

Speaker 2: 36:25

Yeah, just because you've taken a hormone therapy, that doesn't mean that you start eating all the junk food that doesn't give you the you know right. So you still need self-care. Self-care is something that's going to be the baseline. So we decided to start at the baseline, since we are not medical doctors here, as you know. So we wanted to start at the baseline of self-care, self-awareness as step number one, then start progressing into the other steps, which are, you know, quite like hormone therapy needs, lab testing, so many details. So we wanted to start with the baseline and then go to the personalized and then say, okay, what can we go next?

Speaker 1: 37:10

Yeah, well, that sounds really exciting and I know right now, while we're recording this, it's. You had said that it's going to be. You will be launching in about a month.

Speaker 2: 37:20

Yes, yes Okay.

Speaker 1: 37:24

And you will have launched already.

Speaker 2: 37:26

Yes.

Speaker 1: 37:26

Because we're recording this a few weeks beforehand. So I'm really excited for this and, you know, excited to see all of the resources on your platform, and I'm sure that many, many other women will be looking forward to this too, because, like I said, I feel like it's just the recognition of menopause symptoms. Self-care around it is like just blooming right now. So good timing.

Speaker 2: 37:56

Yeah, it hasn't been. It has been, I should say, four years in the making. So it just happens to be now suddenly people are talking about it. But when we started, you know, working on this, at that time it was quite a taboo when nobody wanted to talk about it. We started talking about it about two years back. Before that we were not seeing menopause, we were seeing holistic care. So then now we want to be very specific. So it's good that the press is talking about it. There are entertainers you know actresses who are talking about it because they are also in the same phase.

Speaker 2: 38:34

And you know, our moms never talked about it, because I think that was a different generation. So our generation is educated and they want to talk about it. They want to bring it out and open. So it's really good timing for us to be looking at so many different options that women can start using for self-care.

Speaker 1: 38:54

Yes, yeah, menopause does not come with the user manual right, there's no directions, like you turn 40, here you go, like so it's yeah, so it's people like you who are just getting the word out, and you know, and that's what I'm trying to do on the podcast, and yes, you know, so it's not so taboo, right? And then hopefully that translates, you know, going just full circle back into the workplace, and that people don't have to keep it a secret or quit their jobs because they feel like they can't physically, you know, handle it because of their menopause symptoms.

Speaker 2: 39:30

Oh yeah, I mean the data is quite alarming if you look at the workplace. But more than 50% of the women don't feel comfortable talking about it at work, you know, they would rather suck it up in the sense like, okay, they don't feel comfortable talking to their colleagues or the HR. So I think at workplace now I was reading an article that Microsoft has started to offer these benefits here in United States. Uk is far, far advanced than us, uk. They've been working on it for the last 10 years. So most of the workplaces know about menopause, but in United States it's just beginning. So big companies like you know, microsoft and these companies when they start talking, that's when the smaller guys will start taking notice. Because the smaller guys right now, if you, I talk to so many of them they say, oh no, menopause, oh my God.

Speaker 1: 40:29

This is not on our agenda.

Speaker 2: 40:30

This is we have more important things to do. So you know, that is, overall, has been the kind of the mood, but I think things are changing because corporates guess what? They cannot ignore. 50% of the workforce they have are women over 45. Can you ignore that? No, it's going to impact your productivity.

Speaker 1: 40:52

Right and like smart women, you know who are, who want to be working, you know, and not quitting their jobs because of menopause, and so really looking for support.

Speaker 2: 41:05

Absolutely, absolutely yes.

Speaker 1: 41:08

Well, amita, thank you so much. This has been really informative. I really am looking forward to your nourish doc app and I will put all of your information in the show notes so people can also find that, and I look forward to just seeing how it progresses.

Speaker 2: 41:28

Thank you so much. I feel like you are helping to bring this topic out, so I really want to thank you for inviting me as a guest. Thank you so much.