Did you know that your nervous system can have an impact on your experience of menstruation? I get into all of this and more on today’s episode of Period Story with Amy Gaston, the president of OhmBody, a drug-free wearable device designed to work with the body’s nervous system to naturally support lighter, shorter, more comfortable periods.
In this episode, Amy shares:
- The impact of growing up in a conservative Christian household and being a late bloomer on her understanding of her body
- Why perimenopause has led her to ask better questions about her health
- Her thoughts on innovation in women’s health
- The issues that disproportionately affect women and why we have to talk about women’s health, not just health
- Why menstruation is a whole body experience
- What OhmBody is and why it’s a helpful drug-free way of managing period pain, premenstrual pain, and ovulation pain
- How stimulating the vagus and trigeminal nerves can increase the body’s clotting process, and help reduce heavy menstrual bleeding
- And of course, the story of her first period
Amy says that painful periods are not normal and that if your period disrupts your everyday life in any way, there is a better solution than normalising this narrative.
Thank you, Amy!
Get in touch with Amy:
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Hi Amy. Thank you so much for coming onto the show today. Let’s kick off with a question I ask each of my guests, which is tell us the story of your first period.
Amy Gaston: Oh my gosh, yes. Well, first of all, Le’Nise, thank you so much for having me.
This is going to be a fun conversation. Um, my first period, yeah, it’s, it’s a little late bloomed. I, um, was really, really active kid and very, very thin. Um, had a very low body, percent of fat. And I actually didn’t have my first period until I was almost 17. So by then I had had a lot of exposure. All my girlfriends had had periods, you know, it was, I had pubic hair, like I was developing, I mean, I was flat chested still am, but you know, it wasn’t that, but, you know, I was doing the normal things.
I just had not had a cycle. And, um, it was almost like a joke of like, is Amy ever going to, is she going to like, become a woman? Right? So my mom had had a hysterectomy when I was about 12, and so nobody had menstruated in our home for about five years. And while she had bought me the pads and the pantyliners and, you know, there was no real conversation from my mother of like, what to expect, what was going to happen.
I just knew at some point I would bleed from my private areas. Right? So I grew up in a super conservative Christian home, you know, you just didn’t talk about that. I’m the only daughter I have brothers. And so I remember, yeah, I was almost, almost 17, not quite 17, and I remember I was going to the bathroom one day and being like, oh, blood, okay, I guess this is it.
I remember walking out into the living room being like, Hey mom, I think I started my period. She’s like, great, do you know where the pantyliners are? I was like, yep. Great. That was it. That was the conversation. And I remember vaguely that it didn’t last long.
Like I just, you know, and I, I didn’t have this like terrible cramp pains that my girlfriends were having or something that debilitated me. It was uncomfortable, right? Really, period cramp is not comfortable. It’s not supposed to be comfortable. But, um, yeah, so that was really my exposure to that and, and I was really made me fortunate.
Now that I look back, I’m like, oh, there was probably something I probably should have been seeing a doctor about. But, um, I didn’t have a period, but maybe two to three times a year, those first 5, 6, 7 years of my adolescence into adulthood. I was a college volleyball player and I remember having a teammate who was my roommate, sit outside of our bathroom door, our shared bathroom door, walking me through how to use a tampon for the first time.
That’s just not something my mother used or I was supposed to. Again, nobody had menstruated in our home for five years leading up to my period because she had had a hysterectomy. And so yeah, it was just one of those things where I was like, okay, I guess this is it. But I got no real formal understanding. I, I was a pretty good student. I took a, an advanced anatomy and physiology, human anatomy and physiology class my senior year. And the only thing I remember learning about a woman’s body in that class was watching a birthing video that I swear is the reason I’m child free by choice today.
Like that’s my old, you know, everyone knows that moment, right? That you’re like watching a birthing video for the first time in, in, in school and you’re like, what? I no, that’s never, that’s never happening to my, I’m not doing that. That’s not going to be. So it just, I just really had very little education. I just knew that every once in a while I was going to bleed, especially because I wasn’t regular and I just was going to do that.
I, I can remember maybe one college practice where I just felt terrible. Um, and I just told my coach, I was like, Hey, listen, I’m on my period and I just feel like crap. She’s like, okay, great. Do what you can. And it wasn’t until right before I got married that I got on birth control.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a gynaecologist ever, which is just wild. I think, I think we know better now, but there just wasn’t, again, growing up in a conservative Christian home, there wasn’t like a reason to see a gynaecologist until you were going to be on birth control to prevent pregnancy when you were getting married.
Regardless of the fact of whether I was sexually active prior to that or not. It’s just what it was. So yeah, that was sort of my introduction into menstruation and what that looked like. And through birth control had some, I was only on hormonal birth control for about seven years until my husband decided to have a vasectomy when we decided to be child free.
And so I was really fortunate in that, but even that process was really interesting for menstruation. My first go at that I bled every other week and I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t know what was happening. So my, you know, we went through like four or five different contraceptive, oral contraceptives before we found one that sort of helped me feel better, but was also making me feel crazy.
And then I got on Depo-Provera and then I didn’t bleed for five years on hormonal birth control because
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Amy Gaston: You know, depo keeps you from doing that. Uh, but since then, since my thirties, I’ve, I’ve sort of regulated out. Um, and now that I understand better in this role, what that looks like yeah, so that’s, I a really interestingly light process, but also I think unique to myself.
And I think, you know, as I hit perimenopause, I think about what are the impacts of not having a regular cycle in my twenties, what did, what’s that impact now having on me through my perimenopausal journey and what does that do to my bone density? You know? So, yeah, it’s just, it’s an interesting pathway.
I’m, I’m really, really fortunate and I’m grateful, but I think it has its own challenges, um, that I’ve been through.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s really interesting, the changes in your journey from having a period so late and then having it very infrequently, then getting onto hormonal contraception.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Where you were having these frequent withdrawal bleeds, and then now being on Depa Provera where you don’t have a period and that exploration, as you say, the effects of
Amy Gaston: mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: Not experiencing that hormonal cycle and what does that do to the brain and to the bones. It’s a fascinating question, and I do think that that part of it is probably underexplored because when we talk about hormonal contraception, we always have to add the caveats. It’s been amazing for women.
It’s amazing, amazing for our freedom, our ability to go
Amy Gaston: that’s right.
Le’Nise Brothers: Further into the workplace, but then when you, part of that conversation has to be, well, what are the side effects? And yeah, it feels like a very tricky conversation,
Amy Gaston: especially light of today and where we are and the recent news, you know, just everything that’s happening in, in this administration in the United States and, and what we’re currently facing with, of, um, abortion, banning, but also like taking away birth control.
Like it’s just a really, to your point, it’s really sensitive. I want your listeners to hear me say, I’m a believer in hormonal birth control. I believe that there is a great power to that. I believe that it, to your point, allows women a choice, allows us to be able to, allows me to be able to sit here as the president of a company, child free, because by choice, because that’s what I decided to do.
And while my husband and I ultimately decided a different pathway to our child-free, you know, existence, hormonal birth control, played a portion of that. And it was really vital for us as I built my career and explored things for that. But also to your point the research behind how do we safely administer birth control?
How do we fully consent to women into what birth control actually does to her body? Right. Um, I heard a speaker once say it’s it’s the longest running experiment on women’s bodies to date, right? Because we’re still, we don’t know what the long-term effects of certain types of hormonal birth control can be for women.
And I think that there’s a safe pathway forward in that, but it’s only going to only going to exist if we are committed as a, as a community and as researchers and innovators and, and and investors to say, women deserve ways to control pregnancy and getting pregnant and not just right. Hormone birth control isn’t just about contraception.
There are a plethora of reasons that women need to be on hormone birth control. But there’s, we’ve got a figure out what’s the safest pathway forward with the fewest amount of side effects to be able to support women not just in their reproductive years, which is where that’s really important. But then post that perimenopausal, menopausal, and then post-menopausal women, how do we support their bodies through that, by whatever we’re doing in this sort of reproductive age gap, you know, of 30, 40 years of a woman’s body.
Le’Nise Brothers: So having gone through this exploration now you’re in perimenopause.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: How has it been now you’re also working in women’s health. How has it been almost, I wouldn’t say you were kind of divorced from your body before. Yeah. But you, as you said, you didn’t have the knowledge that you do now. How have you found this exploration?
You know, you’re interfacing with all of these experts in the space. You are, you know, diving into research and we’ll talk about the OhmBody device shortly. But how has that exploration been for you?
Amy Gaston: Yeah, it’s been interesting to your point of divorcing my body. I think that’s what it was. I just existed and I think a lot of women, especially of our generation, just sort of existed.
This is what happens to your body and you just sort of accepted it. Now that I’m in the women’s health space, I sit in a lot of areas where I’m like, just things were on hormones, right? So for a long time, you know, hormones were hormone replacement. There was fine, and then there was the black box label, and now it’s no longer the black box label.
So it sort of ripped it off and now sort of this wild, wild west of what is this? And so I’m really curious in that space. I had a doctor, um, the other day, I was just having a conversation, she’s not even my physician. And I was describing to her sort of what I’ve been going through in perimenopause in terms of these like breakthrough bleedings, how I responded to hormonal birth control.
When I was exploring through all those different pill options, oral, oral options. And I was just describing like where I see my energy fall, where I see my energy rise, what I feel like I can push through. And she said, Amy, I think your progesterone is low. Like, I’d be really curious if we just put you on some progesterone.
And I was like, okay, well tell me more about that. So every conversation I have sort of, it’s like an onion, right? It sort of peels back as I share, Hey, these are, these are the symptoms I’m having, this is what my body’s experiencing. I had never bled heavily ever through my process. And then I became perimenopausal and I was like bleeding, like flooding off out of a disc after two hours, which is just like an insane thing to say, right?
A disc is supposed to hold ten-ish hours of bleeding. And I just wasn’t doing that. As I’m going through this, I know that the privilege that I have to explore these sort of options and these conversations is because of the role that I sit in. I sit next to some of the greatest minds in women’s health every day, and I, I, I have a phone numbers to every major innovator in the space right now, and that’s a privilege to me, and I recognise that.
I think where that leads me to is, well then how do we get that information to the women not privileged enough to sit next to the greatest minds in women’s health every day? And I think that’s the piece that continues to drive for us at OhmBody. You know, we’re more than just a device company. We’re really a company that wants to be about educating women on, there is more to know about your body than what you learned in a human anatomy class or what your mom may or may not have told you because of her own limited experience and her own limited, you know, exposure, um, to her body and what was happening.
So I think, so it’s twofold. One is, is for me, it’s, it’s this incredible privilege to explore and to still understand like, gosh, there’s, I’ll ask questions of doctors and they’re like, Amy, we don’t know the answer to that. I’m like, oh, okay, great. Well then what are we doing to find the answer to that? But then also it makes me acutely aware of the millions of women sitting at home every day experiencing things that are just like me, or worse than me, or different than me, that have no idea where to go next for an answer, right?
Because they’re doctors. Maybe he’s a 67-year-old white gynaecologist who hasn’t been to med school in 40 years, and who hasn’t committed to keeping up with more than just what a medical journal tells him he has to update in his medical practice, right? He’s not looking to be innovative. And I say he, it could be a woman.
I, I don’t want to be sexist in that but that’s her only exposure. Or she lives in a, because she lives in a medical desert, right? It’s the only OB within a hundred miles and he’s the same dad that’s delivered four generations of babies, right? Like that. How do we get to that woman? How do we empower that woman to know what to do with her body when she knows in her gut that what’s happening to her cannot be normal, right?
Even though everyone around her says, well, that’s just getting old, brittle bones is normal for women. Or going bat shit crazy on someone over a piece of egg is, is normal and like that isn’t, and there are better ways for it. So I think that’s, that’s where I kind of sit in this exploration of this twofold of like what it does for myself, but then what, what I hope for women.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Amy Gaston: Everywhere.
Le’Nise Brothers: You mentioned the word innovation and your work is heavily focused on innovation in women’s health. We know that the research in to women’s bodies, not just talking about hormones and menstrual health, but every aspect of women’s health lags quite far behind the research done on men’s health, even like on animal health.
Can you talk about the innovation piece? When you look at the work that you do, what, when you, in your head, what are you thinking when you think about how, where innovation is now and where you want it to get to?
Amy Gaston: Yeah. Um, that’s a, I think that’s a really complicated question. I think that I’m really, really proud of the work that’s been done in women’s health innovation to date.
I think even in the last five years of these, like, it’s almost like it’s sort of supercharged, right? Women’s health is sort of this hot new, it’s not even new, but new to other people who haven’t been in it, right? It’s sort of this space. Everyone sort of wants it. It’s, it’s in vogue, it’s cool, it’s whatever.
And so you’re getting this sort of influx of money. The trouble with that is that we’re so far behind that we have to make sure we recognise that we don’t get, we don’t celebrate too early, right? We don’t say like, well, look at all that’s been happening. That’s great, and we stop. What that should do is, is really encourage us and inspire us to keep going because there are still years and years of us being behind in the curve, right?
Of us not being included in clinical trials, of us not being thought of as the first reason for a solution. And in full transparency, OhmBody was not created originally with women in mind. Like the technology that supports OhmBody started in a space that was very different. But because of those results, we had co-founders who were like, oh wait, this is a women’s health initiative product that we can transition over.
So even for us, it was a, like a happy accident, but since then, you then double down and you really drive into it, right? All of our clinical research. So I think that’s the part for me that’s really interesting in the innovation spaces. I hear these women and I know that it comes from a good spot.
They’re like, I just want a world where it’s not women’s health, it’s just health. And I would really caution us to to not remove the label of women’s health from women’s health, like the women from women’s health, because there are things that disproportionately, singularly and uniquely affect women.
And that will always be the case. It will always be the case. And I think it’s, you know, you, you look at even just societally, right? And, and I’ll say this, like racism still exists, but if we don’t call out racism, if we don’t talk about it, then it’s not there. It doesn’t make the problem go away.
We just stop talking about it, right? Like, we have to address the issue. We have to call it for what it’s, and we have to call women’s health. What? It’s, it’s women’s health, right? Men don’t menstruate. So menstruation is a women’s health specific thing. Women, heart disease kills women faster than anything else on the planet, faster than men.
So that to me is a women’s health issue. We have to address heart disease in women differently than we address heart disease in men. Not that men aren’t, that research shouldn’t continue, but it doesn’t mean that we lump it all together because when you lump it all together, it’s real easy for the people with the loudest voices, which at this point are men, to be able to then suppress things that don’t directly affect them, that don’t directly impact them.
And so I think for me, in innovation, when I look at innovation where it’s going, I think for me it’s not a feminist, well, it’s about women. No, it’s because it actually is about women. And I want innovation for the future that’s specific to things that are disproportionately uniquely or solely for, like, I, I want that I want that to be very specific.
And I want us not to be afraid to call it a women’s health innovation because we think, well, people feel like it’s too niche. Women are, 51% of the population is not niche. So let’s call it freaking women’s health. Sorry, that’s my soap box. I hope that’s okay. No,
Le’Nise Brothers: I love it. I love it. I interviewed Marina Garner.
Oh, she’s
Amy Gaston: great. I love her. Oh, she’s so lovely.
Le’Nise Brothers: And, um, in her book, she talks a lot about the issue that women face when they speak to VCs.
Amy Gaston: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: And they’re trying to get funding and
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: There’s a story that she tells about going into, someone going into a boardroom and someone, a man said, I don’t want to hear the word vagina before 9:00 AM
Amy Gaston: on a Monday.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: As you say, we’re 51% of the population.
Amy Gaston: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: And yet, and yet, and yet,
Amy Gaston: and yet, and it’s interesting, I, I was speaking on a panel once and I got asked the question, why do I think that women’s health has remained taboo? Like, why is that, Amy, why do people, not, to your point, why do men not want to talk about vaginas on a Monday morning business meeting?
And, and my response was that for a very long time, the only people making decisions about health and innovation and investment were men. And that’s the reason that it’s remained taboo. And while I think it is getting better and we’re trending in the space, it can easily change as we’re seeing across multiple places of things that are happening in the world today.
Right. We have to be very committed. And again, it’s not an angry place. I want to caution us. Right. I’m really struggle with women who sit and just want to talk shit and just like be angry. I’m like, it’s okay to be upset, but then, then what? Then let’s go find a solution to the problems that we’re talking about.
We talk about this a lot with women currently, and I’m really grateful to be surrounded by thought leaders who think like this is, it’s one thing to identify the problem, but then we have to go solve for it. And I think that’s the part that we’re trying to do at OhmBody, is we recognise that there’s an issue.
The only current methods of or before OhmBody to dealing with heavy menstrual bleeding, were surgical and pharmaceutical and women deserve better than that. We have to give them options that are not shoving something down their throat or cutting something out of them, right? Or burning something.
Right? And so we recognise the problem and we’re like, okay, well then what is the solve? And I think that’s the other piece is, is we have to be committed to the same. It has to be women’s health. Even things that do affect men, they’re still affecting it differently. So it’s got a be women’s health. But then two, we can’t get stuck in this. Like it’s not this like buckle down and push men out. It’s no, how do we bring this to the forefront? Because men can solve for problems too. They’re brilliant as well. So let’s, let’s link arms and go solve for problems for humanity that include women.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. So talking about solving problems, the work you’re doing is really interesting in the women’s health space around pain and expression of pain and how pain is being managed.
I wanted to talk about all of that, but for listeners who aren’t aware, the focus of the OhmBody device is the nervous system and the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. Can we just take a step back and
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Just kind of walk listeners through what those are for those who might not be aware.
Amy Gaston: Yeah, for sure. So your autonomic nervous system is really how your body experiences both internal and external stressors, right? So constantly things inside of you and outside of you are bombarding you. And it, as you’re listening, if you’re like a mom of four kids, you’re like, oh, constantly, right?
You’re like, oh, I’m just in this thing. Um, so your autonomic nervous system has two sides. It has the sympathetic side, which is your fight or flight. That’s your survival mechanism. When your body senses danger, your body goes into a defensive mode, and that’s for survival. And that’s years in millennia of, of evolution to get us to a point, to be able to stand where we are, right.
Um, and so whether that’s you’re sick and you have an elevated temperature, so your sympathetic tone’s going to rise so that your body can manage that. Or there’s some sort of external danger, right? A stressor, even things like riding on a rollercoaster, right, can drive your sympathetic tone upward, right?
So you’re in this fight or flight, the opposite side of that is your parasympathetic tone and it’s your rest, relax and digest. So it’s really to help you calm. You want high levels of parasympathetic tone when it’s time to go to sleep. Right. And that’s how your body’s going to rest. And your body wants to find a balance.
There are times when it is necessary for your parasympathetic tone to rise again, when you’re in danger or you’re, you’re an athlete right before performance. Right? We want that sympathetic tone high. But again, as I mentioned before, your parasympathetic tone sometimes needs to be high and elevate like in sleep or when I need to focus and concentrate.
Right? But you’re constantly in this like up and down, up and down. So in menstruation, it’s really interesting. We, we talk a lot about, people think, oh, you’re just bleeding and that’s just it and you’ve got some cramps and you’re going on. But when in actuality, menstruation is really a whole body experience and it impacts your, uh, your autonomic nervous system in such a way for some women, really their sympathetic tone, that fight or flight is really an overdrive.
And so you get this over overcorrection in inflammation and, and in your body trying to essentially survive. I know that sounds traumatic, but survive this traumatic moment of you bleeding. So for some women who are heavy menstrual bleeders or even moderate bleeders, right? If you were, I always say this, if you were to bleed as much as you do from your uterus, if you’re heavy menstrual bleeding, bleed from any other part of your body, you’d be in the hospital receiving treatment.
But we don’t do that because it’s menstruation. And that’s not how we think about it. Right? It’s funny ’cause you’ll meet men who are like, oh, it’s just like a drip. I’m like, no. It’s like a faucet got turned on. It’s just coming, right? Because they just don’t understand and bless their hearts, but they just don’t.
And so, but your body is responding to that. And while your body knows menstruation is normal, it’s still going to send stress responses because, and you’re bleeding too much. Maybe your cramping’s too high. Like your body’s trying to be like, okay, how do we bring us, bring her back into balance? And some bodies do that really well and some bodies just don’t.
So when your body’s stuck in sympathetic tone, it can be really, really stressful on your body.
Le’Nise Brothers: Then we talk about the vagus nerve.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Vagal toning and that moving between
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Those two states. And anyone who’s does yoga or practises yoga will be aware, aware of that, the power of the breath to shift into the parasympathetic.
And also that importance of not being stuck in the parasympathetic either.
Amy Gaston: Yeah, that’s right.
Le’Nise Brothers: You know, we always talk about the parasympathetic nervous system and how it’s great and it is great, but there are times where you need to be in the sympathetic, you know, you’re thinking, oh, I’m running for the bus, I’m running for the tube, the subway.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: I need that cortisol, I need that adrenaline.
Amy Gaston: Yeah, you need that shot. And that’s what, that’s right. And that’s what your sympathetic does. And so the vagus nerve is really interesting for your listeners who don’t know, the vagus nerve is the only cranial nerve that leaves your brain and touches every major organ of your body, which is why it serves as a great highway for your nervous system.
So it sort of sends signals from your organs, parts of your body to your brain, and then back and becomes this superhighway is really what we’ve done with these little off ramps. If you’re from the United States, I don’t know if, if London has off ramps on your highways, but we have these like sort of off juts of, of information.
So when you are out of balance for that and those, the, that nervous system isn’t speaking well to each other, then you start to really have some places where you, you get a little funky. Um, and so by, to your point, by activating the vagus nervous system and by bringing sort of some, some balance to it, your body is able to essentially communicate better with each other so that it does what it already does naturally just without all the blockades that can often happen in sort of an out of balance nervous system.
Le’Nise Brothers: Someone listening who experiences really painful periods, painful ovulation, a painful premenstrual experience
Amy Gaston: mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: Will be really interested in what you said about the drug-free aspect.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: ’cause a lot of my listeners, a lot of the women I work with, they will go to their GPs and they’ll get given the pill, they’ll get given some sort of a strong pain relief.
But as we talked about earlier, there are side effects that come
Amy Gaston: Sure.
Le’Nise Brothers: With those options. And some of them are just fed up and they may have explored a TENS device, but talk about the OhmBody device.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mostly how it’s different to a TENS device because we’re very familiar with those machines.
Amy Gaston: Sure, okay.
Le’Nise Brothers: Because they’re used a lot in childbirth. But talk about how that’s different, but, and also how the, the OhmBody works with the nervous system.
Amy Gaston: Yeah, for sure. So those are great comparisons and great questions. So what we’ll start with is what, oh, I’m going to start and go backwards. Is that okay?
OhmBody is a wearable earpiece that goes around your ear and you have a sticky node. So think like a pad, like a, on a TENS unit, the little like electrode pad on the front of your ear, on the back of your ear. Um, and then it’s connected to a small device. We stimulate two nerves at the same time.
The trigeminal nerve, which is how your body manages pain, and then your vagal nerve, which is, we just talked about, all of this balancing of your nervous system. So by stimulating both of those together, we’re actually able to allow the body to return to a state of balance. So we’ve talked about this, right?
So we’re stimulating the nerves directly, and we’re doing that through the auricular branches, which is just a fancy way of saying the branches near the ear because they’re closer to the surface and easy to access. So we do that together. And so what we’re able to do is raise your parasympathetic tone so your body experiences menstruation in a more stable sense.
So we’re, we’re seeing in some of our research, some systemic inflammation coming down, which again, helps reduce the pain. Again, we’re still studying all of that. What does that mean exactly? And then on the other side, we’re actually able to sense signals through TAN, which is the technology behind OhmBody down to the splenic nerve.
The spleen holds anywhere between 20 to 30% of your body’s platelets at any given time. Platelets help you clot. So if you cut your finger and you don’t bleed out, it’s ’cause the platelets showed up and formed a scab and clotted and kept you from, from losing too much blood. And so that same process of platelets coming and, and essentially creating a thrombin or a clot is happening in your uterus when it’s shedding.
That’s how your body makes sure you don’t bleed out, right? Some bodies do that really efficiently and some do not really efficiently. And so we do is in the spleen. When we send these little signals, we’re actually able to prime those platelets that are running through there in such a way that when they show up to a point of injury, so in this case the shedding of your uterine wall, we’re actually able to clot faster, stronger, and for longer.
And what that helps do is to slow the amount of blood loss that you’re having during menstruation. This is really important for women who are heavy menstrual bleeders. There’s a, a bleeding disorder called Von Willenbrand disease. It’s really common in women. And in this, these women can lose up to a litre of blood every time they menstruate.
Women only hold four to four and a half litres of blood in your body. So imagine losing a quarter of your blood every time you menstruate every month through your cycle and how devastating that is. And so these women just, they need to lose less blood. Doctors everywhere will tell you you are healthiest when you hold as much of your own blood in you as possible, right?
Your body needs that blood for lots of different reasons. And so you want to keep as much as you can. So if we’re able to reduce the amount of blood loss for women who experience more than 80 millilitres of blood loss during the menstruation, that’s just going to help in the overall health and wellbeing of a woman, which then in turn helps them be able to recover better, right after through painful periods.
And so we do those two things. How are we different than a TENS unit? There’s nothing, TENS units are great. I, I’m a former athlete. I’ve used lots of TENS units on muscles that needed help and a shoulder that wouldn’t raise ’cause you know, I hit too many volleyballs. TENS units are a direct muscle stimulator, so they’re targeting the muscles specifically.
So they have some TENS units that you can put around your stomach to help reduce cramping. And that’s because it’s directing and dealing with the muscle itself. So it’s sort of a surface level. It’s the same thing that a painkiller does, right? It sort of deals with just the localised pain that you’re experiencing.
When we use TAN, which is trans auriculor neurostimulation, which is the the tech behind OhmBody what we’re doing is we’re actually addressing the entirety of the nervous system. So we’re getting to the root cause of what’s causing you to feel what you’re feeling, causing you to experience the symptoms that you’re feeling.
And so it’s really about addressing the body itself as opposed to just a symptom. I think that’s the, the most basic way of saying, of explaining it.
Le’Nise Brothers: I’ve been working in this space for about 10, 15 years now, and this really feels innovative. I’ve seen a lot of different things and I love the fact that it’s drug free.
I love the fact that someone who puts it around their ear, they can feel it. It’s very empowering, you know, you put something on, you can feel the effects.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Someone with endometriosis, which we know is a condition that has no cure at the moment . Where they can experience pain past, past their final period.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Because of the growth of the lesions.
Amy Gaston: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: They might be listening thinking, oh, I love the sound of this. Is this something that, we talk about vagal toning and really priming the nervous system. Is this something that help, will help train the nervous system to be more adaptable over time and then lessen symptoms over time so eventually you don’t have to use the device?
Amy Gaston: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question and one we’re really curious about. So, while we haven’t studied specifically patients with endometriosis, so I want to be really clear, we do have users with endometriosis who have shared incredible feedback and incredible results.
But clinically, I want to speak to what we’ve done clinically because I think that’s really valuable.
Le’Nise Brothers: Mm-hmm.
Amy Gaston: Our last pilot study, we did a month over month study where women did a baseline month without OhmBody and then had two consecutive months of, of therapy where they were at two hours every day they menstruated.
So this is very specific to heavy menstrual bleeders, but these women also score high on the pain scale, cramping, gastric upset anxiety. So they’re, they have these scores right? What we saw month over month was a reduction across those symptoms. Now the bleeding reduction stayed about the same. And so that mechanism is, is something that we’re like, okay, we think we’ve figured that part out.
But across the menstrual symptoms scale, right? So in cramping, anxiety, sleeplessness, cognitive fatigue, right? We actually saw month over month declines in those categories, which is really exciting for us. And we’re like, okay, what does that indicate? And the science makes sense, right? If you over time can support your nervous system in such a way that it can rest and essentially repair itself and really feel like it’s not constantly in a state of fight or flight, it would make sense that you would eventually get to a point where you’re seeing sort of your body managing it better.
Now, will you eventually be able to just completely come off of OhmBody or a a TAN device? We don’t know, but we’re really excited to find out. We’re currently our parent company, Spark Biomedical is doing a, a pivotal study currently where we’re taking 80 women nationwide. It’s our first pivotal study where we’re studying the effects on heavy menstrual bleeders.
But we’ve got all these scale pain scales across all the symptoms of and and PMS and uh, and they’re going to have three months of treatment. So we’re really excited to see what that continues to do. The science suggests that yes, we’re going to continue to see this reduction. Now where does it cap? We don’t know.
And we think it’ll be different for every woman. And that’s what I love about OhmBody is we recommend a two hour a day everyday you menstruate or have symptoms. So if you have PMS leading up to, and, and that’s when you’re cramping your symptoms to the worst throw, throw that on. And while we recommend two hours, we have users that use it for three, four, we have some users, especially some of our users who have really severe endometriosis that will wear it all day ’cause it’s the only thing that, that relieves any sort of symptom. It provides any sort of symptom relief for them. So what I love about it is because of the safety efficacy of what we, of what our device is, there’s no adverse response to wearing it longer. So if your body needs extra, because let’s face it, when there are days where I’ve just had a really shitty day and my body feels extremely tired, and oh, I just happen to also be on my period, my body’s going to need a little extra support.
And I think that’s okay. And so we, we love this idea. I love what you said about, empowering women to like, take control. Like that’s what own body is about, is saying, Hey, here’s a technology that we know is going to support a balance autonomic nervous system. Let your body tell you what it needs because every single woman is going to be different.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, exactly. Everyone, every single woman is different.
Amy Gaston: That’s right.
Le’Nise Brothers: And we all experience pain differently. We all experience menstruation differently. You mentioned that you have different use cases of the device. You mentioned heavy menstrual bleeding. You mentioned that some of your users do have endometriosis.
Are there any success stories that you can share?
Amy Gaston: Yeah, I guess if it depends on what you define as success, I think success is women being able to get back to their lives. That, to me is, is success. We have a professional athlete who’s one of our ambassadors who’s using our device. And she, you know, what’s interesting about female athletes, is that while their bodies may be experiencing a painful period or heavy period, because we’re women, we just find ways to still perform because that’s just what we do and that’s how we, how we live life.
But for me in that space, after she used it during a championship season where she was playing a tonne and, and her team’s competing, she came back and was like I’ve never had this much energy on my period. And to me, that’s a success story. This is a professional athlete whose entire livelihood is on how she performs on the field every time she gets out there, regardless of whether she’s sick or is menstruating.
And the fact that she could come back and say, this is more energy than I’ve ever, than I’ve ever had. That’s a success story. We have another user, um, we have one user who is in her forties, mom of four kids, perimenopausal and, um, her varicose veins traditionally, when she has a period flare up pretty bad enough that she like can’t get out of bed, it’s very painful.
And using OhmBody, she doesn’t have those anymore. We can’t explain why yet. We don’t know yet. But that’s an interesting piece where we take it and I take it back to our science, our research team, and I’m like, can someone please look into why this is happening? She got to go back to be a mom. That’s a success story.
We have one clinical patient from our first trial who shared, you know, the first three days of her period, she’d never leave the bed. Not ever. Like, it’s just that, it’s not it. And the first time using, um, our technology, she got out of bed on day one and actually caught her teenage son playing a video game.
He was not supposed to be playing, he was supposed to be doing homework. And when she walked out of the room, he said, wait, I thought you were on your period. She said, I am. To me, that’s a success story. Day one, she got on her period and got to parent. You know what I mean?
Le’Nise Brothers: Like, it’s not a success story to her son.
Amy Gaston: No, not a success story to her son, but to moms everywhere, you’re like, yes, I can come back to parents. You know, like living life. Like those are the success stories for us. You know, we get people who say, you know, medication is really hard on my stomach and I can’t take it. And OhmBody is something that, that has helped me be able to manage these symptoms that I’ve had for a long time and, and what I’m experiencing without drugs.
And, and oh, by the way, that also helps me not have ulcers because these drugs are really hard on our stomachs. Again, we’re not anti-drug and we can be used in conjunction with the hormonal birth control you’re taking, with your IUD. Like, you can have a hormonal IUD and not have a period, but still have symptoms and still cramp and still do those things, right?
Like your body can still experience that. So we’re really seen as either a standalone, because maybe you have a 15-year-old daughter whose periods are so bad, but the last thing you want to do is put her on hormonal birth control at 15. So it can be a standalone, it can be for the woman who’s on birth control because you know, she doesn’t want to get pregnant or whatever other medical reason she’s on, but she’s still experiencing really severe conditions or symptoms.
Well then let OhmBody be a companion to that, right? So it, that’s what we really love is like, we’re not here to replace birth control. We’re not here to replace the things your doctor is offering in that. But if we can help alleviate some of that in spite of the treatment that you’re already getting, that’s really valuable to us.
Le’Nise Brothers: What do you have coming up next? Anything else coming up in the pipeline?
Amy Gaston: Yeah, so for us, it’s not really about another device, it’s about what’s the next indication that’s right for us to research. Because here’s the thing that’s really important to us, Le’Nise and, and why I love working at Spark Biomedical, our parent company.
We’re a science first company. We want to be able to clinically tell you this is what’s happening and this is why. And it’s really important to us that we stand on and behind our science. There’s a lot of, as you know, a lot of snake oil in women’s health, right? There’s just like this predatory behaviour from brands around really trying to jump on these really vulnerable populations of women who’ve been looking for answers, right? So it’s really important to us that we don’t add to that noise. And so while we love hearing from users that it helps with my endometriosis, it helps with my varicose veins, those are really great. We want to be able to scientifically prove why that is and we want to have studies that show that.
So that’s really what we’re focused on, is we have an incredible technology that we think we’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg of like what it could actually do. Our next sort of phases are continuing to study indications that are specific in women’s health, um, and where our device can be, can best be, um, supportive and, and be a solution.
Le’Nise Brothers: And is the device available only in the US at the moment?
Amy Gaston: Currently only in the US. We’ve got a target again my hope is next year as you know, uh, regulatory across different countries, it’s just challenging and it should be, and it should be hard for companies to have to like, you know, they have to prove things.
We do have a line of sight into, um, expansion into Europe, specifically in Asia. But yeah, US only market currently but direct to consumer. So if you have US listeners, um, they can go to ohmbody.com and purchase it today and use their FSA and HSA dollars.
Le’Nise Brothers: Great. So ohmbody.com and all the links will be in the show notes.
What’s the one thought that you’d love to leave listeners with today?
Amy Gaston: Oh, it’s always an interesting question, but the one I really love to leave, and we have some really great health expert advisors that shout this from the rooftops. Painful periods are not normal. And if you, and some amount of cramping is normal, some amount of discomfort is normal.
But if your period disrupts your everyday life in any way, there is a better solution for that. And whether that’s OhmBody, that’s not OhmBody, whatever that is, you should be having a conversation with your doctor. I think we’ve been in this world as, you know, Le’Nise, like when you go to your doctor, at least in the United States, they’re asking you how long has it been since your last period?
And for how long did you bleed? Very rarely, if ever have I ever been asked how much do I bleed during that period? Um, how much pain am I in? And I think we have to start changing that narrative and stop telling young girls, well, this is just part of womanhood. Welcome to being a girl. Like, we have to stop that narrative.
I have a 14-year-old niece, um, who started her period just over a year ago. And, and really, and that’s the last thing I ever say to her. Like I don’t ever say, well, this is just part of being a girl. Um, we talk a lot about we’re going to find a solution and someday you won’t have to deal with what we dealt with at her age.
And so I think it’s just important. Painful periods are not normal. They may be common, but they’re not normal. And, and it’s incumbent upon us to not only take up that torch for ourselves, but for the next generation as well.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Everything you’re saying, I’m just nodding along, but painful periods are not normal.
That’s basically the heart of the work that I do, so Yeah. I love, I love hearing you say that.
Amy Gaston: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: You mentioned the link to get to the OhmBody website. Are there any other places where people can find out more about the OhmBody device?
Amy Gaston: Yeah, follow us on social. It’s Ohm.Body.
But find us on TikTok, Reddit, Instagram. We’re also on LinkedIn, so if you’re a business out there and you’re like, man, I I want to support the women that work for me or in your company. We’ve got some really great opportunities for businesses to link arms with us.
Um, and to be able to empower their employees or physicians, um, and their, their individual clinics. We’re across the board, but reach out. We have a really I think, vocal community around it. I think this is a space women are finally like, okay, this is a normal thing to talk about.
Let’s have a conversation. So come join us in the community there and, and ask all your questions.
Le’Nise Brothers: Great. Thank you so much for your time today, Amy.
Amy Gaston: Of course, of course. This has been a blast. Thanks for having us.