SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the 925 Wellness Podcast. Today we are talking about a topic that affects so many women in the workplace and beyond, but still doesn’t get talked about nearly enough, if you were to ask me. And the topic is perimenopause. I am so excited to be joined today by Heidi, the co-founder of Perry, a wearable that tracks perimenopausal symptoms right from the surface of the skin. Now, before I introduce you to Heidi, which I’m super excited about, if you can’t tell already, just a quick note. This episode is for educational and informational purposes only and isn’t meant to be medical advice. Everyone’s body and health journey is different. So if you’re experiencing symptoms or have questions about perimenopause, please talk with your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider. I want to share a little bit about our guest Heidi today. Heidi is the co-founder and CEO of PERI, a woman’s health and data company closing the gender health data gap, starting with perimenopause. PERI is the world’s first wearable and AI platform that objectively tracks perimenopausal symptoms using proprietary algorithms applied to continuous biometric data, delivering personalized, actionable insights that help women manage perimenopause with clarity and confidence. Heidi’s background spans human nutrition, molecular medicine, and consumer health. Prior to starting PERI, five years ago, she spent over a decade developing science-backed products with real-world impact. Her earlier work focused on chronic disease prevention, which I can relate to because that’s where I work, and early detection, including contributions to a major EU-funded research project identifying biomarkers for type 2 diabetes. Heidi holds a BSc in human nutrition from University College Dublin, and an MSE in molecular medicine from Trinity College Dublin. She has been named one of Health Tech World’s top 35 women in health tech in 2022, Healthcare Digital’s top 10 women to watch in 2023, and Enterprise Ireland’s founder of the year 2024. Welcome to the podcast, Heidi. Thank you. I’m so delighted to be here. I’m so glad you could make time for us. Thanks for joining us on the 925 Wellness podcast. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I’m great. I’ve been in New York for 10 days and it’s been amazing. All these different events around women’s health, and that’s what I feel the most passionate about. So great to be here at the end of my trip.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yes, and I am so excited about what you’re doing in women’s health space because gosh, we need it, you know. Tell me about it. Right? Right? Oh so I want to start with something like looking at the bigger picture because someone who’s who just hit play on our episode right now and is watching us and or listening in podcast format, what would be their major like takeaway? What can they take away from our conversation today?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Perimenopause does not have an age. It can happen at any time. You do not have to navigate it blindly. There’s ways of tracking and measuring it now. And what happens in perimenopause is not necessarily just uncomfortable, but it can affect your long-term risk for chronic disease.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Wow. Those are all wonderful takeaways, and I think so important, you know, important for women’s health in general. And a lot of this, as we dive into our interview further, we are going to explore more of these in detail. I think there is a lot of, there are a lot of myths, I like to call them, or misconceptions out there that, oh no, women should just be okay with it. And I’m like, no, I think that’s not okay. So before we dive into Perry as a device and then women’s health, I always like to start with our founder, you know, like your story. So what was that particular moment when you were like, okay, you know what? I really want to create a product that helps women understand their perimenopausal symptoms. What was that aha moment?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

So I’m a scientist by background, as you so nicely told everyone in the bio, but I never set out to build a hardware or a wearable for women. Oh, wow. Yeah. Tell me more. I went to try and find the data to understand long-term health of women. Yeah. And it turns out it’s not there. It’s not? So when you look at the data gap, I mean, it’s enormous in women’s health. We were not required to be included in clinical trials until 1993 in the US. Yes. So a lot of the drugs on the market out there today that are generic drugs actually have we have twice the likelihood of having negative effects or side effects from these drugs because it was never tested on us. So I am a scientist. I realized there’s no data. I had spent a decade as a researcher and a scientist doing exactly what I was trained to do. And one of the things I did was working on cell culture, so where you work and you test in cell lines. Yeah. They were all male cell lines. I know it’s embarrassing. Yes. And then I did mouse trials, and that was in all male mice. Yeah. But the product, the end product was not only for men, by the way. This was just how it’s done. And I was trained that way. Wow. And then we did trials. And in the trials, we started with just male trials because it was easier because women are too complex. They just make the data muddy. And the day that I realized that data gap that existed is when I said, okay, I’m not doing this anymore. I need to switch. I need to figure out how we can collect data at scale, how we can keep women healthier for longer. And bear with me, I’ll tell you why I ended up in perimenopause, because the risk factors for women tend to spike postmenopause. So although we live longer than men, our chronic disease onset is the same time as men. But our risk factors spike postmenopause. So let’s say the number one killer for women are cardiovascular disease. We don’t think of it. Very often we’re scared of breast cancer. It had a big microphone. It’s important to think of, but actually, the number one killer is cardiovascular disease. It’s the same for men, but they’re younger. We do postmenopause. But what happens in those years coming up to menopause, which we call perimenopause, we have huge physiological changes that we have never captured, we have never kept in mind. And that’s why I thought, okay, me and my co-founder decided we need to capture data in that phase of life for women, so that we can, number one, help them as they transition through perimenopause. And then secondly, be able to capture disease risk factors that are specific to women, like hot flashes and night sweats, which we think of as uncomfortable. But turns out they’re more than that. They can be a warning of chronic disease. So if we can capture that at scale, we can start understanding not only helping women as they go through perimenopause, which is really what we’re doing today, but we’ll also capture data that can help women make decisions today that’s going to affect their long-term health as well. So it was all a passion from science, then realizing, wow, like nobody knows anything about me and all my friends. And, you know, we we got to fix this. And the only way to fix it is to fill the data gap.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah. Yeah. You actually just got down into the weeds, and you’re like, I’m gonna take this on, you know? And kudos to you for doing that because you’re so right. Like for years, we have been studying men. I work as an exercise physiologist, and I’m gonna tell you like when I train my athletes, I’m still training them on male data. I know. And it’s like, you know, I’m gonna adjust your numbers, I’m gonna adjust your weight, I’m gonna adjust your speed, I’m just gonna just gonna adjust everything because we are still considering you as smaller men. And uh, I mean, as an exercise physiologist, part of my daily routine is to measure VO2 max. And I’m still comparing women’s data to men’s.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

It’s just incredible that we’re still there. I mean, it is changing, there’s lots of companies out there, but you know, they’re lucky to have someone that at least is aware of the data gap, that is trying to adapt with the data gap that exists. My co-founder is an exercise physiologist as well. So he spent years looking at VO2 Max in women specifically before. And he they did see trends that they wanted to share with the communities, but it wasn’t really received because this was 20 years ago. So they were like, why are we looking at women? Exactly. You know, right? The world has been revolved around men, the healthcare system has been built by men for men. Yes. But women like us are gonna change that.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

So true. Okay, one of the things that I’m noticing in my patient population, because you know, I’m still working in the industry and it’s more preventative and whatnot, but uh for longevity care. And one of the things a lot of perimenopausal women come to me and they say, they’re telling me about their symptoms, right? They’re like, we have night sweats, we have brain fog at work, and they’re very embarrassed because during work, all of a sudden they’re in the meeting and they’re like, oh, we just lost our focus and can’t remember. And they go to their physician, and guess what the physician is telling them? They’re saying, It’s all in your head, you know, go take some sleep medication, you’re gonna be fine over a few weeks or something. So their symptoms are being brushed off. What do you have to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, this is the story we hear over and over again. And this is why when we started and we looked at long-term health of women, that’s when we started speaking to women was when we really realized these women are going through perimenopause, they have no idea what’s going on with their bodies, and the doctors are not helping. And the reason being, about you know, 80% of the doctors had less than two hours training in menopause.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Absolutely. Underscore that right here. That it’s not that the doctors don’t want to help the patient, because I think all doctors mean well for the patients, they just don’t know 100%.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

That’s what we’re seeing as well. It’s it’s not the lack. Obviously, if you go into the medical industry, you’re there to help people, right? Absolutely. There’s very few people that go into that that don’t have that in mind. Absolutely. But they haven’t been equipped with it and the training hasn’t been there. And then, secondly, there’s no diagnostic test to establish perimenopause. There’s no blood tests that we can say, I’ve done a blood test, we now can establish your perimenopause. And the reason for that is that a blood test is a point in time measurement, and in perimenopause, by nature, your hormones are erratic. So change it by the hour, by the week, by the month, that point in time can give you perfectly fine results, and you know something is off. But the doctor, if they do the bloods, which is not the guidelines, but a lot of doctors would do it, they could then say, You’re fine, bloods are fine, and these women go home and they know they’re not fine. Like we’re, as women, quite intuitive.

unknown 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So it’s not in our heads, and we need to really get confident in that. But what we really wanted to do was to help women and empower them with the data they need to number one, understand their bodies as they go through it. So things we track with Perry is like hot flashes, night sweats, anxiety, and other symptoms, as well as lifestyle. Like you’re talking about exercise. We look at diet, we look at hormone therapy if they’re on it. All of that is, well, most of it is tracked with sensor technology so that it’s passively collected, it sits under the breast and it passively collects this data and provides an output on their the connected app. What it allows them to do is to look at symptom profiles over time for the first time. Although that’s really valuable because it’s never existed before and it helps women understand. We also have an AI engine that provides insights to women. When we talk about insights, it looks at all their personal data, both the symptom data and all the lifestyle data, and it gives feedback on what might be triggering symptoms, might what might be elieving symptoms. Or for some women that are unsure if they’re in perimeter and have gone to their doctor and they’ve said, this is stress, they now get the validation that this is this is not that. This is this is different. And it has to be said that for women that are coped their whole life with lots of stressors, overnight a lot of these women suddenly can’t cope. That that’s not life stressors, then it’s the same life stressors, and all of a sudden they can’t cope, they don’t feel like themselves, they’re not sleeping. So these things can be tracked now. They can and and that allows them to have a more meaningful conversation with their doctors. We we don’t want women to go home with antidepressants if that’s not what they should be on. And as we said, this isn’t uh default of the medical community, but we do need to upskill the medical community, and we also need, as women, currently at least, to be CEOs of our own healthcare. We need to get the data points, and for women that go to their doctors feel dismissed, that’s not the end of the road. Go to another one.

unknown 14:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Keep going.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

I mean, I hate to say it, that’s the way we have to do it. I love that. I really love that. And I want to underscore a few things you just mentioned over here. First, you know, just closing this data gap. You know, we want to close the data gap. And one of the ways, and the most important way to get there is for women to learn their symptoms, right? As far as perimenopause and this transitional period is concerned. Second, you have to keep on finding looking for answers, I should say. Go look for answers. If one provider wasn’t helpful, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist out there. Yes, as we continue to have these conversations like these, more and more healthcare providers are gonna come up to speed, learn about these good new technologies and the research that we are doing now on women and women’s health data. And, you know, soon everybody will be on board. So that being said, I want to kind of like just backtrack a little bit, stay where uh with the symptoms, because I think that’s a big concern for women. How does tracking the symptoms during perimenopause, which is a big aspect of peri, just wearing peri as a device, um, how can it help women?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Yeah, so as I said, we we are firm believers in keeping a clinician in the loop. So the the first thing we do is our kind of target initially is the women that are wondering if they’re in perimenopause or the women that know they’re in perimenopause, right? Yes. And they’re struggling with symptoms. And a lot of the women we have spoken to have struggled with symptoms for a long time, have been to the doctor and been dismissed. They’ve tried everything by the book, you know, all the lifestyle. There’s very scarce research, it’s not personalized, they’re trying, they’re not seeing improvements. Yes. So with the tracking that we provide, we provide symptoms over time. So it allows them to understand what the symptoms they’re having. It also from the inside, so we just we don’t want to give a data dump of information. Yeah, we want to give them information that we know is meaningful for midlife. So we built per just specifically and purpose-built for midlife. We don’t, we don’t, not that we don’t care, but we don’t work in any other area. We are working for women in midlife. Sure. So that means that the symptoms they get over time are meaningful, they matter. There, this is the first time they understand it. For the insights, after a week, they get their first weekly insight. I would say the first weekly insight is more stats-based. It’s like, where are you now? What are your symptoms? And then after week two, you’ll start comparing one week towards the other. So are has it gone up or has it gone down? Are there any there might be some lifestyle factors that we start seeing patterns with, but the longer you wear it, the more patterns you get. So you can get to your monthly insight, and your monthly insight, it takes a much deeper dive. Because now you can see patterns over time. Perimenopause patterns don’t happen overnight. So you can’t make a change today and tomorrow you’re fine. I wish we could, but that’s not where we are. But if you look at a month, it starts looking at all the lifestyle metrics. So that could be things like the type of exercise you do, the time of the day. Is any of them does it change if you move your exercise to earlier in the day? Does that alleviate some of your symptoms? All of that sits in your data. So now women can make decisions based on this and act on that. So they’d be like, okay, I notice when I do, you know, exercise earlier in the morning, it alleviates my night sweats. And these things are in the patterns, or it reduces my anxiety overnight.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Which in turn might affect your sleep, right? So there’s all these knock-on effects. We also have the cyclical insights for women that still have their cycles. They can be somewhat regular or fully regular. You know, that there’s no measure for that. You can still have regular cycles and symptoms. But what we have noticed is that symptoms don’t travel the same way across the cycle. So that means my symptoms might land very differently at certain points of the cycle. Let’s say anxiety, maybe over ovulation, I tend to get higher anxiety levels. If that is the case, it can make you feel like, you know, life is over, my husband’s leaving me, my kids, you know, they don’t want me, my work is going under, even though nothing has changed. But just knowing that’s how I feel, preparing for that means, okay, I can feel what I feel, but I know that these are not real thoughts. I know in three days I’m gonna feel better. So it allows them to plan across the month, across the cycle, and take action on the data. And for us, it was always about helping women make decisions and not the guesswork that they’re doing today. And then, secondly, they can also get a report that they can share with their clinician, and that is more of a clinical report. And to start that conversation, they also get three questions that are personalized to their data. So when they go in to their doctor, yes, they can say, I want to know why this has happened over the last three weeks, why this is causing that. And since I started this type of estrogen, I see an effect on, or a side effect, I see that I’m not sleeping as well. What should we do next? So it’s equipping women with all the information they need to make the right decisions at the right time.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

I love that. I love that that now that they can track the data for as long as they want to. And the fact that they can actually see the patterns themselves, and then that their clinician can also see the patterns, it makes it so much easier to make those informed choices, right? It’s almost like empowering women with their own health.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

I mean, I I said it earlier, women have to be the CEO of their own healthcare. But as a CEO myself, it’s very hard to make decisions of no data and no information. So we’re joke. Yeah, tell me about that. Yeah. So we’re providing them with the data they need to make those decisions. And from a clinician point of view, we’re now moving from having to spend the first 10 minutes or 15, however much time they have, usually very little time, right? Yeah. With their patients. They don’t have to spend 10 minutes asking about the symptoms and trying all the recall. They can actually go straight from a report into what do we do next based on what’s happened. So they have more time to make a decision about the next path.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yes, absolutely. And I just want to touch also upon what you mentioned that if the if a perimenopausal patient is starting HRT, what’s happening at that point? Because a lot of times the dosage, it needs to be adjusted, right? It’s not like for very few women, the first time the clinician prescribes a dosage, it’s gonna work. Because of course, everything like HRT. Although we now have bioidentical hormones and whatnot, it’s still gonna impact every woman’s body differently. So, that being said, now that you have that a tracker to actually track your symptoms while you’re on HRT, that’s a big help too. That helps you and the clinician make a decision, an informed decision, as in, oh, should we just dial the dose back? Maybe it’s the progesterone that you need to change rather than um estradiol. Like what needs to be changed? They can, you know, just play around with it, really tweak it to the point where the patient is like, okay, now I feel dialed in. I feel like I don’t have night sweats, my cycle is pretty regular and whatnot. And I feel like myself again. A lot of women, I talk to them, and I’m like, I am the one advocating that, okay, you should start talking about HRT with your provider at this point. Don’t wait till you’re postmenopausal. And they come back to me six months later and they’re like, you know what? Thank you. Yeah. Because I just feel like myself. I was feeling like because anxiety is a big part of it. Anxiety a lot of times depression too. Yeah. Women get depressive episodes. And um and they’re like, something is just off. Everything around me is the same, but I something is off about me. I don’t feel good.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah, I tell you, not feeling like yourself, that’s not something we measure, obviously. And that’s that’s how women feel, and it’s valid.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

But tracking the symptoms and being able to personalize the hormone therapy, because there’s lots of different types of hormone therapy, there’s different combinations, different doses. So being able to do that, then see the symptoms change over time and personalize it. Like today, 70% of women that go to their doctor asking for help. So these are not just 70% of women out there. These are 70% of women that go to their doctors asking for help about perimenopause, they get sent home with no help. Yeah. I’m aware, yes. Yeah, so this allows them to advocate for themselves. And then once they get the clinician on board, they can do exactly what we spoke about here: track it over time, personalize it. And I mean, the aim is that they feel like themselves and even a better version than they have felt for a long time. Yeah. And I’m gonna actually, what’s really exciting is yeah, we’re talking about that now, but we are the first company that are collecting all of that objective data at the moment that we really are working towards where a woman could go in to her doctor once we have enough data, and the doctor would say 90% of women with your ethnicity, your BMI, your symptom profile, this is what worked for them based on data. So that on day one, at least if it’s not 100% for sure that it’s gonna work, it’s still a much higher accuracy that this is gonna work for your profile. We’re not there, it’s a guess game at the moment. We can call it personalized, but it’s a lot of guesswork.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

So that’s huge. And I want to underscore what you just said that once you have enough data, which I know you’re in the process of like building that database. Um it’s amazing that the future generations of women, like they won’t have to go through what we are going through right now. Us, both of us, right? Including uh both of us. I saw a patient today and she’s like, I swear I’m in perimenopause, but my cycles are still regular. And she’s like, My doctors are dismissing it. And I’m looking at her uh DEXA skin and I’m looking at her bone mineral density. She’s osteo she has osteopenia and she’s starting to take all the right steps. Like she’s doing strength training, she is increasing her protein intake, calcium, and all that. But she’s like, I know something is just off in my body. I I have no other way to convince the healthcare provider.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

No, that’s what they have. That’s the evidence they have today is I I feel off. You know, these are my symptoms. They don’t they don’t have anything else to back them until now. And going back to just saying like all the data that we’re collecting, that’s the other thing that we talk about when we’re getting Perry to women, is that not only are we helping you on this journey, but you’re helping on a much bigger mission, which is collecting this data so that us, I mean, not generations after us, it’s gonna change for us now. You know, that’s the thing. Like I’m I’m positive that this is changing now. Yes, you have Melinda Gates that has just committed to a large sum of money, and a lot of that is going to actually helping clinicians and training clinicians. So there’s there’s talk about it now, and everyone’s doing a little piece of the puzzle. So it is gonna change and it’s gonna change soon. And with devices like Perry, we’re gonna help advocate. We’re gonna have clinicians that are better trained, and as we collect this data that everyone will be a part of. I mean, every person that has been a part of our initial trials that we ran to build algorithms, everyone that has been a user since, all of them are helping us build this database that’s gonna help us and women come in behind us.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

That is amazing. So it’s not just gonna be good for our daughters and nieces and you know, everybody, but it’s also gonna be good for us. And that’s very reassuring. That’s very, you know, empowering for me as a woman. I want to bring this whole aspect of women’s health and especially women going through perimenopause back to the intersection of career and health, because at 9 to 5 wellness, that’s what we focus on. And you know, one of the things that I keep on hearing from my patients who are in corporate work, right? Perimenopause tends to show up right when a lot of women are like hitting their kind of like peak or stride at work, right? They’re kind of getting into those C-suite positions. Look at you and I. We’re business owners, I’m still in my job to doing well there. But at the same time, there are days when I’m like, you know what? It’s just too much. These symptoms, along with all of this that I’m juggling, it’s a lot. So whether that looks like for my patients, it might look like a big presentation. For me, it’s like an interview or just back-to-back meetings. So, you know, how can Perry help them?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

It goes back to understanding what’s going on and planning for the day. You know, if you know you have a big meeting and there’s indications that, you know, this is going to be a tough day, you have to plan around it. You have to plan your sleep around it. And yes, I know we wake up at three o’clock every night, regardless. Uh, you can plan away. And I love the sleep hygiene stuff. It’s great, but it doesn’t always work when it’s hormonal reasons that are causing the sleep disruption. But really, it is about empowering them with the information they need to plan for the day, to plan for the week. And yeah, you can’t stop an interview if it’s planned for the Thursday. Yes. But you can start planning in before you hit that interview to set up your days and you can use the data to make the right decisions. I mean, ultimately, what we’re trying to do is to give you all the tools that are out there and give you the indication on what is working for you based on your data, so that you don’t have to plan for Thursday. We have your symptoms managed throughout. And in perimenopause, your symptoms can change over time. So, what works today might not work in six months. So, what we’re working to do is to find something that’s managing your symptoms today, whether with or without your clinician, depending on where you are in your journey. Yeah. And then over time, as the symptom profiles change, we’re so lucky. It’s changing all the time. I mean, it can be very frustrating. But as the symptom profiles change, that we can see that and straight away be able to say, okay, well, this has changed, but this is what’s alleviating those symptoms. So that you don’t have to plan for every day of the week. You have your symptoms managed. That is ultimately the goal here. But if you are in the middle of a symptom flair or you haven’t found a way to manage your symptoms yet, it is about planning and understanding your symptoms. And you know, I hate to say it because I’m people have told me this a million times and I never listen, which is be kind to yourself.

unknown 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Thank you. I’m not.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Give most women are grace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Yeah, but give yourself some grace. Yeah. And you know, I’m trying. It’s it’s difficult because we like to go, go, go. And like you said, we’re probably in the time where our careers are the busiest. We might have children that goes from toddlers to teenagers, you know, depending on where you are, parents getting older. Like there’s a lot going on, but there was a lot going on three weeks ago, too. So, you know, it yeah, and what we often see is that yeah, it can be a gradual process for sure. Sure. But it hits a point where suddenly it’s just too much, and we tend to go, go, go. We just power through until we just can’t cope, and then we go to our clinician and then we get dismissed. So, really, this is about looking at the earlier signs, trying to tackle it early, don’t wait. And I said it before, but perimenopause doesn’t have an age. Yeah. So it you’re not old when you’re in perimenopause. I mean, it could start as early as 35. Yeah. I mean, most women don’t get it at the age of 35, but it can start early. And it could be some women don’t get it until they’re in their 50s, and menopause hits them at 55 or 57. So it it really doesn’t have an age. So it’s about trying to listen to your body, see what’s happening, and when you get there, there to invest in your health.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yes, absolutely. I couldn’t emphasize that enough. And you have put it so beautifully. Give yourself some grace, uh, plan around it. Now that we have a device that’s empowering you, use it to your advantage, you know, use it to your advantage. Um so bring this in a little bit because I think there’s so much useful information that we can find with Perry. And what what I was thinking was what are some of the symptoms? What is some of the data that we are collecting with Perry in the app? And once we start seeing those patterns, you gave some really good examples already of like making some small changes. Like a woman who’s interested in in, you know, wearing Perry as a tracker, she can take that data to her clinician, work with her clinician, and make those changes. She can also test and experiment on her own as far as lifestyle transitions and changes are concerned, right? I would like to look at Perry Tracker and if you can show it to our audience, because I know I saw it at the Live Long Summit, but I want everybody on the camera to see it too. And I want to know what we are tracking primarily as far as symptoms are concerned.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah. So I mean, the wearable itself looks like this. Oh, I love the packaging. I love the colors. I mean, it was it was designed for women, right? So we deserve packaging. Yes, yes, we like pretty nothing was, it was all very intentional. Yeah. And it was always led by women. So if you look at this, it sits with an adhesive. Yeah. And it sits under your breast. And since I have no, you know, shame, it sits under your breast like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

No, this is perfect because then women can actually see like where it’s supposed to be worn.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah. So it stays there, it stays there continuously. 95% of women that wear it say they don’t notice wearing it, which is a big deal for us. So it’s comfortable. So it’s very comfortable. You can shower with it, live your life as normal. You can swim with it up to an hour, submerged in water. So if you’re a big diver or uh, you know, swim for hours, then you will have to take it off. But anything under an hour, so your normal bats and your swims are covered. And then all the data comes to a connected app. The things we track today are things like cycle tracking, which you see in other wearables. We look at activity, which you see in other wearables, sleep, which you see in other wearables. And then we do hot flushes, we do night sweats, we do anxiety, and we’re working on further symptoms. And then anything else that’s self-reported, all of that goes into the data engine. And when we look, when I said as you see on other wearables, what I mean is that we look at it very differently. We bring it all back to midlife. There’s so many wearables out there, and it’s pretty incredible the information we can learn about ourselves today. But perimenopause is very specific, and menopause is very specific. So the wearables out there aren’t able to capture the data that are unique to this transition. So there’s a reason why it sits under the breast. The reason for that is that things like anxiety and hot flushes and night sweats, they start on the upper body, all the signals, and then they totally dissipate towards the limbs. So if you look at the wearables today, they tend to sit on the wrists, on the finger, do an incredible job for other metrics, but not if you’re gonna give metrics specifically for this transition. And ultimately, everything we do from we have Venus as well, which is an AI bot, but that bot allows women to ask any questions around perimenopause and menopause. So we have women that wake up in the middle of the night and they’re terrified because their heart is beating fast. Yeah, yeah. And now they can ask palpitations, yeah. Exactly. And they’re wondering, what is this? Can it be perimenopause? Now, this bot has been trained on only the best guidelines and science and curated by us. So all the answers are grounded in real science. So now women not only get their data and their insights and they can share with the doctor, they actually have a companion that can answer all those questions in between visits when you’re not with your doctor. And that’s actually when life happens.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

That’s so true. And I love all the data you just or data points and symptoms that you mentioned, like night sweats and and the heart palpitations you said, right? Those are two very specific to perimenopausal women, uh, hot flashes as well. And a lot of times women have a hard time placing them too. Oh, is it really perimenopause or menopause, or I’m just having a hard day? Who knows? But if you’re tracking them over time, which I want to uh talk about a little bit, that perimenopause itself is a transitional period. It’s not like a week, it’s not like a month. We are talking an average of seven years, sometimes it’s seven to ten years for some women, where they have they’re experiencing these symptoms. And if you’re not getting help for these symptoms, you’re gonna have to like go through them for these many years. And the impact, the long-term impact that that has on your health, we are finding out it’s not good. Like hot flashes can be a precursor to Alzheimer’s if you are not taking control of your perimenopausal health right away.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Yeah, so what we look at as symptoms as uncomfortable, they’re much more than that. You know, so we we want to help women as they go through perimenopause, but really the aim is to keep them healthier for longer. We’re we’re trying to do this because the old method of I’ll just suffer through, there’s a there’s some, you know, there’s some light at the other side. But actually, if you go to the other side and now you’re walking straight into cardiovascular disease, or you know, you’re not gonna walk straight into Alzheimer’s disease because that happens a little bit later. But ultimately, there’s, you know, Dr. Lisa Muscone has done loads of great research on the brain, and she has shown that the changes on the brain happen in midlife. Symptoms appear later on. Yeah. So I don’t want to say that this is, you know, it becomes very dark when you go, oh, and you’re increasing your risk. But actually, I look at it as a window of opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

When you’re in periomenopausy, you can make, once you have data, you can make decisions here that are going to impact you not just now, it’s gonna impact your long-term health. So investing in your health here and investing in understanding your symptoms and investing in finding a way of managing it isn’t just saying, oh, I’m putting myself first, because that’s what women are always scared of doing. Yes. But actually, we need to be well for everybody else around us to be well. So it’s really important. But then, secondly, you’re investing in your long-term health. So you’re gonna be, you know, more independent for longer. Isn’t that what we all want? I I don’t want to live a long life if it’s with chronic disease. Yes. I want to live a long life healthy, yes, and rather a short life if it’s not gonna be with health.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

So that’s what we’re saying is yes, let’s outlive those men like we always have, but let’s outlive them healthier. And we we have the opportunity to make all those changes in our you know, 40 to 50. Yeah, and beyond. It’s never too late.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

No, and normal therapy being oh, absolutely. I I just love the way you just brought all of this together into longevity. Because I think, you know, I work at a longevity center. I work with a lot of physicians who are working in longevity field as medicine, right? And one of the things that patients keep telling me is like, yes, I’m here. I’m here with you today because I want to keep functioning the way I am. I want to be able to enjoy the activities, the things that I am doing today, well into my, you know, 80s, 90s, whatever that marginal decade of our life looks like. And that a nutshell is longevity. Like whatever that marginal decade of your life is, you want to be independent. They’re like, oh, we don’t want to be depending on anyone, you know. We want to live on still on our own terms and be able to enjoy our grandkids, still be able to hike, still still be able to swim. Whatever we like to do now, we want to be able to do that. And how do we get there? Learning about your body. Like for women, especially, perimenopauses, where, as we just, you know, we have been talking about it, that’s where the decline starts. And if you start taking control of your health right here, you can just stay where you’re at.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

I mean, it’s if you if you look at it like this, for women going in, like hormone therapy, for example, which is very effective for a lot of women, it’s not for every woman, but sure very effective for a lot of women. There’s definitely evidence showing that it helps against osteoporosis, so protecting against that. There’s some evidence on cardiovascular disease. I mean, it’s it’s still early, but it’s it’s going heading that way. Um, but if you’re a woman and you’re having your symptoms and you’re going into a clinician and you’re not being taken seriously or you’re being dismissed, you’re not even given the opportunity to get there. So, like one of the examples, or one of the patients or women that of that have used Peri that I always think about is one that emailed afterwards. And she had ADHD. She had been going to her doctor, telling the doctor that she felt off and there were symptoms. Everything was dismissed and put that back to her ADHD. She never had a real conversation with her doctor about what perimenopause or if it could be perimenopause. But it actually turns out that a lot of women with ADHD tend to have more severe symptoms of perimenopause. Oh wow. So she had a peri-device, she wore it over time, she brought the data into the same doctor, and this was the first time that they had a meaningful conversation around the symptoms, and now she’s on HRT and she’s feeling much better. And all she needed was real data to show that this is happening. Now give me the opportunity to manage this. The other thing I talk about, so we we’re, you know, agnostic. We don’t say all women should be on HRT or all women should do this. What we say is the data will tell you what is right for you. But there’s lots of tools, right? You have the exercise, which is the tool in the toolbox, you have diet, and both of those are very important for long-term health, regardless. It’s boring, but it’s really important for long-term health. So making the right decisions around those. So if you go on hormone therapy, you should never leave exercise and diet behind. And that’s what sometimes happens. We go one or the other. You know, I just want to do lifestyle changes, and then if that doesn’t work, I’m gonna do hormone therapy and now that’s it. But actually, we need to look at everything. And that’s what I love about Pairy is that it actually looks at it very holistically and gives feedback on all of it.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Yeah, I was just gonna say, yeah, it’s all about a holistic approach, right? You can Have a combination of all these, like lifestyle interventions plus medical interventions. And that’s when you find that real rhythm, like or magic, where you’re like, okay, I’m on the right track. You know, I’m gonna age well. We can’t stop aging, but we can age well and still be able to function and enjoy the things that we enjoyed today, later into our marginal decade of our life. Um, and I want to say I love the story. It’s such a great like reminder that small, consistent changes can really add up, right? And I and I wasn’t aware that ADHD, women with ADHD have like more severe symptoms. So that was that’s so reassuring. My next question is more like along the practical lines. So for anyone who’s listening and who’s thinking this sounds like me, which I can tell you probably most women at home are like, this is me. Yeah, you’re not alone. You’re not alone. This is me. All the hands are up. Yeah. What’s the easiest way to get started with Perry? What can they look forward to in those first few weeks, you know, in terms of like usage of Perry and then the data that they’re seeing?

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Yeah, so you can get Perry online on our website. So that’s on myperry.co.co. It is FSA and HSA eligible, so you can get some of your tax dollars there and get it uh a little bit cheaper out of pocket. We provide like just practically, it comes with adhesives, so that’s what holds it to the body, comes with 20 of those. That means you have for about five months continuous wear, depending on the user, and then you can replenish them and buy that through our website. It comes with two batteries, which means that you can change the battery on the body. So it was all informed by women. They kept saying, Well, I leave my wearable in the charger, and I keep walking past it thinking I’m gonna put it back on. So we decided we would do it simpler. So the other one sits in the charger and they can just swap it out. The data, yeah. As I said earlier, you can live your life as normal. That means showering, it was all about being passive. Look at the data when you have the time. You know, it’s a watch or a wearable that you just keep on. You just keep it on, it sits there, it passively does its job, and then you get to look at it when you have time. And then over the first week, yes, you get some stats. But as you go into a month of wear is when you really start seeing the information you need to make little decisions. So the longer you wear it, the more insights you get. Um the first week you’ll start seeing symptom data, but the longer you wear it, the more we can see patterns on what might be causing or alleviating symptoms and what might be making them worse. And the more data you have when you go into your practitioner, the more evidence you have that something is going on and to make a decision of.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

Yeah, that’s that’s great. I think that’s so um good to know that you know, right away you can start seeing some uh data, and then as weeks go by, you can collect the data, you can take it to your practitioner, you can make your own informed decisions right away as far as lifestyle is concerned. And you said it is HSA and FSA eligible, so that’s great, that is so good. And so I have a special actually news to share with you guys that we have a special link for you guys. Perry is $100 off through that link. When you click on that link, um, you will be taken to a window where you can put in a discount code. And in that window, I want you to put Perry on pod. Let me spell it out for you. P-E-R-I-O-N-P-O-D in the discount code box. So on top of that hundred dollar off of Perry that people are getting, you as a listener of this podcast of 925 Wellness, you will get an extra $50 off on top of that with the code Perry on Pod. So before we wrap it up, I always like to ask my guest any parting words for our listeners and viewers?

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Perry Manipauls has no age, you don’t have to navigate it blindly, you’re not too old to start on HRT. This is a discussion with your clinician about risk versus benefit, and you’re not alone. We’re all going through it, and there’s lots of solutions about to arrive. So yes, there’s bright lights in the end here. We can get through it.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yes, there’s silver lining right here. Yeah, and it’s right here with Thai, right? Yes, so good, so good. Heidi, thank you so much for being here and for the work that you’re doing to support women through perimenopause and putting women’s health in the forefront. You know, I think we have been just pushed back for so long, and I’m so glad that you as a scientist took this project on. You were trying to close the gap, data gap. And in that process, you helped perimenopausal women, which is, you know, so important. Thanks for joining this important conversation and this work. And just a reminder again to you guys, the listeners and viewers of 925 Wellness Podcast, you get $100 off of Perry when you order with the link in the show notes. And you as listeners and viewers get an extra $50 off on top of that with the code Perry on pod. Once again, Perry on Pod for extra $50 off. And to everyone listening, if this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend or a coworker who might need to hear it. And I know there are so many of us who need to hear it. So please, please, please hit share. And until next time, keep prioritizing your health while you grow your career. Thank you so much for listening and watching today. Bye for now.