Fertility Reimagined-with Kirsten Karchmer

Kirsten Karchmer shares her revolutionary approach to women's fertility through technology, transforming how we understand reproductive health and making effective solutions accessible to all women regardless of budget or location.

• Former competitive athlete diagnosed with MS at 19 whose healing journey led her to become one of the first board-certified reproductive acupuncturists
• Created an AI-powered app after treating over 10,000 infertile women that has increased natural conception rates by 150-260%
• Operates as a complete virtual care team including AI analysis, personalized nutrition, targeted supplements, and emotional support
• Identifies three key indicators for successful pregnancy: sufficient energy, temperatures reaching 98° after ovulation, and healthy bleeding patterns
• Challenges the concept of "unexplained infertility" by looking at underlying health patterns that conventional medicine often overlooks
• Discovered through research with 16,000 women that only 8% had optimal energy levels for fertility
• Emphasizes the damage "hustle culture" does to women's health and fertility
• Offers first month free on the Conceivable app for women to experience personalized fertility guidance
• Plans to expand the platform to support women's health needs from first menstruation through menopause

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:15

All right, guys. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Nicole Baldwin, board-certified family nurse practitioner, and my good friend and colleague, kelly White, also board-certified nurse practitioner, and today we have a special guest, kirsten Karchmer. Did I say that correctly? Perfectly, okay. And so she is with us today and she's going to talk about something that has been her passion for the last eight years and it's something that definitely pertains to what we're doing. We see women that are struggling with fertility issues, women that want to get pregnant, that want to get pregnant again, and all the things. So we're going to let Kirsten here take over and we're going to let her tell you what she does, how she can help you or someone that you know that may need her assistance. So go ahead, kirsten, if you could just give us some insight to what the heck's going on and how, how you got to where you are and why you're talking about it.

From MS to Acupuncture Revolution

Speaker 2 1:05

Sure. So quick background. I was a competitive athlete and my whole life I was a gymnast. And then, when I was 19, I got diagnosed with MS and I was really sick. I couldn't walk without a cane. I was really, really sick.

Speaker 2 1:17

But the medications were very early then and I just was afraid to start taking them. I was just like there's no longitudinal studies yet and you know, just feel nervous about it and but wasn't into alternative medicine anyway and ended up going to an acupuncturist against my will and I was like telling my friend I was like that's crap, like it's going to a psychic, basically. And she's like no, no, like what if it could help you? And what that doctor told me changed the course of my life. He said look, here's the thing. When you were born your body was really robust. Everything just worked right. You had plenty of energy, everything was taken care of. But then you trained like crazy your whole childhood, like trained in a hot Texas gym until I threw up most days. And what was interesting and problematic is my father was very he's not alive anymore, but he was very proud of that. You know, he's like you are so tough, you are so unstoppable, you will like break yourself to win, and I think this is actually a big problem today, right, because we have this hustle culture. We have all this thing, which is not useful for women's bodies. I don't know about men's bodies, I mean, I know about male fertility, but I know for females this is not working Like well.

Speaker 2 2:28

When I come back, I'm going to go to acupuncture school, and when I was in acupuncture school, I saw that every single symptom in Chinese medicine about reproduction in a period is diagnostically relevant. The days between bleeding, the timing of ovulation, the consistency, color, quality of cervical discharge, the amount, the type and the severity of PMS, the volume of blood, the color of blood clotting, cramping, temperatures and a whole bunch of other ones tell us everything. It's literally. It's kind of cheeky, but like it's really like checking under the hood, like you can understand so much of what's going on in a woman's body. And so I opened one of the first acupuncture centers in the US for fertility and then end up being the first board certified reproductive acupuncturist and I ended up treating over 10,000 infertile women, but then that was like over 20 ish years.

Speaker 2 3:26

I read a study in 2016 that said that less than 3% of couples could afford fertility treatments. And I cried because I was like I'm such a jerk Like I didn't know that, but still, like you know, I could have done a little bit of research and I knew that. A jerk Like I didn't know that, but still, like you know, I could have done a little bit of research and I knew that a lot of people couldn't afford our services. And in that moment I was like I'm going to try to build some technology to help make fertility affordable for all people. I'm going to take what I learned over and over 200 patients a week, just fertility patients. You will learn a lot about one subspecialty.

Speaker 2 3:57

And then we built the first version of the app and while we were building it I was like if it's 50% as good as me, it's worth doing it. Of course we're not going to be able to get it like as good as me. I'm me kind of with ego and they're like okay, so we did it, we did a pilot. So we me, 105 patients coming to me to the clinic twice a week for four months, 105 women all infertile. Uh, no human interaction, only using the app. And that's before even all the ai was baked into it.

Building the Fertility Technology

Speaker 2 4:26

And after the data scientists came back. They're like oh, we got the analysis finished and it's like it didn't work, did it? And they're like it worked. And I was like did she get close to me? We call her she the ai and he's like did she get close to me? He goes actually, you got close to her, she beat you by six percent. And I was like what in the royal f? No way, there's no way she beat me. And they're like pretty consistently across the board.

Speaker 2 4:51

And and it brought two things up for me first, there's a saying in chinese medicine chinese medicine is full of sayings the good doctor treats the patient, the great doctor treats, but the master will make herself obsolete.

Speaker 2 5:03

And that saying kind of saved me on that day because I was like well, I guess I made myself not all acupuncturists, but I made myself obsolete in my clinic. There's no way I'm charging people $5,000 if I can charge them $15 and get better results. That seems like a no brainer to me. And so it's really. We've been working on this for 25 years, but it's only been in the last year, eight years, that we've been building the algorithm. It took eight years to get to basically built a digital care team like an AI digital twin of myself and then a digital care team. So therapists, nutritionists, data scientists, formulator for your supplements, and that you can also interact with those all the time. And that was a super long introduction. Introduction, but you kind of need to know the whole lay of the land to be able to like, interact in a meaningful way.

Speaker 1 5:49

I love that. So something you said really, really spoke to me about hustle and I grew up with very. I grew up very poor on a dairy farm. My dad worked very hard for very little. My grandfather did the same work very hard for very little. But they knew how to hustle and they I saw how hard they worked and I wanted to work that hard. I wanted to make sure in my life that I worked that hard, or, if it's even possible, harder, because I wanted to make sure that that that I was the best me.

Hustle Culture's Impact on Women's Health

Speaker 1 6:26

But as I got into medicine, we I became somewhere along the way, and I don't know if it's it's a generational thing. I don't know if it's. I think it maybe is a time thing, just because of how we work. But society has, because now we're social media. Back then there was no internet, right, so hustling meant a very different thing. But in today's world, hustling is worn as a badge of honor, and that's okay. That's okay. Everybody should have a hustle, right, that's good, but not to the point of burnout. And so you know, wearing hustle as a badge of honor can be a tricky thing to balance, and I know that's something that you said was. You know, just it's insane.

Speaker 2 7:14

So we interviewed 16,000 women last year and the first question that we ask in our consultation, both in in person and in the app, is what's your energy like on a one to 10 without caffeine or exercise for two days? And 8%. I like to see eight out of 10, like that's for optimal fertility. Eight out of 10,. Only 8% said their energy was eight or better. 50% said five or below. Wow, and and and.

Speaker 2 7:44

When I speak with women, you know I'm like well, tell me about your day. And like well, I get up at five o'clock in the morning and then I go to the gym and then I come back and I make breakfast for my family, and then I do this and then I make lunches for everybody and then I go to my job and then I work, work, work, work, work. Do you take a lunch? No, I eat at my desk. Then I get done at five o'clock, I go to the grocery store and then I get stuff. Then I come home and I cook dinner and I do the groceries and I do the laundry, and then it's nine o'clock and then I watch TV for an hour and I fall asleep after drinking a bunch of wine because they're so stressed. That is no life.

Speaker 1 8:13

Yes.

Speaker 2 8:14

That is no life. And and yet I think it's around. I think it's around like we have social media telling us like that we need to look a certain way, we need to dress a certain way, like it's really kind of impacted individuality. I think even my daughter, who's 20, who lives with me, she said the other day she goes. You know, when I was in junior high, everybody was really ugly and dorky because we didn't have social media yet. Everybody was really ugly and dorky because we didn't have social media yet. It's very early, you know, and so we didn't have any training and but she goes. But there was a lot of individualism. You know she used to like to wear a front ponytail, not in junior high but in elementary school, you know like mismatched socks she's like.

Speaker 2 8:51

But because of social media, everybody feels like it's becoming very homogenous and that homogenous homogeneity is expensive, and so then you have to work harder to have more money to buy the stuff to, you know, and so you get into this vicious not virtuous vicious cycle and then you know everyone's fertility and health is really plummeting and we're like, I don't know, it's unexplained, like it's totally explainable. I've never in 25 years seen a case of unexplained infertility that I couldn't explain. It doesn't mean I could fix it, but it wasn't like huh. I have no idea why this person isn't getting pregnant. I've never happened, not even a single time.

Speaker 1 9:29

I mean I've been like I'm sorry, Go ahead, Go. No, no, you go. Is this why I've heard and this is just anecdotal when people quit trying is when they get pregnant, because the stress.

Speaker 2 9:43

I don't know. You know it's like I think that, um, certainly, when we're stressed, everything gets constricted, including our blood vessels, right, which you know. You see, people who are super stressed, they'll have a lot of clotting in their menstrual blood. When you look at their basal body temperature line, if they're really stressed and have a lot of PMS, it'll be very sawtooth versus very smooth, right, the liver is not metabolizing the hormones well and you see this disruption, and so I don't know why they get pregnant on there, because typically you have to fix all the things before they get pregnant.

Speaker 2 10:12

So I would suspect that the ones who are getting pregnant on trips we basically built a predictive analytics tool to predict the likelihood of natural conception, and if their score was above 60, they had an exponentially higher likelihood of getting pregnant. If your score is 70, I expect you to be pregnant in the next four or five months, because a perfectly healthy 18 year old will get pregnant about four every four months. And so you know I lost my train of thought because we were talking about so many things. We'll just keep going to the next thing.

The Next Operating System of Women's Health

Speaker 1 11:08

Okay, that's okay. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of got off too. So tell us about your app, about what it does and all the things.

Speaker 2 11:18

Yeah. So what we're building is we don't like to call it an app, and the reason for that is that I think that typically what we think of as apps are trackers and fertility monitors, which I hate. I think they should actually be illegal. That's a whole other topic we can talk about, because fertility trackers they ingest information and they just report back right. They're expensive and they're extremely stress producing for women who are struggling to get pregnant. And what they're teaching women to me is very unethical, because they're saying it's okay if you ovulate on cycle day 50, we'll catch it with this expensive strip, even though by cycle day 50, for ovulating cycle day 50, that egg's no good anymore.

Speaker 2 12:00

The data is abundantly clear that past cycle day 21, the egg has started to break down. We see significant increased risk for miscarriage and just not getting pregnant in the first place, but no one is talking about that. That in theory they're like I've had 13 miscarriages, you know, and I was like huh, telling, like what's going on? And then you start seeing all these underlying issues that could be repaired very easily before they try to get pregnant, so that we can make sure that they stay pregnant, which for us, that's the only number that we look at. So this app again, if you imagine, it's a virtual care team. So you start off, you download the app and it's kind of janky, right. It's still a first version of it, but it gets the job done right. Increased women's likelihood of natural conception by between 150 to 260% in four months, with no human interaction, no labs, no pharmaceuticals like all diet, lifestyle, behavioral health, highly targeted. So you go through kind of a long assessment. You're collecting all the data so that the app, that's Kirsten AI, can figure out what are all the underlying issues that we need to work with, even if they're tiny, right. And then she figures out all the underlying issues and then she groups them into patterns related to energy, related to blood, related to temperature, related to hormones, and then she builds with the team. They build a curated, customized plan. So what behaviors do we want to start working on to improve that? What foods? So she gets a chef and the chef's like tell me what you like, what you don't like, what week is your period, how many people are eating? We designed the chef to make it very easy for people. So really you're only cooking dinner. You make something for breakfast that you have every day. Snacks are kind of you can make a bunch of, and then dinner makes enough for lunch for both of you for the next day.

Speaker 2 13:38

Because we want to make sure that we're improving hubby's health, even if he's not even trying to improve it in the first place. We have a therapist right, who does, who's trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and compassion therapy, because the stress and the grief related with fertility and miscarriage is quite intense and we want to keep people out of flight or fright. So you know, every time that they're like see something on these stupid trackers and they're like oh my God, my PGD is 47.6. What the hell does that mean? Oh my gosh, google, google, google. They say, take a screenshot of it. They send it to me like what does this mean? What do I do? We solved for that. So, going back to your question why we don't want to call this app, is because what we're calling it is the next operating system of women's health. So while we're starting infertility, the platform will ultimately meet the needs of all women from before they start their first period through postpartum.

Speaker 2 14:28

And because it's an operating system versus an app is because it's a system right. The user comes on, she shares data. We have a wearable that's also sharing data. We have a face scan that's coming out in the next month to do body composition, heart rate variability, blood pressure, so that we can use that in pregnancy to predict adverse birth events. And then it's taking that information, analyzing it and making a hypothesis about how to repair it, telling her here's how you repair it. And we want you to track every single thing that you're doing and not doing.

Speaker 2 15:00

And when they're tracking that, then when she comes back, the app checks in with her next week and it can say like hey, I was looking, that I know we're working on energy, but you're still only getting five hours of sleep. How can I help you? Is it? Is it because you can't fall asleep or stay asleep, or you don't wake up rested? And then she says I can't stay asleep. And then she might say, okay, well, tell me about your caffeine intake, let's start trying to figure out why you're not falling asleep. And starts just praying, problem solving problems, just like you and I would do in the clinic. You know, you guys and I I don't want to say y'all, I'm a Texan and and then figure like oh, kelly's Texan, and, and I'm a y'all girl okay, great, then we'll say it.

Speaker 2 15:37

I have a bunch of team all over the world and at first they're like um, what is y'all? I'm like y'all is the greatest word that was ever invented practically amen. It's very hard when you're talking to two people. What do you say? Like you all. That seems super weird. Or you anywho, use, like my parents from new york, use guys, that's what they say guys canadians these guys?

Functional Medicine Integration

Speaker 2 15:56

these guys, yeah, they're up in upstate new york, yeah, so anyway. So get this bi-directional. So what's happening is is the ai is seeing a presentation, a complex presentation. It's analyzing it, it's making a hypothesis about how to fix the system, not the symptom. That's a big difference, right? We're not trying to fix low progesterone. This is not a medical device. It's a wellness platform and so it doesn't have to fix low progesterone because the low progesterone is coming from low temperatures, like if you have your patients and you see, oh, I wonder how their progesterone is. Well, you can check progesterone on cycle day 21,. But, remembering that progesterone is so pulsatile, if we check it at eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, two o'clock, four o'clock the next day, it's gonna be completely different. But you can see that if the temperatures are getting to 98 within a couple of days of ovulation and staying there sustainably 90% of the time, their progesterone is fine and it's stable throughout the month, not just on one day. So, anyways, the algorithm's looking at, then it's telling her what to do. If she's doing it and it's not working, then the algorithm is learning. In this presentation, this recommendation actually doesn't work. Or in this, when we try to get her to stop drinking coffee. How we recommended to stop drinking coffee is not working, so we need to come up with a new one and the algorithm needs to learn. So we get more data, we get more input, we get more output, we get more results. That feeds the data that AI can learn. It gets better. No-transcript, it's pretty cool. Also, you get a formulator.

Speaker 2 17:25

So based on the information, like people always say, what supplements should I take for fertility? I said none. There are no supplements that are good for fertility, apart from a high quality prenatal. There are a lot of high quality supplements that can be really effective If we know the underlying issues that we need to target. People always show me this huge basket Like here's my supplements. My naturopath told me to take like 40 supplements. Like why are you taking this? I don't know. Why are you taking this? I don't know. Have you felt different? I don't even know Right. I'm like usually four or five, six supplements would be a ton and we figured out a way we had our supplements.

Speaker 2 17:58

We used to have a clinical grade line of supplements. They were really expensive, like think, like metagenics, thorne, super high quality, and I just didn't want to skimp, even though everything we're doing is to try to make it more affordable. But this was a piece that wasn't working because I was like you know, it's like $400 a month for supplements and I'm not here to like make a fortune. I'm here to win the Nobel prize Actually, that's my ultimate legal because I want to prove that you can.

Speaker 2 18:21

You can take care of women's health for almost nothing. That's that's my goal is to prove that we can do almost all of it. We can put all of the power back into women's hands. We can make women the hero of the story and actually we can make the work of our physicians and PAs way easier, because if we clear out all the lifestyle problems, they're not coming to you with a thousand symptoms Like I've got this and I've got this, and I've got this and I've got this, and then then it starts like it's very hard to make a good diagnosis because there's actually it's very convoluted. So if we can send them to the doctors when we're not able to make an impact, then the physicians can see that and see like oh, there's like three main symptoms. This is a lot easier and we know this is not related to lifestyle. Right, then our diagnostic ability becomes way more precise. Health care gets more efficient, but anyway.

Speaker 2 19:06

So in the supplements we were able to partner with a new manufacturer same quality supplements. You can basically get individual packs made like for each day of the month, with the supplements that are specifically targeted to your specific underlying issues, for about 50 bucks and we have a coupon save 40,. You get 40% off your first order. What I've just been telling people they're like. I was like there's no margin for us on this hardly. It is outcomes. I need outcomes to prove that when you do this right Consistently in about 10,000 years, that way we can have people's insurance paying for this.

Supplement Formulation and Affordability

Speaker 1 19:40

That's amazing. I'm going to Kelly. What are your thoughts? Like I know, this is your wheelhouse One of. Like I know you, this is, this is your wheelhouse One of them. I mean, you're just, you know, obviously have multiple talents, but this is this is one of your wheelhouses.

Speaker 3 19:55

So what are your thoughts? What's going through your head? So I am sitting here just listening to the perfect blend of women's health meets functional medicine and a one stop shop Like it. It sounds like the perfect blend of functional medicine with an underlying twist. Like you are taking all the things that I spend an hour digging in with a patient, like, literally, a patient's first visit with me is an hour, hour and a half. It can even push two hours going through all of like you said. They come to you with a laundry list of problems, going through all of like you said, they come to you with a laundry list of problems and I literally go through a patient's review of systems from head to toe and I go through every single thing with them and we touch on it. And then, at the end of all of those things we've touched on, we go back and we pick the top three things Because, like you said, when you narrow down all those things, there's typically three big ones that are the resounding problem, like that's really the medical diagnosis, and I tell them, once we clean up these things, the rest of that stuff will fall into place.

Speaker 3 20:58

And once they get going with, like you said, the sleep and the nutrition and the diet and the exercise and the caffeine and the like. You get all those things piled up. The rest of the stuff starts to fix itself, and so then you can narrow down. There's truly only two or three big medical diagnoses that we have to address and what takes me an hour and a half or an hour for each patient. This program that you've designed could essentially do that through this replication of learning this person over and over and over, at the leisure of the person doing it, as opposed to coming in with a structured hour, hour and a half visit, you know, with a provider, and so it sounds like something that could, at the end of it, tie into a pretty bow, something for someone like me that I can just dig in and be like okay, the program has tied all of this up and sent to me. Now I have top three things to deal with.

Speaker 2 22:00

So it yeah, so it's interesting. So we have a web app. That was the first version of it. That's very ugly, but there's a piece of it that hasn't gotten moved into the iOS app yet and it's basically just an AI version of acupuncture me, so they can take their phone and share it with the acute, with their clinician. And for you guys, you would need a little bit different, but I'm thinking we could probably create that for you.

Speaker 2 22:21

Where the like, there's a lot of acupuncturists who don't have very much experience treating fertility and it's actually quite complex to be effective, and so what we want to do is just, like you know, say, you live in a really small town in Maine and there's only one acupuncturist and they haven't treated very much fertility. We want to make sure that that resource is going to help, so that acupuncturists can chat with AI me and say what's this person's Chinese medicine diagnosis? And it'll not just say, it'll say a whole report like they have cheat efficiency, because this, this and this, they have blood deficiency, this. What are the herbs I should use? What points should I use? But we could do the same thing from a functional point of view. Maybe you'll help me tell me what you want in there, because I only know what I want as acupuncturist, so I'm happy to do that. It is, I mean, part of this. It's interesting because what we used to do in the app was actually it would be like a chat interface the the assessment, because I wanted it to feel like my consultation was like yours.

Speaker 2 23:13

It was very long, but if you got to the consultation, there was so much teaching that happened that at the end of it, people like whoa, I'm coming here, but also, but they get a lot. They they're like, they see, because at first they're like I don't think anything's wrong and then you detail all the little tiny things and you've got this whole pile of stuff to work on. And then they're like, okay, I need to get to work, you know, but it was just too long in the app, so we switched it to a survey, at least for now, because people weren't finishing it. They're dropping off me like how many questions? Holy crap, it's like 30 minutes.

Speaker 2 23:44

But yeah, I think that's a great idea. I mean, how do we make, how do we use AI to, to make everybody more efficient, to allow our clinicians to use the best parts of their brain and not and just eliminate the repetitive things that aren't actually changing the outcomes for our patients, like they need to get the education, but do you need to be the person delivering it to them to get the outcome?

Speaker 3 24:07

Do you feel like moving forward, especially like Nicole and I are? We're seeing a lot of transitional patients right now. So we have this period of time where we have patients that are very willing and want a lot of technology and AI and don't waste my time and I want gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme and. But then we have we still have this clientele that are, you know, they're in their forties, fifties, sixties. They don't want that. They want me to spend an hour with them and talking to them and holding their hand, Like we have a patient liaison who will spend an hour on the phone with them and that's what they want with them, and that's what they want. So what do you feel like in your research? Do you feel like patients or people at large are ready for something like this, or do you think that you're still going to be like? We're in a time where we have a transitional population of patients, where it's still going to be one or the other, Probably.

Speaker 2 25:00

What's interesting is, the people that I see the most resistance from are the young ones. Really, like my children are 20 and 22. And anytime I show them like cool AI things I'm making, like oh gross, I hate.

Speaker 3 25:12

AI, my daughter is 27. And you know, the other day she told me the same thing she goes. I just think it's creepy. Mom, ai is just creepy, it's creepy.

Speaker 2 25:21

Yep. So I think there's two sides. It's like the older, the older ones, the thing that's unique and why we started with fertility, not only because that's what I spent my career I mean, we have patents on like applying this to all the same principles, to all of women's health but because women who really can't get pregnant are way more compliant, and so they will put up with a little bit of a janky app. You know that they'll put up with. They don't want to, they don't want to use yeah, they don't want to use the AI, but they want to have a baby and they don't want to spend $25,000. They're like well pocket, I'm going to do it anyways because I even though I don't want it, cause this seems cheaper and I like the idea that I don't have to take a bunch of chemicals, IVFs. But I think that we need to help people to get ready to stay pregnant. We need to take the pressure and the focus off the BFP. They call it like the big fat positive, because infertile women will miscarry at least 40% of the time. I think we can make that much lower if we do the work to help people to prepare to stay pregnant. What I saw in 20 years.

Supporting Women Through Perimenopause

Speaker 2 26:25

Three things have to work to stay pregnant. You need enough energy Fatigue is highly correlated with miscarriage. You need temperatures that get to the 98s and stay there after ovulation, without any herbs or any supplements to do that. It is such a strong predictor of whether the person will stay pregnant or not. And then we need lining. We need four days of bleeding, soaking a tampon or a pad about every four hours, with no cramping, clotting or spotting. Those people will stay pregnant. So these people, they have all that. They're not getting pregnant. This was when iui makes a total sense to me. They have one day of bleeding, their their cycles 50 days long. It doesn't make sense to me because if they have a 50-day cycle, they probably have insulin resistance or sugar issues or adrenal adrenal issues we probably need to repair because we're going to have a quality issue. If that makes sense, yeah, oh, absolutely it does to me, yeah.

Speaker 1 27:16

It does make more sense to Kelly than me, but I definitely, I definitely get what you're putting down. I, I, I absolutely, absolutely do. I think it, I think it's incredible because just you creating this is something that is so much more reachable to patients than the thousands and thousands of dollars, and that's, I think, what the core of what we do as well. You know, we, we, I got into telehealth, for one of the reasons was we want to help patients in rural areas who wouldn't otherwise have access to care. We want to help patients in rural areas who wouldn't otherwise have access to care. Sometimes you're in a small town and there's one or none acupuncturists or there are, you know, no fertility specialists that, you know, is, you know, world renowned or whatever, and we're just good, yeah, yeah, they're fair to good Right, which is you know everybody's you know learning, and so sometimes it just is what it is, and so this really just gets people, just gets them engaged where they're at and meets them where they're at, and I really, really like that.

Speaker 2 28:17

Thank you, I like it too Go ahead.

Speaker 3 28:20

I was just going to say so where are you at on this journey? Like, when can folks expect to see this groundbreaking technology be accessible to?

Speaker 2 28:29

them. They can go right to the Apple Store and download it today Conceivable with Kai, but if you just look up conceivable, you can find that, yeah, they can start using it today. We're gearing up for a whole new version that'll be ready in about two months, but it's perfectly good right now. It can still do all the things that we talked about. What's coming is this face scan technology, which I'm super excited about. We do have a wearable. We have a ring that's similar to the aura ring.

Speaker 2 28:52

It's the first ring that can non-invasively measure glucose a monitor not measure, monitor, so it's not fda cleared device for like a diabetic or using for insulin. In that survey that we did with 16 000 women, we asked them what's your blood sugar? High, low or normal, like literally. Seven or eight people knew.

Speaker 2 29:11

And because it's so tied to reproductive outcomes. I was like, well, we should. We should figure out how to measure that, and I know people don't want to use it. You know a non-invasive, but it's expensive, right Every place. Every little thing that you add on adds more expense. And so how can we affordably get all of this data for the patients so that we're we're helping them to heal their bodies? And what I like most about what we're doing, just from the feedback that we've been getting for women, is that, like when I used to be on acupuncturist and they would get pregnant, people would say, oh, kirsten got me knocked up. You know, kirsten got me.

Speaker 1 29:42

I love that but.

Speaker 2 29:44

I don't like that because I don't want to be the hero of the story. I want them to be the hero of the story. And why the app? Why, yeah? Why the app beat me was because when you go to acupuncture, they lay on the table and they get a treatment, and maybe they get a bottle of herbs and they say eat more iron, cause we need to make more blood. Like okay, okay, yes or no, maybe Right, but when they're doing the app, it's all on them. They have to learn about themselves.

Speaker 2 30:10

We make it so easy and I mean it's not hard learning, but but what happens is you start to understand how your body works and how your body currently isn't working and how it's related to what you're doing, and that actually you have all the control. You have all the power and all the control to get it the way that you want it. Like 85% of. Of course, there's things that, like I'm never going to get rid of my MS, but I can get it pretty handled right, and so then they become transformed because of that journey. When you do it yourself, you're a different person after that, and so then hopefully they're a different kind of mother, right? And then you have a generational impact, right, those mothers are now feeding their children different. When their daughters are having periods, they're talking about them differently. All those will have apps for that. You know, like experiences, we're calling them, not apps, so that we're tying all of those pieces together, both for this generation and future generations.

Speaker 1 31:01

I love that. So if someone, if we have a patient that is struggling with fertility, we can tell them to download the app. Conceivable and it's $15 a month, is that?

Speaker 2 31:14

what you said, yeah, and the first month is free, so they can. And what I tell people is like, download it for free and work it. Like often when we get things that are free, we're lazy about it but think like I'm going to get every drop of goodness out of this and see what happens there. It's not possible. If you do everything that the app tells you and it's not that much, like probably you can do everything in 15 or 20 minutes a day. If you follow the app, you will see your score go up and you will start to feel differently.

Speaker 2 32:08

Take your supplements, you know, I think the packs. The first pack is like $25. It's different because different things, ingredients will be in it. But we try to make that first experience such a no brainer so that it all they have to do is try. So they start to see, oh God, I did a little bit every day and I'm really different. My period was really different, the blood was different, the color, the consistency, the volume, the timing, and they start getting this like I think I can. I think I can. And that's where, like, the flywheel starts.

Speaker 1 32:41

I love that, all right. Well, thank you for joining us today. We? I think what you're doing is absolutely amazing, and I'm so glad that we were able to connect to you, and we will definitely be sending some patients your way, just because there's a lot of women out there struggling, and this is something that any one of them can do very, very easily, and and when you win the Nobel prize, let us know so we can support you and be there cheering you on and be excited for you, because this is amazing work and I have no doubt, no doubt at all that you are going to at some point win that prize.

Speaker 2 33:15

Well, that'll be fun because it's like some acupuncturist right, I'll be old lady by then, but like you know, some that'll be like and this year's Nobel Prize goes to an acupuncturist. That's weird, weird.

Speaker 2 33:25

Um but yeah, I don't care, I mean mostly. I just, you know, too often like I was on with a surgeon on a show last week and the surgeon was like at first he was very skeptical, you know, and he's like, well, what's the data? And I was like, talking about the day, he's like, oh, what about this day? And I was like there's data on that too. And what about this data? And then he was like, huh, you're convincing me. This is very compelling, you know.

Speaker 2 33:47

But there is this, you know, this mindset that it's like even when we first did the personalized packs of supplements, we only took like a 15% margin and and we had a coupon for the first time and no one was buying. And I was like, what in the freak? These are so high quality and they're so affordable. People like I emailed a bunch of people and they're like it seems like a scam, it's too cheap. So we raised the prices. Even though I didn't want to raise the prices, I wanted it to be like whoa, that's a baller deal.

Speaker 2 34:25

I'm patient potential, like we don't call them patients anymore, but in a way that feels safe and comfortable to them. Certainly, you know, suggestion from you guys makes a big impact. What I'll say is, if your patients are using it, definitely like, ask them if they can share it with you and look at it and you guys can download it to play around with it. You know, happy to send you a code to if you just want to use it and see what happens. But anything that I can do to make like, as you're looking at it, your patients use, like, like what you're saying, kelly, like a report of, basically, these are the most important things that I'll make.

Speaker 2 34:57

That because, however we can make the seamless integration between you know what's happening in the app and the Western medical community. We help women more right, so the just the better that we can serve each other, the better women's health will become. We'll have less infertility, less miscarriages, healthier women, happier and hopefully even more powerful women. I'm always like if 82% of women have life interrupting, PMS and cramping every month, I was like what happens to society?

Speaker 3 35:28

when we get rid of that I just see this to be like once you have perfected and you're so close this you know conception and you've got this all down and you've won your prize, then I'm going to come back to you and you are going to create a hormone therapy, perimenopause, menopausal program for those women, and it's just going to be fantastic. I see it, I just see it. It's going to be great.

Speaker 2 35:54

Well, maybe you can help me with it, because it isn't. It's in our playbook, like it'll be before the Nobel Prize. It'll be this year that they'll.

Speaker 3 36:02

I would love to help you with that, because that is where I am right now.

Speaker 3 36:05

Nicole and I are both on the perimenopausal not so fun bandwagon and I do a ton of hormone therapy with women and perimenopause and menopause is a huge, huge, huge soapbox of mine and I spend a lot of time with women managing that time of their life because it is something that very much like fertility. We don't talk about fertility, we don't talk about it, women don't talk about it, and it goes back less than fertility. Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back to what you mentioned earlier with that hustle, that hustle culture. We carry that into our forties and fifties and we continue to try to be that woman while our testosterone levels drop and our estrogen levels drop and, like all of our hormones just naturally like, go away and we're fighting this uphill battle of fatigue and exhaustion and bone loss and muscle loss and it's just, it is awful, and so I spent a lot of time dealing with that, and so I I I see your program being something that would benefit that class of women immensely.

Speaker 2 37:09

Yes, especially because also that therapy piece right so that they can get emotional support. Because you feel so. I mean I'm 56. Like you feel so crazy Sometimes. You know you're like I had a period of a year where I just had, did not have a brain. I thought I was convinced I had Alzheimer's and I was like, oh my gosh, I must have I't. I would be in the middle of a consultation and then be like what were we talking about? Like just it was horrible and and I'm a clinician just like you guys and still you know it's, it's really it's a big lift, but it's really important and it lasts a long time.

Speaker 3 37:44

Like I'm 45. I think last weekend I was texting Nicole and I was like I had a major meltdown, Like I finally had to look at my husband and go stop asking me what's wrong. I need you to stop asking Like, just stop. You went down to murder town man. Yes, I was like, please just stop asking me. It is not you go away.

Speaker 1 38:02

I was like it must be in the air or those like something, because like a few days before the weekend, like I had gotten up and there was just like one little thing, just, and I'm pretty like we are pretty happy-go-lucky glass half full people, yes, but I was just like off the chain, like what. I don't even who is this person, I don't know. And I was just like off the chain, like what. I don't even who is this person, I don't know. And I'm asking Kelly, I'm like because I started hormone therapy, I'm like, is this like a side?

Speaker 3 38:34

effect of that Like.

Speaker 1 38:35

I'm losing my mind. So I think this, yes, this, this will definitely go from conception to the other to the other side, walk women through from beginning to end.

Speaker 3 38:48

I see this program being something that women could use literally from beginning to end of life. I just I see it Okay.

Speaker 2 38:55

Well, I'm coming back to you in a couple months Well, probably like six months Cause I will need help. I will definitely need help for this, so we'll have you wait. So all the like, all the agents, they have like basically cartoon versions of themselves, so you can be the menopause coach. Yes, I love that. I would love that. That's what she does for me in real life. So we're good. I need it too. I should do a consultation with you. I was just thinking I didn't ever take hormone replacement, but lately all my friends are taking it and they're feeling a lot better and I was like me either.

Speaker 1 39:25

I was against it forever and then I'm like, okay, okay, something's got to give. Yes, yes, I just started, literally a month ago. I was like all right, kelly, I got to have a consult with you. I swear to God Cause, I was like I'm going to tough this out, I don't need a home replacement, I'm just going to go through it, I'm going to suck it up and it'll be fine. I just got to get through it and I was like. I was just like at a place where I'm like okay, I need help.

Speaker 3 39:51

I told. So uh, kirsten, I'll tell you a funny story real quick. I told a friend of mine the other day. I was like if men woke up one day and all of their testosterone had suddenly disappeared, yeah would be hospitalized. Yet women are expected to suddenly one day have low estrogen, no testosterone, low progesterone, and that they're just supposed to live with that. And they're just told to oh, we'll meditate or do some yoga or get some sleep, or maybe you need therapy.

Speaker 2 40:23

No, and Like I do need all those things, but I need some goddamn estrogen.

Speaker 3 40:27

Yes, yes, give me some testosterone, like what is the?

Speaker 2 40:31

deal Like all those things would be helpful, but I need something that I don't have.

Speaker 3 40:37

Yes, and so I just I was like you know what. It is just not okay that women's health is seen so differently in that light, and I think that you know there was a provider not too long ago that quite literally picked a fight with the FDA about why testosterone is not approved for hormone therapy in women. We, our ovaries, make testosterone. We need testosterone.

Speaker 3 40:57

It's part of testosterone, yeah, and so it's not just for sexual health, it is also for our bone strength and our muscle strength and our memory and brain fog and like it is part of who we are and it serves so much more of an endocrine necessity and so, anyway, you can I can go off forever about that but I think that having that access for women to understand you don't have to live that way. There are options, and we know enough now to know that. You know 20 years ago when they said you know it was natural to go through that process, you hormones are scary, they're going to cause cancer.

Speaker 2 41:32

We know better than that now yeah, there's a lot, a lot of new data that really changes. That. I'm really excited about that. I've met a lot of people that I want to like pull into, like the app experience, because we have a lot of work to do. You know, there's a lot of people who really really need us. But you know one thing that that I just I've been thinking a lot about just the political situation.

Uniting Women: "I Stand With Her"

Speaker 2 41:53

I don't want to have a big politics talk on y'all show, but, but I was just thinking how, like you know, a lot of people say, like you know, even women are now sort of divided politically, two sides of the party and and women's rights are being, you know, eviscerated pretty much, and I was like I think we need to start a new political party that's just women. Like I stand with her, like we have got to start relating with all of the women on this planet as our sisters, like irregardless of race or politics or whatever is happening in the world. Like we're the future of the species not me anymore, and not y'all either, but but you know, like, in general, none of us well, because we're past having children, you know, true, but but we are the progenitors of the rest of the species. It's actually a really important like opportunity, responsibility gift, call it whatever you want. It's not the only reason that we were put on earth. Some people will say that, like the only reason I was put on earth is to have a baby.

Speaker 2 42:51

Like, no, first of all, I don't know if we were put on earth or not, but like you're here and like what could happen if we started to like get women healthy and actually find ways to find common ground with women, to come together in support of all women, to protect women, to advocate for women, like we.

Speaker 2 43:12

We've had, you know, generations of people talking shit to us about how inferior we are and all these other things, when it's just simply not true. You know, but we've internalized that and so because of that, we don't think we're worthy to stand up to what's happening to us, medically, politically. You know I saw that they just removed from the human rights and I can't remember the organization, the one that they report the human rights violations to but now the US isn't reporting human rights violations to women anymore Yep, to me that's like so that they can start violating our human rights more. I don't know if that's true or not, but the point is is how can we continue to think of ways to to be like all women on this planet, like they're, we're, we're part of a tribe and and we're we're really going to have a bad situation if we don't come together and start to ask for what we want, fight for it and get it, because no one else is going to. You know.

Speaker 3 44:14

I like that mantra I stand with her. So, kirsten, you start it Hashtag I stand with her and I'm right there with you because I think that and I respectfully disagree. I think we are a part of that, because I think that women should support women through their entire lifespan, from beginning to end. So I think that you know I stand with her. All of us should.

Speaker 2 44:34

Agreed. Well, I stand with you guys. For sure I can tell we're going to be friends. This is good when?

Speaker 3 44:39

are you in Texas, by the way? It is such a pleasure to meet you and learn all of what you're doing. Thank you so much for joining us, she asked you where you were in Texas.

Speaker 2 44:46

She asked you where you were in.

Speaker 3 44:47

Texas. Oh, so I am just outside of Abilene. Abilene is West Texas, kind of West-ish.

Speaker 2 44:59

Central, so I'm about three hours two and a half hours West of Fort Worth on I-20. I grew up in Arlington. Oh yeah, so where are you at Austin? So I was trying to think how far we were. I could just come to my consultation with you in person.

Speaker 3 45:08

So you are. Well, you'd have to come to my house because I'm telemedicine, but you're welcome in my house. You're welcome, I I. You are about four hours four and a half ish hours South of me.

Speaker 2 45:17

Okay, that's not too bad. Yeah, we're the only state right when you can just drive for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and never leave.

Speaker 3 45:24

I know, I know and people will be like I'll ask them you know, how far is something like? Oh, it's quite a ways, it's like 45 minutes away. I'm like dude, that's not far. That's like driving to the grocery store, yeah.

Speaker 2 45:35

And dodging tornadoes and stuff.

Speaker 1 45:38

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 45:39

You guys. Thank you so much for having me today. This for having me today. This has been such a great conversation. I've really really appreciated getting to connect with you guys and know you a little bit.

Speaker 1 45:48

Okay, so all the women download the conceivable app and there is more to come with that, and it is going to just grow from here, so grow like wildfire. So thank you for joining us today and hope you have a very blessed evening.

Speaker 3 46:01

All right, thanks everybody, thank you.