Menopause: The next frontier

What if you could develop something where your potential users are literally half the population - of the planet? According to a Fortune article, it is a $600 billion dollar opportunity “based on an average $2,000 a year that the 1 billion women expected to be in menopause worldwide by 2025 spend on prescriptions, doctor visits, treatments, devices, and products to address symptoms like night sweats, loss of libido, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating.” (my bold).

If this interests you please feel free to reach out to me and let’s tackle this. ([email protected])

Femtech - technology to help improve women’s lives is a huge area with applications ranging from the expected area of reproductive health to pregnancy and nursing care, to mental health, to chronic disease management. Reenita Das, healthcare futurist and strategist, partner at Frost & Sullivan explains that “Frost & Sullivan defines Femtech as technology solutions such as a device, diagnostic, product, software, app or services, or any combination thereof, that cater to the needs of women’s health.” and that menopause is only just beginning to see the light of day in these new solution offerings. (Quoted from her interview at WoW - Women of Wearables, another great resource you should check out). 

Let’s ask the question most people don’t ask - what the hell even is menopause? (Overgangsalder p? dansk). Don’t worry, I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on the internet, but let me break this down for you: it is not just ‘the time my wife went crazy’ as I’ve recently heard some refer to it as, but rather a three stage period in every woman's life, where she transitions from perimenopause, to menopause, to post menopause. Here’s a handy infographic in nice bright colours, but with upsetting symptoms and secondary diseases built in. 

Now while this infographic is convenient - lower estrogen = 20 years of suffering, it doesn’t tell the whole story. In her TED Talk, neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi explains how menopause impacts cognitive health - specifically, how “women’s brains are more sensitive to hormonal aging than straight up chronological aging” - as estrogen drops, so does what Dr. Mosconi calls brain energy. Aka: 

Because one of the major problems of menopause is that women have a hard time explaining what’s going on - to their families, their doctors, their friends, or even themselves. 

There are over 35 symptoms of menopause. Take a moment, read that again. 35! Most people think of hot flashes. Okay, you’re warm, take off your jacket. But it’s not just warm. It’s an inferno, burning your skin, causing you to sweat profusely, and absolutely removing your ability to concentrate. It’s different for everyone. Mild for some, extreme for others, but let’s go with the extreme version for a second: imagine you’re leading a meeting and that happens. You have to play it cool. See what I did there? :) 

But hot flashes are the easy symptoms. Because a woman can communicate these. People can see it. The other symptoms are far more dangerous because people don’t discuss them. Our mothers didn’t tell us. Their mothers didn’t tell them. There’s a taboo around menopause - a stigma that’s far worse than the one around menstruation. We simply do not discuss it.

Fight club ain’t got nothing on menopause. 

So let me tell you about it. I’m just going to copy paste from this great resource:

1. Hot flashes, flushes, night sweats and/or cold flashes, clammy feeling
2. Irregular heart beat
3. Irritability
4. Mood swings, sudden tears
5. Trouble sleeping through the night (with or without night sweats)
6. Irregular periods; shorter, lighter periods; heavier periods, flooding; phantom periods, shorter cycles, longer cycles
7. Loss of libido
8. Dry vagina
9. Crashing fatigue
10. Anxiety, feeling ill at ease
11. Feelings of dread, apprehension, doom
12. Difficulty concentrating, disorientation, mental confusion
13. Disturbing memory lapses
14. Incontinence, especially upon sneezing, laughing; urge incontinence
15. Itchy, crawly skin
16. Aching, sore joints, muscles and tendons
17. Increased tension in muscles
18. Breast tenderness
19. Headache change: increase or decrease
20. Gastrointestinal distress, indigestion, flatulence, gas pain, nausea
21. Sudden bouts of bloat
22. Depression
23. Exacerbation of existing conditions
24. Increase in allergies
25. Weight gain
26. Hair loss or thinning, head, pubic, or whole body; increase in facial hair
27. Dizziness, light-headedness, episodes of loss of balance
28. Changes in body odor
29. Electric shock sensation under the skin and in the head
30. Tingling in the extremities
31. Gum problems, increased bleeding
32. Burning tongue, burning roof of mouth, bad taste in mouth, change in breath odor
33. Osteoporosis (after several years)
34. Changes in fingernails: softer, crack or break easier
35. Tinnitus: ringing in ears, bells, 'whooshing,' buzzing etc

And the worst part is, these are fairly common. People I’ve spoken with personally describe many, if not most of these symptoms. And again, this isn’t for one week of your life, it’s for years, if not decades. 

If ever there was an opportunity to ease people’s suffering - here it is. Pick one. 

And these are just the symptoms. There’s also the terrifying correlations. Like how this drop in estrogen is directly correlated to an increased risk of Altzheimer’s, Dementia, depression, anxiety, insomnia and cognitive deficits. (Articles 1 and 2)

And fundamentally, this is still such a new area of research, that we’re still just learning and proving the correlations between gender and diseases. (Which is why Femtech as a whole is so important). And which is why we just launched “The Making Tank” - a “think tank” where we think through making / prototyping and do so with a feminist perspective on the world - because women have a unique perspective on how they experience the world. 

Let’s have a moment of comic relief: In her TED Talk, Comedienne/writer/performer, Sandra Tsing Loh introduces us to the historical study of menopause, indicating yet another symptom: 

“Hysterical flatulence”

(Definitely worth a watch!). She also launches into politics and menopause and Orcas - killer whales, and menopause. Interesting stuff. Check it out.

So now I think we have a bit better understanding of this area, let’s jump into what’s out there. I recently wrote an article about this at Tech Truster about the various devices available - because I work in devices, hardware. There are a number of really important innovations in this area, platforms, communities, skin care products, sexual health products, which are all emerging in the menopause area. At Kintsugi Design, we’ve gone for a deep dive into research and mapped these out for ourselves, and there’s a few of note I’d like to share with you here: 

• Genneve - an online health portal which offers a menopause assessment and telehealth
• Lisa Health - a platform designed to track symptoms and offer knowledge. As they state “As girls, we learned about getting our period and pregnancy. As women, we learn about pregnancy health and hormones. Yet most of us find ourselves completely unprepared for menopause and midlife health challenges.” 
• WithAlva - a community and knowledge bank designed to help women make decisions about menopause treatment*

*Oh yes, I forgot to mention - menopause treatment currently consists of hormone replacement therapy, which I’ll just let you Google for yourself, and/or changing your diet and lifestyle, completely. Please avoid: caffeine, spicy foods, wine, actually alcohol of most types, eating too early, eating too late, eating too much or too little, exercising too much or too little, and so on. Basically - please experiment like crazy to find out what triggers your symptoms. That’s why these three platforms above are vital - because it is otherwise impossible to figure out how to treat menopause. 

So let’s circle this menopause wagon back around. I work primarily with helping companies to a)strategically design their futures, b)utilize prototyping and a prototyping mindset and c)evaluate their product in terms of meaningfulness (fulfilment, purpose, identity) in life. So for me, this is my jam. There is a significant lack of development being done in the area of menopause within hardware devices. Alleviating just some of the suffering women experience during menopause would make a huge difference. And that’s exactly what I’m aiming to do with Kintsugi Design.  And why am I sharing this incredible opportunity area when I could have it all to myself? Because we need to do something. Collectively - on a massive scale.

Please check out my article at Tech Truster for the current tech overview, but let me summarize it here, (excluding the “LadyMagnet” - panties with a magnet attachment which gets amazing reviews ˉ\_(ツ)_/ˉ ) there are TWO products specifically designed for menopause which I’ve found that are on or close to market. Have I missed some? I’m sure I have but we’re still hunting. The ones I’ve found are Grace and the Menopod. Both designed for hot flashes. Grace which tracks temperature and cools automatically, and the Menopod which is a portable cooling device. Then there’s quite a few devices “in development”, or being developed as part of hackathons. Again, 90% of these focus on hot flashes, a few notable ones focus on a multi-symptom approach. It’s the one tangible thing which is easy to tackle, get hot, cool down. However, as you can see, menopause is a complex beast. Solving this isn’t easy. But we’re damn sure going to try. 

So here’s my CTA - please check out Menopause. Ask your loved one about it. Ask your mom about it. Start the conversation. Happy International Women’s Day, 2021.

And please feel free to reach out to me ([email protected]) and help me in tackling this. And in the meantime, if you’d like to hear a talk about menotech, femtech, prototyping, or other subjects, let me know, I’d be happy to organize this with you. If you’re looking to ensure your company is around in 50, or 200 years, let’s talk about your strategic future planning. And if you’re looking to create impact and design products or services which resonate with your customer’s sense of identity, purpose and fulfilment in life, then let’s talk about Designing for Meaningfulness. 

Also read: This report by Frost and Sullivan which is a great starting point to learn about the opportunities in this area.

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Vanessa holds a PhD in Designing for Meaningfulness in Future Smart Products and is the founder and interaction design researcher at Kintsugi Design, a design studio specializing in hardware, and creating robust futures. Originally from Canada, Vanessa’s background is in interactive art and technology, where she’s used prototyping extensively both as an interactive artist and within her 15 years developing smart products in industry. She co-authors “Greater Spaces” with Majken Overgaard, a blog featuring incredible women in tech.