Episode 6: Kristin Mallon

TRANSCRIPT

Kristin Mallon: 0:00

We understand perimenopause, menopause and life after that time in a woman’s life, and how to enhance and promote health span and lifespan both, but it’s so, it’s so complicated and complex, I think. Oh, and then one other thing is to stay up. So all of these things, just like the difference between menopause and perimenopause, is very confusing for the consumer.Caroline Balinska: 0:23

Welcome to the Life On Purpose Over 40 podcast, where empowerment, elegance and health takes center stage. I’ll be your guide on this thrilling journey to outshine your past self. This is a podcast all about transformation. We’re plunging head first into exactly what health, wellness, style, relationships and career look like as a woman over 40. You’ll be hearing from all the most sought after global trailblazers and experts. This isn’t just about learning. It’s about embracing your inner fierce, fabulous self. Let’s get started. Welcome, kristen Mallen, to our call today. I’m so excited I wanted to get you on. So I’m so excited to have you here and welcome Thank you.Kristin Mallon: 1:05

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.Caroline Balinska: 1:08

Wonderful. Now I actually found you because I have had a lot of dramas around perimenopause and I came across Femme Giverty. And when I came across you, I thought, wow, this is absolutely amazing. I want to get into a little bit more about what Femme Giverty does, but I want to start off by asking you a little bit about how you actually started. I do want to talk to you about why you are looking a little bit flush today, because that’s another thing. You’re all about looking younger and about women taking over their aging process and making that something that we control ourselves, and I want to talk to you about that as well. So we’ve got lots and lots of things to cover. I want to talk about hormones, I want to talk about skincare, I want to talk about looking after ourselves, but first let’s start off with you and how you actually got into this. How did you start, femme Giverty?Kristin Mallon: 2:02

Yeah, so my skin is a little bit redder today because I did do micro-needling, so part of Femme Giverty. Femme Giverty is mainly the inside, so kind of being younger from the inside, but the outside does count too for women who kind of want to approach it from both ways. And whatever way a woman wants to do it is definitely up to her, but I happen to do both ways, inside and outside. So my skin is a little bit redder today and I do sometimes add a little Trenton Owen to my skincare regimen and so that’s making my skin extra red today. So it goes a little bit longer than the normal path of just typical micro-needling which leaves your skin red for a few days. So that is why I look a little sunburnt, I think, like I was in the sun a little bit too long.Caroline Balinska: 2:47

And then it just takes a couple of days to calm down, doesn’t it? So not something that?Kristin Mallon: 2:51

Yeah, and with the Trenton Owen there’s a little bit more peeling and so that’s a lot more of the resurface. It’s kind of a form of resurfacing and then a lot of rejuvenation of the skin cells and so they have to fight to kind of get tougher and be younger and rejuvenate, and so that’s kind of the process behind making them work hard to get the kind of elasticity that we want, that you want to get out of your skin.Caroline Balinska: 3:17

I was just saying to you that it’s something that I don’t know if it’s available here in the Netherlands. So it’s now after us speaking just before we started recording. I actually will look into it and look into getting it done myself, because it’s different from acid peel. So back in I used to own a hairdressing salon and we had like a whole group of people working with us for beauty stuff, and back then 20 years ago, it was all about the acid peel. We all remember Samantha off Sex in the City with her face, yeah, yeah, and this is nothing compared to how it was shown there. So how is that different from the acid peels?Kristin Mallon: 3:51

compared to Trentinoin, yeah, so acid peels are really meant to get the dead skin cells off the skin, so to kind of I know it seems really harsh, but to burn that acid is very harsh and it will burn the top layer of skin off and then what happens is the skin cells regenerate and repropagate very often and if we’re not cleaning and we’re not removing all of those dead skin cells, the dead skin cells will actually lie in wrinkle beds and then make the wrinkles worse. So it’s almost like the Roman Rett Road theory of getting those dead skin cells lying into those wrinkle beds and then so that’s what acid peels do is when you put the acid on, it removes all of those dead skin cells so that you don’t have them just kind of sitting there constantly reinforcing the wrinkles that are on your face. Because think about it, like to a skin cell, a wrinkle, is like a river’s bed wide, so they’re all in there, kind of just making, you know, chucking away and making the wrinkle bed worse and worse. So getting them all out of there helps to kind of smooth the skin and then a lot of times after acid peels, a lot of women will report that they have like a glow or they look brighter or that they. You know, acid peels are sometimes touted as being brightening or have brightening properties or characteristics, but that’s generally what acid peels are used for. They shouldn’t be used too often because if you don’t have any dense skin cells to remove because you’ve just done an acid peel, then you would just be then harming the bottom layer or you would just be harming the riverbed, so it wouldn’t be necessary to keep doing them. So they have to be kind of done at the right amount for to get the skin. I mean, I’m not a skin expert by any stretch of the imagination other than my own skin, but definitely a health and internal body expert for sure.Caroline Balinska: 5:40

But the difference is with what you’ve done, that’s actually slightly different. Isn’t that what the it’s actually working on? A different yeah.Kristin Mallon: 5:49

So microneedling is these tiny needles. So some of them are so small they call them even nano needles, but I think they’re just like really really very, very tiny, like half of a half of a millimeter thick, and then they poke really small holes in the skin to basically disrupt the skin and cause damage to the skin, which then causes collagen building or makes the body form more collagen. So then it seems counterintuitive like you’re harming your skin to then form more collagen. But if it’s done in these very tiny, tiny micro ways, it actually helps the skin to be tighter and firmer and have more of that like bounce back, that you see that, like Jennifer Lopez has, and like I love it when stars too are like oh, I just drink a lot of water and I get a lot of sleep, I’m like aha, I’m sure I’m like you probably do it in an hour or two of skincare every single day no, no, no, I know I used to like.Caroline Balinska: 6:46

I said I had my salon before and this is going back more than 20 years and I used to stand there just wanting to pull my hair out that my clients were like those people don’t get any sort of plastic surgery. I’m like what on earth are you talking about? These women are getting so much work done. It’s unbelievable. Yeah, they’re just getting really good plastic surgery. And the ones that look like they’re getting done are the ones that are getting amazing, like they’re spending a ridiculous amount. And I always say, yeah, come on, if you’re going to spend that much money on your face, you hope you look that good. I hope no one notices how much work you’ve done.Kristin Mallon: 7:21

Right, exactly, that’s the point. Yeah, you don’t want anyone to be able to tell, except today, when you have redness on your skin.Caroline Balinska: 7:28

Yeah, that’s part of the process. And on that, how often would you have that done on your face?Kristin Mallon: 7:35

So I’m pretty strict on both regimens. So I’m pretty strict on, like, exercise, health and skincare. So I do micro-needling four times a year. Okay, yeah, and I do micro-needling four times a year. I do pretty good facialists, like. I go to my facialists pretty regularly. I know it’s. I have a facialist who isn’t like you know, an arm and a leg. I know people spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars, but I go to a facialist usually like once every six weeks at a minimum, and then you know you need to get extractions and a good deep cleaning and O2 therapy. I think is really good. You can’t really do that at home, although some people can. I think that’s more and more popular now. And then the other thing that I really like is the fibroblast. That’s something that I do like to do. Tell me more. Tell me more. That’s that is the, the slight burns. It’s the same kind of concept. It’s I’m sure you’ve seen them like these tiny black dots that people do, and so they do it all over. I’m a certified nurse midwife and so I’ve seen people do it to clean up postpartum belly skin, tighten up postpartum belly skin, and it works amazing for postpartum belly skin. It used to be. There wasn’t anything to do for that. You just had to do a tummy tuck. Like you know, all these like M sculpt and cool sculpting and you know evota, m Vota, all these lasers and radio frequencies like nothing really worked for women that you know had gained a lot of weight in pregnancy and then lost a lot of weight and now they wanted to tighten up that skin. But fibroblast works pretty well. So it’s not like a cure all, but it’s going to make it a lot, a lot better. So that’s something that I usually do once every two years or so. For the fine lines like around I’m actually 80. Now, I’m just kidding, I was just making that joke to you. Yeah, around the, because the crow’s feet, I those, those are the things that bother me personally the most out of. I think everybody kind of has their things that. You know, some people at the lines here are like the lip lines, but for me the crow’s feet just really bothered me the most. But of course, botox everybody Botox is those. I definitely Botox the crow’s feet. I Botox them as much as I see them coming back and we use these muscles so much they come back much quicker than Botox on another part of our face and then I did the fibroblast there. It helped significantly to reduce the really tiny fine line. I’m taking notes, I’m taking notes.Caroline Balinska: 10:05

Yeah, after selling my cell on years ago, I actually don’t. Yeah, I still do stuff, but not. I used to be so ingrained in everything I think. Now, at my age, I think I need to be back in that, understanding all the new procedures, because it’s definitely changed a lot in the last few years, yeah, and I think much like the space I’m in.Kristin Mallon: 10:29

So I’m a certified nurse midwife and we didn’t talk about, we kind of got off track about my background, which I’m happy to go into. But I’m a certified nurse midwife and we do hormone balancing for women and a lot of perimenopause and menopause management and balancing to help women with feminine longevity. So if you look great when you’re 90, what difference does it make if you can’t play tennis? Sit on the floor, play with your grandkids, put your luggage in an overhead compartment. If you’re totally immobilized in those decades, the last decades of your life, it doesn’t matter if you have great skin. So that’s really what we’re doing. But there’s so many people in our space that the space is really crowded with nonsense. And I think similarly in the skin care space. I’m not an expert in that at all, just what I do for my own personal self. So I don’t want to talk like I know everything. But in hormones and feminine longevity and health, I know that’s my area of expertise. But in skin care I see how many charlatans there are, and even in the field of obstetrics, every month someone’s coming in trying to sell us a laser, trying to sell us a fat reduction technique, trying to sell us a muscle enhancing technique or a skin tightening technique, and so I think there’s so much nonsense out there and noise that now it’s really hard to get the signal through the noise. And that’s definitely what we are. We’re experts, we’re medical experts. We understand perimenopause, menopause and life after that time in a woman’s life, and how to enhance and promote health span and lifespan both. But it’s so complicated and complex, I think, for the average, because it’s complicated and complex for us to understand. I can’t imagine a consumer and I see women getting off track all the time being swiped by. Well, buy this biohacking technique and buy this supplement. That’s going to 400 dollar face cream Totally. Yeah, totally, even JLo. I love how she has a face cream now and I’m like she’s like, oh, my face mask is so. And I was out with some women from my town and I was like, oh, you guys, jlo’s face cream Like who’s going to believe that? This woman is definitely doing like I told you, one to two hours of skin care a day, plastic surgery, I’m sure All the things I just listed that I’m doing. She’s doing way more than that. And they’re like oh, I almost fell for it, I almost bought it.Caroline Balinska: 12:51

I’m like you know, so it’s like everybody is really.Kristin Mallon: 12:56

I think we’re all kind of like in this, like marketing overload from, unfortunately, a lot of snake oil out there.Caroline Balinska: 13:05

Yeah, 100% agree, and that is why I started this podcast was because I wanted to get some good information specifically for women at this time of our lives, because I didn’t understand that until I hit my 40. Like, I got pregnant just pretty much a few days after I turned 40. And that whole time period just leading up to that, the year before, everything really started to change in my body. I find out now that that was actually me going into perimenopause, which I didn’t realize, and it really is different from us being in our 30s and our 20s and we didn’t have the right information before. So I feel like we’re lucky that we do have the opportunity to learn more than our mothers knew. So I think that’s actually really good. I want to get back on track, because we’ve been talking about beauty and there’s, while that outside part’s really important, I think the inside is like you said if you’re not able to do things when you’re 80, then it doesn’t matter what you look like on the outside. Take us back to the beginning of your journey. And why did you start working? You were a midwife, so how did you get into this? What happened? What changed?Kristin Mallon: 14:11

Yeah, so I am a certified nurse, midwife and I went to really good schools, I think, in the US. I went to Johns Hopkins and I went to New York University and I started caring for women in private practice right out of the gate. I loved it. It was fantastic and I took care of women that were 20, 30 and 40, because I was really working with women giving birth and having started their families, growing their families. And then, as I grew and my practice grew, my women got older and their needs changed and they started to need more from me in terms of perimenopause and menopausal care and then feminine longevity care, wellness. For that time in their life they weren’t sick, but they wanted to optimize their wellness, so they would go. I thought, okay, go to your primary care doctor, because I’m really focusing on birth, so it’s in the primary care doctor. But then they would come back to me and they would say, well, my primary care doctor is saying I’m not sick yet, but that’s not good enough for me. I know I’m not feeling optimal and I wanna feel optimal and I wanna make sure that I’m protecting myself and doing everything preventatively so that I don’t. Why should I wait for diabetes? I wanna prevent diabetes, or why should I wait for cancer or heart disease or metabolic disease or bone loss? So that’s really when I kind of started the journey to kind of look into the space of longevity medicine and perimenopausal medicine and menopausal medicine. No one was doing it because it was after the WHI study of 2002, which basically halted the use of hormones across the board. So pretty much from all of the 2000s and even into the 2010s, nobody was doing it. So I had to. But as a midwife we kind of were always on the fringe of the OBGYN community, so it was easier for me to tap into the people who were doing it and then kind of getting into the international community of people who were getting into bioidenticals and hormone balancing with supplements or nutraceuticals, what labs they were using, what functional medicine tests they were using, and so I just kind of grew that part of my practice, really starting from like 2010,. And then birth work is hard, unfortunately, and I don’t think that we give birth workers the proper respite that we need to have a lifelong career in birth, and so what happens is like I think that for birth workers like myself, like it was my passion, it was absolutely the thing that I loved the most. But to keep going at the rate that is demanded of us in order to keep going is unsustainable for decades and decades and decades. And so I fully retired. I was like, okay, I’m gonna hang my hat up and I’m not gonna do anything. But so many of the women that I had cared for were like, well, we can’t lose you, we have to continue to still be able to see you. And a lot of what I was doing was they were like I need you to, I need my sister needs this, or my cousin needs this or my best friend needs this. And I was like, okay, this can still be done. It doesn’t have to be done in a brick and mortar way, it can be done virtually. We can send you know. Now, especially after COVID, the world is much smaller in terms of people can have mobile phlebotomy. They can go to a lab point of care solution center, get their labs drawn, have labs mailed to their home, do their labs at their home. You know, cheek swabs and saliva testing, urine testing, a lot of some of these tests stool samples can be done at home. And then I was able to kind of, you know, not totally do nothing but still kind of fuel the passion that I have for caring for women and very, very, very passionate about feminine longevity. I do think it’s true. Like Dr Davidson Clair says, the first person to live to 150 is alive today. And I think more and more we hear all the time in our common talk like oh, so-and-so had 102 birthdays, so-and-so had 104 birthday, and then I think in the next decade or two it’s gonna be so-and-so had 110, so-and-so had 110, so-and-so had 112. And so the people, the women like us that are in our 40s and 50s now, we should expect to live that long but also take care of ourselves now in our 40s, 50s and 60s so that we’re gonna be able to do all of the things that we wanna do and then get so much like squeezing that last bit of juice out of the lemon like we’re gonna get a whole nother lemon out of the lemon by kind of thinking about longevity now.Caroline Balinska: 18:46

That is so true and it’s so close to my heart and it is really when I came across to you exactly why I wanted to have you on here. Because, yeah, I think that if we knew, if I knew what I know now 12 months ago, I think the last 12 months would have been a really different. The last four months have been fantastic, but before that sort of the first eight months, like last year and then the start of this year, I had a terrible experience, and I think that there’s a lot of women out there that are. My time period was only about eight months, but that’s because I had enough knowledge to take action, but not only knowledge. I had enough persistence. And I was fought against here in the Netherlands, told no, you’ll be fine. I went to all these doctors and like, don’t worry about it, just don’t get any blood tests done, you don’t need anything done, Just get over it, go on the pill.Kristin Mallon: 19:46

I call that the AOL version of what we’re doing now. That’s like having an AOL email address. It’s like telling someone to go on the pill is like having an AOL email address.Caroline Balinska: 19:57

That’s what I was told. I was told don’t do any blood work, you’ll be fine. I finally found a woman here who is a hormone specialist. She’s an XGP normal doctor. She’s turned to just doing hormone stuff. I have paid an arm and a leg to see her An arm and a leg Looking at you, what you do and the prices that you charge. If anyone’s looking at your prices thinking, wow, that’s expensive, trust me, it is not expensive at all, because what I paid was just unbelievable and I’ve only done the first part of it. But at the same time, what I paid at the time, I was really like do I want to pay this money? Will I get results? And the results that I got have made it. I would have paid three times that.Kristin Mallon: 20:42

Yeah, yeah and now where I sit now.Caroline Balinska: 20:45

I wouldn’t easily pay three times Like I am all more like I feel amazing and realizing. I thought I felt terrible at the time but now, looking back on, like I was literally just surviving. I wasn’t even surviving. I really wasn’t even surviving. I was really holding on by a thread. It was terrible. I think about it. I want to cry just how bad it was. And now I think back to so many women I’ve spoken to over the years as a hairdresser. You hear it from, you know, sort of in conversation, but then again it was always hush-hush. Yeah, we don’t really talk about it. Women don’t talk about their hormones and women don’t talk about their menopause. And women don’t talk about the fact that as we get over the age of 30, our bodies do change, no matter how much we don’t like to think about it, and that’s all part of that hormones changing, getting into our perimenopause. So I just think there’s a lot of women out there that are really suffering, and not just for eight months like I do, suffering for years.Kristin Mallon: 21:42

Yes, yeah, so it’s. I can’t believe like your story is so empowering because, like you telling your story and you sharing your story is like hopefully we’re going to get the word out and the message out and less and less women will have to go through what you went through or exactly what you said. So many women are suffering in silence, being gaslit by their providers telling them you’ll just get over it. I mean also to be fair to the providers, like that’s what I was taught as a midwife in America, going through school because of the WHI study. So like it’s not all their fault, like they were just like hormones are going to cause cancer, which is absolutely not true, and there’s nothing you can give them. So just tell them to suck it up. So the gaslighting and then not realizing because women are so good at thinking about everyone else and so good at kind of like letting everything go under the rug and kind of like suffering through, like all of the things childbirth, menstrual cramps, endometriosis, pcos, like all of the different things that were kind of used to kind of grinning and burying it that when we get to the perimenopause time or then even the menopause time, we’re just like, oh, used to it and that doesn’t make it okay. And knowing more and having awareness and bringing all of this information to light is going to empower so many women to be like, okay, wait a minute. Like this isn’t normal. And I always tell women like, don’t give up on yourself. Like just because you’ve tried five things, six things, 18 things, doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there that could help you.Caroline Balinska: 23:16

Yeah, it’s so true. And just on that like, even if it’s, even if you’re not suffering much, you might have a girlfriend of yours, you might have a sister of yours that’s going through something, and just listening to her story and saying, hang on a second, you might actually be able to get help, and it’s made me more aware. I think my mom didn’t talk about anything. I don’t know anyone’s mom’s that did. I didn’t even understand. I didn’t even know what perimenopause was. I’m sure that for you, you’re a midwife, so you understand. But me, as when I first went to the doctor, I spent two years trying to get pregnant and I couldn’t get pregnant and I just had a baby and I thought I’m 41. I need to quickly get pregnant again. It wasn’t actually two years or less, it was like a year and a half, and all the doctors were like, just keep trying, just keep trying. And then finally, and then I was like something is like can you find out what’s wrong with me? And then finally I got some tests and oh, you’re going through perimenopause. And they spoke to me as in like, oh, and I’m like I’ve been trying to get pregnant for the last couple of years and you’re acting like it’s no big deal. And then when they told me those words perimenopause I was like what is perimenopause?Kristin Mallon: 24:20

Yeah, you’d never even heard of that term.Caroline Balinska: 24:21

I think I’m really stupid and I was like I’m so embarrassed I don’t actually know anything about this. And then I started asking friends and they’re like what, Peri, what? And they’re like yeah, and yeah, and even me like this harsh, harsh thing that no one totally knows the difference between, like what menopause actually is in the time period of that and all of that. And we need to. If we don’t understand the concepts, how on earth are we going to fix it in our own bodies?Kristin Mallon: 24:47

Yeah, or you don’t even know what you’re looking for. But yeah, the even when I was in school too, like we were just told that perimenopause is like the irregular periods before menopause, and that couldn’t be. I mean, it’s a little bit true, but it’s kind of like you know saying like I don’t know, like a piece of cake is, you know, is a little bit of flour, like there’s so many more components and pieces to it. And yeah, and to your point about hormone experts costing so much money, I think that it’s true and that’s what we really wanted to solve with Vemjeviti is like we really wanted to like how Uber brought chauffeurs to the average person. Like now, you know, maybe you’re not going to get someone who’s you know dressed in a black suit and opening the door from you and handing you champagne and giving you water, and you know, but if you need a chauffeur, if you need a driver to take you from point A to point B, that’s available to you at a reasonable price. And that’s really what we wanted to do. We wanted to bring concierge functional medicine for perimenopause and menopause, because that’s really how perimenopause and menopause is best treated from a holistic bird’s eye view. It’s not like a simple, straightforward thing like diabetes, insulin, hypothyroidism, thyroid replacement. It’s very complicated and complex, so it needs that functional medicine lens and we wanted to bring that down to the consumer level, the average consumer level, and make it affordable. So, rather than it costing thousands of dollars, which is what most hormone balancing people charge, it’s, you know hundreds of dollars, and you know that’s as cheap as we could make it. If I could make it cheaper, I definitely would, and maybe in time, as more we have more users and we can figure out how to streamline more things or we can find ways to make things cheaper, we can even make it less expensive. But that’s so true to your point about it being very difficult to find the right practitioners, because the right practitioners know they have the good clinical expertise and they really can solve this very difficult problem. And it’s a supply and demand thing. There’s just so so, so few of them. Billions of women who need their help. Yeah.Caroline Balinska: 26:50

Yeah, what you do is amazing. It’s really. I think if any woman is questioning whether they should get some testing done and find out what’s going on with their bodies, I think that, yeah, scrape up the money and get it together and do it, because it does, and everyone I’ve spoken to has seen the difference I wanna ask you about. I know you don’t have a lot of time today and I think I’m gonna get you back another time because Great, definitely, I’m definitely full of amazing information. I just wanna talk to you a little bit about the HRT hormone replacement. I noticed you mentioned bioidentical. Do you personally only believe in bioidentical or do you look at the both? What do you call the other one? Just normal HRT? I guess I don’t know.Kristin Mallon: 27:34

Yeah, so all of these things, just like the difference between menopause and perimenopause, is very confusing for the consumer, and the same thing with HRT and bioidenticals is very confusing for the consumer. So sometimes I think it’s easy to break it down. I can break down both things pretty quickly. So perimenopause is really just the time leading up to menopause. For some women it can be up to a decade perimenopause and it can have a whole gamut of symptoms. So it doesn’t traditionally have the hot flash symptoms that’s associated with menopause, although it can, but it’s more symptoms. Yeah, yeah, it’s more symptoms like night sweats, insomnia, hair loss, weight gain, mood changes, menstrual changes, PMS-like symptoms, breast tenderness, acne. The list goes on and on. So there’s a-.Caroline Balinska: 28:22

Fun, fun. Yeah, we do see symptoms.Kristin Mallon: 28:24

We get all the good parts and I think, like just in the you know and I’d love to get into the nitty-gritty of all the hormone changes that are happening and why but the kind of like, really like five second version is progesterone is going down and estrogen is staying the same, and so estrogen levels are staying constant. Progesterone, dhea, testosterone are going down, and that’s where you get all these perimenopausal symptoms. Then you get into menopause, which is medically defined as the 12 months after the last menstrual period. So technically, menopause is only one day, but I think when we’re talking about it colloquially, like in layman’s speak, or when we’re talking about it just like in regular common verbiage, it’s really like the year around that one day without having a period. So it’s like the year leading up, when the periods are like four months in between, now seven months in between. Oh, now two weeks, now five months in between. Okay, now it’s been a year. That’s really menopause and that’s really more fraught with the drop of estrogen which is seen with the hot flashes and more of the vaginal urinary symptoms. So that comes with loss of libido sometimes, although they can all cross over. So you can have menopausal symptoms and perimenopause and perimenopausal symptoms and menopause, though, but just generally speaking. That’s when you have vaginal dryness, that’s when you have more UTIs, that’s when you have urinary incontinence, more urinary symptoms, more vaginal symptoms, vaginal pain and vaginal itching, burning, things like that in the menopausal time. Now when you talk about HRT and bioidenticals and nutraceuticals and supplements and what’s the difference, so when I think of it, I kind of divide it into commercially made medications, commercially made hormones, and then bioidentical, biodynamically made hormones and some bioidentically made hormones you can get commercially. And so that’s where I think the confusion comes in. So I’ll give you maybe some examples. So estradiol and micronized progesterone are two bioidentical hormones. So when you look at the chemical compound of estradiol, which estradiol is an estrogen and micronized progesterone is a progesterone, they both mimic the same estrogen that your body makes and the same progesterone that your body makes. So they’re both bioidentical. So you can either get that from a commercial pharmacy which is usually produced in a very large factory in India or China or Mexico and produced through a pharmaceutical company, even though it is a bioidentical. A lot of times those commercially made pharmaceuticals, even though they’re bioidenticals, will have fillers in them to make the shelf life longer. So they’re gonna have glycols or minerals or parabens or something that’s just gonna extend the shelf life. So you’re gonna get a two year shelf life on most bioidenticals that you’re getting at a traditional, usually national or even international pharmacy. Brand Bioidenticals that are made at small compounding pharmacies. The same chemical compound, estradiol and micronized progesterone same exact thing, but they’re made in small batches, usually in that actual compounded pharmacy. So hormone replacement therapy really means it encompasses the whole thing. When you get into hormone replacement therapy somebody could be talking about either, when there’s commercially made hormones you’re talking more about there’s ethanol, estradiols, there’s estrones, there’s estriols. There’s things that are synthetically made, that are not bioidentical, so they’re not in the exact chemical or biosimilar, so they’re not in the exact, very similar compound to the body. So they’re different. And this is where we have hundreds of different types of birth control pills. You can have one woman that does very well on a certain birth control and woman that does very, very poorly on a different birth control because the synthetic ethanol, estradiol, birth control, a medication just doesn’t work with her body chemically. She doesn’t metabolize it right or she metabolizes it poorly. So for the bioidentical hormones you’re getting a little bit more options too that you don’t get commercially. So, for example, dhea can be bioidentically made compounded. Testosterone can be made bioidentically compounded. Pregnant alone can be made bioidentically compounded. Testosterone, dhea well, dhea in some factors, that’s kind of a complicated, but for the most part DHEA, testosterone and pregnant alone are not available in commercially made from a big pharma. So hormone replacement therapy kind of means all of it. But what you use, do you use something that’s covered by insurance? Do you use something that’s a small batch Can get in? That’s where it kind of gets into the individualization of like what does each patient want? Generally, for the most part, bioidenticals are absorbed much better. There was a study that came out of Arizona that reported that a bioidentical is absorbed about 77% even after it’s gone through the first pass effect. So when you take it orally it goes through the first pass effect, the liver metabolizes it. You’re getting about 77% of that medication in your body versus about 50% of the same exact medication. So you’re talking about estradiol to estradiol made in a bioidentical way sorry, in a chemically compounded way, in a compounding pharmacy, versus made in a pharmaceutical way. So it’s the exact same medication but the absorption is usually much better because the shelf life of a bioidentical, chemically compounded medication is usually three to six months, because they don’t use the fillers and the like, the lechicins, to hold the medication together. They just know the patient’s gonna use that medication right then and there and it’s not gonna sit on a pharmacy shelf and be wait to be distributed. So there’s lots more to it, but that’s kind of like a general overview of like how that works and like what hormone or HRT means. I think most people mean both when they talk about it.Caroline Balinska: 34:49

And do you recommend people taking the bioidentical or are there certain reasons why you’d say to use the commercially provided one?Kristin Mallon: 35:00

So I’m a really big fan of bioidenticals. But again, it’s very confusing for consumers because bioidentical pharmacies are not heavily regulated and so you have to make sure that you’re. It’s hard to know as a consumer what you’re looking for, that are they part of the compounding pharmacy regulation, self-regulating groups, and do they participate in the FDA regulating programs or not? Because the FDA kind of looks at compounding medications like supplements and then supplements have gotten together and then self-regulated. So that’s I think that can be very confusing for consumers. We happen to use a pharmacy that sets the highest standards you know the FDA recommends once a year. They do it. They test their facilities and all of their kits every 12 months. They don’t make anything larger than in a batch of 6,000. I mean it’s we went through a very highly vetted process, but that’s because we’re experts and we know how to do that. As a consumer I think that would be very hard to do and very difficult to do, and so I think if you don’t have access to someone who’s an expert in compounding, then going with a commercially made medication is the way to go. But yeah, I do prefer, you know, very meticulously well made bioidenticals, just because a lot of times you can get away with taking less hormone and getting the same result.Caroline Balinska: 36:26

Yeah, fantastic. I was told by the doctors here that bioidentical are not needed and are not good and was told not to do any blood tests and I would be out of the way because I decided after doing a lot of research that doing some blood tests and I understand the blood tests don’t always tell you because blood tests change, your hormones change over the time of the month, so it can change.Kristin Mallon: 36:49

Yeah, hormones are very pulsatile in general. But even though hormones are pulsatile, meaning like they can go up and down, they’re still going to only go up and down within a certain range. So, for example, estradiol we’re going to test your estradiol level. Is it zero to five, is it five to 50? Is it 50 to 300?, like so even any data is still really really helpful. And then also knowing that, like, okay, well, we tested you today and it was five, and we might test you tomorrow and it’s 150, and that’s okay, but it’s still giving us a lot of data and data points, especially in relation to your cycle, and that’s super, super helpful and really useful data that we can use to dose you appropriately in combination with your symptoms. So they’re both equally important data labs and symptoms. I say 50, 50.Caroline Balinska: 37:39

That’s exactly how I took it was that I thought that any data that we can get is actually going to be helpful, so I took that as well, and what I love about your company is that you actually offer the packages so they can get blood tests. Yeah, is that how I read it directly on your website that you actually can have the blood tests done each month.Kristin Mallon: 37:58

Yeah, so we have women who like to be tested every month, some women who like to be tested every three months, some women who like to be tested every six months and some women who like to be tested every year. And we’re very customizable and we really try to meet the women where they’re at and see what their goals are and then kind of go with them from there.Caroline Balinska: 38:19

But I think the point is is getting more than one lot of tests. Oh, yes. Yeah, it’s not just that one lot of tests. You’ve actually got to go back and get more tests, and that’s where I’m up to. Is that in the next month or so, I’m going to be getting my three month test, because I pay a fortune here, and but I’m going to get at three months, I’m going to get some tests. And she said, wait six months. But I was like, no, I’d rather get it done at three months, just to understand better. Yeah, what’s going on? So, yeah, that’s. I just love what your company does, and I wish you were here in the Netherlands, because it would definitely help. I wanted to ask you as well People listening, what are three ways that they could optimize their health? If they’re listening now and they feel like they’ve got some sort of symptoms, what are three ways that they could actually optimize their health?Kristin Mallon: 39:08

Yeah, so well. I mean, one of the things that we do offer is we do offer coaching, and so even international coaching. So we can’t do any treatments and we can’t offer any prescriptions, but we definitely can do advisements, and so that’s one of the ways. But if someone doesn’t want to go through that and they just kind of want to figure out what’s going on with themselves, I always, like I said before, always tell women not to give up and to seek out someone who usually I do really like clinical degrees I mean, because I’m a clinician and I work with doctors and nurse practitioners someone who touts themselves as a menopause or perimenopause specialist and there’s sometimes through referrals or Facebook groups, whatsapp chats you know there’s a pretty decent online community in many areas that can sometimes lead you to the right person who can sit with you and answer your questions. Like don’t be discouraged if you get a no from a primary care doctor or from an endocrinologist. Like much like yourself to keep going and not give up on yourself. And then it can be really helpful to share your symptoms, write down your symptoms and like familiarize yourself with what are the signs and symptoms of perimenopause, what are the signs and symptoms of menopause and the sooner you get the hormones balance and then, like you’re probably are a testimony to this the better you’re going to feel and the more it’s going to affect your longevity. Because most of the time, women are experiencing loss of lack of sleep or they’re experiencing mental health changes which are very can affect their life very significantly for very long periods of time. That can have a long term effect on their longevity. The way a woman and the reason why we call the company Femme Jeviti is because the way a woman goes through menopause and perimenopause significantly affects her longevity, and so that’s it’s important to not put it on hold or to not sweep it under the rug, because the sooner you get treatment Like I always say, like every month you get treatment now is another month you’re going to get in your 90s or another month you’re going to get when you’re 105.Caroline Balinska: 41:28

Yeah, I definitely believe that I was at the point where I was not getting out of bed, I wasn’t exercising and just motivating. It wasn’t even motivating, I physically had no strength to do anything and it was really, really bad. So when you talk about longevity, when it comes to as we get into our menopause years, what are some probably some advice that you can give? So we’ve got people have to check their hormones. Women have to check their hormones, find out if there’s something wrong with their hormones. But then you spoke about bone loss and things like that. Is there anything there that you can sort of guide us on the important, the important things women should think about?Kristin Mallon: 42:11

Yeah. So in terms of longevity, there’s we. So in longevity medicine we’ve kind of like touted these, something called the four horsemen of disease. And so the four horsemen of disease really are or is cancer, cardiac, having a cardiac event or cardiac health loss, alzheimer’s and dementia. And then metabolic health, which includes kidney, liver and diabetes health. And so most women, when they look at their health history and when they look at their family tree and their family health history, are going to come back positive on two of those four, and so picking exercise and diet and possibly even laboratory testing, very specific to those two, so let’s say, let’s say we’ll just pick cardiac, for example. So some women that have a history you know their father had a stroke at 50 or their you know grandmother had had a stroke and she was paralyzed for the last 10 years of her life when she was 65. There’s cardiac testing that can be done now and levels that can be done now and then very specific exercise programs. So the way you work out for metabolic health and the way you work out for cardiovascular health and the way that you work out for cancer prevention are all very, very different, and so I think that that’s something that women always wait and thought, oh, I’ll get a cardiologist, like when I’m 50, that’s the average age that I should be, you know getting something. My cholesterol is fine, so I don’t have to worry about anything. But there’s so many other levels, like, especially in cardiac, there’s something called an APOB, there’s something called an LP, little a, there’s something called the cholesterol HDL ratio, triglyceride levels are very important and so working now to keep those numbers low and reduce those numbers and watching those numbers over time can be very, very helpful. And then, when it comes to diet, the same is true about the four horsemen for diet. So diets for cancer prevention, diets for cardiovascular health, diets for diabetes reduction can or diabetes prevention even can all be very different. So it’s not to, it’s not to underestimate the power of exercise and and eating right for what your risk factors are.Caroline Balinska: 44:30

Wow, okay, I’ve never heard it explained like that before, so I’ve just been about you know, eat less sugar, make sure you work out. Now it’s about working out using weights, because weights are important to build my muscles and that’s really interesting. About the four horsemen, I actually I know we have to wrap it up because you have to go, but I want to invite you back on just to talk about the four horse. What?Kristin Mallon: 44:57

is it? Yeah, the four horsemen of disease. That’s like also one of my favorite things to talk about, like my passion.Caroline Balinska: 45:02

I would love to get you back on just to discuss that, so that would be wonderful. Is there anything else? Because I know you do have to go and I don’t want to hold you up. Is there anything else you want to finish up by saying today to let people know about before we get you back again?Kristin Mallon: 45:18

Yeah, so and I guess for like the three things. So I definitely would say get your data, like laboratory data is super important. Exercise, exercise, exercise. And for women, we know every decade the weights have to go up. So, like you said, weight bearing, exercise and then figuring out what the best type of diet is and for your health overall with the data that you got from step one. So not just thinking about eating right for weight loss, which is, I think, what a lot of people do, a lot of women especially, like we’re always thinking about I want to diet for weight loss, but thinking about, okay, I want to diet for cardiovascular health or cancer prevention or metabolic health prevention. So those would be like the three key things I would say. And we’re more than happy to coach people. We can only treat in the US and not every state in the US yet, but we’re going to come to another really soon. That could be a goal like a five year goal, but we’re more than happy to help people with coaching, to kind of direct them and guide them. Like this is the laboratory testing you should be asking for and this is also how to interpret it, and then this is the exercise that you should be doing for that specific type of risk factors that you might have.Caroline Balinska: 46:31

Yeah, that’s fantastic and I can’t stress enough, if anyone’s not sure if to get like some test done, it’s yeah. And when you said about writing things down, when I went to my lady here I actually wrote everything down, but really specifically. So I was like at 9am I’m having these hot flashes at 10am. This is happening. And I had stomach issues in the past so I was really good at journaling my issues. And when I went into her and I’m like here’s my issues, like do you have any symptoms, I’m like here’s my issues, like wow, okay, like that, that, I think, makes a really big difference and is really helpful.Kristin Mallon: 47:07

Oh, and then one other thing is to stay stay off hormonal birth control in your 40s, unless your desire is to use that for birth control itself, like if if you’re in your 40s and you need birth control for birth control sake, then great. But if you don’t, it’s really it’s. It’s not the way to go for hormone balancing. And even women who just are on birth control and they’ve just kind of always been on it and they’re getting closer to 44, 45, I highly, highly encourage them to go off it because it can make matters worse on the other side of that birth control. So that’s another kind of key thing that I would, I would encourage women to do. I mean, unless it’s it’s to prevent pregnancy, you know, which is a totally separate issue, but if you’re using it to manage your symptoms, there’s much, much better ways and much long term healthier ways to manage your symptoms than using birth control.Caroline Balinska: 47:56

I can vouch for that. That’s what they tried to do to me. So, yeah, kristen, I know you have to go, so thank you so much. You have been amazing. I want to get you back about the four horsemen of disease because I think that’s really interesting and I think you’re opening my eyes to even more information, so that’s great. Thank you for joining us today and thank you everyone for listening, and until next time, have a great day. Bye.