Name: Brainstorm Health 2023 - Hear Them Roar: Menopause’s Market Opportunities
Uploaded: 2023-04-26
Duration: 23 min 49 s
Description: Gwendolyn Floyd, Co-founder and CEO, Wile Judy Greer, Founding Partner, Wile Moderator: Chrissy Farr, OMERS Ventures

Gwendolyn Floyd, Co-founder and CEO, Wile Judy Greer, Founding Partner, Wile Moderator: Chrissy Farr, OMERS Ventures

Brainstorm Health 2023 - Hear Them Roar: Menopause’s Market Opportunities

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Hear Them Roar: Menopause’s Market Opportunities

So here is something that might not surprise you, menopause is not new. Did you all know that? Um But what is new is society's changing attitude about menopause. It is no longer a taboo topic. One rarely spoken about. It's no longer considered a time in women's life where they become invisible, irrelevant or past their prime. Quite the contrary, some of the most powerful and influential women in the world are over the ages of 40 and 50. Right now, more than 50 million women in the United States are over the age of 51. The average age that menopause hits and for some menopause symptoms start even earlier around age 40. There are those who have taken notice. It's even been called the menopause gold rush. I've never said that sentence before. Um the global menopause market hit $15.4 billion in 2021 it's projected to reach nearly 24 a half billion dollars by 2030. But beyond the business opportunities, this is an important and beneficial shift affecting so many women's lives as we all know, and we want to talk about both joining brainstorm health, co-chair Chrissy Farr to do so are two of the leaders behind the women's wellness brand. Wow. I hope I pronounce that. Right. Maybe it's Wiley, like Wiley Coyote. Gwendolyn Floyd is CEO and Judy Greer is founding partner. We're thrilled to have them here today. So please welcome them to the stage. Hey, so we have a packed afternoon, um, with a lot of panels on women's health. Um, and we will start this one off with, um, a topic, the topic of menopause with ya. No, no, it's really great near and dear to all of us for, for many a reason. But, um, we have this, this incredible panel here today and I wanted to kick things off by talking about the cultural depictions of menopause. Um, last night, a very good friend of mine who was in the audience reminded me of the sex and the city reboot. Um, does anyone remember the moment where Kristen Davis is experiencing what it seems to be perry menopause and she's wearing a white, white pants and gets a period. And, um, it's this like incredible moment. But, um, Leslie and I, last night at dinner, we looked up, how old would she have been in that while shooting that scene? She was actually in her late, mid to late fifties, um, which is just, you know, it's an amazing moment for so many reasons, but also kind of an inaccurate one because a lot of women experience this way sooner so maybe we should stop there. Just like, yes, we're making progress but when are we gonna start getting actually real about menopause? Um, Judy, I'm gonna throw this one to you. Well, now that Gwyneth Paltrow is talking about it, I think we can all agree that it's a real hot topic. Um, yeah, one has got it. You got it. Um, well, I think, you know, because we always sort of look to Hollywood and celebrities, whether they're actors or just celebrities. Now we just have people being celebrities for, I'm not sure what reason. But, um, you know, now that, that something that's being addressed on film and we're watching it in our favorite TV shows. I mean, it'd be nice to see it start a little younger. Like you're talking about Kristen davis' character being 57 when she shot that scene. And, like, it'd be great if she was in her forties, maybe shooting that scene. But it doesn't really matter because I was thrilled to see that as we discussed earlier that now, like a huge television show, like sex and the city is really talking about this and I think that's unfortunately a great start and I thought it's good. Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, I think it's, um, as we were talking about earlier it's very uncommon for women to be going through menopause in the late fifties. Um, yes, if you're incredibly privileged because unfortunately there's a relationship between stress and para menopausal like symptoms and expression. And that's also why, you know, co color and minorities actually experience para menopause earlier and they have much more exaggerated symptoms. And so I think it is kind of classic on that show, which represents women living at the height of privilege and white women to boot. Ok. Yes, they're having symptoms in the late fifties. So not only is it inaccurate, but it also, I think magnifies some inequity in the care system and, and honest conversation about when it begins to affect women, which is oftentimes early forties and even like for myself, even for myself, late thirties. Um So I'm just gonna put it out that we are way too comfortable with women's pain as a society. Um Yeah, I mean, I just had my second child and it was, I was reminded of this all over again. And um you know, we all remember the indignity of putting the towel down at night because the sweat that you get after you have a baby and nobody tells you about this. You're like, what is happening to me? Like am I dying? Um And fortunately, you know, it goes away but then you get per then it comes back, it comes back and this is just one of so many symptoms that, you know, I think we, we tend to kind of underrepresent um trivialize. Why, why do you think that is and, and how do we fix this Well, I think, you know, there's so little education out there about peri menopause and it really is peri menopause. I mean, menopause is, is one day of your life, like the day 365 days after you've had your last period. So we're talking about one day versus potentially 12 years leading up to this one day. So, like, we're not educating our health practitioners, they're not learning about this or they're choosing not to. So they're not telling their patients about this. And really like when you're a woman and you either are done having kids or you decide you don't wanna have kids, it's like good luck, don't get osteoporosis. Like that's what happens. And you're just kind of like, you know, you go in for your once a year scraping and you're boob smashing and, and like if everything's normal, like, you know, enjoy these years, but, but there's not, you know, if we're not doing our own research, like, how are we supposed to know? Like I thought I was depressed, I thought I was sick. I thought there was something really wrong with me. The fatigue was unbearable. I couldn't remember my lines. I was sad and I've never been a sad person and I was told to go on PROzac, I was told to go back on the birth control pill, like, and this is for my doctors. So it was frustrating. So I think, you know, like we have to do our own research and we have to start holding the medical community accountable. I mean, we're, you know, there's 10 times as many articles about pregnancy as there are about menopause. When you search pub med, that's what you'll find. But all of these women who are having babies are going to go through menopause like you are. So, I don't know why this is why this isn't being discussed and why we're not being treated like uh we're relevant. Yeah, I mean, over 80% of medical schools do not include menopause in the curriculum. And if it is, it's an elective and there's a neuroscientist who studies the brain and menopause in women um at U C Santa Barbara and she has this line I love, which is women's bodies are not an elective, you know, that needs to be driven home and be true within practice because it is, it's a, it's an institutional issue from an education perspective. Um And it is also a cultural issue because it's not only it's unfortunate, perfect storm of lack of awareness and education for the for the end customer and for the patient um women thinking that it's them or you know, it's psychological and the fact is that it actually can be true because hormonal changes express themselves as behavioral and mental health issues. And so so many women think that yes, this demographic has the highest suicidality rate of any female demographic. We are the highest antidepressant users in the world, right? But that has a hormonal correlation. And so, unless we're approaching it both from a woman's psychological and emotional experience and the hormonal regulation that's happening, we're actually doing her a disservice and there's this massive weight space out there that is, goes far beyond the anti aging rhetoric of like wrinkles and weight gain. You know, that really is ripe for innovation, technology. Like we don't even have a clear picture of who she is. And that's the irony. Like we have talked to over 45,000 women in depth. We're starting for the first time ever to have a really granular illustration of who she is. And only then as an industry, as a medical community, as a culture, can we appropriately address and support her? So it's just, yeah, it's manifold the issues and challenges, but it's such a huge opportunity and it's vital that we address it. Yeah. And I love, I love that we keep talking about, you know, who is she part of the problem is the invisibility that this population faces. So, one of the most kind of widely cited studies out there from the UK shows that something like 900,000 women have left the workforce due to uh perimenopause or menopause. Um That is insane. Um And I'm jealous. Just kidding. I love my job. I, I, I get it. Um So, but yeah, I mean, we're like, we go through our twenties and thirties. We, we're told we're too young to have a, have an opinion and we hit our forties and we're suddenly like, now, ok, we can, we're power women. We know we're like, do you have cancer? No, you're fine. Ok. And then it's like this hits and women are out of the workforce again because of how severe it can be. Um, so how do we, how do we go about kind of addressing this, how do we reach these women and actually give them the help that they need so that they feel that they have options if they wanna continue to work. I think we have to approach it from all fields and we need to approach it collaboratively. We always say that we're sort of this perfect gateway, you can find our products, you know, on shelf at Whole Foods at CV S and it work stores across North America and of course, online as well. And um the landscape has been strangely balkanized between like H RT and kind of pharmaceutical solutions and kind of plant based or natural over the counter solutions. And to us, that's ridiculous because these two domains can both work fantastically independently, but they also work great synergistically and there's such a limited care out there that we shouldn't be kind of fighting with each other. All of us believe in our developing products that are science back based on clinical data and really data driven. And so it's an opportunity to collaborate and try to create solutions across the board that can really support all women because unless she's able to find it on shelf where she shops and then have that experience be normalized. Understand that like be educated through that journey of what per menopause is that she's not crazy. It's yeah, honestly, depression, then that's going to also open up the gateway for her to then talk to her doctor about it who granted only has, you know, 15 minutes to see her, which is not a lot when it comes to the manifold symptoms that you might be experiencing through this life phase. So again, we always say like all, you know, all ships rise together, it is such an underserved category and there's so much opportunity in all kind of in all spaces. But also only if we work together and only if you really kind of combine forces and look at all the different solutions. Are we going to be able to have an impact across the board on women's lives? What I love about this product and um is that I feel like uh so much of the promotion about aging and aging gracefully um is about what you put on yourself and not what you put inside of yourself. And I think like when you're feeling great, you will look better and you will want to take better care of yourself. But when you're just like putting, you know, and there's great creams for women who are aging and all of those things that I'm not um against those products at all. But I do think that like, healing ourselves from the inside out is the best attack on this because we will take better care of ourselves if like our symptoms are being alleviated. So like putting on a face cream is not necessarily going to make me feel younger and feel better about myself, but like getting great supplements will. And I also think it's an issue of so it's consumer awareness and education, but it's also creating a narrative. It's a cultural, it's a cultural issue I would say over the past 100 years, a woman's lifespan has increased by over 30 years. So that's an entire life phase that we don't have cultural dialogue around. We don't have, yeah, we can't identify with that's really not spoken of. And so we speak to all these women and they feel invisible at a loss at a life phase that really hasn't been defined or story told about. And that is unbelievably important. We can't, yeah, we can't kind of undervalue the again, the synergy between like really effective solutions and also providing kind of a cultural landscape for women actually feel seen, feel heard. We actually like women thank us for asking them questions about their health and about their well being in this phase of life, which is egregious, you know, that should not that should not be the case. So it's, we always say this is, it's a, it's a life phase issue. Yes, we're creating a portfolio of products, you know, that can be mixed and matched and really address the specific kind of emotional and hormonal symptoms that she's experiencing as her kind of experience change, changes over an up to 10 year journey. But we're also providing kind of a cultural platform and dialogue that really helps empower her to step into this opportunity, to thrive, to feel great and to have the impact that really this life phase should be designed for. This should be an aspirational phase in life where you, you know, we, we should be, I mean, it should be the best time in our lives. So we have the most impact at work at home, you know, in your personal and social lives. Questions from the room. Any questions? All right. Well, I'll come back to you. Uh you thinking here we have a question. Hang on a second. We've got the mate coming. Oh oh, ok. Um First off, please keep doing your job. We all love you for uh uh What about funding in this space? Right? That's been something that's been such a at a crisis for 15, 20 years like what you guys experience with that and what's your point of view on it? That's a great question. I love it. Love, we love the money, it want it is it, it's really complex. We've thankfully had a lot of luck with fundraising but it's been harder than it should have been. Like, we've experienced everything from, like, the weirdest internalized misogyny and, like, women investors to, you know, or how about the male investors that tell you about their wife and, like, their wife represents all women? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know what, I'll take it. Yeah. He's got money and his wife is having really bad symptoms. Yeah, I think a great bring, bring, bring the money. So I think it's, this is a weird correlated between like what's happening culturally, just like translated to the funding landscape. But like we're either two dimensional, you know, or overlooked. There are thankfully some incredibly innovative investors that are out there that are really have partnered with us and I want to continue to partner with us and we love them. But it's also a strange time in the investment landscape at large. Like they're like, yeah, you should, you know, you need to be profitable and have rapid growth within the first year of operations. You're like, well, that's, that's quite difficult to achieve. Um And that I think it's important that the investment like especially within women's health health, like there are different models that can be incredibly profitable, but they're not gonna have hockey but growth. So like right size growth that require education of a customer that has been largely in the dark is going to have a different growth growth trajectory than like another, I don't know, photo sharing app or something. And so, um it's about, I think it's about vision and, and that's unfortunately across, across culture, across investment across medicine really lacking when it comes to, to women's health. Still at large. So, um Judy, you've definitely been played the role of the, the best friend we had in honor of you. We had a dinner table question last night about whether you did the protagonist or the best friend in a movie, um which is a great friend. Um But you know, from that context, like, how was it for you to, to speak about menopause? Did you experience pushback? Because, because you wanted to take this on and how, how did you navigate it? Well, at first I said uh to, to my partners in while I was like, well, I don't want to say the word menopause when I talk about it. So I'll just talk about hormonal changes and they were like, OK, that's gonna be kind of hard but sure Judy. And um and then as I started to talk about it publicly, it's just been so heartbreaking but awesome. The people that come and want to talk to me, people coming to me crying like fans, but also like people who are using the product and loving it and it's been so great and I don't want to deny that anymore. And it's scary as an actress it scary as any woman to publicly talk about like this phase in life and perry menopause, which is where I am now. It's so great. Uh So awesome. But um so like talk about that, but one of the nice things I'll say about not being a movie star is that like, I can play all kinds of roles and I don't have to worry as much about uh I feel like that kind of stigma but I think that stinks and I think that movie stars should talk about this and, and they're starting to um but it's, it's really encouraging to have started this dialogue. And one of the reasons I wanted to be involved with wild is because I wanted to start this conversation because when I started having symptoms like a few years ago, no one would talk to me about it. And when I was talking to my friends about it, my friends from college, my lifelong friends are like, I don't want to talk about that. I'm like, but it's just the two of us walking with coffee. Like, why can't we talk about this? Like, I know I don't have that. I'm like, well, I think you do but me and on that note it's a wrap. So thank you so much for just elevating this issue to both of you. Um And you know, love the topic of Just hear them roar I think was the title of like hell, yeah. Like, you know, we are, let's just keep, keep it going, keep talking about it. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for.