From Perimenopause to Femtech: A Holistic Approach to Women's Health. Interview with Heidi Davis

Have you ever found yourself contending with symptoms such as hot flashes, sleep disturbances, irritability, or anxiety? These could be the signs of perimenopause, a stage in a woman's life that barely gets the consideration it deserves.

In today's episode I have the pleasure of talking to Heidi Davis CEO and Co-founder of Identifyher.ai

Heidi has a an Msc in Molecular Medicine and  was included on the Incredible women in health tech the 2022 longlist published by Health Tech World.

We discuss all things perimenopause related;

From how it can begin as early as the mid-30s.

To how it can lead to a host of disruptive symptoms (that are often misunderstood due to the lack of conclusive diagnostic tests).

But the conversation doesn't stop at understanding perimenopause.

We explore how technology is revolutionizing our approach to women's health, bringing down the limitations of self-reported dietary and health habits.
Heidi explains the many benefits of having reliable data that women can even take to their healthcare professional to actually show them what's going on, rather than having to remember a whole bunch of symptoms.

Get to know the potential of wearable devices in providing more reliable data, and let's shed light on the subtle differences between how diseases manifest in women compared to men.
The disparities in health outcomes are alarming, and there is a pressing need for more research and funding into products designed specifically for women's health.

Finally, let's dive into the challenges and opportunities in designing women's health products.

We share our thoughts on the current wellness industry trends like supplement overload and high costs, and how they can be avoided.

You'll hear about the importance of gender inclusivity in the design process and discover how both genders can contribute to better health outcomes for women.

Definitely check out, and support where you can, Identifyher.ai's work towards a future where women's health is understood, recognized, and prioritized.

Obviously you can find Identifyher online;

The website is full of good info
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Playing us out this week "Heaven on Earth" by "mommy issues"

Transcript

Peter Lap: 2:08

So let's start at the beginning. What is perimenopause and when does it actually start?

Heidi Davis: 2:14

Yeah, I suppose perimenopause is really that period leading up to menopause and it's really important to really say what menopause is. First, because menopause is diagnosed as the 12 months without a period and you're going through symptoms. It often happens around the 51-52 mark, but perimenopause happens a lot earlier. So on average it's 4 to 8 years before menopause happens, but it can be. So. 45 is the average age of perimenopause starting, but it can start as early as you know you're mid 30s. But what happens during perimenopause is you're experiencing menopausal symptoms and it can be really debilitating, but you're still having periods, so you're not getting that diagnosis. And that's one of the things we're doing at Identify Her is to really help women are going through this period where there is no clear diagnostic test to give them assurance that this is perimenopause and you can navigate your way through it.

Peter Lap: 3:11

Yeah, because that's a really tricky one, isn't it? Because I remember one of my wife's friends went through it when she was in her early 30s so that was very early. And Wendy, my wife went through it in her let's say 40s, that she's early 40s she's a bit older now and she had no idea what was happening really, because she just thought I'm too young to be going for any of this sort of stuff. It can't be the menopause yet and therefore it can't be anything at all. She had no idea what to do and therefore it's almost like do you remember the Netflix series House of Cards, which started off really well and everything then went horribly wrong with Kevin Spacey and we couldn't watch it anymore. Well, that's what that's kind of all some people know about, I think. Yeah, you get hot flashes and you have to stand in front of the fridge for a while to cool down, but there's a bit more to it, I know, isn't it?

Heidi Davis: 4:10

Oh, there's so much more to it and you're so right. It's that guesswork, you know, mainly at the start. It's I don't know what's going on. We have, you know, we have talked to so many women now and there's women that just said I thought I was going mad. Yeah, you know, I thought it was seriously ill. I and a lot of them went to the doctor and they then went and got, you know, MRIs, they got dexas, they got so much done because there is no clear diagnostic test there to do.

Heidi Davis: 4:38

And so women actually don't know what's going on. So this whole guesswork needs to change. Like women's hormonal health throughout our lives is really cyclical, right? So we've got kind of before, when we were teenagers, we went through these mood changes, you know, maybe more anxious, more irritable, but then we had parents and somebody said this the other day that you had parents like what just went? Okay, do you know what? It's just one of those days we're going to leave her alone. But when you're older, you don't have parents that say we're going to leave you alone.

Heidi Davis: 5:11

You know children that might be teenagers going through this hormonal thing and they're getting irritable. And you're getting irritable but you're also feeling guilty because as an older individual, you now think about others, but yourself, the teenager only thinks about themselves, and so you know this whole guesswork is just crazy. So that's what we really decided to do at Identify Her is to provide objective information on menopausal symptoms so that we can help early detection of perimenopausal symptoms and help women understand what they're going through is, understand their personal journey, but also take the guesswork away so that they can test management strategies and be able to say, okay, this is working, I can see it, you know it's tracking it, so so we're taking away that mystery that seems to be there and really is causing, you know, prolonged suffering and unnecessary worry for a lot of women.

Peter Lap: 6:11

Oh for sure, Because I see it a lot with my clients that are in their early 40s. You know they start having sleep difficulty sleeping and all that sort of stuff. A bit more irritable, like you said, maybe a bit more anxious, and they go because they're all, to be relatively blunt, they're middle class and have a bit of money. The wellness industry is very keen these days to sell them supplements immediately. Right, that's the thing. You don't sleep, take more magnesium. Don't even bother with the reason why you're not sleeping, just don't sleep. Take more magnesium. Need eggs, take more vitamin B2 or whatever it is. So what symptoms? Because there's a ton of them, I know that. What symptoms should should women kind of be looking out for? That could be part of the whole perimenopause sort of thing.

Heidi Davis: 7:00

Yeah, you've kind of said it there. There's so many of them and it's so individual. So you can talk to your friends and they might say one thing and you're thinking, no, I'm still not perimenopausal. So yeah, sleep disturbance is actually a huge one and a lot of them get it early on and it's not something you would say, oh, is this down to perimenopause? You just think you're having poor sleep, but actually it could be that perimenopause itself and the hormone imbalance and magnesium isn't going to fix that alone. Anyway, then you have the kind of mood changes that, that irritability that just comes.

Heidi Davis: 7:36

Anxiety is a big one we've found from women and very often they don't realize it very early on, you know. So it happens really slowly over time. So you start off feeling a little bit more anxious and actually end up withdrawing yourself from social circles, but it's happened so slowly over time that you haven't noticed it yourself. So once you start noticing that you might be, you know, wrestling worries and newfound anxiety when you're going to bed and spending hours doing that, that could be one early sign. It doesn't mean you're perimenopausal, it means you should still look at that as something isn't right. It's not how I used to be and not just put it down to stress. So that's the other thing with perimenopausal. A lot of us just put down stress because you are often very busy at that time. You know you've probably done quite well within your job and progressed there. So you're at a time in your life where you're not in the kind of easy jobs you're in, the more required they require a lot more. You might have kids, you might also have elderly parents. That you're minding and I think that's what often happens is that women put it down to just there's just so much going on and it is important to try and find time where you can put a little bit of that away as well, because managing it does come down to trying to manage your lifestyle as well as, very often, hormone therapy.

Heidi Davis: 8:56

You know there's loads of options, but these are really the symptoms that we see kind of early in perimenopausal. And then you have the hot flushes, the vasomotor symptoms, the night sweats. We often find a lot of women notice the night sweats first and then hot flushes during the day later on. And then we also see that it's not necessarily perimenopausal, but over time as you go through your cycle, your monthly cycle. There's certain times during your cycle where you get really anxious so you have poor sleep. It can be the same time every month.

Heidi Davis: 9:28

So, really understanding your symptoms and tracking them, not ignoring them. But if things change, if it's either mood or if it's physical joint pains, for example there's so many. I could go on and on. The list is there and I don't think the list is complete. But the point is, once your body is telling you something is different, you really should learn about it, educate yourself about it and, like we do in Identify Her is, track it. You know we want to give objective data to take away the guesswork, because it can be hard to recognize. But really it is about taking your body seriously and if you see changes, don't ignore it, don't put it down to stress and don't necessarily let your doctor always guide you and take you to the hospital either, you know, and it is about taking that, empowering yourself by educating yourself and taking that information and trying to really, I guess, guide your own health in many ways.

Peter Lap: 10:27

Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I did an interview a long time ago with Dr Kylie Burton. She's an American proper doctor who's also into functional medicine. So I know functional medicine still has a really bad reputation in the UK because there's a lot of quacks in it. But you know people who have both the PhD and are proper medical doctors and she's one of those guys and she says that you know, most people forget that their health is always in a fluctuating state, it's always moving and therefore they don't know what the norm is for them. Right, and it's so easy to go to a GP these days and say I feel a bit more anxious, and the GP immediately goes well, we have COVID, the world is going to pot, there's a couple of wars happening. So you know, here's some pills, right, that is the go to. Let's give you some anxiety medication, some Cytolopram or whatever they throw your way.

Peter Lap: 11:28

And before you know it, you're taking those pills for eight or nine years because it's not actually fixing anything, because there is not. Fundamentally, your access is not necessarily what the actual problem is, and it's so easy to then say, oh, what you need to do is that medicine, meditation. Today, your access that's will magically disappear. So you buy a headspace subscription and, like I said, you don't sleep well. So you buy some magnesium and before you know, you're loaded on supplements and loads of wellness stuff and it's not working, simply because you don't really know what the problem is. Right, you, you don't realize that the change in you. Because, that's what I said, there's quite a stigma attached to menopause, as in, menopause means you're aging. Yeah, and that is, I think, for a lot of women that I've come across in the early 40s that are saying that I Just can't be this year because I'm not old enough. But men don't have this problem, right?

Heidi Davis: 12:35

No, it's funny, it's very different. It's there's more ageism towards women. Whether we've created it a little bit ourselves or if it's driven by both sexes, I'm not sure, but the truth is there is more ageism Towards women and there there is this, you know, requirement of staying beautiful, staying and now also working and being successful. There's just so much going on. But that whole thing of Women, you know, going to the doctor, saying their answers You're right, they're getting anti anxiety medications or they're getting anti-psychotics, and it doesn't actually fix the problem. It fixes a symptom, yeah, perhaps, and not even always, but it can fix the symptoms, but it doesn't fix the underlying problems. And there's just such an importance in Advocating for yourself in health and particularly for women, because there's so little done like medicine and science have been led by men and done by men on men until very recently, and now it's changing, but wrong at the start of actually understanding women and doctors have been trained with what has been, you know, produced the date. So I do think when you go into a doctor you can only expect so much. Our Idea that, even with time from identified here, is that we can help doctors so we can say this is prescribed from you to women that come in. So if you do suspect that, even if you haven't been trained that much on menopause or perimenopause, that you can put this on them and then you get more information so that you can give a diagnosis and and whether they need it or not, for month therapy or give lifestyle changes. So that's that's really important. There's this gap where clinicians don't actually have the information they need. In many ways that hasn't been done, and then there's women that expect the clinician to just fix it. You know, like here I am and it's not working, but it is changing now. You know women are really this, this bigger revolution. Women are demanding better healthcare and I do think women are better at advocating for themselves and their health than men, and so what we really want is for women to understand their bodies, clinicians to better understand women as well as they come in, and to get this understanding.

Heidi Davis: 14:51

Going back to another point you said of it's not, it's not old when you're perimenopausal, like you said, one of your, your wife's friend, was early 30s. Now that is really early. But even 40s, I mean, it's so early. So it's not, it is a part of our aging process, but that happens really early. You know we're always. It's a continuum. So I also think that whole this menopause, that's the 12 months, that was kind of easy. 12 months, no period, yeah, your menopausal, it's a day now you're postmenopausal.

Heidi Davis: 15:21

But for perimenopause it's discontinuum really. You know it starts really early. Some women don't really notice the symptoms until they're closer to 45, but it is a part of the aging process and we call it perimenopause. But it's very broad. You know. We can go from having very mild symptoms that are totally fine and your your functioning fine at work, to very debilitating symptoms where you know you take a more sick days, eventually leaving your job and that's very dire to say, but it's the truth, it's what's happening and even the information. That whole Area is now Less taboo, particularly in the UK and Ireland and it is everywhere else and I know because we talked to other you know people from other countries where they go.

Heidi Davis: 16:06

What are you talking about? Let's not talk about it. They get very you kind of put back. But for me it's so natural to talk about it that I talked to anybody about menopause or perimenopause. You know I do it all the time and the US is getting more open. There's loads coming out about, and I think that's what we need. You know, the conversation needs to be open. It is open now Starting to open, and in some countries they're ahead of others. But that's gonna really really help.

Heidi Davis: 16:31

Number one Understanding when you're experiencing symptoms that that could be perimenopause. I've talked to loads of women that said, look, only now that I see all the information out there, I'm realizing actually I've been living with perimenopause for the last five years, yeah, and I really do need to do something because I want to go out and have fun again. I've just been sitting at home because I was too anxious to go out, or whatever the reason might be. Or I'm exhausted because I haven't slept for five years, but I just never put it down to perimenopause. And these are nurses, these are, you know, people that you think would know. So the truth is we need more information with a conversation to be open.

Heidi Davis: 17:07

Taboo needs to go. It's not you're not getting older where the only mammal that outlives our menopause. There's a reason for that it's because you need us. Revolutionist said you need women past menopause. So that means we're really important whatever age we are. But you know, it happens really young. So, yeah, it needs to go. That's just, and you know you.

Heidi Davis: 17:28

You talk to some women that have got through it. Now. There are women that have symptoms until the 70 and 80 but that feel like they've gotten over the worst of it or they have the better side of it and they just say, look, it's great when you get to the other side as well. You know there's so many good things, but what we want is it's not that we're trying to have a negative conversation about perimenopause and saying how awful it is, but we need the awareness that women are struggling and that's what we're trying to do. And then we're saying but we can now provide information from identity her so that you can navigate all your challenges during perimenopause much better and much easier and actually having you know better quality of life as you go through it.

Heidi Davis: 18:09

The other thing that's really important as well with understanding perimenopause early on is actually future risk of disease and chronic disease, because the symptoms are linked to chronic disease. So ignoring it is just not a viable solution. It just means you're now saying, okay, I'm gonna compromise my quality of life throughout these years and then I'm gonna walk into chronic disease because I never did anything about the symptoms. So there's just so many things that is important to do now for women to understand. It doesn't mean you're old, it just means you have to find a way to navigate it, and if you navigate it right, you're now setting yourself up on a much better health journey during perimenopause and beyond.

Peter Lap: 18:53

Yes, because that's a big thing is it's? It is just information, as in a diagnosis of perimenopause, so to speak, is just information. You're already going through it. Anyways, this is this is just Having a proper diagnosis, so to speak, just just gives you the chance to do something about it in the right way, rather than trying to address loads of issues, maybe addressing the wrong issue, because, like you said, that is, there is a clear link between Certain things that people take for a lesser for, say, anxiety and all that sort of stuff and Some chronic illnesses later on. So if you get described the wrong stuff, you're making a Situation that isn't actually that bad. You're turning that into a A more troublesome situation potentially.

Heidi Davis: 19:45

Yeah, I think the whole perimenopause area. You know the symptoms themselves some women are happy to suffer through. But it's like I said why would you want to suffer through and then walk into cardiovascular disease that if you actually manage the symptoms it means that you're at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis. You know all these terrible things that we don't want too early, because women actually outlive men. But we have onset of disease as an average of 64 years and that's the same for men. So that means we're really just outliving you with a poor quality of life. So we do need to extend that kind of quality or life side of things. So what we have, I guess, just to kind of mention what we are doing at Identifier, a wearable sensor, is it under the breast and it continuously monitors menopausal symptoms and it sends it to a connected app on the phone. So very similar to a Fitbit that sends steps to your phone on the app, or you can see it Now, this one won't have a display, it sits under the breast but everything comes up on the connected app and it will give you then how many night sweats, hot flushes, you've had the frequency, the severity. So both are, you know, informative for the woman but also for a clinician. It looks at anxiety and sleep quality. So they're, of course, for symptoms, and we will continue to expand as we go.

Heidi Davis: 21:10

And the whole idea is that women can then track their symptoms, understand their perimenopausal progression and then also track what management strategies are working and not working. They can overlap it with activities. So we know that there are lifestyle changes that can help not for all women, but it can. So you can look at activity, overlap it with symptoms. So if you see that if you take a morning walk every day, this is just an example but that reduces your anxiety throughout the day, you know that that's an important thing to implement every day for yourself. And it also comes back to the supplements.

Heidi Davis: 21:47

So there's so many supplements for menopausal, for each of the symptoms, for I mean, it just is endless. The oil is getting bigger and bigger, and there I am not personally against supplements, but it is much more unregulated. So the problem is you don't know which ones will work and which ones do work. We have had women come in and say well, I pay 200 Euro a month for supplements and one of them is working, but I'm terrified of going off any of them, because I don't know which one it is, so they're just paying for that. So, really, this will give you, then, from the wearable that we've created, it will give them the information they need to see. Actually, this one is doing some things. I can continue paying if you're willing to do that I want to do that or these are not doing anything.

Heidi Davis: 22:31

So I'm just you know, I'm just buying it to buy it. So it really is to help women navigate and find the right personalised management strategy for them. And then also if they want to be able to share the information with the clinician and whether that is for lifestyle changes or hormone therapy, and if it's hormone therapy, even that with clinicians it's a big black box. It's personalised. If you go to menopause specialists, that's all they do they in and they out. But we've done research and actually 60% of menopause specialists said that they really do struggle to get accurate information from self reporting of symptoms. Of course, yeah, yeah, so it's really hard. And 40% of them said that they actually struggle to have enough time to provide a diagnosis because it's so complex and an overlaps and they obviously don't want to ignore anything that's really serious. So these are the menopause specialists and the general GP's tend to think they're okay from what we've seen, but we don't know that most women that go to their general GP's don't get a diagnosis or a treatment. So there is a gap. Sometimes, when you don't know, you think it's fine. Menopause specialists are aware that they.

Heidi Davis: 23:46

It would be great to have more information to guide a diagnosis and even then when they decide on the hormone therapy, it there's a few different modes of taking the therapies. It could be estrogen, progesterone it depends on your uterus. So there's. I won't go into all those details, but the point is they will put you on hormone therapy and they will see over three months if it's working, based on self reporting of symptoms. So really what we want to do is be able to say, okay, currently try a hormone therapy that they believe is the best out of their knowledge and then track over time and then be able to much sooner say this isn't working or this is working, get them on a new treatment.

Heidi Davis: 24:26

But the idea is, with time will sit on this incredible women's health database where we can see patterns between BMI, symptom profiles, ethnicities, and say, well, look, if the profile is this, this is probably most likely according to our stats in our science is the therapy that's going to work the best, and the same with lifestyle management strategies. So at the moment we're giving overlapping and you kind of have to read into the data a bit more, but it's high. We want to give suggestive information on lifestyle changes for women when they wear our sensor, but we don't want to do it now because there's not enough information out there. We don't want women to go down more rabbit holes because it's so personal. So we really do need to collect that data, and why not identify her to do it first.

Peter Lap: 25:16

Oh no, absolutely not. Because that's the thing, because I get quite a few, because most of my audience is, well, a lot of my audience is, say, 35 and younger, so they're just heading in this direction of 40. And then I have a large section of people that are, let's say, indeed, in countries where perimenopause and menopause isn't discussed right, especially in Asia and Japan, china it's just not a thing, it's just not thrown out there, other than you know, when you're 40, you start taking some herbs and all that sort of stuff, but it's not an open discussion they're having. But the reason I was so interested in having you on is because the whole idea that women can pass data on properly to their GP, to their healthcare professional, is remarkably powerful. Because one thing as a PT and that's what's been a PT for a few years now in the beginning you get told to have your clients write down your weight loss guys. Have them write down what they ate in a day, right, and self-reporting is notoriously unreliable, even for even for a food diary, even for just what you have to eat yesterday, and someone always forgets something is what I mean.

Peter Lap: 26:35

And then if you have complex issues, things that are much more complex, where you have 10 or 20 symptoms and some symptoms you might not even be aware of being a symptom of what you're actually going through, self-reporting becomes basically useless. It is as in there is just no point. I'd rather have no information than of bad information, if you know what I mean. And that is really because at least I have no information, I'm not being steered in the wrong direction, I can just start from scratch, whereas with bad information, if I miss one or two things and, like you said, most GPs, that's because most GPs aren't great with specific issues anyway. So that's why there's GPs.

Peter Lap: 27:18

They're wonderful at what they do but they're jack of all trades and their initial job is to be that first line of defense to what I call the real in the UK, the real NHS, the specialists that you want to see but that are swamped because there aren't enough of them and they're underpaid and all that sort of stuff. So what most doctors find when they go to medical school is they spend four years studying stuff and an afternoon is spent on women's specific issues. It is roughly that it is not great, and that goes for anything postpartum related, that goes for anything permanent. Basically, the four year course is, here's all the medical things. Oh, and women are slightly different. That is fundamentally what it is, because, like you said, everything is tested on men, even John Oliver, the comedian from this week, or last week. With John Oliver, he did a whole thing about medical bias when he pointed out that ovarian cancer medication was never tested on women.

Heidi Davis: 28:27

Oh wow, I didn't know that.

Peter Lap: 28:28

I know my mind is not developed, because at the time it was, I mean, I'm sure it is now, but when it was rolled out, women are too complex, because you're in a constant state of flux, that you're talking about constantly transitioning from, from teenager to to womanhood, so to speak. You know, you go through puberty and then 15, 20 years later, you start with another one and we're then ignoring the monthly cycles and potentially having babies and all that sort of stuff. It's, you are the messier of the species, so to speak. If you're a scientist, right, it's. Look at me. I'm straightforward. I go through puberty and then done until I hit middle age, and then I get a midlife crisis, which is easily the spot because I buy a Porsche or something like that.

Peter Lap: 29:18

It is. I don't have a 10 year period where I get really complex. It's just I go to the doctor and he says, yeah, you have that age, now we need to check your prostate and then we're done. So I don't have anything to self report to my doctor. To get back to the original original point whereas you have a whole list of stuff, whereas women have a whole list of stuff and you're obviously going to miss stuff out on them. So it makes sense to have a wearable device that just spits the information out that you could show your GP. So how does the information come out? Is it easily readable for people and do people understand or do they have? Is there a bit of a learning curve in the beginning?

Heidi Davis: 30:00

No, I mean there's always a learning curve when you get a new application right. But we've spent a lot of time testing this on the end user, which are women that are going through perimenopause and have adapted accordingly, so got feedback just to make sure that it's really easily understood, easy to navigate, so that really isn't going to be an issue as far as I see it, because we keep testing it, we keep iterating and making sure it's. The whole idea is it's not made for the clinician, it's made for the woman. She owns that if she wants to share it with the clinician. There's a report. Now the report for the clinician is designed for the clinician, so that's a slightly different report.

Heidi Davis: 30:39

But if you're using and navigating the app to try and look at your symptoms over time overlap with activity or diet, so we do take some. If you want, you can self report diet on our app. We have taken a very different approach and I think you might like it Because, like you said, self reporting is just terrible. I so my background academically is in nutrition and molecular medicine the food diaries it just doesn't work. You know it's always wrong. And if you do kind of weight management, which I'm sure you've done a lot through your PT work as well. It's just really hard because they come in and they give you a food diary and it doesn't match right Because there's so much missing, and we know that in menopause as well.

Heidi Davis: 31:22

We had, you know, an ex-president of the North American menopause society that said look, women are great historians when it comes to their menopause symptoms. You know it, just don't remember and they don't even know what they are. So that's really, really important. But the way we're collecting data on food if you want to, it's an optional is that we're really looking at dietary patterns over time. That matters to perimenopause. So it couldn't be things like have you had more caffeine than last week or less caffeine?

Heidi Davis: 31:53

So it's looking at patterns more than calculating, and the same with some of the others. You know, soy, that can be important for perimenopausal symptoms and menopausal symptoms. Have you had more or less fiber? So we've taken out some food groups and there's a list of them, but they're not extensive. You know it's small, but it's the ones that we believe it could be, things like have you had more fast food than last week? Because weight gain is another symptom, right, that you see during perimenopause. So we're just really looking at patterns over time and that's what matters and that is a better image.

Heidi Davis: 32:25

I know from my nutritional background that trying to get everything written down in detail because they're not going to do it is that is kind of the main reason. And then, just going back to that whole thing of you know, men going into their doctors and women having to bring a lot more information, my husband always says, oh, they just, they just shrink it and pink it. So basically they just go yeah, that'll be fine, make it a little bit more, a little bit more pink, and it's good for a woman. And they weren't like that in products as well, right, it's like you know what. Give it to the women as well. Make it a bit smaller, oh, it's a great garden.

Heidi Davis: 33:03

But I don't even want to say a brand. But you know, and I wear a huge garment, I love garments. I'm not going to use that. You know, it doesn't matter what it is, whatever brand. A lot of brands take something, make it for men and then they adopt the women after. But we shouldn't be an afterthought, right, we should be thought of as our. You know our biology works and the same with kind of disease related issues is that women have different diseases. The men are higher prevalence of some compared to men. We also show different symptoms for some diseases that are recognized, kind of cardiovascular disease and stroke events. Men have that typical, you know, the chest you know there's something going on.

Heidi Davis: 33:45

Women can just feel really fatigued. They can have a very different symptom profile and it's it's, I guess, more subtle and often not recognized by the clinician either only in the recent years. So these things are changing now, but it's really late because mortality rates are much higher in women. If they actually go into the clinic having a stroke event, there's a bigger chance that the woman will die from that stroke event than a man because they'll recognize the symptoms straight away. So just across women's health now I'm in perimenopausal it's very women. You know it's specific to women, but it actually come. It's every disease diabetes, cardiovascular disease. We are different, you know. We have to look at symptoms of specific women. We need to look at the biology behind it. That is specific for women. We have hormones. It's very complex. So, like I like to say, we're too hot to handle. I'm wearing a t-shirt now that nobody's, that's our slogan because we're just too difficult. We're too hot to handle, there's too much to do. But the truth is what we have to do is understand the disease over the cyclical woman you know over time and understand it, and that's just how it is, if you want to improve women's health overall. So I think there is definitely a huge gap in research and we have started, but we need funding for research as well as for commercial products like RSS. But, you know, ultimately it's got all the science and research behind it and that's what we're trying to do and making sure that it's something that people can rely on.

Heidi Davis: 35:20

That is going for medical device approval. That is, you know, real information that women can trust and clinicians can trust with time, and it's designed for women by women. You know we had two under women wear the device and drive the kind of product development to understand how it sits, how we can get the information in. So it was all primary men and positive women behind us, so that was really important to us. There's also been so many female products, so women's health product designed and developed by men, and I actually think my co-founder is male, don LaGorman. He's amazing and actually I see the real strength in being both genders driving this. There's certain things that I have insights into that he wouldn't just for the simple reason he's a man, you wouldn't even think of it, while there's other things that he would drive that I go God, I would never think about that. And that's just and it's not necessarily gender, but it definitely is really really nice to have both thought that we had loads of women helping us. Guide the product development was also important, and actually that takes me into a very different thing and I'll stop them.

Heidi Davis: 36:32

But that whole thing of getting men on our team is really important too. I just find there's been this you know, revolution women's demanding better health and I actually think there's loads of men that are happy to stand behind them. My co-founder, my husband they're all there. My son they're all behind me, you know, but there's nearly like there hasn't been space for men to come in and say something, because it's like it's our time. But we do need the men to actually follow and come with us and do this with us to make a true change. We can't really do it alone, so we can shout and scream and you know which needs to be done, and then we can create solutions, which is also happening now and we are one piece of a puzzle for women's health and then we need men to help us on that and advocate for women.

Peter Lap: 37:25

Oh yeah, absolutely, because it's. I mean, this is always how it goes with any sort of pendulum, right, it was so. The pendulum was swung heavily towards men's health and men leadership and patriarchy, if you want to use that phrase. And then, for a little while, there was this correction where you had a lot of a lot of people saying now men need to sit down and shut up for a little while, which is fair enough and fine. But then it went to women's only companies looking into women's health, and the problem with that is, of course, not At the end of the day, you still have a lot of men at the top of the chain, and to get them to change, shouting doesn't tend to work, simply because people who have all the stuff and have all the power and have all the money they don't want to lose any of the power or their money Right Fundament.

Peter Lap: 38:20

This is what we see everywhere in the world right now, and I always say this, I repeat this on every podcast. I know I'm a middle-aged white guy. If someone comes to me and says I want what you have, I'm going to rather not give it up if you don't mind too much. Whereas if you look at this, especially women's health and all that sort of stuff, because it's always struck me as all of that ever since I moved into postnatal health, like over a decade ago. Yeah, 50% of the population roughly 50% of the population is massively underrepresented in the field of health, which is just insane, because we tend to look at health as a nice to have a little bit in society, as in. We don't see how much it costs, how much money there is to be made for it, for the companies you know all the Nestleys in the world and all that sort of stuff Because, like you said, they design something for men and then they make it pink and they charge an extra pound because you guys pay more for the same stuff as we tend to. But you see this a lot with health as well. You see this with supplements aimed at women.

Peter Lap: 39:41

Right, as soon as you put a pink label on a supplement it can be just whey protein You'll pay an extra tenor. That is just the way it is. It's immediately marketed as lean protein because God forbid you have a gain weight because of the protein you take and you see the same thing that. This is why it would help your postnatal body. It's the weight loss management program for men. It's significantly cheaper than any sort of postpartum program is, and we're talking to a factor of 10. So I can go online and I can go to ATHLEANX, which is one of the better men's health fitness programs, and it's like 60 bucks, something like that. Google the average postpartum program and you pay for the same 12-week program. You pay 150 to 600 depending on which branding you like the best, and the same kind of goes for all women's health things that are out there.

Peter Lap: 40:36

And as soon as you look at any sort of diet plan aimed at men, it's always gets shredded. It's cheaper than losing weight toning up, it just kind of is. But it's odd because you have 50% of the population that you're dealing with and, from a healthcare perspective, just preventing if you could have the time you'd save by just by every woman in the age bracket that could be per menopausal we're having having some sort of wearable that doesn't suck, that they can wear in comfort. Like you said, you have to test that on women and then go to the GP and say here's what my data says. This is what I'm going through. The GP can immediately be a one-stop solution. They don't have to waste time sending you to specialists here, specialists there, and you can streamline the whole process. That would save. It would make a lot of people, a lot of money, but it's also save the health service billions. It simply must do, yeah.

Heidi Davis: 41:38

I mean, it's the ideas that women will get a diagnosis earlier I hate calling it a diagnosis, but it is a diagnosis in those in the life transition. So get a diagnosis, get managed earlier, so that ultimately they'll be a lower cost to society, right, because they'll be healthier for longer and more productive for longer, so they'll stay in the workforce, they'll stay healthier for longer. So that's one side of it. The other thing is now the doctor will have information it didn't have before. So, whether you're very knowledgeable in menopause or not, you now have objective information that can help you and now you can spend less time in that visit and not be worried, like our research show, about not having enough time to give that diagnosis. Now you have the data. When they come in, it's there. So it really is. What we're trying to do is to help doctors and help women, bridge that gap to women that need help and doctors that don't have that clear diagnostic tool, and then also basically enable women to live healthier, more productive lives for longer. That is ultimately what we want to do and that's going to benefit everybody, society as a whole. And I think, just going back to what you were mentioning about, there's a lot of men at the top. That has to change too, and there is a push to get more women into leadership. But you also need to then help women through perimenopause and menopause so they can get there and stay there and be productive when they're there and be at their best, because women are amazing, but they might just we just haven't designed.

Heidi Davis: 43:13

Society's been designed for men, so offices tend to have the temperature that suits men. They're everything from scratch has been designed for men. So now we're saying, well, we need more women, but I agree that it shouldn't be all women. It should be, and you know already that if you have a diverse board, it it performs better, right, and that comes across gender, ethnicity, sexuality, whatever that might be. But having all whites, males at a certain age, sitting at the board, that just means there's no insights for anybody else, and you know that means that products for me are going to be designed, so products for other ethnicities aren't going to be designed with them in mind because they don't have anybody there talking about it or representing it.

Heidi Davis: 44:03

So that's, that's going to happen, and I feel positive just because women are now saying, okay, wait a minute, we need to change this and I think it's going to be more and more, and it's not, I guess I said, screaming and shouting. It's not screaming and shouting, it's making people aware of what has been going on to date and how we need to change that. And I guess what we really want to do at Identify Her is to help women in that really critical period of life to navigate the challenges of perimenopause, to keep them in the workforce so they can thrive as they go through that and they can outlive their men and still have a healthy life, because they're still outliving them but have, you know, good quality of life then as well. And that's that's really what we're trying to do and we're launching next year, so we're excited to actually get it on the market.

Peter Lap: 44:54

Yeah, because that was my next question was going to be that because people can currently sign up to your waiting list, right?

Heidi Davis: 45:00

Yeah, so you can go to our website, identifyherai, and you can sign up for early access for our waiting list, and then we're launching in quarter three next year. It's at the end of 24. We will be in the US next year to kind of show off and showcase, so you'll hear much more about us then. But yeah, if you want to even learn more, go on our website, or if you want to sign up for the wait list, that's where you go.

Peter Lap: 45:25

Yeah, because there's a ton of blogs on there as well and all that sort of stuff, because I also check out the website before. As far as wearables go, you know, for me it's the, it's the neon, it's not neon, it's one of those weight lossy things that people have wearables for now and all that sort of stuff. And I think this makes a lot more sense to have the wearable for and you know, everybody wears an oora ring, everybody has that, that, that thing that they break in their arm to measure blood sugar spikes after they've had an apple, and all that sort of nonsense, right. But for this it actually makes sense to me to have a wearable for, because it's so complex, right. Everybody should kind of know that if they had a donut, their blood sugar is going to spike. You don't need to wear any sort of wearable for that.

Peter Lap: 46:15

If you have five donuts, you're probably going to gain a bit of weight if you have five donuts every day. Again, you don't. This is not rocket science, but this stuff is much more complex and I think, because there's a real medical sort of driver behind this, that would make this so much easier for just everybody in this, even for me, because obviously I deal a lot with it. I only deal with postpartum women at the moment and a lot of them are going through menopausal stages Because for me, postpartum is more than just the first year Postpartum. It can be farewell, and a lot of women are having kids when they get older than they used to be what the BBC very kindly described as the older mom Not long ago.

Heidi Davis: 47:02

Yeah.

Peter Lap: 47:02

I know it was a wonderful thing. I did an interview on the BBC and it was an exercise in the older mom, Jesus 42. That was a cut-off point apparently.

Heidi Davis: 47:13

Yeah, that was sound right.

Peter Lap: 47:16

But that was the language used at the time and I know what they're trying to do and they meant well, it's a nice click, Because it's still what people search.

Heidi Davis: 47:24

What would they call men, though? What would they call men? Would they just stand out, smart, or right there, there's nothing wiser.

Peter Lap: 47:33

Maybe we look wiser as we age. We don't get older so much, unless you Hefner or Keith Richards age and you marry a 29-year-old. That's when they say, well, he's a bit of an older man now, but isn't Jack Nicholson had a kid when he was 72? Or something like that? He's a bit old to be a dad, a bit old, not too old, just a bit old. Let's be very clear about this. It's creepy, that's what it is.

Peter Lap: 48:00

But it makes so much sense for me to even have access to that type of data when they just say listen, I think I didn't sleep well last night, but I'm not sure. And I'm not sure what the cause is, because everybody, like we said earlier, everybody buys a whole batch of supplements. These days, everybody tries 10 different supplements at the same time, because you have to buy 10 different ones and you don't know what works for you, what doesn't work for you. You keep spending.

Peter Lap: 48:32

Except, $200 a month is nothing compared to what I see, because a lot of people that invest, so to speak, in their health with the gas of supplements, they like to buy the really good quality supplements, so to speak, and I air quote that good quality stuff. Good, most supplements are not great quality, but they spend a lot of money. They go on to Amazon and they look for the most expensive ground. They walk into Harvey Nicks and they just spend the fortune on that stuff and before you know it it's a monthly subscription essentially and, like you said, you're too scared to come off it Just because you don't have the data to make the decision that it's OK to come off it, that it's not going to mess up your sleep and all that sort of stuff. It's an absolute no brainer to get one of these things, I think.

Heidi Davis: 49:22

Yeah, well, I'm obviously delighted you think that, and we see the demand from women as well. It really is coming from women. They do want to understand what they're going through. And just going back to the sleep as well, it's so important to understand what is happening when you're sleeping. So a lot of people would say there's great sleep trackers, like the Oro Ring, which has done a really good job on tracking sleep, but for women that are going through perimenopause, it could be the night sweats that are causing the sleep disturbances that interlink between symptoms as well. That is really, really important. So I suppose that is what kind of differs us when it looks. When we look at sleep. We don't look at sleep alone. We look at sleep and the effect of symptoms on the sleep.

Peter Lap: 50:01

Yeah, and also, and again, this is exactly what you said. This is the difference between a product that is designed for men, the Oro Ring Because, to be honest, that was not designed for women, right, that was designed for the boardroom executive, that's why it's a big black ring and all that sort of stuff. And then they made a smaller one and that's the one you can wear. Right, that is fundamental. But if we agree that the species are not identical, so to think that men and women are not exactly the same and we should all agree on this, don't buy into. The women should train exactly the same as men do and women's health is exactly the same as men, it's nonsense, it's poppycock. Then the product just shrinking the product, like you said earlier, it simply doesn't work as well.

Peter Lap: 50:45

For you might get some information. I didn't sleep great last night. Yeah, what do you do? It tells me something, because usually for me, if I were to be inclined to wear an Oro Ring, I can go. Ah, indeed, I went to bed too late. Oro Ring kind of identifies stuff you should already know yourself. It's just really good at reminding you to go to bed earlier. That's why I don't mind wearing a Oro Ring so much In your case. It actually does something, though. It actually gives me information. Oro Ring doesn't tell me whether the extra coffee I had at 10 o'clock kept me up and just says hey, you didn't sleep well last night. Right, yours is a bit more, let's say, serious for want of a better face. And I'm not slacking off Oro Ring at all. I don't mind people buying these things. I just think there's a different value level to the product. Let me put it down.

Heidi Davis: 51:34

Yeah, I think it's the whole, like our whole idea is that this is designed for women. And we have been asked. You know, men go through hot flushes as well after cancer treatment and I said I'm really sorry and I hope somebody produces a product for them. But it's not going to be us, because everything is based on women and women's physiology and biology and you know that's where we are working.

Heidi Davis: 51:55

But we've been asked three or four times they're like and would you give it to men? No well, number one, it's not going to fit them because it's been signed to women. I guess we could make it a little bit larger, yeah it's just comfortably under the breast, yeah. So I think that's you know, that's what's really important for us is that this is designed for women. We're sticking to women.

Peter Lap: 52:15

It's always going to be women's health and, yeah, we absolutely love that question, though, as soon as you go with the design, the product for women, yeah, but could you mine it for a very small percentage of men who it could also maybe apply for so we can sell it? I mean, that is the go to and this is the difference. This is why I work with a lot of women to get my feedback, because I'm a man and I wouldn't necessarily be that dumb to ask a question. Maybe 15, 20 years ago I would have asked that question. I said, oh, can we also sell this to the boys? Would it just? It's just, yeah, it's, it's. It. Wasn't a woman and ask you that question, I virtually guarantee it was not.

Heidi Davis: 52:54

But I also have to say it feels like I've been dissing men. I love men and I have great men in my life. I had great interactions with male investors and you know we've had great males. But there is that stereotypical that sometimes you just go oh, I can't believe.

Peter Lap: 53:09

I always say this, that this is why I always specify this and I always think the Bill Burr approach and I've mentioned him before. I am a middle aged white guy. The reason I point that out is because all the information you're giving me goes into my middle aged white guy brain and it comes out to my middle aged white, it gets processed in there. So I see things but I don't see everything. And I like to be aware of, like to think I'm a bit more aware now than, say, I used to be, but you know, I am still what I am. Therefore, some of the questions I tend to ask tend to be more male centered and I really had to learn through my listeners, sending me an email every now and again saying, oh, you should have asked X, y, z, because that is what we want to know.

Peter Lap: 53:53

And this is the same with, like said, with the healthy person body website, I picked a really pretty color scheme, right, a really pretty. It was nice and red and it was gorgeous. And all my clients, all my people what the hell are you doing? That is? That is so aggressive, and the language you're using is way too good. I would never buy anything from you, even though you might be the best at what you do. I simply can't use this thing because you've designed it for your stupid man brain. So again, I'm not saying we're slagging off men at all, because I'm very much in the in the gold man camp, but there are certain things that you just go. Yeah, that wasn't the woman that asked that question.

Heidi Davis: 54:34

I think you can agree that together we're great, Isn't that it no?

Peter Lap: 54:38

no, that's not the main thing. Yeah, I think it's just the included. Yeah, then we're absolutely golden. Yeah, we covered a lot of ground. Was there anything else you wanted to touch on? No, I think I think that's great.

Heidi Davis: 54:52

It was a great conversation to have with you, Peter, Lovely Well thank you very much.

Peter Lap: 54:56

I'm not happy now that our best stop record here.