[00:00:00] Ellington Brown: Welcome to SpeakUP! International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown! 

[00:00:13] Rita Burke: As you're aware, on SpeakUP! International, we traverse the world to find people we consider to be community builders. And today is no exception. We have with us a woman from San Francisco. She is Amita Sharma, and she is the co-founder of the of NourishDoc, which is a holistic wellness platform focused on empowering women through their harmonial transition from PMS to peri menopausal and peri and post menopausal years.

Amita has developed a culturally sensitive and affordable Innovative Healthcare app. So to our guests, to our listeners, help me to welcome Amita Sharma to SpeakUP! International welcome! 

[00:01:12] Amita Sharma: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

[00:01:15] Ellington Brown: Thank you. for joining us today. I want to start with, an introduction and maybe just a touch of inspiration.

So what inspired you to co found NourishDoc and focus on holistic wellness for women during hormonal transition. 

[00:01:35] Amita Sharma: Thank you so much, Elton and Rita. The main thing for me was my journey, I suffered in silence having been educated at the Gerontop institutions. I didn't have the courage.

I'm ashamed to say that, but that is the honest truth. When I was going through perimenopause journey, I didn't even know what perimenopause was and it impacted my entire life. My, my physical, emotional, social, everything, and I was too scared to speak up the show, your name of the show is SpeakUP!.

And I couldn't speak up. I was like, oh my God, this is taboo. People will judge me. People think I'm not capable, all those things. And I suffered in silence for years, until, the, I hit menopause. And so that I kept quiet. And then a couple of years back, it just bubbled up out of nowhere.

And then, I'm at a stage of my life, my career, I, that of course making money is important, but also giving back to the society is more important for me at this stage of my career. So I said, what is it that I can give back? I can really make an impact. And this kind of bubbled up out of nowhere, that this is something that I could not voice my opinion.

I started looking into it, researching, and realized that I'm not the only one. There are millions of women all around the world who feel exactly the same thing, despite having all kinds of education, and all kinds of corporate ladders, and all that kind of stuff. That's where I said, Okay, let me dig into it.

The more I dug into it, I realize is under researched, underfunded, not spoken. We are ashamed to talk about this. We don't consider enough funding all the reasons. And that's when I said, okay, let me let's just go into it and start creating something that can make an impact to other women. At least I suffered in silence, let other women not suffer in silence.

Let me be the voice. 

[00:03:34] Rita Burke: That is certainly an amazing thing to consider your concerns. And what you were going through and to expand it to include studies for other women as well. So kudos to you for doing that. Now, please help us please expand on your statement. I think it's on your site or is it's in your bio that women should get empowered to take care of themselves after their reproductive years.

That's a state that's a loaded statement. Talk to us about it, please. 

[00:04:08] Amita Sharma: Yeah, this is absolutely all over the world, we are focused on fertility part of the woman's stage of life. And after the fertility, when the perimenopause, the hormonal transition starts happening to women in their 40s, the same thing that happened to me.

We are completely, we forget about them. The medical system, the society, and the women suffer in silence. We have no knowledge. We don't know where to go, where to seek help. We go to the medical doctors are not taught in medical schools about perimenopause, menopause. They're only taught for eight hours.

So the whole system is not forget about the empowerment. It's I don't even know I'm confusion. So much confusion and slipping under the rug and taboo and all that. And so they need to understand we understand everything in this day and age with AI and Internet and all that. What is going to come ahead of us?

And here we are, a woman's half of a woman's life is going to be spent in perimenopausal lets say 40 year old woman starts. Getting perimenopausal, she's probably going to live until 85 and we don't know nothing about it, barely anything about it. Until the woman is senior and she is now having chronic condition of osteoporosis, now me saying, oh my god, let's fix it.

Too bad, too late. So that's what I when we say the word empowerment, that's when we say we need to not focus on here as 65 year old woman, which I'm not saying don't focus, but we need to start here is what I'm saying. You have to start when they are younger and empower them with this whole knowledge of this stage of their life from peri, meno, and post what to expect so that they can at least make intelligent decisions about their health and wellness.

[00:06:02] Ellington Brown: So why do you believe that menopause and other hormonal health topics are considered taboo in many societies? 

[00:06:13] Amita Sharma: We don't talk about it. We have started talking about it in the just last two, three, four few years now. If you go back decades, nobody even talked about this whole menopause, just considered end of feminism, like feminine qualities in a woman, maybe women felt like that, It's that they can no longer bear children.

Historically, I'm talking not now, not in today's day and age, right? And now, you are also loss of libido is another thing that can happen to a lot of women and that can impact relationships. So everything that's feminine about a woman starts going down during this whole journey and may go down, I'm saying and nobody, Women don't talk about it.

They, slip it under the rug. The society thinks it's taboo. And, there's jokes about, oh, she must be menopausal. She's at that, age, right? We see that. We see that in so many movies, even during the PMS, we say, oh, you must be going through that part of the month, right? And oh, you're going mood swings.

Oh you're going through that. So it's just this whole media perception of a woman going through menopause that she might be going cuckoo. She's going through mood swings, all those strange things, right? We saw in Sex and the City when that Samantha goes to Abu Dhabi and she has all these supplements in her thing.

I said, oh, without this, I will go cuckoo, so it's just the perception of this whole menopause that a woman can go crazy or, and the women don't talk about it. It's just all these things as a society, women, everyone included. It's not just one thing that's going on, and now the medical doctors don't talk about it.

So that also becomes. shrouded in mystery. Like what the heck is that?

[00:07:52] Rita Burke: You talked about media perception. And I suspect it's not just perception, but information that is shared with the world from the media. Do you think if more women were involved with. The media, we would know more about it or the stigma or the taboo would be erased if more women were involved with the media.

[00:08:26] Amita Sharma: Absolutely! You see now more influencers are involved like Oprah's coming out. She's discussing her story, right? So a lot of women follow her. That's great. Michelle Obama, Reece Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow, all these women are influencers. So when they are sharing their own stories of going through petty menopause, it makes a huge difference because now women like you and me, who are still a smaller influence, Start feeling that, we start feeling confident that if these women can talk about it, why can't I talk about it?

So I think it absolutely helps and it has started happening in the last few years. If you think about really, talking it openly and these women are being the trailblazers, so to speak. 

[00:09:15] Ellington Brown: You talked about the challenges that women have going through this transition. They face this in the workplace.

Regarding menopause and hormonal health. You also said that this also affects their relationships so within your organization, do you help the husbands or partners understand what the woman is going through because He's sitting there probably scratching his head going, I've prepared this beautiful dinner nice candles rose petals on the bed You And nothing, so they're scratching his head and the wife is trying to explain what's going on and he's not having it.

So do you as an organization help the partners understand what their partner is going through? 

[00:10:15] Amita Sharma: Not at this moment, but this request has come from not from you were so many men who've interviewed me and they've asked the same thing is that help us understand you should do a something simple primer for men to understand what their partner might be going through and then they're clueless so I think we're going to take the suggestion.

But at this time, our platform is only for women. To help them. But but we will have something really simple for men to understand, what their partners are going through, but not at this time. We're only focused on women, just women to understand what is going through their bodies, and hopefully they can communicate to their partners.

[00:10:55] Rita Burke: Now, Amita, at one point in my life I was involved with health care. I was a health care professional. And the term perimenopausal was not written about in any of our books. It's a relatively New, I would say maybe in the last 15, 20 years that you're hearing the term, of course you knew about menopause and you knew about hormones, but that's relatively new for people that are in my age bracket, I would say relatively new, but I fully understand what it means.

So tell us about your holistic wellness program. Talk to us about that, please. 

[00:11:43] Amita Sharma: Yeah. So perimenopause, you're absolutely right. Just to go before to the holistic wellness program. Not many people knew about it. I also did not know about it. I got to learn about it when I was going through it. And the fact that, like you said, the health professionals are not even taught about what perimenopause is makes it more worse for people like us.

like consumers when we go to the health professionals if they're not being taught about what perimenopause is, only menopause, then how are they going to help? Now, come back to the holistic wellness. That's what we are really trying to do to women, is that menopause, yes, happens around 51, 52, an average age, but the perimenopause can start in 40s.

Now, you need to, because of the hormone fluctuations, so you need to change, you need to change your lifestyle. You need to, that's where when the symptoms are coming up, the heart flashes, the lost libido, all those things that we just talked about, that's when they need to start or even earlier to start embracing lifestyle modification, dietary modification, movement doing, embracing a holistic lifestyle.

Using some of the holistic therapies like different life, food as medicine, yoga, breath work, hypnotherapy, essential oils, all these things, we put it in a bottle or put it in a box and give it to the woman in our holistic wellness programs, whether she's coming for anti aging, whether she's coming from sexual health, panty menopause, post menopause, and we help her understand what the issue she might have and the simple steps that she can take by embracing this holistic lifestyle to help herself with this journey. That's what we offer in the Holistic Wellness Program. 

[00:13:28] Rita Burke: Now, before Elton comes with his next question, I'd like to hone in on something you spoke about. Food as medicine. Could you expand a little bit more on that?

[00:13:38] Amita Sharma: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of research has we have a lot of research, a lot of evidence that if we put the dietary we nourish ourselves with the right kind of nutrition, we can change the gut microbiome. So when I'm talking about food as medicine Taking the nourishing foods, whole foods instead of processed foods and the red meats and, sugars and all that.

Everything processed is going to create havoc in our gut health as opposed to taking the right nourishing wholesome foods, plants, vegetables. That is what you take the food as medicine. There's so much research on different type of spices that it can help simple different kind of cruciferous vegetables, different vegetables that have.

All ingredients to help you overcome or reverse some of the chronic conditions like for, I'm not an expert in diabetes, but it has a lot of expert, research on reversing or managing diabetes, prediabetes heart health disease. A lot of chronic conditions can be reversed and managed using food as medicine, movement as medicine.

And I'm retaking the same principles of food as medicine, movement as medicine to take into account the panty menopause journey as well. You're not going to reverse it. You're not going to go back into, what you were before. This is a stage of a woman's life. She's going to not stop menstruating.

You know what I mean? Not start menstruating. I should say that. But the idea is to overcome the symptoms that are happening during this pedimenopause journey. It can be controlled and managed using food as medicine and some of the holistic therapies by incorporating all these things consciously. 

[00:15:17] Ellington Brown: So you talked about Using food as a way of dealing with this process that women go through.

I'm assuming vitamins also probably they all work into this, but how does an individual's culture fits into these wellness programs? Because one of the things that you mentioned earlier. Is that there's a degree of shame. Where women don't want to really want to talk about this because well, they don't know who to talk to about this so it comes back to them being shamed.

So there's just shame and then it's culture sensitive on top of this how do you your organization deal with those issues? 

[00:16:10] Amita Sharma: Absolutely. This whole thing is so culture sensitive. In fact, the women from different ethnic groups have different type of symptoms and the age when they experience menopause is also different.

So just to give you a very quick example, the average age I talked about 51, 52, Latino American and African American women. get menopause at 47, 48, and the hot flashes are more aggravated in this community as opposed to the other community. So there's a huge culture sensitivity on this whole topic. And we are trying to bring culturally sensitive coaches so that they understand the different type of women Who come to our programs so that they understand, their lifestyle, the food habits the cuisine, mostly it's food habits and some of the Muslim cultures, they don't have the movement as, as often as other women would do.

So we're trying to bring the right type of coaches or different ethnicity, she were to manage the different cultures that women will come through because every woman coming from a different culture or ethnic background will experience this not only the symptoms differently also the age differently and the type of severity of the symptoms.

[00:17:25] Rita Burke: I must say that is a healthy approach to dealing with anything to be culturally sensitive. And indeed, there's no question that depending on one's ethnic background, they, things show up in different ways. And so that, that is a huge, amazing, welcome addition, I think, to your approach. Now, if I to register in your anti aging program, what can I expect?

[00:17:56] Amita Sharma: Yeah, so anti aging is not only Botox, what we think, oh my God, give me the Botox injection and I'm anti aging. It's not about that, right? It's about in side out, how you feel your, yourself your body, your physical aging, your mental, how you feel you're fit, right? So anti aging is everything, your physical fitness, your mental fitness, your emotional fitness, all of the above.

So we will teach, talk you through anti aging, meaning like I said earlier, food as medicine, movement as medicine, cleansing your gut as one of the things, the anti aging, there's a strong relation of healthy gut with the skin. We know that there's a correlation of healthy gut with your mind, right?

Keeping yourself busy, that is also anti aging. If your memory is working, if you're doing something every single day, you're not going to get into memory lapses or dementia or all those things. So there's a lot of research. Anti aging is all about that. It's not just looking the skin being whatever. So that's what we are really trying to tell a person when they come into the anti aging program. It is everything around you. It's, it's not just one thing that's anti aging. You need to make sure your gut health is fine. You're mentally active, you're not feeling stressed out or anxiety, right?

Your, You are doing some movement on a daily basis. You're nourishing yourself on a daily basis. You're having a me time on a daily basis. All that is anti aging. And then, of course, you're taking the right steps to make sure that you know the right supplements and the right all those things so that you.

You're active. That is what the anti aging is. And of course, skin and hair is included. I'm not saying we're excluding that skin and hair. How to take care of skin as you age, how to take care of hair. A lot of women start getting hair thinning as they start aging, right? These are common symptoms.

So we, we talk about that as well. In addition to what I just talked about so that you are really cleansing and living your best from inside out, not outside in. 

[00:20:09] Ellington Brown: So do you have some, I'm sure you do have a few success stories with individuals that have gone through this expert assisted care program and you help them with their stress and anxiety because now we're looking not from the inside out, but from the outside in and sexual health related to menopause.

So do you have any. Success stories that you can tell our audience. 

[00:20:40] Amita Sharma: Yeah. A lot of these experts have shared a lot of success stories with us that the same story they started getting, one of the coaches, she explained that she started getting heart palpitations, and she thought she was having a heart attack and then suddenly she was feeling anxiety and she went to the doctor and they gave her medication and nothing happened and then suddenly she realized that she was going through perimenopause and heart palpitations is one of the symptoms, very strange symptom, but it happens and what was happening was inside her body when she got the testing.

The testing is very important in some of the cases that she had a lot of inflammation inside the body over the years, right? With the kind of food we take this, pesticides laden foods. All of us in the Western society are everywhere in the world and makeup and all that kind. So she had a lot of inflammation inside the body.

And as a result of hormonal fluctuations along with inflammation, she started getting heart palpitations as a one of the symptoms. So she consulted a naturopathic doctor, which who recommended clean cleansing of the system, inside out cleansing, that's like a medical detoxification, where you're given for a number of days, some very mono diet and you cleanse the system and you basically you are you through bowel movements, the toxins are coming out so that's what started happening and then after that she was put on a diet, a holistic diet with the nourishing diet with the plant based mainly plant based diet to nourish her body with the right kind of foods and movement, the type of movement that also was included.

And she started feeling much better and the symptoms not, subsided. So these kinds of stories are very common that a lot of coaches, a lot of people, women have shared with us. And these are, themselves, health coaches in the health industry, and they had no clue what perimenopause was, like you just said, Rita and it's not only in your generation it's even in today's day and age, so many women have shared their stories that they had no clue about what perimenopause was when they started experiencing these strange symptoms.

[00:22:45] Rita Burke: It's interesting that it seems to me as if you what you do is holistic education for the people that you work with for the women you work with. And I'm glad that you've got some great success stories. I am also glad that you talked about something that a term that I use often, and I have used it with students I've worked with.

Me time. Me time. It's not everybody that knows about that and everybody that talks about it. So expand on what me time means to you, please. 

[00:23:20] Amita Sharma: Me time is just taking time for yourself on every single day. We women are taking care of everything else, our kids, our families, our God knows everything, right?

Except for ourselves. So the me time, every single day, that's what we talk about. Put 10, 15 minutes for yourself. What that, what you like to do, whether it's reading a book, whether it's doing flower arrangement, whether it's knitting, whether it's writing, whatever gives you joy. Okay. That's what you just for yourself.

And that's what we encourage women to do on a daily basis so that, they have time for themselves, for self love, for self care, for self esteem, for self worth, all of the above. That's me time. And, is what we are saying.

[00:24:11] Ellington Brown: What is the number one food that seems to come across the board for women who are going through this transition? 

[00:24:24] Amita Sharma: Plant based, right? They need to switch. They need to get rid of red meats. They need to get rid of processed meats. They need to include plant based vegetables. And number one food, if you ask me, out of the plant based vegetables is phytoestrogens, meaning that the vegetables that have natural phytoestrogens will help women because as the estrogen is going down, if they put in these foods in their diet on a daily diet that will help them navigate the, the imbalance that's happening of lowering the estrogen.

When I use the word phytoestrogens, cauliflower, foods that have natural estrogen in it, flax seeds, soy broccoli, these kind of foods. But generally having an overall. balanced plant based diet and including all the taste that's important. When you think about it, when we say, Oh, eat prebiotics, probiotics, right?

We talk about bitter vegetables, but if you pay attention to all the different tastes in a meal, you will end up including the bitter vegetables, the prebiotics, the fermented foods, the hell, whatever the sour and the sweet and the salty. That's what, so if you include all that in your diet, that is very, that is number one in my mind.

It's important for women to pay a lot of attention to this.

[00:25:53] Rita Burke: We're talking with Amita Sharma, who helps women to manage and to cope with perimenopausal and hormonal issues, so to speak. So she provides some kind of holistic education for women. On SpeakUP! International, we seek to inform, educate, and inspire people. And you're helping us to meet those goals today.

Talk to us about Amita when she was 20 years of age. You haven't always been doing this. Talk to us. Give us a picture of what you were like at 20? 

[00:26:31] Amita Sharma: I studied architecture, believe it or not. I wanted to be an architect and design these beautiful buildings. Not that I could have become Frank Gehry of the world, but still.

So I always wanted to, I was always a creative person. I always wanted to create something beautiful. And then at that time, architecture seemed to be the vehicle for me to create. But me as a personality, I was very naive, very unsure of myself with a low self esteem. I should say that most teenagers I think mentally I was still a teenager when I was 20 and I was still very lanky and unsure of myself.

Don't know what the world is going to throw at me and emotionally very imbalanced. That's how I would describe myself at age 20.

[00:27:16] Rita Burke: So what was your first career then? 

[00:27:20] Amita Sharma: But my first career was an architect, believe it or not. I was designed homes in near San Francisco for wealthy individuals. And quite a few of them here in Atherton. And then I ended up switching from being an architect because it was very hard to pay my bills.

And to software, that's what happened. So it was a switch. I had to go back to school and I studied engineering again at UC Berkeley and then went back, came back into the industry and started working for high tech. 

[00:27:53] Ellington Brown: Okay, so I have a two part question here. One, how does meditation fit into this holistic means of helping women to make this transition?

And then you have a self care app. Is that correct? Alrighty. And can you talk a little bit about that app and how that helps women over 40? 

[00:28:25] Amita Sharma: Absolutely. So tons of studies have been done on how meditation can help women, men, women, everyone with their mental health, anxiety, the depression.

Basically, meditation is, we were talking about me time earlier, right? Meditation is another me time example for me time. You're just concentrating on your, the present moment. And if meditation is listening music, And, a gentle music. You're just focusing on that gentle music and letting it soak into your mind, body and soul.

And there's a lot of research that helps with the mental health. So the meditation is. Very powerful. If everybody can do it for even a few minutes in a day, right? There's so many apps right now just on meditation. I can like at least hundreds of them right now. Now, what we are doing is meditation is one small, teeny little part of what we are doing.

We are not a meditation app. We are about perimenopause menopause, but meditation is a vehicle to help women. So our app is coming out next month. It's not out yet. In March it's coming out, but the app is going to be talking about the things that we discussed is, let's say a woman logs onto our app and she says she's either perimenopausal or postmenopausal depending on her stage of where she is, she's going to be presented the kind of symptoms of the kind of programs that are applicable to her stage of whatever the journey is, right?

A 40 year old honey menopausal woman will have different symptoms as a postmenopausal 65 year old as an example. So based on their journey, we match like the different things what she has already told us. And then she starts on this journey in within the app of self care program. That would be the first one.

We are pricing it at $10.00 a month, which is super affordable. So every woman can go through the self care. The next level would be guided program, but the experts would be guiding in a group setting is still it's very affordable and the 2nd part. And then the 3rd part is completely concierge guiding guided one on one personalized.

And that would be the 3rd part. So that's how this app is structured. It's going to be structured so that. It actually takes care of a comprehensive offering at the same time price points, because that was one of the things that I wanted to make it super affordable for every woman out there. If you go, if you are a woman and you say you want to consult with a functional medicine doctor, they're charging like 300 to 800 an hour.

And you're going to spend thousands of dollars in just the consultation and the testing and all that, and still you are like completely baffled at the end of the day. Maybe you get the thing, but it's super expensive. So that's why we're demo. Literally the democracy of the knowledge is what we are bringing in this.

Shrouded mystery topic, the app brings you the affordability and also gives you the empower is in the palm of your hand at 10 bucks and lets you go to the next level. If you want to, 

[00:31:39] Rita Burke: what else can you ask for? The app is in the palm of your hand. It's innovative. It's individualized. It sounds to me.

It's it's tailored to meet individual needs. Sounds wonderful. Yes. Tell us now, what would you say is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given? 

[00:32:00] Amita Sharma: Believe in yourself, even if no one else does. I have been given this advice by my grandmother, and I'm like, I was explaining you how I was at age 20.

I did not believe in myself. I was like a emotional, not a wreck, but emotionally. weak person. I should say that. And she would take me every day to a local temple where it wasn't like a temple, like a religious temple, like a spiritual guru temple, where a spiritual woman used to be there and she would give the advice.

And that's what she told me. You gotta believe in yourself. So I think that's the best advice I've been given. And I still think about it on a day every day about that, that what that woman told me. A spiritual guru woman tells me that just believe in yourself and you'll be fine. And I think a lot of us.

Don't do that in our life. 

[00:32:53] Ellington Brown: It's look upon as a good thing when, a woman talks about her family and all the things that they're doing. And then, another woman will tell, say, for black, my mom, Oh Miss Juanita, you need to slow down. You're doing so much for your family, but the way that they say it, it's a good thing and not necessarily a good thing.

So how does Nurse Doc empower women to prioritize self care and to prevent chronic conditions in their post reproductive years. I know we touched a little bit about that, but it would be great if you could elaborate on it. 

[00:33:36] Amita Sharma: Absolutely. Women, we women have the habit of being super women.

It's the truth. We love to go in parties or whatever and gatherings and say, Oh, I'm doing this for my kid. I'm doing this for my mom. I'm doing da. And we never talk about what I'm doing for myself. I don't know. We have this And it's agnostic culturally agnostic. It doesn't matter which culture you're coming from.

We all do the same thing. So we have a therapy sessions, group therapy sessions for women. And in addition to all the things that I just described at NourishDoc, so that, we try to teach them. That how important it is for women to have me time to force for self care, self love. Due to all the changes that they're going to go through in addition to in addition to the therapy time, they also have community when they can talk to other women about it and they can discuss what they are going through and what other women are going to specifically not trying to say, Oh, I did this specifically about this topic of any menopause, what they are going through, how they're feeling, that is important for them to release the emotions.

A lot of women, we don't release our emotions. We just try to always take someone else to say, Oh, you're so great. You're a super woman. That's what women are trying to do most of the time. And we are trying to teach them. We're not saying don't do it for others, but do it for yourself as well.

And that's why we have these therapy sessions that are by experts also by simple other women, they can talk to them in a safe space. They want, they need to feel safe. They don't want to be judged. It's okay to do whatever. So I think that's what women need is a safe space where they can open up the real who they are, rather than trying to always prove they're better than the other one.

That's my humble opinion. I don't know how you feel, Rita. 

[00:35:28] Rita Burke: I thought we were super people, aren't we? I thought we were socialized to be super, to take care of family, take care of friends, take care of the neighbors, take care. And then you know what happens? I shouldn't have to tell you what happens.

Then we get to a point in our lives where we say, enough. I have to start taking care of me. And in most cases, I think we wake up to the call. There's an aha moment and we wake up. But I'm wondering what brings you joy? 

[00:36:06] Amita Sharma: I'm making impact on other people's lives. I think for me, that is the most Joyful. I'm telling you, I wake up in the morning.

I am someone or the other like you today or someone the other tells me every single day, even during the time it has been challenging for us to put this whole thing together. Someone will tell me. Oh no. Don't give up. You're doing a great thing that to me. I have been able to make an impact on someone's life in a positive way.

To me at this stage of my life, when the kids are in college and grown up, that brings me the biggest joy.

[00:36:44] Ellington Brown: So how does education play a role? Because I think most women, they have these walls around them. And so you don't get to really know what's going on the inside, right? Yeah, I know that to be true because I remember having trying to have very personal conversations with my mother. She wasn't having it, but she just refused to let me in.

Here you are, you have women coming to you with these walls around them. How do you use education to break through that wall, that break through that stigma that's around menopause and women's hormonal health? 

[00:37:29] Amita Sharma: First of all, even my mom, she, I agree with you. She's has a wall around her. I can never get through to her what she's literally thinking.

And, but I think this generation of women are different. I certainly, all of them are working, our moms were not working. My mom never worked in her life. She, not that anything wrong with it. But in our generation of women, they're all working. They're very open minded.

They, the way they have planned their life, their career so far, they also want to plan this stage of their life, right? They're not, yes, the slightly post menopausal woman who are 60 plus, absolutely. They will have a wall around them because they're a little bit different. But a 40 plus a woman in today's day and age is very open minded.

She's most of the time on social. She doesn't have any problem, sharing her entire life on social media as opposed to a 60 year old woman, right? So our hope is not that we are not going after a 60 year old woman. If they're postmenopausal, they need the help. But what I'm saying is the younger women are definitely better.

Much, much more open minded and having these discussions. That's my experience has taught me after talking about 3000, 4000 of them that the depends on which stage the women are and how closed versus open minded. They are what we find is. Typically, not that I'm trying to bias against age, but typically, 60 plus women because they have grown up in certain type of society when the internet and the flow of information was not so fluid, so to speak, a little bit more still in a closed wall, as opposed to perimenopausal women who are very open and they're very, they want to learn as much as they can.

[00:39:16] Rita Burke: And also, there's a lot more information out there, and with the advent of the internet, yes, the information is there for them, and you are quite correct. I believe that, without any judgment, that they're much more comfortable sharing their stories with each other and with strangers as well. Now, is there anything that we did not ask that you want to share with our listeners?

Feel free. This is your time. 

[00:39:45] Amita Sharma: No. Thank you so much. I think you've asked all the right questions. We encourage your viewers, followers to go to our website and let us know how we're doing. Like I said, the app is coming out for another month or so. And until then women are Encouraged to send us an email or submit a form.

And when the app comes out, when we launched the app in March, we let everyone know, including you, of course, and thank you so much.

[00:40:14] Ellington Brown: What is the name of the app? 

[00:40:17] Amita Sharma: So it's right now, everybody should go to the website, www. nourishtalk. com. And when the app comes out in March, we are final finishing it up as we speak, we will have the links to download the app and enroll in the programs like I explained earlier, the $10.00 and all that everything will be on the website.

[00:40:43] Ellington Brown: Perfect! Sounds like a plan to me. 

[00:40:46] Rita Burke: There's something that I wanted to ask you. Tell me about the name of the business, Nourish Doc. What's the origin or significance of it? 

[00:40:57] Amita Sharma: So Nourish Doc was nourish. We talked a lot about nourishing yourself, right? And dock is literally Doctor of nourishing yourself.

So initially when we started, we wanted to put together a mega holistic like a library or directory of all the doctors and the holistic experts in the world. That's what hobby started with, and we said, Oh, some of these things, therapies are not clearly well understood. Why don't we bring everything under one umbrella?

So that was the genesis of Nourish Doc. And then we said, Oh, this is too much! We need to everybody told us you're trying to do too much and you're not going to be successful. You need to narrow down. And then we started narrowing down and then. This menopause, perimenopause came out of, like I said, my personal journey.

Then I said, look, if there is something that I personally want to focus on within the holistic wellness arena, this is what I really want to bring to the, to the public that the the nourish part of it, nourishing yourself during this phase. So that's, it's really is the genesis of what the name stands for nourishing yourself.

And doctor is just. DOC, if it makes sense. 

[00:42:15] Ellington Brown: Yes, that does make sense. Amita Sharma, it has been a pleasure this afternoon having a wonderful conversation, enlightening conversation about women's hormonal transitions, health. We talked a little bit about breaking those taboos and addressing the challenges that women face.

and the things or the programs that can be used in order to help women, including technology and innovation and empowering women so that they understand how to prioritize self care and prevent chronic conditions, which I think is excellent. And using community and engagement in terms of being able to meet together and allowing women to come out of that shell and actually say what's on their minds without fear of retribution And I think all of those things attribute to a woman being able to go through this period in her life with dignity and minus the shame. So thank you so much for spending time with us today Rita, is there anything you want to add to that?

[00:43:39] Rita Burke: I just want to duplicate your thank you to Amita to say that a few things will resonate with me. The importance of me time for women, the importance of sharing information in community is really very significant, I think. And I think you found a niche and I wish you the best as you move forward. To help women with hormonal health issues. Thank you so much! 

[00:44:14] Amita Sharma: Thank you! Thank you! Both of you, amazing conversation! And that really is the intent to help women get through this phase with dignity, Elton talked about. And that is the intention!

[00:44:26] Ellington Brown: Thank you for tuning in to SpeakUP! International! If you wish to contact our guest, Ms. Amita Sharma, please be prepared to submit your name , your email address, and the reason why you wish to contact Ms. Sharma at www.nourishdoc.com. Ms. Sharma has other social media accounts you can use to connect to her that will be listed in the description section on Spotify and other social media platforms.

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