How do you navigate a career as a corporate lawyer while also coping with severe insomnia, severe brain fog, feeling disconnected from your body and dealing with medical gaslighting? I get into this and more on this week’s episode of Period Story, Sonja Rincón, the founder and CEO of Menotracker, an AI-powered menopause app that transforms symptoms into personalised insights and support.
In this episode, Sonja shares:
- What happened when she was dismissed by her gynaecologist after seeking treatment for brain fog and a frozen shoulder
- When she stumbled upon the term medical gaslighting and how it made her understand that she wasn’t alone in her experience
- What to do if you feel like you’re not being taken seriously by your doctor
- How 1 in 10 women have left their jobs due to the impact of perimenopause and menopause symptoms, and a quarter of women have considered quitting due to the impact of these symptoms at work
- How her experience led her to found Menotracker
- Cultural differences in conversations around menstruation and perimenopause across Europe
- How tracking symptoms in perimenopause and menopause can help you have a better understanding of your health
- The importance of understanding what any health app you use does with your data
- And of course, the story of her first period
Sonja says that when you use an app, it’s really important that you really check what they are going to do with your data, especially any health related data. If you’re not comfortable, don’t use the app.
Thank you, Sonja!
Get in touch with Sonja:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Hi Sonja. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. I’m really excited to speak to you, to hear about the amazing company that you’ve built, but let’s start with the first question that I ask all of my guests, which is tell us the story of your very first period.
Sonja Rincón: First of all, thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here. My very first period I think I will never forget that. I was 10 years old in school and all of the sudden, I felt like I felt a slight cramp and I just started bleeding and I had no clue what was going on whatsoever.
So I went to the bathroom, to get some paper towels and just keep in mind, it was a time where there were no smartphones. Actually, there were no phones at school at all. And I was totally overwhelmed, so I just went to a teacher and they helped me out. They gave me some panty liners and that was basically everything that happened and after that I just had to deal with it.
Le’Nise Brothers: So you were 10 years old. You started your periods quite young. And what sort of education had you had about menstruation and what was happening to your body?
Sonja Rincón: Well, basically all of my knowledge at this point was from school lessons.
It was from biology lessons, basically. So in theory I did know what was happening, but the reality was there were no persons talking about that. I didn’t live in an environment where women were comfortable talking about that at all. I didn’t have any more knowledge than the biology class at the end.
Even after it started actually.
Le’Nise Brothers: And so how did you educate yourself about what was happening to your body?
Sonja Rincón: I started rereading biology books with slightly more interest. And before it it started and I tried to talk to friends about that, but that was quite early. So it was very difficult to find someone to talk to.
But actually there were maybe some like, magazines for teenagers that picked up on the topic, but that was about it actually.
Le’Nise Brothers: And did you have any issues with your period when it first started?
Sonja Rincón: I was one of the very lucky persons who had severe cramps. I felt sick. Usually I was so much in pain, I could barely move.
But the issue was, nobody believed me, so it was like, oh no, you’re faking it. You just don’t want to go to school. And which didn’t make sense even at this point of time because I always loved going to school and I was a pretty good student. I didn’t mind studying. I actually loved going to school.
But in this regards, I was completely dismissed by everyone. She’s making it up and that’s not possible, and it’s just normal.
Le’Nise Brothers: How long was it before someone started to take you seriously?
Sonja Rincón: Well I would say five years.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow.
Sonja Rincón: Probably.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. And so what happened then?
Sonja Rincón: Well, that’s basically when I had a boyfriend and I went to the gynaecologist.
It was very much the very first person that, that took that seriously. But the answer to the whole problem was basically, okay, we’ll give you hormonal contraception, so you’re on the pill you won’t have to deal with that anymore. And that’s pretty much what happened.
Le’Nise Brothers: And once you went on the pill, what was your experience of your period like?
Sonja Rincón: Well, I mean, it was at the beginning because it wasn’t one of those mini pills it was more regular which was, which was nice because before that I wasn’t really aware of when it would start because the cycles were quite irregular for some years.
That was nice actually. But, I gained some weight and, my mood started to change. I, it just felt a bit weird. But I wasn’t really sure that at that time that might be caused by the pill actually.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right.
Sonja Rincón: I wasn’t aware of it.
Le’Nise Brothers: And how long were you on the pill?
Sonja Rincón: Oh my God. I changed pills couple of times until they had the one where you don’t get your period anymore, which was honestly a relief.
But probably 12 years.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay.
Sonja Rincón: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: So what happened after 12 years.
Sonja Rincón: I wanted to get pregnant. I had my daughter when I was 28. And right after birth, actually, I just went back on the pill again.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right. Okay. So what was that experience? Because it’s interesting given the work that you do now where you’re tracking symptoms, around perimenopause and menopause, and you had this short window where you weren’t on hormonal contraception, what was your experience like not being on hormonal contraception, did you have in mind, oh, I’m going to track what’s going on, or were your thoughts primarily focused on trying to conceive?
Sonja Rincón: Well I was primarily focused on trying to conceive at that point and really after giving birth, my only thought was, oh my God, I don’t want menstruation, cramps, and problems coming back because I was so afraid.
I was so afraid of the pain and of the nausea and of all of that. Well actually my interest for tracking all of that, that just came back a couple of years ago actually.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right.
Sonja Rincón: When I stopped taking hormonal contraception because I was taking a deep dive into hormones actually and what contraception might cause and the whole discussion about hormones and cancer that’s when I stopped hormonal contraception, actually, and that’s when my whole journey started.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right. Okay. How long would you say that you were on the pill for about 12 years, then you had a gap where you were trying to conceive, and then what was that time period between you going back on the pill and then when you stopped it? Most recently,
Sonja Rincón: Another 10 years.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow, okay. Okay.
And then can you say more about what it’s been like since you’ve stopped taking the pill?
Sonja Rincón: First of all, I was really afraid of stopping, honestly. It wasn’t very enjoyable just the thought of it. But I wanted to get on HRT, which is just not not happening when you’re on hormonal contraception.
Basically I started to track, that’s when I was aware. I was like, okay, I want to know what’s happening. I want to know exactly what I’m feeling. And I really, it was, I think the first step of the whole journey was really listening to my own body. Because I wasn’t used to it anymore. I was completely disconnected to my own body, which is very interesting when you realise it first.
Le’Nise Brothers: When you started to listen to what your body was telling you, what were the, some of the things that you learned?
Sonja Rincón: Well, I mean, besides the issues I had with still, with my period, which were not as severe as when I was a teenager. That completely shifted. That there were still cramps, but it wasn’t as bad though.
I realised that I had lots and lots of other symptoms really. Like brain fog and I had a frozen shoulder at one point and the symptoms, they were really, really random. So I really tried to make sense out of that somehow. But it took me a while to, to draw a conclusion, honestly.
Le’Nise Brothers: And what sort of conclusions were you able to draw?
Sonja Rincón: The first one was basically, obviously I’m in perimenopause. That was one of my very first conclusions. And the second one, after talking to my former gynaecologist was that obviously not much has changed. I was dismissed several times for those symptoms as well, so I sort of relief the experience of being dismissed for symptoms.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right. I think that’s very, it’s very common being dismissed for your symptoms and it’s rather frustrating as well. And you’ve, there’s been this through line throughout your life where you’ve had these symptoms and you’ve been dismissed over and over again, and was there a point perhaps once you came off the, and you started to notice the signs that your body was giving you, and you got the information that you thought, okay, there’s something I’m being dismissed.
There’s something I need to figure out what I can do next.
Sonja Rincón: Absolutely. In the meantime of the whole journey, I finished up a law degree. I got educated. I lived through a whole shift where so much more interested in women’s health because now it was something that really affected me on a daily basis because of the symptoms and, I got angry for quite some time that nobody ever told me, like enough about what was going on in my body. And I would say I’m very much interested in information and reading up on things and so on. So I was really actively looking for solutions to make sense of everything and get educated and all of that.
But I found it was quite difficult really to find real information. And and then I stumbled upon the term of medical gaslighting, which where I was really very much hooked on the term. And I was like, oh, obviously that’s something that’s happening everywhere in the world. So I was like, okay, if I’m having those issues I’m not so special.
There must be millions of other women going through the same thing. Actually, that was basically the whole starting point that led me to start the software development of our meno tracking application of the, for the menopause and perimenopause.
Le’Nise Brothers: So medical gaslighting. Can you just say what that term means for people who might not be aware or might not have heard that term before?
Sonja Rincón: Absolutely. It’s basically like in a nutshell, it’s when you go to your doctor and you say, oh, I’m having all of those issues. I’m feeling really bad. I have those cramps and, all couple of symptoms, and the only answer you will get is that’s normal.
Or maybe, and that’s what happened to me. You’re imagining that. You’re too young to have perimenopausal symptoms, so you’re just imagining that go deal with it like, like all the other women.
Le’Nise Brothers: You mentioned earlier that this is something that goes on all around the world, and it’s so true.
I speak to women all over the world and there seems to be this common experience of medical gaslighting from when you first get your period to around fertility, and then going into perimenopause and then post menopause. It’s just these themes of, oh, everyone, like you said, everyone experiences painful periods or periods are supposed to be painful, or you, maybe you’re just stressed or it’s all in your head and it’s incredibly, incredibly frustrating. And I’m just curious before we start to talk about your business, because I do want to spend a lot of time speaking about it, but based on your experience and based on what you’ve learned from your company, what would you say to women who are experiencing medical gaslighting. What would be your advice to them?
Sonja Rincón: I would say go to your doctor’s appointments prepared. It doesn’t matter if you like pen and paper, if you use a mobile application, do whatever you feel comfortable with, start tracking your symptoms because if you go somewhere with data and like with days and times of when you experience things, it’s way more difficult for a doctor or any other person to dismiss you.
Also you don’t you don’t feel crazy because the thing is that when somebody’s really good at gaslighting you or you don’t have the confidence of, or you maybe you’re not used to stepping up for yourself you might feel very frustrated and you might feel like you’re going crazy.
So really prepare yourself. Just be prepared. That will change everything.
Le’Nise Brothers: Oh yeah, absolutely. Preparation is so important and like the way when I talk about it I talk about it like almost having a vocabulary for what you’re experiencing, like actually being able to describe it in depth, but also the impact that it’s having on your life because, it’s if you say that, oh, I’m in pain. I have painful periods, you might hear, oh, well that’s normal when you have a period, and we know that it’s not, but then if you say, my periods are so painful, I’m missing a week of work every month. Or I’m experiencing a frozen shoulder and it’s stopping me from playing tennis or something like that.
That makes it more tangible and I think something that doctors maybe can connect with a little bit more because they see the impact that is having on you. What’s really interesting now is then speaking about the business that you’ve built and then connecting it with your own challenges that you’ve described around perimenopause.
Can you describe, firstly, the impact that perimenopause had on you physically, but perhaps on your career?
Sonja Rincón: Absolutely. I wasn’t aware that I was in perimenopause until years later of, of course, right. Because I didn’t even know it was a thing. Retrospectively, I would say at the worst thing was the brain fog.
I forgot everything. It was sort of reliving my pregnancy where I already had those very similar issues, right? Forgetting stuff like or putting your keys into the freezer or something. Really weird things happening. But what was the worst for me and what impacted me really a lot was the lack of sleep.
I was, I mean, I was never a person that had a really, really good night’s sleep. But that really got so bad. I think for years I didn’t sleep more than three or four hours.
Le’Nise Brothers: Really? For years. Wow.
Sonja Rincón: Yeah, I was constantly tired. I thought I was really depressed, so they put me on SSRIs, which was really great because it didn’t, did not help me at all.
I got rid of the SSRIs once I realised, okay, it seems to be a hormonal issue though. And honestly didn’t even feel the difference when I got rid of them and I started HRT things started you know, to improve so much. I was really glad actually, that I figured out it was perimenopause myself at the end.
But it’s my lack of concentration, I had mood swings. I didn’t have any vasomotor symptoms, meaning like hot flushes or night sweats or anything. I’m really grateful for that, even though that might have helped me figuring it out earlier, what was going on. Yeah, but I would say the lack of sleep and the issues with my mood, I think were impacting me the most.
Definitely. Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: What’s so interesting is the conversation around perimenopause where I think it’s definitely changed over the last even five years, where there is a greater understanding of the fact that perimenopause is a phase of life that exists. Because I remember when I think maybe about 10 years ago, I was working with a client and she, we were talking about perimenopause and she told me that she was speaking to her doctor about it, and her doctor said, oh, well that’s not a real thing. And I just thought that is, that’s absolutely crazy because we know that it is a real phase of life. There’s a lot of scientific evidence to back it up. It’s now really interesting now to see the impact that of education on women and there’s a greater awareness of, oh, I’m in my forties, something might be going on for me.
Talk a little bit about the brain fog and how it impacted your career because what’s really interesting is that we see that one in 10 women have left their jobs due to the impact of menopause and perimenopause symptoms, and about a quarter of women have considered quitting due to the impact of these symptoms at work.
Can you talk a little bit about the impact on you personally?
Sonja Rincón: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can you, let’s just start there. Absolutely.
Sonja Rincón: Yeah. Absolutely. The, the brain fog, it’s sort of, it starts like creeping into your day. It’s not like you wake up and it’s there all of the sudden. What I felt was everything was much more stressful because I couldn’t remember things.
And I wasn’t used to that, so I really thought there was something wrong. I mean, not at the very beginning, obviously there, it was just the increase of stress because if you’re a very organised person, and I give you an example, I was basically I did study law in the evenings where after my divorce, my daughter was three.
And I went to work during the day and I put her to, to sleep and then I studied and I did that for four years to get my law degree. So I was very much focused. I was very well organised and, I was really relying on my brain to work properly. So otherwise it would’ve taken me forever to finish the whole thing.
But that sort of started declining. I couldn’t really remember things, even appointments. It wasn’t that difficult complex stuff at work. At the beginning, it was just a name here and there, which is not great when you have to network. Right. I couldn’t remember things that colleagues told me at work.
I really completely forgot them. It’s not even that they came back after I was aware. It was like every time, oh, I never heard that before. And that was a very, very strange experience because it feels different than forgetting something and then remembering at some point these things were just. Really gone. Gone. That was pretty stressful. So I started writing down notes a lot. So I was walking around with the notebook, taking notes of everything. And at some point I realised that I couldn’t remember anything anymore, really. My notebook was like, I went through notebooks, like other people through bags of candy.
Right. It was very stressful to keep up. And that was really impacting my life and that I had a very short period of time where I thought I might have some sort of a dementia or something because it was really weird. I was very much concerned. Thank God that was at the very end where I figured out okay, that that’s perimenopause. But I was very much concerned, at least for like two or three months, I thought, okay, maybe I’m just, I will have dementia, like my great mother and I will die and I will not remember anyone. That was a pretty, pretty horrible experience. But what it also did was, of course, I mean your self confidence, it’s so declining so much.
Taking on new tasks when you know, you cannot remember anything. You don’t do that. I honestly, even before the brain fog and everything started, I didn’t see a lot of purpose in my work. So it was not like I was so much in love with my job and it all of the sudden went south, that didn’t happen.
But, what it did though is it started me questioning if, since I thought I was maybe like really sick. I was like, okay, maybe. Maybe that’s not the thing for me. Maybe that’s also like a part of it is, it’s not only that I might be have, might be developing a, some sort of dementia, but also maybe because I’m not happy.
So basically the whole process also triggered these thoughts of, is this what I want? Do you really want to continue like that, living like that with the notebook and sort of having fear in the morning of going to work and could I live up to the whole expectations and pressure? Because at some point your colleagues realise it.
You can have a perfectly flawless notebook with you all the time, but if you can’t remember your colleague’s name, it’s, that’s very obvious. Something’s wrong. Also at work, obviously you cannot talk to your colleagues and say, Hey, just forgot your name.
So once you have reached a certain level at work or you might be up for a promotion or, whatever, which I wouldn’t have considered at that point, honestly, because I was barely thinking that they could keep up with the work as it was. It’s also a very lonely place, really. It’s a very lonely place because you cannot talk to anyone.
That wouldn’t be very beneficial. At work you have to keep it together and you don’t want to destroy your life’s work if you want, if you want to go for the promotion or even, the image of others, like she remembers stuff. She gets things done.
That’s, you are proud of that and you don’t want to lose it, but you feel like you’re losing it. So it’s very much of a battle. It was, yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: What happened next? Once you realised what was going on, what did you do? So you talked about going on HRT. What happened next from a career perspective?
Sonja Rincón: I kept basically the thought of, is this the right thing for me? That did persist and I decided to quit because I didn’t see any purpose in what I was doing. Honestly, I didn’t, I was really, at that point I was reading up a lot on like women’s health and perimenopause and all of those things.
And I always loved technology. So that was always one of my hobbies was like, AI and building with AI and no-code tools, building apps and figuring out what the new trends are in AI and things like that. So that was something that happened parallel to me starting to rethink my job and what I was doing. At the same time I found, okay, HRT could be an option so I looked into that and at the beginning, the only reason why I thought HRT was because when the doctor told me, well, you’re way too young. You’re too young for that, that’s not possible. Having those all of those symptoms I was so prepared. I just said I’m not imagining anything and I’m not leaving your office before you hand me over that prescription. And the answer of the doctor was, well, okay, here’s a prescription, but just so you know, that’s not going to help you.
And I was like, okay, I will, I’ll see about that. Well, obviously it really helped me. That also, that was a situation that it pushed me to do what I’m doing now. That was one of those moments. Where I was like, okay I’m prepared already. I had to fight for a prescription. And that was not the doctor of the general public health system in Austria.
I went there, I had to pay for that. Fighting for my prescription cost me 150 euros.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow. And you just think like the impact that that had on your life. When you, when your doctor said you are too young, how old were you at that point?
Sonja Rincón: 41.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow. Okay. Okay. Wow, that’s so interesting because, we do know that perimenopause, it can start in our early to mid forties and we typically talk about it as a very gradual process. That’s so interesting that you then saw this immediate impact and then you were playing around with AI and technology is as your out of work hobbies. What then was the impetus that led you to founding your company Menotracker?
Sonja Rincón: There was one more thing happening that really upset me, and it was one of my very good friends not getting a promotion at work because she was so impacted by the symptoms. So, and that totally triggered me. I was like, okay I know I, I knew already what I went through.
Right. And it was like, okay that just can’t happen. This lack of education this lack of support at work and you might be working like your whole life for that promotion or, or still, I mean, you deserve it. It made me really, really sad that she didn’t get the promotion.
In the meantime, she’s all fine and she’s doing a great job and all of that. But at that point I was very much upset and I was like, okay. Obviously in, in Austria where I’m still based, the whole perimenopause and menopause and all of these women’s health topics, they’re not as much in the public as in the UK. I would say the UK is at least 15 to 20 years ahead of everyone else in the European Union.
Le’Nise Brothers: Really?
Sonja Rincón: Yeah. Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I find that fascinating because I think the assumption is that geographically we are in Europe, we must all be having these conversations, but then you dig into what’s going on culturally. For example, different attitudes towards women in different European countries.
Say more about what the conversation is in the public space in Austria around perimenopause and just women’s health in general.
Sonja Rincón: I would say up until two years ago, there was almost no dialogue about perimenopause and menopause at all. It did pick up and there are like a couple of events per year like dedicated to that.
There’s maybe just really one bigger one and there is a self-help group. But that’s about it. It’s very difficult talking about it really because what was so interesting is when I started the company, right, I was like, okay, I want to make an impact.
I want to start the dialogue. Let’s see what we can do about that. And I reached out to doctors I mean to women anyways, because it was always in Facebook groups talking about that. But, I was, so, I was actually, I was so shocked about how much it was dismissed. Like when I even came up with the idea that we could track symptoms and we, there could be a platform where you can get educated.
The response I got was, nobody needs that. That’s a niche. It’s a niche market. Even when I applied for grants it was like, oh no, that’s not innovative. Nobody’s going to use that. Don’t do that. So it was very, very clear that, not only women had no idea, but also doctors had no idea.
I, I tried even very recently, a few weeks ago, I tried again to onboard an expert from Austria actually to our experts pool. And the thing was, it was so difficult because I couldn’t find anyone who was willing to collaborate with another doctor, so I didn’t. I don’t have an Austrian expert in our pool because the responses I got were, well, if I am here, I’m the only expert.
And I was like, okay, that then that’s not happening because I’m looking for a team, which is usually more than one person. So the doctors are not even willing to like, collaborate. The problem is that there is there are very few who really know anything about perimenopause. But they’re not even talking to each other.
That’s that the problem is that a dialogue in like in the public space, like a real dialogue is just not happening yet. I think what they need is a study on the economical impact of perimenopausal symptoms for employers. I think that would be something that would sort of turn it around.
Le’Nise Brothers: Is there no equivalent to, so like for example, in the UK we have these female celebrities who’ve been on television for a long time here really driving the conversation. And there’s a woman called Davina McCall, quite famous in the UK, has been on TV for a long, long time, and she has made programs around perimenopause, her experience, now has written a number of books about it, and she’s sort of spearheaded this big public conversation, which a number of other celebrities have started to back and add onto. Is there no equivalent in Austria?
Sonja Rincón: No, unfortunately not. Not yet. Right. I mean, I hope, I hope there will be.
Because this has its pros and cons when you have like a VIP starting the dialogue. but I think in terms of starting the dialogue, it would be so great to have someone but no, unfortunately not yet.
Le’Nise Brothers: And what about periods? Just to a sk a little bit more about the wider women’s health conversation.
Are periods spoken about quite openly, or is it still a taboo?
Sonja Rincón: It’s still a taboo. That’s still a taboo. Yeah. And you would never, ever think of talking about that openly in the workplace, for example. I wouldn’t because you would be afraid of being, I wouldn’t want to say like harassed, but at least dismissed and, you know, people like rolling over their eyes and not taking you seriously.
I mean, no, you wouldn’t.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow, that’s, I mean, I’m sure, I know there are workplaces where you wouldn’t necessarily walk around with your tampon in hand going to the loo. But there are big campaigns where, women are saying, we need to talk about this stuff. We need to walk around with our tampons or whatever.
Don’t hide your tampon up your sleeve. I remember last year there was a tampon company, they had a big ad on the buses throughout Central London and you could see the tampon string. And that was like I remember seeing that and thinking, wow. Like I, that’s amazing.
Sonja Rincón: I mean, honestly, I would be glad if there was a movement like that in Austria.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Sonja Rincón: Really very much. But I don’t see it happening fast, honestly.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right.
Sonja Rincón: It’s everything takes a bit longer.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Sonja Rincón: I mean, I’m pretty sure in, maybe in 10 years the thing will be, it’ll be different, but for now it’s definitely not the focus.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Sonja Rincón: For anyone.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay.
Yeah. So this is then having an impact on you being able to bring experts onboard into your company, into your team of experts.
Can we just backtrack a little bit and talk, so the app that you founded, the company you founded is called Menotracker, and this is really about tracking symptoms that you are experiencing during this time of life. Can you just share a few insights that women have gained through using the tracker that have then gone on to improve their health and wellbeing.
Sonja Rincón: Absolutely. Yeah, it was, first of all, it’s the education. We also have an educational part of it. First is the awareness. I’m not crazy. I do have those symptoms. That was the very first response of women was like, oh my God. Now I know i’m not imagining that. You can validate what you’re experiencing yourself, so you don’t need someone else to do that for you, which really helps your self confidence.
That was one of the very first things. And then basically seeing okay, the impact of activities you’re doing. Basically or your sleep or your mood and all of that. You are basically able to see how it’s all playing to very well together. So you can see okay for example, it’s the experience is also are so different, but for some women activity level, let’s say your goal is eight to 10,000 steps a day, right? Which is something that women might already do, but seeing that it might actually help you, for example, with your, with days of your hot flashes and things like that’s basically what you can find out. It’s on a very personal level.
What can I do to improve my situation? Not necessarily only focused on HRT and all of those things, but basically what can you do that is, is a very little effort, but just basically listening to your body again, because that’s what it’s doing also, is it forces you to listen to your body.
What we’re working on now, which is really great and we’ll have that in a few weeks now, which is testing, is you will be able to draw a whole report you can bring to your GP showing what has happened since your last appointment.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow.
Sonja Rincón: Really based on your own data, and that’s helping a lot.
Really. I love it. I’m testing it at the moment myself and that’s going to be for free also, so women can take advantage of that. You can actually track everything. You don’t have to remember it if you can’t, and then you can just decide if you want to share that with your doctor or not.
Le’Nise Brothers: Wow, that’s amazing. It’s amazing to have something that is specifically focused on this time of life, so perimenopause and beyond, and not necessarily having to do this in like a menstrual like a period tracker, which, a lot of us would still be using, going through perimenopause to have something that’s quite, quite specific to this time of life is really important. Something that’s really interesting is the idea of using a health tracking app. Can you just say a little bit more about that, whether that you’ve seen, we’ve already talked a little bit about the cultural differences between the UK and Austria in terms of talking about per perimenopause, but is there a difference between the two countries in terms of using these sorts of apps to track information? Is this something that people are quite accustomed to doing?
Sonja Rincón: I would say maybe for your periods women are more like used to using it. I would say for perimenopause.
Austria is not yet our market because you have to be very aware of the problem itself before you, you have the idea of actually tracking the symptoms. I would say, honestly, most of our users are in North America at the moment. It’s very interesting. Yeah. We have a subsidiary in Canada already because because of that I think that there is a big difference.
It’s not that women in Austria are not used to tracking things, but I would say more maybe the periods, but the, yeah, there’s too little education regarding perimenopause.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay. Can you just say more like, that’s really interesting. So you’re based in Austria, but you, your biggest market is North America.
Can you just say more a little bit about why the focus on the US and Canada?
Sonja Rincón: Sure. It’s actually I think it was sort of a coincidence. I went to lots of events and I talked a lot to women, like everywhere. I went to medical congresses and things like that but also for example, to the Web Summit in Vancouver this year and so on.
And we really talked a lot to women there. And it’s probably because, women are more open to innovation in North America, but also in the UK. Right? The UK, the Netherlands, the Nordics, I would say in Europe are the countries which are more interested in innovation and trying new things.
I think that’s basically might be basically the reason. Even though we do have our application now in 37 languages at the moment, we found that it was, people were very much open in North America to the idea of tracking things and I think one of the reasons why they were particularly interested in us was we are a privacy first application.
So yes, we do store data in the EU, but we also have a system in place that even if something would happen, it would be impossible to connect private data of women to the symptoms tracked. So yeah, we made sure of that, and I think that’s something that really speaks to women in, especially in the United States at the moment, where we had some scandals, let’s put it like that.
And I’m personally, with my legal background and all of that, I just, I just, I don’t know. I just don’t understand how something like that can happen because selling out women’s data can only be based on greed. It’s like because what else can be the reason if you do research and if you really want to help you don’t need like personal addresses or from women. You don’t. You just don’t need that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, and that’s a really interesting point because we’re being asked to rely more and more on technology to store different types of information about ourselves, including our most personal health information, and we want to make sure that this information is being stored and treated with care.
And you add, as you mentioned, the context of the US where I have women who say to me, I live in the US and I don’t know if I should be using a period tracking app right now. Because what if they, what are they going to do with my data? Are they going to, what if I have a miscarriage and what are they going to do with that information?
And it’s quite scary. And so it’s quite reassuring to hear that, these privacy concerns are are really important to, to you and you weave that into how the company considers data.
Sonja Rincón: Yeah, absolutely. Because actually that was at the Web Summit in Vancouver where women were saying, Hey, that’s so cool.
You have a, like a tracking application, but what are you going to do with the data? And I was and I talked to women also from the United States who were telling me all of those things that had happened in states where abortion was illegal. Things like that. And it got me thinking because honestly, being like born and raised in Europe with GDPR protection of everything, you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that.
But actually that was the reason why I was like, okay. Obviously that’s a big problem. It’s not in my business model to sell out women. Because the exact opposite is the idea. The idea is to help. To really help. Yeah. But everybody can say that because everyone’s saying that rather, I mean there are like apps that had big scandals and they still have on their homepage, trust us, we’re not selling out their data.
Well, everybody can say that, but we will in a few weeks. We’ll invite people to like, to audit our application. We have a few things that need to be done to finalise the whole process because we were restructuring everything that we have so we can meet our own standards of what data privacy should be which is a standard way above everything that’s required.
That’s something that’s so important to me. I cannot, I don’t even have a word for it. Because you should be able to rely on it and especially, yes, you have to use technology for everything in your life, and you should be able to rely on it and you should be able to trust.
And I think the issue of lost trust is the biggest one in the health app space at the moment. Maybe it’s not talked about as much as it should be, but it’s definitely an issue. And it has to be addressed also.
Le’Nise Brothers: Absolutely.
Sonja Rincón: In the public space. Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of Menotracker, you mentioned the audit that you’re going to be doing.
You also mentioned the ability to take your notes to your GP. What else have you got coming up next?
Sonja Rincón: Well, at the moment we’re working on a community feature. That should be finalised also before the end of this year where basically only doctors who are certified by International Menopause Society will be able to post content because for me it’s very important.
We don’t have Instagram 2.0 experts posting stuff. Right. I think that’s a big issue. I mean, I’m very grateful, honestly. For VIPs and social media to start the dialogue. That was brilliant. And I think that has speeded up the process a lot really. But you cannot rely on things just from social media.
You should be able to see the real source of information. Yeah, so basically we’ll have a community feature that will allow women to get educated and to find out everything there is. And by the way, also complete being completely anonymous the whole way through. That’s part of it. But you will be able to find everything from osteoporosis through incontinence.
The risk of, increased risk of developing a cardiovascular disease you name it, sexual health, whatever we want to cover everything that’s basically where I’m onboarding experts at the moment who will cover those topics. That’s one thing that we have lined up and I’m very much looking forward to it.
And the second thing that will be coming also within the next few weeks is you will be able to connect your smart device to the application.
Le’Nise Brothers: Right. Okay. That’s really interesting. What’s the one thought that you’d like to leave listeners with today?
Sonja Rincón: I would say ask yourself, like when you use an application, for example, really check what are they going to do with the data.
Ask critical questions and if you don’t feel comfortable, don’t use an application because you should feel comfortable. Even if you stick to pen and paper, which is, it might be more difficult if you if you feel that’s right for you, just do that. But what I would say, what’s so important is ask your doctor critical questions.
Go to your doctor’s appointments prepared, and if you don’t feel well taken care of, change your doctor.
Le’Nise Brothers: Fantastic. I a hundred percent agree with that. Where can people find you?
Sonja Rincón: People can find me on LinkedIn because I’m traveling a lot, but I’m very eager to respond and you can find also always new information on menotracker.com on our homepage.
Le’Nise Brothers: Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming onto the show today. It was wonderful speaking to you and hearing your experience and getting more insights into the company that you built.
Sonja Rincón: Thank you very much for having me. It was my pleasure.
