News flash! A new alternative alternative therapy!

Posted by Liz on Jun 16, 2008 in hot flash | 4 comments

As promised in my post last week, I tracked down Denise Polacek, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Life Quality Technologies to learn more about the device for hot flashes that she is developing. We chatted about how and why she invented the product and more importantly, what it means for women in menopause who for one reason or another, don’t want to take hormone replacement therapy.

Her background? Denise has not spent her lifetime as a career inventor but she has spent years in a field called technology transfer (assisting scientists with patenting and commercial licensing of inventions). So she understands the ins and outs of development. What’s more, she has a broad scientific research background and a few patents under her belt already, although she says that these are based in cardiovascular genomics and not targeted to her current interests.

No stranger to hot flashes, a few years ago Denise found herself attacking the thermostat in meetings every time her internal thermostat rose a degree. “After about the fifth time, a colleague pulled me aside and suggested that the problem was me,” she explained. “So, I went to the gynecologist and immediately started hormone replacement therapy.”

While the hot flashes stopped within 24 hours, her interest in research didn’t. She felt that if she was going to take hormones, she better understand what she was taking. While delving deeper into the published literature, she learned about the association between HRT and incidence of blood clots and heart attacks. The cost-benefit ratio was not worth it, she says. So she stopped the drugs immediately. And became a guinea pig for her own experimentation with thermoelectric cooling.

Denise likens her own patented invention to a cooling fan in a computer; when the compressor starts overheating, the fan kicks in. She says that she soon realized that as soon as she got into the cold, her hot flashes would stop and that she could attenuate the symptoms within seconds. “I used those blue ice paks commonly reserved for injuries,” she says. And by experimenting on different parts of the body, she discovered that certain areas were more sensitive to cold than others and could literally halt the flash in a very short period of time.

Although the new device does not have a name or a final design as of yet, there is a prototype that’s been tested successfully on numerous colleagues. The results thus far have been exciting. “Cooling is mostly immediate and instantaneous” she says.

Denise expects the yet unnamed device to be on the market sometime in 2009. She emphasizes that the final product will be lightweight, portable, discreet, and worn under clothing near the waistline, “like lingerie.”

This is a lady who was not afraid to take some risks and follow her own path when the path in front of her has too many potholes. She’s networked like crazy and her efforts are paying off – not just for herself but those perimenopausal and menopausal women for whom drugs are not the answer. Denise told me that while she has a few other ideas for her new company, she is first and foremost dedicated to menopausal women and breast cancer sufferers plunged into premature menopause. “Menopause is not a disease,” she says, and “shouldn’t be treated like one.”

The possibilities are endless. And here’s a new pioneer who’s created innovative solution for millions of women who suffer from hot flashes. Cool!