Search results for coldfront

Forecast: there’s a Coldfront moving through

Posted by Liz on Apr 23, 2012 in hot flash, HRT | 2 comments

“Cold front” you say? But it’s Spring in the Northeast and temps have been pretty warm.

Nope, not Cold Front, but Coldfront®, a new personal cooling system designed to cool flashes when they hit.

Coldfront is not unlike Cleavage Coolers, the revolutionary product that fits right into your bra like rubber chickens. However, these nifty little Coldfront packs fit into a container the size of a sunglass case, are the size of your palm and reportedly soft to the touch and stay cold all day because of a built-in cooling core. When those hot flashes hit, just pull one of these babies out and palm those sweats right out of your life. No drugs and a reusable cloth that wicks moisture away. The company describes Coldfront as “safe, effective, discreet, convenient, mess free, environmentally friendly” and best of all: “elegant.”

I’m not entirely sure about the last adjective and hardly believe that the carrying case would easily double as a purse on a night out on the town. Still, Coldfront is not the first product based on cold technology to address the body’s sudden inability to regulate its internal thermometer. And yet, at a pricepoint of $50, it seems like a reasonable investment compared to other HRT alternatives that require a bit more of a time and financial commitment.

I have not seen the product nor do I know anyone who’s used it. Personally, I am a bit skeptical but it’s my job to be. And, I never truly believe testimonials on a website; what company publishes negative feedback? What’s more, the product, like cleavage coolers, the bedfan, the chillow, chillipads and gelmats, all rely on a woman who wants some ice, ice, baby! I dunno, but I run hot/cold on this whole approach.

Have you heard of Coldfront? Have you personally used the product? Inquiring minds need to know!

Redefining ‘cool’: Cold Front’s pushing new boundaries

Posted by Liz on Jun 28, 2013 in hot flash | 0 comments

Cold Front ® is not simply for hot flashes any longer. In fact, entrepreneur and Founder of Personally Cool — Susie Hadas — is expanding her horizons and needs your help!

Although hot flashes may be the only game in FlashFree Town, there appears to be a need for cooling outside the menopausal boundaries. And let’s face it; as much as me and several other esteemed menopause bloggers have tried to move the needle, talking menopause is not always easy. And engaging women who want to admit that they’re not simply sweating but flashing can be an upward battle. Consequently, Susie and her team have gone back to the drawing board and emerged with a brand new bag: personally cooling is truly a global endeavour. Voila! A new Indiegogo Campaign has been born! And your assistance is needed!

I can assure you that Susie is not turning her back on menopause but looking forward to help millions of individuals worldwide who suffer from:

• heat intolerance due to multiple sclerosis and thyroid issues
• hormonal changes in men that also cause hot flashes
• chemotherapy side effects

When I caught Susie on the Twitter stream announcing the campaign, I sent her a note asking for more details. She says that when she and her team were on the road,  “more people were talking to us – travelers, moms, fashionistas, runners, bikers, hikers, the list goes on. They were all asking us the same question, “Why aren’t you talking to me?” So, she took a step back and decided to relaunch Cold Front on a new level.

Susie notes that in order to grow, they need funding. Moreover, the money they raise to produce another run will enable the company to produce wraps for the gel packs and a single larger gel pack which is what customers have asked for.

And yet, there is another element to this that I want to share with you:

Giving back.

Like many entrepreneurs, Susie has not rested on her laurels or profits and rather, has consistently and continually given back. An attractive aspect of the Indiegogo campaign is that the money that you donate can actually go towards funding three charities whose constituents will benefit from cold therapy:

• Love to Langa, a Cape Townships, South Africa organization that is working to build and renovate Early Childhood Education Centers. Your gift of coldfront® will cool the children down and always be on hand as a non-toxic first-aid solution for minor bumps and bruises. 
  
• Nayaya Health, a Nepal-based organization that provides care to residents of the Achham region of Nepal for free, and employs over 160 Nepalese citizens. (Nyaya Health has been using coldfront®  to keep staff and patients cool and aid in pain relief and they have requested more units).
• CT Challenge’s Center for Survivorship, a Connecticut-based  survivorship center offering evidence-based programs designed to help empower cancer survivors to live healthier lives.

Susie’s campaign goal is $100,000 and she’s got 35 days left to achieve it.

How about we chip in as a team and cool the world?

Wednesday Bubble: Packing heat? Tips for the road…

Posted by Liz on Oct 17, 2012 in hot flash | 0 comments

Ladies, are you packing heat?! Seems like there are more of us everyday. In fact, although hot flashes will never come into fashion, they certainly drive fashion choices for many women. The rules of the hot flash road are fairly obvious:

• Keep it light – sure, it’s 25 degrees outside. But you want to be able to remove clothing without being left with nothing on but your birthday suit. Consequently…
• Wear layers – layers, layers, layers. They will be your saviour; trust me.
• Consider wicking fabrics – cotton is great but it can’t wick the wet away from your body when it need it most. Athletic gear is most famous for the more fashionable wicking clothing so if you can get away with a few items, at least on the weekends, go for it. Just stay away from butt messaging and the leisure suit look!
• Pack a change of clothing if you can – it never hurts to be prepared.
• Be prepared to cool down quickly with something like ColdFront – my friend Susie Hadas has invented an easy to hide, readily accessible, personal cooling system. When you’re packing heat, be sure that you’ve got ColdFront on demand.
• Lose the heavy baubles – talk about a sweaty, heavy load!

Got more tips that work best for you or additional instructions for other readers? We’re all ears!

Your Weather Forecasting is Spot On! Guest post by Susie Hades, Founder, Personally Cool, Inc

Posted by Liz on May 7, 2012 in hot flash, HRT | 0 comments

You may recall that about a week ago, I took the mick out of ColdFront, a new personal cooling system designed to cool those hot flashes. The day that the post ran, ColdFront inventor and Personally Cool Founder Susie Hades posted a comment with an offer to provide with me a sample so that I could try it for myself. Although I turned Susie’s offer down, I did reach out to her via email and phone and we had a lengthy conversation about her vision and the product. And you know what? I was impressed by her philosophy and approach, so much so that I offered her a guest spot on Flashfree.

Part of my mission is to reveal products and agents that work and that don’t, to uncover snake oil approaches and provide data-driven alternative solutions. Mostly though, I believe that information is truly power AND empowering, and that by educating ourselves, we are in a better position to play a role in driving and shaping decisions about our health and our healthcare.

Susie’s goal is not unlike mine and I encourage you to show some love. And Susie? I am glad that we had a chance to exchange ideas and start what is certain to be more than one conversation. We need more of those exchanges if we are ever going to move menopause out from under the Menopause Industrial Complex and into the hands of women who want viable and safe solutions.

I founded Personally Cool in 2007 because I couldn’t find what I call an “and” product for hot flash relief: drug-free; AND effective; AND safe; AND convenient; AND discreet; AND elegant; AND eco- and wallet-friendly.

I must have bought and tried one of almost every type of hot flash relief product available with the exception of bio-identical or hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Even though the efficacy was unquestionable, the data tell a larger story for HRT.

In 2002, increased risks of breast cancer, stroke, and a number of other side effects were widely expressed across various studies. As a result, prescriptions of Prempro (a leading Wyeth/Pfizer HRT product) dropped 80% by the fourth quarter of 2003.[1] Women, frightened and confused by the findings of these studies, wanted other choices.

Our own research (both initial and a just-completed survey of 300 women) confirms that women are still looking for safe alternatives to HRT. We also learned a number of other interesting facts – from how often and with what severity women hot flash, to how they handle them. Two poignant realities were derived from this last point. First, more than 80% of the women we surveyed had either never used HRT or they stopped at the advice of doctors or of their own volition. Second, more than 55% of the women currently experiencing hot flashes – given the choices they’ve faced until now – deliberately choose to do nothing at all. In other words, they literally sweat them out.

I invented coldfront to be the “AND” product that other products aren’t, and I am proud to say that it is. A test panel conducted late in our product development to make sure that we got it right was critically helpful. We abandoned certain product features that we loved but that our intended audience didn’t. After testing coldfront for three days, over 80% of our panelists reported that they’d never use anything other than coldfront to relieve their hot flashes. This was huge!

Yes, coldfront is great at cooling a hot flash, but we couldn’t ignore larger forces at work – the enormous need for psychological and social relief from the stigma of menopause. Although we’re living up to a third of our lives post-menopause, our society still sees menopausal women in an unflattering light. Among women my age, there is a growing desire to reassert control over our own lives and bodies, and to put a stop to allowing other people to define for us what this time of life should mean. Personally Cool wants to change the perception of midlife women and create our own conversation. When we say, “we make menopause cool,” we mean it – on a number of levels!

With coldfront, we are encouraging women to take charge of their own relief, which – in our case (pun totally intended!) – is no farther away than your handbag and no more complicated than what we already know works – cold – especially when it’s in the palm of your hand. It is so discreet and convenient that it allows most women to get through a hot flash without letting anyone know they’ve even had one.

And this, ultimately, is what sets coldfront apart from every other cold therapy product available today:

1. coldfront was designed in every way to be compatible with the life of a menopausal woman who defines herself, simply, as a woman. It is the least intrusive, most effective, complete, and portable cold therapy system for hot flashing women on the market.
2. coldfront can go right from the freezer to your bag because it was engineered to be condensation-free. Your bag, phone, or iPad will not get wet; you won’t be uncomfortable; and you don’t have to worry about batteries or enlarging your “carbon footprint.”
3. Each woman experiences hot flashes differently and in different parts of their bodies. The two palm packs are formulated to last the average length of a hot flash, 1-3 minutes, and they can go wherever a woman needs them. After replacing them back in the case, within 20 minutes they will be cool again and ready for use.
4. Hot flashes make you sweat! The antimicrobial super absorbent cloth wicks away moisture and is easily washed.
5. Your day is long, and you’re not always near a freezer. coldfront will continue re-cooling the palm packs for up to 12 hours.
6. Unlike one-time use cold packs, which can create over 600 pounds of toxic waste over the course of five hot-flashing years, and literally cost thousands of dollars, coldfront is phthalate-free, non-toxic, and costs less than $100 over the life of the product.
7. Everything in the system is reusable and is designed to last.

Liz, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your community and to speak about our product. Because women all experience menopause and hot flashes differently, we know that coldfront won’t be for everyone. But, we believe deeply that coldfront is something special – not just because it works, but because it speaks to a societal issue we believe we can change.

Here’s to a new kind of coldfront moving in!

Susie