Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.154 Vaginal Dryness, UTIs, and Hormones: What Every Woman Over 40 Needs to Know

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 154

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This episode is sponsored by Better Help - https://betterhelp.com/askingforafriend

Your Skin's Glowing, But What About Down There? Let’s Talk.

We obsess over skincare, fitness, and aging gracefully—but when it comes to vaginal health? Total silence. Meanwhile, millions of women in perimenopause and beyond are battling dryness, painful sex, recurring UTIs, and feeling like no one warned them. It's time we change that.

In this bold and empowering episode, I sit down with Kate Wells, founder of Parlor Games, who’s on a mission to bring vaginal wellness into the spotlight. With a background in hormone science and a serious passion for women’s health, Kate is tearing down myths about estrogen, exposing the real risks of ignoring vaginal care, and revealing how simple hormone solutions can transform quality of life.

Ready to take charge of your midlife health and stop suffering in silence? Hit play—your body deserves better. 🎙️✨

You can find Kate Wells and Parlor Games at www.parlor-games.com

https://www.instagram.com/parlorgamesfun/

https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=parlor%20games

Check out their website for amazing educational blogs and information on women's health.

This episode is sponsored by Better Help - https://betterhelp.com/askingforafriend for 10% off your first month of therapy

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Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling run-down. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
https://www.fasterwaycoach.com/?aid=MicheleFolan

Have questions about Faster Way? Please email me at:
mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

After trying countless products that overpromised and underdelivered, RIMAN skincare finally gave me real, visible results—restoring my glow, firmness, and confidence in my skin at 61. RIMAN Korea's #1 Skincare Line - https://michelefolan.riman.com

*Transcripts are done with AI and may not be perfectly accurate.

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Michele Folan:

This episode of Asking for a Friend is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's be honest midlife is a season of transition, whether it's changes in your body, your relationships, your career or just the weight of trying to hold it all together. Sometimes you need more than a good walk or event session with a friend. You need a safe space and a trained professional to help you process it all, and that's where therapy can be a game changer. Betterhelp makes getting started simple. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a therapist in as little as 48 hours. You can message your therapist anytime and schedule sessions that fit your lifestyle no commuting, no awkward waiting rooms and if you don't click with your first match, you can switch therapists to find the right fit. With a 4.5 star rating on Trustpilot and thousands of positive reviews, betterhelp is a convenient, trusted option for those ready to take a step toward better mental health. Visit betterhelpcom forward. Slash Michele for a 10% discount off your first month and take the first step today. Therapy isn't just for crisis moments. It's for anyone who wants to feel better, think clearer and navigate life with more confidence Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife.

Michele Folan:

I'm your host, Michele Folan, and this is Asking for a Friend. Welcome to the show everyone. Let's talk about something that way too many of us are struggling with in silence poor vaginal health. We openly discuss skincare, workouts, the latest health trends, but when it comes to things like vaginal dryness, discomfort and painful sex, the conversation suddenly goes quiet. And yet these issues affect so many women in perimenopause and menopause, impacting not just intimacy but overall health, confidence and quality of life.

Michele Folan:

I'm so excited to sit down with Kate Wells, the founder of Parlor Games, a company on a mission to change the way we think about vaginal care. Kate saw a massive gap in the market for women's intimate wellness and set out to create a science-backed, effective and easy-to-use vaginal estrogen cream that helps women feel comfortable, vibrant and empowered in their bodies again. In this episode, we're diving into why vaginal health is a non-negotiable, the science behind estrogen therapy and the risks of ignoring menopause symptoms. Plus, we'll talk about the bigger picture of menopause hot flashes, brain fog, weight gain and the unexpected ways declining estrogen affects our bodies. Kate Wells, welcome to Asking for a Friend.

Kate Wells:

Thank you, michelle. I am always happy if there's a day where I get to sit and talk about hormones with someone who's interested and can share the message with other women. So thank you for the invitation.

Michele Folan:

Well, happy to have you here and you know this audience is very engaged in their wellness and you know HRT and hormone therapy and vaginal health are things that do come up all the time. I do want to let the audience know how Kate and I met. So we met through Donna Cravatta. Donna is the mastermind behind the Real 50 Over 50. She invited Kate and some other people who are experts in the menopause space and had me along for the ride on a panel discussion. That was incredible and that panel discussion came out. Was it last week?

Kate Wells:

Yes, it was last week.

Michele Folan:

Okay, it was last week, so we're speaking on March 26th, right now. And so, anyway, long story short, Kate and I decided this would be a wonderful topic for us to share with this audience. So, again, welcome, thank you. Yeah, so I think you've got a fascinating career path. Could you share a little bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?

Kate Wells:

Right. It does have some twists and turns and of course you know at age 62, when you look back and you think, oh yes, that's what the stepping stones were. You know, when you're leaping from one to another through your life, oftentimes it's a bit of a blind leap. So I began my career as a teacher. I was a high school teacher in England and love teaching I do. I love seeing anyone's eyes, doesn't matter what age group, just like that dawn of understanding of a concept or an idea or something. I love conveying information in a way that someone goes oh, I get it. And so I talked for about six years and I've always been ambitious and I realized, recognized that if I was going to have a career in teaching or in education, I would not be in the classroom, I would not be doing what I really enjoyed. And so then I figured well, if I am going to be in an administrative or leadership role, how about business? And I found my way into the Lloyds Bank management training program. Lloyds Bank was one of the major high street banks in the UK and they had a pretty still have a pretty extensive leadership training program and I got into that. I was loving that, really enjoying discovering the process of business.

Kate Wells:

And then my husband at the time came along and said hey, I found a job in Portland, Oregon. Shall we go? We were living in Brighton on the south coast of England at the time. Brighton to Oregon that's one heck of an Oregon trail, and so long and short of that story is like heck. Yes, let's go. And the plan had been to be here for just a couple of years. I would do my MBA at Portland State and then we would go home and start a family. But we had so much fun in Oregon. We skied in the winter, we biked, we kayaked, we did all the things and by the end of that first year it was like we were going nowhere. We had bought a house, I was expecting our first baby and coming here and staying here has just it's been transformative for this you know, short, slightly uptight British woman. It's transformed me and that's all a good thing. And so I did my MBA and I have done consulting work. But a big portion of my work has been in the integrative medicine field. I have worked in and run and led salivary hormone testing laboratories. I have worked as a product development specialist or developer in a genetics testing laboratory.

Kate Wells:

And you know, through all of this, I was the business person. I am the business person, the business person through and through. I love the business process. However, I fell in love with the biochemistry, particularly of the endocrine system. You know our hormone messaging system, and we would go to conferences and, instead of just hanging out at the booth at the table to wait for doctors to arrive, I would go in and I would listen to all the presentations and I would absorb this information and, kind of from an autodidact point of view, taught myself filled in a lot of gaps in terms of biochemistry and how the body works.

Kate Wells:

And through this process, I would then talk to, you know, not the practitioners who are my customers, but the just everyday people, my friends. And I mean I can remember one time I was at the dentist with my daughter and we get talking about what I do and it's all about saliva hormone testing and she says, oh, oh, my breasts are really tender. Is that something to do with my hormones? And then, before you know it, I've got six dental hygienists sitting around me listening to me talk, while one of them is working on my daughter's teeth, and it dawned on me that, you know, women just don't know, they don't know what's going on with their hormones. And so it has been my mission, become my mission, to share information in a way that makes sense, that gets women to that oh, I get it.

Kate Wells:

And once they get it, then they feel so much more empowered to make some adjustments, to make some changes, maybe to find a practitioner or at least find solution for some of the symptoms. So, you know, I worked in labs, did some more consulting work, and then I, you know, I tried to retire I've actually tried to retire twice, like that's happened. And then my best friend, Kirstie Hegg, who is my business partner she and I have 50-50 owners of Parlor Games she came to me and said Kate, you know, I've got this issue with vaginal dryness, do you know anything about that? And I'm like oh, I am the friend you've longed for. And I gave her some estriol hormone cream and within a couple of weeks transformed her body back into its well-functioning state.

Michele Folan:

Amazing, how that happens.

Kate Wells:

I just I mean now she's an entrepreneur, she's a serial entrepreneur, and so we sat around, as women do, plotting revolutions in parlors, and decided that we had to bring this to the world. I knew that there was such a gap in knowledge and information and there was such a gap in resources for women, particularly for vaginal health, for urinary health, and she has this direct to consumer experience which I don't have. Mine is all wholesale, it's working with practitioners, and so we have combined our experience. I have this business management experience and the science knowledge, and she has the marketing and depth of experience over there. And that brought us together to form and grow Parlor Games. And it has been a wild ride, I tell you.

Michele Folan:

So what has surprised you most about this journey, Kate? So?

Kate Wells:

One of the things that I found for me. I think I have always been someone who made things happen. I'm a doer in the world, I make things happen. I'm a doer in the world, I make things happen. But I found my way into Reiki as a hands-on, energetic healing modality and that allowed me to continue to develop my spiritual side, my spiritual relationship with the universe and with the source, and through that I have learned to trust and allow. And now my life is less about making things happen and it's about allowing things happen.

Kate Wells:

And 20 years ago, if I had ever thought that that sentence would come out of my mouth, Just no way. So that I think that maturing within myself to know that I have this unique experience of living what I am here to do in this lifetime, I mean that operates at kind of a vibrational level within me. And whenever I begin to get, you know, frayed, because I'm a little bit busy, I've got too many things on my plate or, you know, once again we're hiring and that just adds a load, Then I just I take a deep breath and I calm myself and I'm like, oh no, I remind myself you are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing and allow, just allow, and I think that's one of the things that has surprised me most.

Michele Folan:

Oh, can we go back to that? Let's go back to that. Yes, of course, Because that is something that I want women to understand practice, I think that was a genius thing you just said about it's not always about making things happen, it's about letting things happen, and that we don't always have to be in total control of everything. Right, that was that was I. I like that. That was. That was my inspiration for the day. Thank you very much, Kate Wells. Great Appreciate that, I'm glad. Yeah, I kind of needed that today as a matter of fact.

Michele Folan:

So, thank you.

Kate Wells:

I think it takes a little courage because you are letting go of control. You are saying to the world I want to be of service, I want to make a difference. I have a vague idea what this could mean, but bring it, I am at your service and here we are from my point of view. But it takes the courage to not hold on so tightly to control. Yeah.

Michele Folan:

I want to talk a little bit about the science of things. Vaginal health is a topic that still probably doesn't get enough attention. I mean, I hear about it just because of the people I follow on Instagram and I follow you, but can you break down why vaginal estrogen is so important for midlife women?

Kate Wells:

Yeah, absolutely I'll talk about. I'll bring several concepts in which are kind of woven together. But one of the things I'll start with is let's just think about our skin barrier. You know, we can look at the back of our hand, our arms, we can look at our face and we see our skin, that skin barrier, the integrity of that, how it holds together, is critical for the health of the whole organism that we are, our entire body, because the skin barrier, this organ, keeps pathogens out. So we want to make sure that our skin is healthy. I mean, women put a lot of money into making sure their skin is healthy and supple, but what we don't tend to think about is the skin layer that lines the vagina and yet it's still very much part of this whole skin layer system.

Kate Wells:

Now, estrogen is very important for the maintenance of the skin that lines the vagina. And as we go through menopause that menopause transition where our periods have all gone to hell in a handbasket and we don't know what's happening that is an indicator that estrogen levels are beginning to drop. And then post-menopause you know, once we've had that period of time of 12 months without a period and we are technically post-menopause transition, our estrogen levels really are low at this point. Now it can take a little while for this to be felt, or it can be felt immediately. But the skin cells in the vagina are sitting there saying give me estrogen people, give me estrogen people, give me estrogen, people. I could be with some estrogen here.

Kate Wells:

And when they don't have enough, the skin loses its strength. And so then if somebody is wanting to be in an intimate relationship with their partner, penetrative sex can be painful, you know you're. Oh, let's just be straight out about this. You're putting something hopefully hard and um uh large in there and that's rubbing against that skin. It's moving backwards and forwards a lot, yeah, and so if we're not careful, that skin is getting thinner and thinner, it may tear. And once you begin to get little micro tears in the skin, the body's going to try and repair that. I mean, think about, you know, when you're a kid and you fell off your bike and you grazed your knee. The first thing your immune system does is like, oh, quickly, repair, repair, repair. And it puts a little skin over there and forms a scar and you pick at it and your mother says stop picking at that, just let it heal.

Michele Folan:

Your mom too.

Kate Wells:

I mean, it's really hard to imagine the inside of your vagina like just one long scab, but it can get to be like that for some women who have been really, really starved of estrogen and so, as the immune system is frantically trying to repair that skin, it's localized inflammation. It's part of the healing process. But if that doesn't happen, it's just low-grade, continuous inflammation. And when the body is in an inflamed state, that is the root of many of other diseases, such as Alzheimer's. That is very strongly correlated with the state of inflammation in the body. So we want to supplement with estrogen to make sure that that vaginal tissue has its supply to keep that tissue strong and supple. And it's also important for maintaining the pH of the vagina, and making sure that you have a low pH is critical for making sure that bacteria can't get in there and start to multiply and cause infection.

Michele Folan:

I had a client who was talking about her mother and her mother-in-law. She was taking care of both of them. Both of them got UTIs and they were in their 80s, right, she said their UTI presented like dementia, like dementia in 24 hours, kind of like didn't know how to turn a light off with the light switch, kind of scary. And you know they finally figured out oh it's a UTI. But you know, she said had they been on estrogen therapy vaginal estrogen therapy they probably could have done a great deal to curtail these recurring UTIs in both her mom and her mother-in-law. Can you talk about why? That is why there's a connection with UTIs and vaginal health?

Kate Wells:

Absolutely, and I too have had that experience about a year ago I had this persistent UTIs and vaginal health Absolutely, and I too have had that experience. About a year ago I had this persistent UTI that I could not get rid of and I went to a conference. I was exhibiting at a conference and I remember clearly opening this box of all the things I need to put on my table and I'm just looking at this box, going, huh, I know I'm supposed to do something with this and my daughter was helping me and I just looked at her and said help, my brain could not put it together and I've got a decent brain and for it to just not function like that, it was frightening. So the connection is that just as we have estrogen receptors in the vagina, we also have receptors little doorways to the cell, in the urethra and the tube that goes from the bladder to the outside world. We have receptors for estrogen all around the bladder and in the muscles that are around the bladder, neck, and so again, with a lack of estrogen, some of the function of the muscles and the bladder and the urethra will be diminished and just as you can get sort of micro tearing in the vagina, you can get disruptions to the skin surface and the urethra and that makes it so much more susceptible to pathogens. And when we think about you know all the exits in a woman, they are very closely located, very closely located.

Kate Wells:

It is super easy for E coli to get from the anus to the urethra, to the vagina, and not to put too fine a point on it, but we get wrinkly, the vulva gets wrinkly, the skin is losing its collagen and in all those wrinkles it's so much easier for little pathogens to be sitting in there and then transferred to the vagina or to the urethra.

Kate Wells:

So our likelihood of getting E coli, in particular where it shouldn't be, increases, and then we don't have the defenses to fight it off. So UTIs are way more common. But here is another concept that I have been doing a lot more reading about and really trying to dig into, and that is the concept of biofilm. Now, biofilm is a kind of a mucus-like film that bacteria will put around them to protect themselves from antibiotics. And so someone has a UTI and they get antibiotics for that, and the antibiotics will often knock out 80 to 85% of those pathogens of the bacteria. But there is a portion of them that may get stored in biofilm on the layer inside of the bladder, and so, when circumstances are right, they can begin to grow again, and then you have a repeat.

Michele Folan:

UTI, yeah, and it becomes resistant, that's right.

Kate Wells:

Yes, so you might be able to knock out the majority of the bacteria be able to knock out the majority of the bacteria, but not all of them. So there are ways to disrupt the biofilm and there are some good nutraceutical companies out there that make products for that. But this is just a, you know, it's a concept that is only just beginning to have more conversation about it. Yeah, so, but because of the inflammation that occurs with the UTI, it quickly can go to the brain, where it is, resulting in that confusion and those dementia-like symptoms.

Michele Folan:

You know, someone close to me was having a lot of genitourinary issues and they started on vaginal estrogen therapy game changer, like life-changing results for that person. And I talk to my friends all the time about the importance of vaginal health and going on. You know vaginal estrogen and I still get pushback. I get, oh well, I'm not having sex with my husband anyway, or I'm not too worried about that, and I'm like, look, you may not have issues right this second, but this is important for when we're looking 5, 10, 15 years down the road, you're going to wish you did this and we're going to take a quick break, Kate, but when we come back I do want to talk about some of the confusion around estrogen safety.

Michele Folan:

When I turned 60, I caught myself thinking is it time to head to the dermatologist? My skin had lost its glow, my neck and jawline were changing and fillers just didn't feel like the right move for me too expensive, kind of risky and not really me. That's when I found RIMAN, Korea's number one skincare line. I started with the expert experience kit and within weeks I could see and feel the difference. My skin looked brighter, firmer and for the first time in a while, I actually loved my skincare routine. Riman delivers what it promises science-backed, clean products that give real results. And now, with their new color cosmetics, it's skincare and beauty you can feel confident about putting on your face. Want to fall back in love with your skin? Click the link in the show notes or reach out. I'd love to help you get started. Okay, we're back. Before we took the break, I mentioned that I wanted to talk about estrogen safety, and can you demystify the science and address the common concerns that women have around estrogen therapy?

Kate Wells:

Yes, yes, I feel this is definitely one of my missions is to try and change the dialogue here, not just among individuals, among women, but among practitioners too. So there was a large-scale study that went underway in the late 1990s looking at the impacts of using hormone replacement therapy and this is synthetic hormone replacement therapy, you know based on pregnant mare's urine. And four or five years into this, some of the early results suggested that there were some risks and the early analysis of some of the data suggested that this big message was really important to share to the world. Estrogen causes cancer. Now I will just say that that is nonsense. If somebody does have breast cancer and it's estrogen receptor, positive estrogen may feed it. Positive estrogen may feed it, but it is highly unlikely to cause it.

Michele Folan:

Well, and if you think about it, kate, if estrogen caused cancer, we'd have a bunch of 20-year-olds with cancer. Sorry, it doesn't work that way, and I do want to clear this up too. This is like PremPro and Premarin that were used in the study.

Kate Wells:

Okay, yeah, the synthetic hormones. So at the time, you know, this was massive news hit the media and practitioners just pulled women off their hormone replacement left, right and center, and there has been a gap of 20 years where women have been very underserved because of this false interpretation of the results. Now those results have been reanalyzed multiple times. There was one arm of that study that continued using just estrogen, not estrogen plus the progestin, and discovered that actually estrogen can be protective against breast cancer in many breast cancers. So over time that message is gradually being unwound. However, it's not translating yet into many medical practices and that message is not translating or transmuting through into our general conversations. And practitioners will still say to patients and we hear from them a lot, from our customers they will say, well, you know, we'll put you on, but we want to get you off it as soon as possible. And that's because they're talking about the synthetic hormones and there are potential risks with these synthetic hormones, particularly if they are oral hormones.

Kate Wells:

When someone takes a hormone through the mouth it goes into the stomach and then it is, you know, shunted off to the liver to be broken down. That's the first thing. That is a big, important role that the liver has, and studies are beginning to indicate that if the liver is breaking down these oral hormones, they are more likely to be broken into metabolites that can increase the risk for developing breast cancer. So it's become pretty well established, certainly in integrative medicine, functional medicine fields, that oral estrogen is not the way to go. Topical estrogen means you can use less of a hormone because it doesn't have to be first broken down by the liver, it can just go straight into the system and it is much safer to use than an oral estrogen.

Michele Folan:

Oh, I was going to ask you a question, so I want to make sure that we're going to differentiate. When you say topical estrogen, you're talking about one that you would, a cream that you would rub into your arm or a patch, correct, because vaginal estrogen is not absorbed systemically, correct, that's right.

Kate Wells:

Okay, Because it's in small amounts. You just need a small amount. The vast majority of it will be used locally. A little bit may pass through into the bloodstream, but estriol is so protective that it's not a problem, isn't that?

Michele Folan:

Okay, I wanted to make sure we cleared that up, so all right, okay.

Kate Wells:

So there are a growing number of practitioners who recognize that, oh absolutely, women have to have hormones. Just because they're done with the reproductive phase of their life does not mean that their bodies are finished with hormones. We need them for so many functions throughout our body, and so increasing numbers of practitioners are suggesting that they use topical cream, a topical estrogen, a topical progesterone, which delivers the hormone directly into the system for use throughout the whole body. Now, some practitioners are still not open to that, and so women are taking things into their own hands and going to look for solutions, and that's where we come in. We really want to provide the education, the knowledge, share the science, as well as have products that really work.

Michele Folan:

So tell me a little bit about what you offer and how people go about getting your product.

Kate Wells:

So we offer. Our flagship product, the one we started with Kirstie and I started with is a vaginal estriol cream, and it's a very small amount in there, just enough to help rebuild that tissue. And that, by far, is what we hear the most about from our customers. We get messages like oh, you've saved my life, you've saved my marriage, I can be intimate again, I can go outside my house without fear of peeing again. So you know that's what we get most of the feedback about.

Kate Wells:

However, if someone is going to be using estrogen even the estriol in our cream, you know it's a good idea to have some progesterone in there as well, and progesterone is a superhuman hormone. It's important for men, it's important for women, for women, you know, and we run out of it, we start making it, um, and you know our adrenal glands are supposed to be our little backup system, but you know everyone's so stressed and people's adrenal glands are so tired that they're not making progesterone. They're struggling to make cortisol, and so the progesterone has it's over 400 functions within the body, and so adding some of that back in is important. And then we have a DHEA cream. That's a whole other topic about the importance of DHEA for overall wellness. And then we have a fun product. It's called Chaos Calmer and it is for it's for anxiety, and you know there's a lot of that around, and so it's to help with that.

Michele Folan:

Oh, okay. Well then you get the anxiety because your cortisol is, you know, pumping out, you know, over time. Right, it's amazing how all of this is so interconnected, right? You get the sleeplessness and those issues that progesterone will definitely help with. You talk a little bit about that, like just some of the other things that progesterone does help with. Oh, yes.

Kate Wells:

So one of the things that women experience as they're going through perimenopause and through menopause is weight gain, and a lot of that can be due to a contributory fact is the fact that their progesterone levels are dropping. You know, progesterone is important for helping manage insulin and management of blood sugar, and if we're not able to utilize food for energy, to get the blood sugar into the cell to burn, to create energy, then it gets shunted off and stored as fat tissue and progesterone helps with the management of all of that. So that's one thing. Progesterone also has some interesting relationships with the neurotransmitters, the neurochemicals in our brain. Progesterone some of it, is metabolized into allopregnanolone and then from allopregnanolone that will prompt the production of GABA. And GABA is one of our calming neurotransmitters. It's the one that helps us calm down, helps us feel relaxed, and it's a counterbalance to the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate. And we do need some glutamate, but when we live stressful lives there's a tendency to make too much of it and we've got to have it balanced by GABA. But if progesterone has dropped, that's one of our major sources for making GABA or for prompting the production of GABA. So mood so it helps with mood, helps with weight management, um it, uh.

Kate Wells:

Progesterone is important for cardiovascular health. It helps um for want of a better phrase you know, keep, keep the veins and arteries, keeps them smooth and healthy so there's less likely to be a little rupture in there. And, of course, once you get apture, you need to repair that and you get a little scar and then if there's a scar there, then there's an increased risk of a blood clot. So all these little steps in the process, and then the other one, of course, is memory. Progesterone is important for the ability to remember information, to form new memories, and it's not like we're going off, you know, to go to college at age 60. I mean, I have thought about that and thought no.

Michele Folan:

Wouldn't surprise me if you did.

Kate Wells:

But we do need to remember things. Like you know, we need to plot our ways around a town. You know we need to map things. You know, when we go to the grocery store, we need to map where we find things.

Michele Folan:

We have to be able to find our car to go back out to the parking lot right.

Kate Wells:

So we still need our memories and we want our memories for the you know, 35, 40 years after menopause, for heaven's sake.

Michele Folan:

So those are just some highlights there, yeah, and so, and kind of back to estrogen too, and this is one that we didn't talk about, but bone health, the importance of of using estrogen for our bone health, I mean mean that's a huge one, because the data out there is not kind when it looks at fracture and death rates. I should say morbidity rates. Death rates Right, it's a little harsh, but morbidity rates, so that's the other one. So I always tell my listeners look, if you're a candidate for hormone therapy, find someone that will listen to you, because I think oftentimes we just the doctor says no and we just say okay and we don't advocate for ourselves. So, Kate, how do people go about getting your products? Are they prescription? No, these are over the counter.

Kate Wells:

You know these are hormones and gosh. I think you know products like ours have been available for, you know, 30, 40 years. You know demand is growing. There are a growing number of women who are not just saying to their doctor, okay, they're saying all right, well, I'm going to sort this out on my own If just because you don't know doesn't mean there isn't a solution for me. And they are on there looking for products.

Kate Wells:

So you know our website, parla-gamescom. So parla-gamescom, parlor-gamescom. You know we've got so many articles in our blog section, so go have a read through there. You can read to your heart's content. I think for quite some time going through our blogs and our products are all listed on there. But one of the things that we have that I think sets Parlor Games apart is that we have a community. We have a private Facebook group that is just for customers and in this group, customers are able to ask questions of each other. I mean it's 35,000 strong, plus now it's a lot of women in there and there will be posts. Like you know, I've been in this group for six months. I'm very shy and they're posting anonymously. This is the first time I've had the courage to ask this question, and they'll ask a question about their intimate health and before they know it, they've got 80 responses, and I love that.

Michele Folan:

It's fantastic, yeah, I mean I love the fact that women are willing to say, oh, this is what I did, or I hear you. Women just want to know that they're not out there alone on an island, Right, that they're the only ones experiencing these issues. And the other thing is, Kate is there are so many wacky symptoms of perimenopause and menopause that I mean we have no idea. I mean I started having serious perimenopause probably in my 40s. I had no idea that's what it was. No one, I had never even heard of perimenopause. Probably in my 40s. I had no idea that's what it was. No one, I'd never even heard of perimenopause till I was well into my 50s. So women just aren't fed that information and they may be walking around with something that could be so easy to solve with some hormone therapy. Yeah, Right.

Kate Wells:

Well, certainly from a perimenopause point of view, I was very fortunate to know about progesterone. Progesterone starts to drop in our I would say early 40s, because we think about how the body works. We get a surge of estrogen in the first half of the month and this is what is prompting that uterine lining to grow ready to receive an implanted egg. Then, once the egg is released from the ovary and is beginning to, you know, make its way along the fallopian tube, it has a little sack around it and that sack is the um, what's called the corpus luteum, and that is where the progesterone is stored. Now that gives us a surge of progesterone in the second half of the cycle. It says to estrogen okay, hold it, you've grown enough. Now we're going to stop and we're going to, you know, concentrate and we're going to improve the quality of this uterine lining. But it's the stopping point that makes estrogen stop. All this just like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. Now, as we get into our 40s, particularly if we've got a stressful set of activities going on in our life, we begin to miss ovulation. We still get a period, but we're not ovulating every month. And when you're not ovulating, you're not making that surge of progesterone.

Kate Wells:

In the second half You're still making your estrogen, but it is unbalanced by that progesterone and that is when your symptoms start to happen, because estrogen it's great, but too much of it is not. It can lead to bloating, it can lead to imbalances in mood, it can lead to poor sleep because we don't have the chemical messengers to help our brain calm down and rest for sleep. So those early symptoms, once you begin to see those, a woman can begin to start to use progesterone. And I was so lucky that I knew that and could start using progesterone in the same volume that I used to. And that I mean I don't. This is not a brag, it's an illustration. But I flew through that menopause transition because I had adequate progesterone and my estrogen gradually dropped and dropped and dropped and eventually caught up with, you know, low internal production. But because I was balanced all the way through and I had that supply of progesterone by supplementing, I think I had like five hot flashes and you know, yeah, it makes a world of difference, yeah.

Michele Folan:

I've never told my audience this story, but I did have a hysterectomy back in 2021 because I had very large fibroids uterine fibroids and the doctor she was wanting to do the surgery, but she said I would feel more comfortable if we could shrink these fibroids a little bit. So she put me on a course of Lupron, which, for people listening, lupron is a drug that was, I believe, developed for prostate cancer to shut off hormones hormone production in men, to quit feeding the prostate cancer. So it cut off the testosterone. So what essentially they were trying to do with me was shut off all my hormones that were possibly feeding the growth of these fibroids. Well, it didn't work, but the only thing it was successful in doing was totally shutting off every bit of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, anything that my body was taking.

Michele Folan:

So by the time I had this hysterectomy and everything's gone right, I was just depleted. There was nothing. And I didn't realize until they ran some numbers, got all my hormone numbers and they're like oh, Michele, we got to get you going again. So that was vaginal estrogen, I did oral estrogen, I did progesterone, I did testosterone all at once because I needed some help, right. So I'm a big, big fan of HRT and what it can do for women. So I so appreciate the path that you were on and getting this message out to women, and I love the community, Kate, that you've built.

Kate Wells:

Well, and that is a little bit of why we went with Parlagate for our company name. You know we picked Parlor because you know women, as I said right at the beginning, women have gathered. We've gathered in parlors and cups of tea, in our knitting or sewing, and plotted revolutions for a long time. You know, women have always gathered in community and made a difference through that, sharing ideas, helping each other out. It's what we do as women.

Kate Wells:

I joined the business world in the UK, you know, in the early, early 90s, in the in the early early 90s, and I think the UK is behind the US in terms of diversity in the workplace and I still, and I really had the grew up with this feeling there that I, I had to be like a man to be successful, um, and, and so I I'm conscious of how that is not a collaborative environment. And yet when you get women together, they are so collaborative. Our company, all but one person is female and we have such a collaborative environment. It's teamwork here year, and you know, we, we there is this growing virtual community of people like you who are engaging women together in in a virtual way to build community, and it it is the way we change the world for other women and help each other out. We have done that since there have been women and I think we should. You should be applauded for your part in that, just as much as you know for how much Parlor Games is helping women feel safe discussing these intimate issues.

Michele Folan:

Well, thank you for that, and I sometimes having these conversations means we have to be a little vulnerable ourselves. Having these conversations means we have to be a little vulnerable ourselves and because I want other women to know hey, this has been my experience, this is what's happened with me and it's okay, you know. It's okay to talk about it and I love it when friends will call me and say, hey, I have a question for you, and I love that. I love being that friend that people feel comfortable with. So anyway, Kate, running a company is very demanding and stressful. What are some of your personal self-care non-negotiables? What do you do for yourself?

Kate Wells:

The first thing I do is guard my sleep. You know, my partner and I sleep separately. We sleep in different rooms. He is restless, and he will often wake in the night and want to read in order to get back to sleep. My legs flail around the bed as if I was playing soccer, and we learned early on that we both sleep and get better sleep if we sleep separately, and so I guard my sleep. It is my space. When it gets to nine o'clock, I'm turning the lights off. It's like I'm not talking to anyone, my phone's turned off. I guard that first thing. So then exercise, exercise.

Kate Wells:

I do love to be outside. It's a little harder as I get older to be outside a lot in winter. I live in grand junction, colorado, where it is cold in winter. It is cold, but getting outside is important, and I have found I mean, you know, for heaven's sake, at at this point, I know myself I do better when I've got a goal to chase, and so you know I had not been getting out to do the hiking that I want to, and last Thursday I was out there, beautiful day, thinking all right, I need a goal.

Kate Wells:

I'm going to do at least 100 miles by my birthday in August. My stretch goal, 100 miles is a minimum. This is on mountain trails 120 is really the goal, 140 is a stretch goal and if I get to 150 miles by then, like I'm the queen. So I set myself goals because I work that way, eating right, we eat super healthily, and then, you know, keeping that spiritual grounding, you know, as we were talking about earlier, not allowing myself to get into a tizzy about having to manage it all, but really just allowing, allowing what is and living a life of gratitude. Oh my goodness, yeah, oh my goodness, I'm so grateful.

Michele Folan:

I think all of those are terrific. Those are great. What is your hope for Parlor Games and its impact on women's health in the long run? What do you have brewing there, Kate? What do you have brewing?

Kate Wells:

there, Kate. Well, so this is such an interesting question because, you know, it is literally five years ago today that Kirsten and I sat down and had our very first conversation about this.

Michele Folan:

Oh, happy anniversary, I know.

Kate Wells:

And where we two have projected, you know, looked into the future, like five years from now it's. We could not have possibly come up with the vision of what that this would be. We just knew that we wanted to help women, that we wanted to have a good product. Um, we wanted to be smart about it I mean, we're smart businesswomen and so it's never been about, you know, particularly chasing something about other than just continuing the mission, you know, and our mission is to save the world, one vagina at a time.

Kate Wells:

And I think, as long as we keep doing that and we back it up with sound science and good business acumen and a sense of humor and kindness and compassion, I think that's my goal, is that we keep doing that. Yeah, you know, and who knows where this ends up. But if we keep doing that, you know we're making a difference. And Kirstie's the same. She thinks exactly the same. I mean that's one of the beauties of this experience is that, I mean, for all that we're very different, we share such common goals, and that helps us work together so well as business partners.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, that's great. Hey, Kate, can you please share with the audience where they can find you and Parlor Games?

Kate Wells:

So we are we're all over Facebook, we're all over Instagram, but really you will get the best information. Go straight to our website at wwwparlor-gamescom.

Michele Folan:

All right, all that information will be in the show notes. Kate Wells, thanks for being here today.

Kate Wells:

Michelle, it's been lovely. Thank you so much for your interest and for such cool questions. Nicely done.

Michele Folan:

Well, thank you, I try.