#19 Pt2: 48 Symptoms, Five Archetypes, Zero One-Size-Fits-All Solutions: Mapping the Future of Menopause

In Part 2, Anna Butterworth completes the five menopause archetypes with the Post-Menopausal Visionary and the Uninformed Endurer, then explores climate impacts on hormonal health, the VC funding problem in women’s health, and the curveball questions.

Key Topics:

•  The Post-Menopausal Visionary: ageing as purpose, not decline

•  The evolutionary argument: why humans and whales go through menopause

•  Skin and vaginal dryness, muscle loss, osteoporosis in post-menopause

•  Anti-ageing culture vs. embodying age

•  Home health suites and at-home biomarker diagnostics

•  The Uninformed Endurer: the forgotten consumer

•  Low-barrier, affordable, stigma-free menopause solutions

•  Why generic, scalable tools matter as much as personalised ones

•  Upskilling primary care teams to identify menopause symptoms

•  Environmental factors: PFAS, toxins, climate change and menstrual irregularity

•  Why a one-degree temperature rise disproportionately affects women

•  VC funding models and why they’re stunting women’s health innovation

•  The Phase app and cycle-based productivity

•  Book recommendations: Invisible Women and Unwell Women

•  Anna’s unusual habit: a lifelong fascination with Mormon culture

•  Investing in your team as the highest-return decision

References & Resources Mentioned:

•  The Future of Menopause 2035 – Ultraviolet Agency report - https://www.ultravioletagency.com

•  Phase app (phaseapp.io) – cycle-based productivity tool

•  Biohacking Eve earlier episode with Maggie McDaris, founder of Phase -  https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/15-aligning-work-with-biology-maggie-mcdaris-on-cycle/id1782080943?i=1000743385443

•  Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

•  Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn

•  Iris Apfel – referenced as cultural example of ageing visionary

•  Pamela Anderson – referenced as example of natural ageing in public life

Guest Links:

•  Ultraviolet Agency – https://www.ultravioletagency.com

•  Anna Butterworth LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/annabutterworth

Insta/TikTok: @BiohackingEve
Website: www.BiohackingEve.com

Transcript

Judith Mueller (2) 0:00

Humans are one of only a handful of species that go through menopause. In almost every other species, the female dies once she can no longer reproduce. The reason we don’t? The older woman is too valuable to lose. In Part 2 of our conversation with Anna Butterworth, we meet the Post-Menopausal Visionary an aspirational figure the products haven’t caught up with yet and the Uninformed Endurer, the woman the wellness industry keeps forgetting. Then we get into why climate change is about to disrupt menstrual regularity, why VC models are stunting women’s health innovation, and the one tool that transformed Anna’s productivity as a founder and mother of almost-three. Welcome back to Biohacking Eve, health Optimization for Women with Judith Miller, where we shine a light on everything that will help you reach your best self. As a woman, as unique and individual as then you can be live long and prosper my friend.

Anna Butterworth 1:16

the post-menopausal visionary, what's so interesting about her is I think we've seen I certainly thought in the early days of my women's health career, and actually prior to that, right? Just as a woman growing up in the world, I have to say I thought menopause was something that happened to women with white hair. Who were, 80 years old. I really didn't understand that this was something that happened much younger, and we had this long experience with it. And I certainly didn't see a postmenopausal woman as an aspirational vision. Somebody that I would like to grow up to be right. There just wasn't that cultural experience for us growing up. And that's really shifting. And the post menopausal visionary is the poster child of that, right? She's in her late fifties, perhaps up to 70, 75 years old. she is super content and in control, right? She feels powerful. She feels free. She has lived a long and full life. She's confident in herself and she wants to bring her experience personally and professionally, culturally, socially. She wants to bring that to her community, to the people around her, and act as a mentor, not in a direct mentorship sort of way, but act as this powerful, aspirational person that we can all look up and aspire to be one day. And she's a really exciting individual that I'm so happy that we are seeing emerge. We've seen a little bit of this with the Iris app fulls, and it's still novel, but we're gonna begin to see this broad strokes, particularly as people age. In a natural, graceful way. Pamela Anderson is one of my favorite people on the planet, and she wears no makeup. She's had no work done. She is aging gracefully, and she really wants to make sure that she's bringing her lived experience to everyone around her, which is just incredibly powerful. This postmenopausal menopausal visionary is really at ease with herself. She prioritizes slow living, restorative movement, creative expression, nature. She blends her lifestyle with purpose and pleasure. So she participates in the community. She really pushes things forward. She's cultivating a circle of women that she mentors or is mentored by. They all uplift each other. The way that she engages with the world around her. She really invested wellness products. She advocates for women's health in the workplace and community. travels a lot, engages in aging narratives and really invests time in intergenerational connections. She's just a really exciting person to begin to emerge. I think we don't understand necessarily is that humans are the only one of the only species to go through the menopause. It's just humans and a couple of species of whale, and that's it, right? In every other in the world, as soon as the female sex are unable to reproduce, they die. Humans go through the menopause because the older woman is so incredibly important to society that we have this experience where be long beyond being able to reproduce. We're still there and it's because of this. Experience that we can bring to culture to the society. That means that we've been kept around for millennia, right? This is not a coincidence. it's we have to understand that older women are incredibly important to our culture and our, to our society. And the postmenopausal visionary really exudes that. We'll start with her pain points though. So some of the challenges that she has at the moment are dryness. So skin and vaginal dryness are really big challenges in in menopause. Still not a huge number of solutions that are designed specifically for that life stage. Still much younger, still lots of anti-aging stuff. It is not what she's interested in. She's not trying to defy age, she's trying to embody it. Muscle loss and disrupted sleep. So muscle loss is a really big problem in menopause and we think a lot about cardio health and cardiovascular health also incredibly important. muscle loss can be really challenging. And and osteoporosis is another big pain point of menopause and post menopause. making sure that we start working out in the right ways earlier. And this postmenopausal visionary is lifting weights. She understands that she needs to do those things, but environmental health factors are really impacting her. So she's a little bit more susceptible to things like toxins and pollution. They're all impacting her health and wellbeing and her longevity. So figuring out ways that we can extract those from her day-to-day life are going to be incredibly important. Although we're seeing this shift, she's still feeling a little bit invisible as she ages in professional and public places. She's doing everything she can to counteract it. But broad strokes outside of her immediate community, she's still feeling a little bit invisible. So finding ways we can uplift and support her will be incredibly important. Although she's tech enabled and she likes digital tools. She really wants something that goes beyond basic symptom management. She's having a complex range of experiences and she needs something that's specifically designed for her. Right now, all of these tools are still designed for much younger women not building out for her experiences. We are still seeing this culture of youth and this culture of anti-aging and she's doing everything she can to buck that trend. there's still this residual challenge that she's experiencing and she's doing everything she can, but we all need to be doing that as well. Understanding her value as an individual and as our postmenopausal visionary, she's looking for in terms of tech and product preferences, evidence led health technologies that address the root causes of postmenopausal symptoms. So we're still masking symptoms. We're trying to treat symptoms rather than root causes, and that can be a really challenging thing. She doesn't wanna spend too long with complicated technologies. She wants minimalist and intuitive digital tools that enhance her wellbeing without her having to spend too much time tracking and inputting. She wants to spend time in nature. She wants to spend time with her family in her community, and she wants longevity focused products that support her mobility, cognitive clarity, sleep quality, and metabolic health without too much disruption to her everyday life. She wants the human touch. She wants expert guidance. She wants symptom check-ins, but she wants it to be something that is, is relatively light touch and allow her to support lifestyle. Again, we've got lots of guidance here on how you can talk to her, how you can position your brand and your product, how you can meet her needs in a way that is meaningful to her. For, in terms of products and services, there are lots of interesting ways that we can think about strength and vitality through hybrid programming that combine metabolic training, strength training, hormonal optimization, all those sorts of things in order to give her this really interesting holistic combined solution. She's also looking at ways that she can use her experience. So visionary leadership opportunities, immersive coaching experiences, future thinking and archetypal, physi psychology and strategic leadership development. All of those sorts of things will be ways that she can utilize her experience in meaningful ways in the community and in the workplace. Looking at ways that we can listen to her more ultimately. And then we've got lots of we are really excited about the way that sort of at home longevity. Will be dealt with. Home health suites at home, biomarking diagnostic systems that can look at your bone health, that can look at inflammation, metabolic longevity, whether or not you are integrating HRT. All of those things will be much more there'll be at home tools that will start to see going forward and I'm very excited about. And then finally, looking at structures. As we talked about there's this focus on we're still being very focused on youth and anti-aging and using and cultural developments. We can start to bring these brilliant, vibrant women into our into our everyday lives. So looking at intergenerational mentorship frameworks, inclusive wellbeing environments. Looking at the, again, the wisdom workforce models and integrating postmenopausal health into our long-term care pathways will all be really vital in building structures that really support our postmenopausal visionary. So finally the four archetypes that we've looked at are, one a couple of key themes that thread through all of them is they're empowered, they're comfortable advocating for themselves. They're educated and aware of what's happening, and they're actively looking for solutions to support them through their menopausal journey. Now there is a really key consumer that doesn't really have any of those things the uninformed endura. She has not been fully educated on her health and wellbeing. She's not been tracking her cycle for decades. In fact, what she's been doing is often masking a lot of her experiences as a woman through perhaps she's been on the pill to mask difficult periods or painful heavy periods. She is not hyper aware that her emotional dysregulation, her poor sleep, her cognitive challenges, she's not super aware that those are being driven by her hormones. It and she's feeling a little bit confused. She's feeling a little bit overwhelmed and ashamed sometimes of those experiences that she's having. And she's never really felt super comfortable talking about her health and wellbeing with her family or her friends. It's just not something that comes up. And I think in the women's health space particularly, we often forget about her. We are so used to being in this little bubble of women who understand their health and are looking for solutions and want this technology and want to build something better that we often forget about this uninformed endura and this person that we need really to support through education and handholding first. although, she's in the workplace, she has a family, she's got a lot of work and responsibilities at home and professionally but her body is changing, her experiences are changing. She feels very different. And she often feels very confused by these things, and she doesn't really know what to do. She often ignores or masks her symptoms with things like caffeine and alcohol and painkillers as we all do, right? And is not spending the time to, to really look at what the root causes are. And that's not a criticism on her. She just was never given the tools to do that. And she sometimes feels a bit embarrassed, disgusting symptoms. It might be from incontinence to brain, fogs to sleeplessness. can feel very difficult and it can feel very, it's exhausting to be masking these things and just trying to manage and deal in the world, which adds an extra layer as well. We really wanna make sure that we are still building for this uninformed endura going forward because we, she often gets forgotten about, I think, in particularly by the women's health industry. Some of her biggest pain points. I don't think it's gonna be that hard to understand what her pain points are, but she feels very overwhelmed. There's a lot of contradictory health information. She doesn't really know where to start or where to begin. Even just knowing the sorts of things to Google right to search for, we take for granted now that we are a little bit more informed and a little bit more educated, that we understand the sorts of questions that we need to be asking. But even just that is, is an incredibly privileged place to be. So knowing the sorts of challenges, even knowing the kinds of questions to ask your GP can be very difficult if you haven't been educated in that way before. So often digital tools can feel a little bit too complex or expensive. Maybe she feels like they're not for her. They're not built for her, and quite often they're not really. She needs tools that are easily accessible. And she needs to understand the types of treatment options that exist or the types of things that she should be thinking about. Even knowing what is normal and what is not normal, what is manageable, what's not manageable, what can be treated, what can't be treated, all of these things. She really needs support, understanding. So what she's looking for are really simple, beginner friendly tools that have very clear instructions, very little jargon. They're affordable. She's not yet prepared. She's never spent a huge amount of money on her health and wellbeing. It's, she's not she's not an indulge, right? Her family and her friends and her community, they always come first. making sure that we have really low barrier digital health solutions, low barrier, affordable symptom solutions. Really easy to implement into her lifestyle through nutrition and supplementation as well. All of these things need to be private. They need to be stigma free. She doesn't necessarily want to be talking about it with her friends and family, but she needs to be able to,, we want to make sure that she knows that these can be solved and we can help her, right? So looking at retail based solutions where she can pop into her local store and it's very low barrier to entry. It's not something that she needs to search around for ages. She understands they're in spaces that she already frequents and in places that she trusts. So these are going to be really important. And again, we've got lots of information here on how you can meet her where she already is. So what that looks like are things like beginner friendly menopause starter kits. So this is really easy to understand. Education tools, symptom tracking very basic supplementation. it doesn't have to be hyper personalized. we talk a lot about personalization and prevention when it comes to the latest innovations in women's health and where this is going. While yes, personalization and prevention are gonna be incredibly important, making sure that we have lots of generic tools that can actually scale very cheaply and very easily, and can reach people in lower socioeconomic communities that don't have the access to personalization, that don't have access to DNA tests and and trackers that will track Q 24 7. Making sure we build a lot of generic solutions are gonna be really important as well. This also looks at micro interventions, small accessible products for immediate relief that are discreet and she can access and she can have in her purse and she can get in her local pharmacy. Those sorts of things are also going to really change the game for her. sure that we have, human LED tools as well. She might not necessarily feel as comfortable dealing with digital technologies, and she wants to hear from individuals, nurse led, doctor led interventions and ultra simple symptom trackers. Now when we're thinking about how we can build structures that support her, again, discretion is incredibly important. But as we start to see workplace benefits start to integrate menopause, she might not even be thinking about the menopause as an impact for her. So looking at ways that we can build education through generic conversations, through generic workshops will be really important. And that includes anything in the workplace and anything in the community. It shouldn't necessarily be driven by as a core factor because it might not be something that she's even considering. what is really key here upskilling our primary care. teams as well. So she is likely to go to her GP before she is likely to go to the internet for solutions. And what she's going to the GP for might be symptoms that she isn't relating to the menopause. It's up to the GPS to then understand where these symptoms are coming from and what these root causes are. So making sure that we're upskilling our primary care team. And also looking at the ways that we can support each other, peer to peer as well. So local community, peer-to-peer support groups will be ways that she can feel, seen, heard without it being too much of an impact on her day-to-day life.

Judith Mueller 17:53

Fantastic. Well done. You ready for the curve ball questions? All right, so what are three things that you wish your colleagues and or clients would know that you believe would really move the needle in your field? Are there any, any itches that you would like to scratch in the sense you just get frustrated by like if people knew that it would make such a difference.

Anna Butterworth 18:15

the biggest one for me is that we are still looking at solving point solutions. So we've talked a lot about products and services here that will solve the needs of these individuals. But what I think the root of all of this comes down to across the board in women's health is building tools that serve us. From our first period, right the way through to post menopause. We have a incredibly complex range of experiences and everything is impacted and underpinned by our hormonal fluctuations. So understanding hormones, understanding our menstrual cycle, how it begins, how we get pregnant, how it impacts us through pregnancy, post pregnancy, through perimenopause, through post menopause, what all of those different impacts are and how they impact us individually, what the comorbidity factors are that is fundamental to all of this, right? It's all very well building a digital tool for post-menopausal visionary, but what we need to understand is that there is this underpinning of hormonal fluctuations that still hasn't been rigorously tested. We still don't have enough clinical data on it, and the information that we do have is still a little bit too generic. It's not intersectional and it's not building in factors that will be, impacting us going forward. Things like environmental EE even, climate change the global warming. Increasing the global temperature by one degree will actually impact women much more significantly than men. This is turning into quite a few different things, but ultimately the main thing is understanding hormones, how going forward the climate factor is gonna impact women more significantly than men. And then the third one I think is the fact that we have incredible talent across the women's health industry, but we are all being stunted by lack of investment. And it means that we need alternative forms of funding because VC funding is actually stunting the industry and is not allowing us to grow sustainably. And it's making it very difficult for us to build this holistic all purpose solution. We need to be looking at this differently.

Judith Mueller 20:23

This is interesting. So I did an early episode precisely around the VC funding because if you say the typical pitch of something like 10 minutes, but if it takes you nine minutes to actually explain what the problem is to, you know, male audience who just doesn't have that lift experience, that makes it very difficult. Actually. Tell us a bit more on the environmental factors. You've mentioned, global warming.

Anna Butterworth 20:44

so there are a couple of things that really impact women specifically. So on global warming and the increased heat, obviously in menopause you'll have hot flushes. That's very clear. It can impact fertility, it can also impact brain fog and it will impact we're actually moving towards a future where through things like the climate crisis pfas and toxins, the menstrual cycle is much less likely to be regular. So as we are putting a lot of inf a lot of research into understanding our menstrual cycles now, they're actually very likely to change over the next 10, 20, 30 years as and be much less regular, which will create a whole other range of factors and challenges from from my health and wellbeing, from a fertility perspective, but and from a menopausal perspective as well, but across the board. That's

Judith Mueller 21:38

Okay, that,

Anna Butterworth 21:38

interesting.

Judith Mueller 21:39

that is very interesting because I don't think anyone's linked to global warming to fertility issues. Very interesting. But that makes sense. But if you have more toxins, that will have all sorts of endocrinological impacts. And then obviously whether it's menopause. Whether it's fertility. Okay. Super interesting. So what is the book or books you've given most as a gift and why? Or alternatively, what are want free books that have greatly influenced your life and why?

Anna Butterworth 22:03

easy, invisible women. Unwell women are the two, right? They're the ones that I always say whenever anyone talks about it. Have you read Invisible Women? Have you read Unwell Women? Those are the two big ones. I always give them, you can't work in this industry without reading them. I don't think you can live in this world without understanding it. Those are my two big ones for sure. And

Judith Mueller 22:22

Interesting. And what purchase of a hundred pounds, dollars, euros, or less has most positively impacted your life in the last, say, two to three years on recent memory?

Anna Butterworth 22:32

purchase? This could be something.

Judith Mueller 22:34

Oh, so this could be something very personal. This, this doesn't have to be to do with fem tech.

Anna Butterworth 22:40

I run my own business. I am a mother of two, almost three four. Under four and a half. My time is incredibly stretched and I need to make sure that every single minute of my day is utilized as effectively as possible. So integrating this is gonna sound very on brand, but integrating a productivity tool that is based on my menstrual cycle was by far the biggest impact I had, or had the biggest impact on my productivity and on my ability to use my time as effectively as possible. The one that I use is phase, and it has been unbelievably brilliant. It meant that I was able to block out time for, those really boring admin tasks. Make sure that I'm doing my pitches on my most communicative and powerful days. And it really just made it structuring my business practice, structuring my lifestyle in a way that I could make sure that I was maximizing each day. and it just, it changed my life. Now I'm pregnant. I can't use it right now, but I'll come back I'm using it again. I can't wait.

Judith Mueller 23:50

So did on that, we actually did an episode with Maggie Mc, who's the founder phase.io so highly recommend that. So she talks about, you know, these different cycle phases, but how you actually harness them because contrary to popular belief, you don't have two good weeks, two shit weeks, but you can actually do something with the shit weeks. Which I thought that's, this is really interesting. So so very highly recommend that,

Anna Butterworth 24:11

question.

Judith Mueller 24:12

the same question for a thousand pounds or less. So anything that has, what is the thing that has or doesn't have to be a thing, physical thing? What has most positively impacted your life? That is a spend of a less than a thousand pounds, dollars, euros, or less.

Anna Butterworth 24:28

I don't spend any money. I don't know. valid

Judith Mueller 24:32

That's also valid answer. Fantastic. Alright,

Anna Butterworth 24:34

kids. I'm on my

Judith Mueller 24:35

let's.

Anna Butterworth 24:36

I don't spend any money on myself.

Judith Mueller 24:39

what is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've ever made? This could be an investment of money, term, and energy,

Anna Butterworth 24:45

moving into women's. When I did, when I first started at LV 10 years ago, I was not expecting a career in women's health. I wanted to work on a tool where you could play computer games with your vagina, right? I thought it was just such a cool idea. I had no interest in the gender data gap. I had no

Judith Mueller 25:02

I.

Anna Butterworth 25:02

the gender health gap, but that's where I learned about it, and I became completely radicalized in this mission of improving women's health. And so by far the best investment I've ever made of my time has been the needle and changing the game in women's health. And I feel like we've done a lot of work up to now the way the women's health industry has changed over the last 10 years is mind blowing. And I do feel like I've had a hand in that and I feel, I've done my little piece there and I look forward to spending the rest of my life co changing it more and making it even

Judith Mueller 25:31

Awesome. And what is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

Anna Butterworth 25:39

Alright.

Judith Mueller 25:40

Alright

Anna Butterworth 25:41

any piece of culture to do with Mormons? consume absolutely anything,

Judith Mueller 25:48

enough.

Anna Butterworth 25:49

Documentary, every show. And I know Mormons have become very popular in the last three years. This is something that I've been a bit obsessed with since my teens. So

Judith Mueller 26:01

This, this is not an answer I've heard before, so thank you for broadening my horizon.

Anna Butterworth 26:06

grill me on anything to do with Mormons and I will. History, current affairs, you name it, I've got it the bank.

Judith Mueller 26:14

Fantastic.

Anna Butterworth 26:15

And

Judith Mueller 26:15

Okay. And what are you working on at the moment and or what is the next exciting breakthrough that you can see coming?

Anna Butterworth 26:23

What I'm working on at the moment, we've got a big roster of reports coming this year. A couple have already been published and, we've got a few more coming out this year, so just really excited to work on those. And obviously my growing family as well.

Judith Mueller 26:36

And we'll add the links, not to the family, but to the reports,

Anna Butterworth 26:39

online, so

Judith Mueller 26:40

the show notes. Fair enough. All right. And who would be your perfect sidekick in your work? This could be someone past or present real or imagined.

Anna Butterworth 26:51

I got my perfect sidekicks already. My team are brilliant and this is the first time I was lucky enough this year when I went on maternity leave to be able to hand over and delegate to my team. And it has been the biggest, that was probably one of the biggest things. If you wanna talk about investment, investing in my team was probably certainly the biggest one that changed my life. Being able to, take a maternity leave, but being able to to pull back a little bit, at least from client facing work and just hand over to my team was really great.

Judith Mueller 27:20

Do you know what strikes me when I ask that question to men? They're like, oh, you know Marcus Aurelius and I don't know Tim Ferriss and all the rest of them. The women always thank their team. I find that very, very interesting. Alright.. Thank you so much for coming on.

27:39

Thank you for joining me on this transformative journey. Your presence in this community is truly valued. Now, you may not realize it, but your words hold in men's power. They have the ability to reach others. You may benefit greatly from the wisdom shared here. If you found value in what you had, I kindly ask you to take a moment to subscribe to by Hacking Eve. Leave a glow and review on your preferred podcast platform and share by Hacking Eve with your friends and family. Your support helps spread the message of health optimization for women far and white. Lastly, I want to express my gratitude to you for investing in yourself. We're prioritizing your wellbeing, new service, and inspiration to others. I'm eagerly looking forward to bringing you many more exciting episodes, and thank you for being a vital part of our community. Live long and prosper, my friend. The Biohacking Eve Health Optimization for Women Podcast is for general informational purposes only, and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services. Including the given of medical advice and no doctor patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be substituted for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of the healthcare professionals for any such conditions. In addition, the information on this podcast does not constitute investment or financial advice.