Talk health to me, baby…on ePatient Conference, Seduce Health and menopause
When was the last time talking health was considered sexy? Or creative? Or passionate? Well, if you are a long time reader of Flashfree, you know that I don’t mince words and I don’t attempt to turn menopause or aging into a steamy soap opera (unless we’re talking steamy as in night sweats and hot flashes). However, I do try to approach the ‘what you need to know’ with humor, integrity and candor and stay away from fear mongering. That’s why I was excited to meet a lot of people last week who not only shared my passion for healthcare but more importantly, for conversing about it.
If you have not heard of ePatient Conference, you may want to check it out next year. It’s two solid days of engagement, exchange and networking. But if you take away the buzzwords, you are left with an opportunity to put creativity back into the way that healthcare is approached, managed and talked about.
Among the many incredible experiences — from hearing Seth Godin’s keynote to witnessing the VGo Robot take photos of the audience — none were quite as inspiring as meeting Google’s Chief Health Strategist, Roni Zeiger. And while Roni is undoubtedly doing some very cool things with Search and Trends over at the Google Headquarters, I was most impressed when he started telling me about Seduce Health. Along with co-founder Alexandra Drane, Roni started the site “to get a public conversation started about how we can reframe how we ask people to change their behavior, to live healthier and therefore happier lives. To move from fear and lecturing to passion and dreams, hope and beauty.”
It’s not a bad goal. But is it achievable?
It’s fairly clear that health messaging often falls on deaf ears and that sometimes, the individuals, experts and organizations leading the charge are the ones who are also misleading the very public they seek to educate. Take overweight and obesity for example, problems affecting an estimated two out of three American adults and at least 17% of all children. Obesity is the elephant in the room, acknowledged but rarely discussed without fear or lecturing, under- or misestimated and frequently inadequately addressed. Menopause is also a good example, a natural transition in a woman’s life that has been turned into the disease of the 21st century, medicalized by many health practitioners, manufacturers and the media, and mongered to the point where we have a burgeoning Menopause Industrial Complex based on greed, profit, fear and self-loathing rather than empathy and education.
When it comes to women’s health, I do believe that can be sensuous and passionate, not dry and stale. Along these lines, I recently wrote that:
taking control doesn’t have to mean that the aging process is denied, stopped or obliterated, medicalized or industrialized. Rather, it means taking charge to feel better, more vibrant, healthier so that you/we/I can live the best life I can live while we are alive. For me personally, that doesn’t mean hormone replacement or botox or lipo; it means trying to make more healthier decisions, control or address my symptoms with evidence-based alternatives and accept the transition as a natural part of my journey. I consider this time an opportunity for shifting priorities and interests that open all sorts of possibilities. And, I want to take the experience out of the closet and foster discussion and sharing. Ultimately, I’d like the see a more natural course driven by women themselves, as opposed to societal expectations and stigmatization of the aging process and as opposed to the Menopause Industrial Complex.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Let’s crowdsource menopause. Let’s make it a goal to seduce our peers and practitioners into talking about it, embracing it and not trying to change it into something its not: a four letter word. Aging can be a hopeful, positive experience.
What do you say? You in?
p.s. If you are curious about ePatient Conference, organizer Keven Kruse has graciously posted presenter slides here.
Read MoreWednesday Bubble: not your mama’s menopause?
I have been writing about the medicalization of menopause for several years now. So I was intrigued when I stumbled across a review in the Journal of Aging Studies discussing how the social construct of menopause has shifted to “an increasingly more medicalized perspective that emphasizes the biological deficits of the aging female body.”
In this piece, researcher Rebecca Utz reports on qualitative interviews that she conducted with a small group of pairs of mothers and daughters, divided by generation and apparently, attitudes towards menopause. Medicalization, she writes, “is defined as the way in which the apparently scientific knowledge of medicine is applied to a range of behaviors that are not self-evidently biological or even medical, but over which medicine has control.” Therefore, in the case of menopause, our definition has shifted from something that a natural part of our development to an illness-based perspective “requiring medical intervention.”
Accordingly, when she interviewed both groups of women (mothers born during the 1920s and 1930s, and daughters born in early to mid-1950’s) she discovered that despite the commonality of physical symptoms, attitudes were significantly different:
- The older women did not perceive menopause as a problem or disease but rather, something that “just happened.” As such, it was not part of their narrative and most were uncomfortable discussing it, primarily because they considered it private and “inappropriate for public discourse” much like sexuality or emotional instability. And the steps taken to address it: Watch and wait for it to be over.
- The daughters, on the other hand, were likely to seek medical treatment as soon as symptoms appeared. This behavior is consistent with the premise that menopause has been increasingly medicalized. However, it wasn’t simply menopause that the younger women were fighting but on a larger level, aging. “In other words, menopause was just the beginning of a long, downhill battle that cannot possibly be won,” but can be controlled and self-managed. Moreover, these women’s fear was not necessarily entrenched in hot flashes and night sweats, but in what the start of menopause meant in terms of the delineation between youth and middle/old age and even “end of life as we know it,” a new older life stage that was unwelcome. The “cure” of course, were hormones and other pharmaceutically-derived interventions, which represented a way to “suspend old age” and control the physiological aspects of aging.
Not surprisingly, Utz also points to the ‘Menopause Industry:’ a “profit-seeking enterprise comprising pharmaceutical companies and perpetuated by the media intent on “turning 40 million baby boomer women into patients for life by defining menopause as an estrogen deficiency disease requiring significant medical intervention.” While the companies create the drugs, the media (whose increased attention attention to menopause, largely fueled by the wave of 1970s feminism and in part, funded by corporate interests) not only provide women with access to the information and resources that they seek but also contribute to perceptions of personal control among women who do not want to “sit back and let menopause just happen to them.” The result is that the Menopause Industry has not only developed products that these women crave that allows them to win their battle against old-age, but, continues to highlight the need for them.
Where does this leave us?
Although some women have fallen off the HRT wagon post-WHI study findings, others have remained. And even more expect the pharmaceutical industry to come up with something different to “quell the realities of their aging bodies.” Are we/they in for a surprise? Perhaps, because as Utz writes, aging is inevitable, even with quick fixes, and that at some point “the perceived autonomy and need for personal control may make [these women] more vulnerable or less prepared than their mothers to face the realities of old age.”
I’d like to offer another, more positive construct up for consideration:
Taking control doesn’t have to mean that the aging process is denied, stopped or obliterated, medicalized or industrialized. Rather, it means taking charge to feel better, more vibrant, healthier so that you/we/I can live the best life I can live while we are alive. For me personally, that doesn’t mean hormone replacement or botox or lipo; it means trying to make more healthier decisions, control or address my symptoms with evidence-based alternatives and accept the transition as a natural part of my journey. So, much like the mothers in this research, I consider this time an opportunity for shifting priorities and interests that open all sorts of possibilities. And like the daughters, I want to take the experience out of the closet and foster discussion and sharing. Ultimately, I’d like the see a more natural course driven by women themselves, as opposed to societal expectations and stigmatization of the aging process and as opposed to the Menopause Industrial Complex.
What about you?
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Oh, Baby – a New Glam-Parent is Born! A guest post by Julia Beck
Boomer grandparents are game changers. This is not news. Google the topic and you’ll immediately find a long list of articles addressing the boomer grandparent experience. The Wall Street Journal chronicled the on-going issues of stereotypes and ageist profiling in names (hint: opt for Glammom over Grandmom) My favorite resource was found on www.grandboomers .com – a long, comprehensive list of what a boomer grandparent could be called including MiMa and Opa) to avoid the age-old (and thus far too conformist, restrictive, cliché title of grandma).
According to The Grandparent Economy report: Grandparents account for $52 Billion dollars in spending on their grandkids per year. Eight years ago, I instructed my team here at Forty Weeks to include the “expectant grandparent” into our key target markets – taking great care to help our clients understand the demography and psychography of this not so fertile but certainly powerful segment of the juvenile market.
Flash forward to 2009 – grandparents have an uncanny knowledge of strollers (just ask them – Bugaboo v. tuetonia) as well as clothing, nursery décor , family vacation destinations and even strategies for quality time with toddler. What is still, sadly and overwhelmingly missing is an understanding of how to best support the new mother.
Perhaps this is a consequence of boomers seeing the entire new baby experience thru the lens of Grandparent – and foregoing the generation in-between. But really, it is the parent – the child of the boomer who needs the most support. Especially in the early, hard to navigate, bleary eyed days with new baby. In a piece of stunning research about to be released by the BBIC we see how profound an effect grandmothers (mothers and mothers-in-law) have on nursing initiation rates, success and length of time spent nursing. The anecdotes are painfully consistent in their portrayal of mother-in-law as deal breaker (embarrassed by breastfeeding in public for example, dismissive of the benefits of breastfeeding is another – “we did not do that, and you turned out just fine” and worse).
The data supports that a little more love and care for the new mother and not just the baby (or bling) is in order. And of course, a little more empathy and understanding is part and parcel with that call to action. Further, allowing and even supporting a new mother’s intuition is a big part of that plan. Not at the expense of the Glamparent experience but rather to enhance it. And with that comes an even richer, deeper and more connected bond between the boomer- grandparent and grandbaby.
About Julia Beck…
Julia Beck, founder of Forty Weeks, knows the pregnancy and motherhood lifestyle. A prominent marketing strategist based in Washington, DC and New York City, she noticed and experienced the huge number of unmet needs of pregnant women while pregnant with her first child in 1998. Recognizing a glaringly overlooked market, Forty Weeks was created to develop products and services with a clear focus on the woman and her experience throughout (and beyond) her forty-week journey. Julia regularly shares her perspective, trend-watching and insights with an array of media outlets including the New York Times, Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal, In Style and more.
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