Hey guys, welcome to the Learn Feng Shui podcast, range and tradition, meets modern living. I'm Candice Berlanga, certified Feng Shui practitioner, and each week I'll talk about an aspect of Feng Shui or Chinese metaphysics. Today I'm focusing more on the Chinese medicine and a little bit of tech. Today I'm sitting down with Kirsten Karchmer, a health tech pioneer, a women's health expert, and the founder and CEO of conceivable technologies. After working with more than 10,000 women in her clinic, Kirsten saw the same story again and again.
Women weren't getting the answers or support. They needed so she built one of the first AI-driven fertility platforms designed to uncover the hidden factors that keep women from getting and staying pregnant. Her company has been recognized as one of the most innovative health startups and her work has been featured everywhere from tech crunch to Fox News and she's built an online community of more than 300,000 women who trust her for grounded guidance. In this episode, we'll talk about what's actually missing from women's health care. Why no two women have the same needs and how she's turned down to the same needs.
So, I'm going to talk about the decades of clinical experience into AI-powered care team that helps women see measurable improvement in their health and fertility. Let's get into it. Welcome. Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here.
Yes, I'm very excited. You know, I feel like a lot of this, not even portion of my life, maybe just this year, I feel like I've really been kind of faced with my own issues relating to my cycle relating to kind of going into that change. To life, the parry menopause, and even though the doctor tells me I'm not parry menopausal, I'm not supposed to be experiencing symptoms yet. I'm experiencing some symptoms. And I feel like it's just very relevant.
And I feel like I'm meeting a lot of women recently who are having the same type of symptoms. And, you know, really where do we start. And I think it's just kind of a default to go to hormonal, hormonal supplements. But there's so many things we can do in between that that can also support us. And I'm just very excited to talk to you about everything.
And we're going to also cover things like calcium, cell transition, energy shifts, even effect fertility, and menstrual cycles. So I'm excited to go into that. Okay, great. What led you to this line of work? How did you end up here?
Well, so I was one of the first board certified reproductive acupuncturists in North America. And I had the privilege of getting to work with over at least 10,000 infertile couples. But then in a in 2015, I read a study that less than 3% of couples could afford fertility treatment. And I thought, wow, I'm part of that problem too. You know, and yes, I did help like tens of thousands of women.
And I used to be really proud of that. But then I'm like, that means I left 97% of them in the dirt, right, with no resources. And so I set out to try to figure out like, how do we democratize access to not only fertility and families, but also to just like basic health. Like a good period that comes regularly doesn't hurt you. That you feel good, your energy is good.
You know how to manage your your resources. And I feel like that's a human right. And that's that's really what we're trying to tackle it conceivable. I think you make a really a point there because for a lot of women in the health care, we have some substitation in the US a little bit. We have some different clinics that offer perhaps mirrors and all the kinds of things.
But it's very basic. And so where you turn when you're having fertility problems, but you don't maybe don't have insurance or you don't have access to really good health care. Even if you have access to good health insurance, that doesn't mean that you have good access to women's health care. That means you're going to go to the doctor and tell your doctor, I've got really bad cramps. And there is a very good chance that doctors and say, just get on birth control.
To me, that's not healthcare, right. If you doctor says you have PCOS and doesn't explain to you that that exponentially increases your risk for diabetes, heart disease, estrogen dependent cancer, stroke, and suicide, then that's not good healthcare. And that we're about to play so much more for our healthcare and we're still getting less and less. To me, healthcare is care that actually empowers and enables women to be healthy, to feel great, to have answers, to understand the workings of their body and the signals that their body is communicating with them and then using that as the feedback loop. Because what would happen like 82% of people of women have life interrupting menstrual pain and PMS?
What would happen if we got rid of that? Like if all women just got back two weeks of the month to be their absolute best self, already they're crushing it. But how much more could they crush it if they didn't have to deal with PMS, with cramping, with hemorrhagic bleeding and so on? Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize that women just work through it. We just keep going on about our lives and we go through with pain and we go through with emotional ups and downs and depression and everything.
And we just keep going, there's not a break. We're expected to do a lot, I think in this society is women. Well, I think we have two ways we can be in the world. Well, actually, we have one way that we can be in the world and that's happy and smiling and cute. And if we're anything else, we're a bitch or a baby or we're queer, you know, like, oh, she must be queer.
Like some, you know, it's just like, and yet nobody can get to just be their authentic self, you know? If you don't hate it, and I hate that people use like being a lesbian is like to try to disparage someone who's like feeling fierce or feeling tough or feeling vulnerable. Yeah, it's like the angry and lesbian trope, right? The militant angry and lesbian or something, which yeah, I feel like I've heard since I was a child and I really didn't understand exactly what that was supposed to mean. But, you know, as you get older, you're like, oh, you're just mean she's assertive and dominant.
Okay, you know, smart. That's not a bad thing. Where can a woman start? So we're here at this point in society where we're expected to do all the things. Actually, I had a, I had a guest on that her, her episode will be coming previous to yours, but we kind of talked about the fact that, I mean, female hormones, we know, go on that month long, you know, cycle the waxing and the waning, the highs and lows, you know, we have all of that.
And we're not able to function each week at the same level in the different parts of our cycle. So where can we start at? So I think that don't worry about the phases of your cycle. There are way more important things to worry about right now. First, we have to talk about, so in Western medicine, your doctors, they're following the guidelines of what's normal.
So what they're looking for is anything that's outside of a disease state. You can have some, you can have really bad menstrual pain, but it's not necessarily a disease in which case your doctor's me like, it's not that big of a deal. Even though you're puking or passing out from pain. So first, I want to talk about the difference between normal and optimal. So again, when your doctor says, well, it's normal to have a 50 day cycle.
I can't run what the guidelines are, but it's a lot more than 20 to 32 days. That's because they still consider that a non-disease state, but that tells us so much that it's likely that you either have PCUS or some estrogen dominance or it minimum some significant hormonal disruption that's causing that cycle to be long. Your doctors aren't telling you is that long cycle actually really works against your fertility because around cycle, they 14 to 16 is when the egg is perfect for fertilization. And after that, it starts to break down. So in those individuals with long cycles, once ovulation happens past cycle, the 20 of the egg is starting to break down.
It's no good. They have significantly higher risk for miscarriage. And so, you know, I'm not going to go through what everybody thinks is normal because really it's pretty much anything as long as you're not dying. I say that kind of joking and kind of not joking. What I like to talk about is what's optimal.
Some of this optimal comes from the peer-review data of what's been shown to be optimal for fertility. I think of optimal fertility as optimal health. So even if you are not even thinking about having a baby, I want you to think about it, but I want to be optimally healthy and I can use my period as a barometer of each of those small things so that I can know what to do. So we got to start with like an optimal cycle. I call it the conceivable cycle because that's when people would come into my clinic and they would be everything would be bad.
You know, everything's all over the place. They weren't getting pregnant in the over about three months. They would start having what I called a conceivable cycle and I would tell my team like, oh, this one's going to get pregnant. And she finally has a conceivable cycle. And then they would.
And so what we call a conceivable cycle has two parts that are kind of outside of your cycle. That is first your energy. It's probably the most important thing to pay attention. So when you say, Candice, where do we start start with your energy? And the question is follows.
On a one to 10 with no caffeine or exercise for two days, what would your energy be on the third day? And if you've never had a day like that because many people haven't just guess enough to make a big deal out of it. And and then what we want to do is we want that to be above eight. It doesn't mean it's perfect. It means you don't need naps and from six o'clock or seven o'clock in the morning until you know nine o'clock at night, you're pretty good.
If you have a rough week, you still might get a little bit tired. That's normal. Right. If you had a really heavy week, but generally you don't need naps, you don't need caffeine. You have to be careful because you're not going to get a lot of energy.
Because exercise, if you're tired and you exercise, you get energy because you get adrenaline because you literally don't have energy to get through the workout. That is the worst thing you do exercise when you're tired. Just when you're tired in general, because what happens is you immediately go into flight or fright to get through that workout. You want to avoid that. The second one that's kind of outside of your period that most people don't talk about is your basal temperature.
That's your waking temperature. First thing in the morning, when you wake up, you take your temperature. After ovulation, I want to see those within three days. I want to see that getting to the 90s and staying there. That tells me there's plenty of progesterone.
The thing that makes a progesterone is sensitive to heat so the higher the temperatures get, the more progesterone you typically see. Above 98, typically not perfect. We'll have just fine progesterone. I'm sorry, excuse me, is related to your period. So things like 28 to 32 day cycle, four days of leading, looking at tampon or a pad, about every four hours, not more and not less, no cramping, no clotting, spotting, fresh red blood.
And then around cervical discharge, there's good, clear, stretchy cervical discharge, and there's no PMS whatsoever. So you don't have breast tenderness bloating, mood changes. If your doctor's been telling you for your whole life, that's normal. It's absolutely not normal. Your PMS is just a reflection of how good a job your liver does to take the extra hormones, use them, tablize them and get rid of them.
And when the liver's working great, you don't have any PMS. And that usually can be done that cycle. If you just stop listening right now, that cycle is achievable, like 85% of the way you can get 85% of the way most of you inform three or four months with about 15 minutes of effort a day. It's not hard. It's not like becoming a marathoner.
It's like, oh my god, that's like a unicorn. Because each piece feeds another piece. And when there's energy on everything works a lot better. If you don't have high energy, we need to figure out why and then we need to fix it. That was a long answer, like most of my answers typically are because I'm, you know, wordy.
Tell me more about liver. I know of course liver. What can happen to your liver where that it stops being healthy enough to aid in that cycle. So I honestly, I wouldn't try to figure out the biochemistry of it. I think that what's happening in that question is like slipping back into Western medicine.
It's like, well, like, what is it as a disease date? Like, what's wrong with it? So many things affects the liver function. What we eat, how stressed we are, how tired we are, the chemicals that your liver is having to process. So if you have like a lot of things with scented products are probably the worst thing for your liver.
Because the BPAs and the thalates are really, really injurious to liver function and the rest of your cells. If you drink alcohol, if you smoke, all of these things are like insults to the liver. The other one is if you're very fatigued, the liver, this is Chinese medicine, it won't work as well. And if you don't have a lot of blood, the liver doesn't work very well. So the liver is the one organ, like a very large percentage of your blood pools in your liver when you go to bed at night.
And in Chinese medicine, they say it's like your anchor that keeps you asleep. So people who have like scantier periods will have more insomnia and anxiety. And when you fix that blood issue, the insomnia gets better and so does the anxiety. So you want to think about more what are the things that can affect the liver as opposed to like what's the disease state that's causing it. You know, it doesn't mean that you have like fatty liver, any of those other things just start with like what am I doing that would not be nice to deliver.
And then we can start figuring that out. But usually like I still believe in a personalized approach too often I work with women. They're like I'm doing everything and I'm still not getting pregnant or I'm doing everything and my PCS is not changing. And then I'm like, well, what are you doing? And they tell me a bunch of things that are not the right things.
So they're doing like two hours of stuff a day. There's something they saw on TikTok or Instagram and they're like, well, I heard this is really good for fertility. I said, but that's not for your fertility. You don't have high testosterone or you don't have low progesterone or you have a regular cycle, not an irregular cycle. You don't need a monitor.
If you have a regular cycle and plus I never think people should use monitors anyways except for mine fertility and period trackers and health trackers and fitness trackers have not been shown in the clinical data. To make a damn bit of difference tracking alone does not do anything. But what we do because I just believe that women deserve better right so in the conceivable app we just have an analyze button and you're just wondering like what is all this mean hit the analyze button. She'll be she'll look at every single piece of data that you've tracked with her that AI. And she'll be like, okay, well look looks like your energy still a two out of 10.
But when I look at your sleep you're still only getting like five hours of sleep. Let's figure the sleep out see what happens to your energy see what happens to your progesterone after that. That's what a tracker should do tracking should just be the tool that gives us the data and the software should be smart enough to analyze that data and then tell you what to do to fix it. Gotcha. Yeah, that's true.
I mean we are so different and kind of like back to what you said about the Chinese medicine to and versus the Western approach. We know that when the organs are all flowing right it's all about the flow and how they're they're functioning rather than like what's I guess was wrong with it, you know, and we can have a variety of different conditions that can affect that. Right again, and I wouldn't even call them conditions. I would call them behaviors. Like before you even worry about a condition look at behavior because behavior is where you have power right and what we want to do is want to pay attention to the amount of PMS that we have and then try interventions to improve the function of the liver until it starts agreeing with us.
You know what I mean, instead of thinking like, oh well, what's the, what's the, you know, the only condition is PMS most of the time. Like yeah, maybe you have fatty liver, but you know there's a lot of other symptoms if you have fatty liver. But definitely the first thing to do is really if you're really looking to improve your liver function is just clean up. And people say like, should I do a detox? Absolutely not.
Never do a detox. You don't have to do a detox. If you really do a detox that's going to work, this is what it looks like and it's 100% free. You don't need to do a six week thing or on Instagram, that's all a scam. The liver in the body can detox itself very efficiently.
You don't need any help to do it. But what that means is you have to remove the things that are detoxic to your body. So and this is why it's hard to do it. It doesn't, it's not like supplements or smoothies or anything. It's stop drinking, stop smoking, stop using weed, stop dipping, get rid of all the scented stuff, get rid of all the plastic in your house, start eating organic.
Like all of those things, that's how you detox. And your body can do it. Like give it yourself a couple of months, get outside every day, walk for 15 minutes, get some sun and your body will do its job on its own. Get enough sweep and work on your energy, you know. So yeah, you don't necessarily need to go through and do like a liver cleanse or anything like that.
Okay, got you. Because scam on the planet. Interesting. Or a parasite cleanse. Also parasite cleanse just to scam.
I should not. Or I can know how like the thing about I always just say this because a lot of people ask me about parasite cleanses. Here's the thing parasites are really hard to kill. They're really hard to kill. And while there are many plant based compounds like oregano oil and things like that that can kill a small percentage of parasites.
There is no agent that kills all of them. And when you're using something really strong to kill parasites, you're killing everything. You are you are annihilating your gut biome because that's the only way to do it. And so instead of like if you think you have parasites do a stool test and identify exactly what parasites are doing. And then you can see what parasites are growing in your gut.
Then go to the CDC website and determine what biologic this is where I would not use plants or Chinese medicine or herbal medicine. Go to the biologics. This is probably one of the few times this in cancer that I would say goes straight to biologics. You see exactly what that pharmaceutical is. Okay, it's treated with this horrible thing.
But what you have to do is whatever that parasite that you have it has a life cycle. And usually one window in which that organism is vulnerable enough to kill with the pharmaceutical agent. And so what you do is you're like, okay, well, if you know you can kill this in the egg stage. And when you have the egg stage, you'll have this symptom. So as soon as you get that symptom, you might have to wait like a month or two.
You get that symptom. Then you take the biologic agent that kills it. And sometimes you have to do two courses of it. They'll tell you how to do it. But you do that.
You're going to get rid of what you had pretty effectively. I think it is kind of overused sometimes like, oh, I just I'm feeling slow. I should think I have parasites. But do we really always think about that? Do we really have parasites or is it just a catch all because we don't have energy?
Maybe it's a lot of energy. I think it's I literally think it's because of creators on social media selling cleanses and scaring people. And they're like, well, the doctor doesn't know what's wrong with me. It must be parasites. I'll buy this $1,200 cleanse.
You know, and I was like, oh my gosh, that's such a waste of money. That person isn't even a clinician. And I mean, people always say to me that like, well, you're not a doctor. You don't know anything. And I was like, no, but I'm the doctor that your doctor goes to when she can't get pregnant.
I mean, I will tell you when I was in an acupuncture college, we were studying the like the agents that are anti-parasitic like clove and oregano and things like that. And pumpkin seeds are actually very good anti-parasitic. And she said, she said they hit her and her husband who was also in school with me. They had they went to Mexico. And when they came back, her gut was just like not right.
And then she goes about a month after we got back from Mexico, I was at the grocery store and I bought a pound of pumpkin seeds. She's like, I've never bought pumpkin seeds in my life before. I had not seen a recipe or it wasn't like a TikTok trend. She's like, I just was like, I need pumpkin seeds. And she's like, and after I ate a few, I became obsessed.
And I was like, I'm not just like eating so many pumpkin seeds. And about three days later, she pooped out a 12 inch worm. And I think that people sometimes will crave what their body needs. Like, do you find the instances of that like with like conception? Is there certain things we can eat more nutritious?
Do you have you found that with? Well, the data are very robust on the relationship between food and fertility because we need resources to make humans. Right. And so it's not only what you eat, but also how well your gut functions. When you eat, you have gas, bloating, fatigue after meals, sugar cravings.
And so, you know, I don't ever think like I don't believe in just tips. I think the tips lead to this like I'm doing everything. But what we do know is that, you know, starting with a Mediterranean diet, but we knew data just came out this week that just showed that like the Mediterranean diet, but with a little bit less animal products. Still not vegetarian, but smaller amounts of like red meat and things like that, which is more common in a Mediterranean diet. It's going to be your place to start, but each week of your menstrual cycle, different things are happening.
And we can use food to support those. So, for example, say you have PCOS and your waking temperature is 96. It's not even the 97's. Right. We have to raise your temperatures to get you to ovulate.
And so we can use foods using Chinese medicine food therapy that are warming like cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, cumin. But if you're an older woman and your FSH is getting a little bit high and you don't have a lot of cervical discharge, that would be the worst thing that you could do. That warming is going to dry up the fluids. It's going to make your period come even earlier. And so that's why I just have such strong feelings about the need for personalization, like even seed cycling, I think is a scam because if it's good for one person is bad for another person, right, because each of your bodies are not functioning in the right way in different ways.
To assume that everybody needs the same seeds week one, two, three, four is a little bit short-sighted. And it means that half of people taking those seeds might not be appropriate for them at that part. So like in our app, we just we just give people a chef. So after they do their consultation, the chef Kai, that's me, figures out like, okay, what are the, what do we need to work on this person needs to improve her gut so we can improve her energy. We need to give her lots of high protein and fiber because she's been having high blood sugar.
We need to give her low glycemic because she looks like she's trying to get PCOS or something. You can do all of that and have it all personalized just for you as opposed to like guessing. You know, I think that PCOS also, I feel like it's a term that doctors will throw at you when they don't know why things are different. I'm sure you know, I'm sure you know exactly. As I mentioned earlier this year, I was just having a lot of just female issues.
Well, I cut out a lot of inflammatory foods, speaking of eating. I was like, I'm going to use the Chinese medicine approach too because I have to be eating different like something wrong with my stomach, had the heartburn, and digestion, all that kind of stuff after eating at some herbal supplements, but marshmallow, just some very calming, soothing kind of supplements there, which have helped a lot of. He was like, just based on your symptoms, I think you have PCOS, I was like, I've never had an irregular cycle until like this year. Definitely choose a different doctor because yeah. You don't want to put in PCOS in your chart.
That's a serious pre-existing condition. So you don't want, so you're like, if you think I have PCOS, you need to diagnose it. You need to do ultrasound and you need to do labs to see if I have ins, and you need to tell me what type of PCOS I have. Is this insulin resistance? Is this post-pill?
Obviously, you just didn't just go off the pill, but you know what I mean? There's five different types of PCOS. And what are we going to do to make sure that this doesn't predispose me to diabetes and heart disease? I didn't even know to ask this question there. I don't know clue what it is.
I just know it can throw everything off. That's all I know. I didn't even know there was five different types. It's basically for those who are listening because I think this is true for a lot of people. It's basically pre-diabetes.
It's pre-diabetes that it's a metabolic disease in which your body doesn't use sugar well. And so you get pre-often get predispose by having elevated blood sugar and that elevated blood sugar screws up ovulation. It throws off like when you have high blood sugar it throws all the hormones off. So then you get kind of predispose to elevated testosterone or estrogen dominance which then can make you have really heavy, crampy periods. Which all are extremely disruptive to your fertility, but long term it puts you at a very high risk for miscarriage, very high risk for gestational diabetes and pre-aclampsia which is like heart disease, like high blood pressure in pregnancy.
And then after that like if you don't manage it it will turn into diabetes. And so it's basically like your body's like hey, hey, hey, pay attention right now. Look at how about my period is because the excess testosterone they'll get a little like facial hair. It could have a lot of facial hair. You can get kind of like you was saying your neck like for PCS this symptom is like you can get this like darkening of your skin that's from the testosterone on your neck or on the back of your neck.
And you can get cystic acne too, but it's all your body screaming like please we need help managing the blood sugar. And then if we don't we have some problems. I've had none of those symptoms. The only thing is irregular cycles. I don't think I'm going to go back.
Being good care from your physician, meaning they do things like you might have this and then they don't do anything. Maybe choose a different doctor because there are some good doctors out there, but sometimes you have to go through a lot. How do you go back to women's health care? It is hard sometimes to have somebody listen and take the time. You know, I think I think that one of the biggest issues is because doctors do get a really bad rap these days, especially gynecologist.
Here's the situation are they are they are they are they join they became doctors to help people, but then they didn't know they were going to be crammed into this institution that only allows them 10 minutes to a year to see with people. And they know that there's a lot more things that they need to be doing to help you. There just isn't time. Yeah, you know, and and so and because the way they're trained is to only look for diseases. They don't have any preventative training gynecology, maybe if they're cardiologists and things like that.
And gynecology, there's no preventative training. There's no lifestyle training. It's really like. Do you have endometriosis PCOS or PMDD yes or no or pregnant? And then that's what we know about really well and menopause.
And if it's anything else, they're like use birth control. Yeah, for sure. You put me on some birth control, which I I weed myself off of. I was like, I take it for like three months. I'm like, I'm done.
Let's try to do this naturally. So that's where I'm at now. And I think that's where a lot of women. I say a lot of women again, working at the herbal shop. I see a lot of women come in and they do.
They're like, I have stuff going on where my cycles are regular. I have a mood swings and they're on top of that to I do tell them eating the exercise like all of those things how much sleep you really have to take care of yourself to which you know, that kind of brings me to my next topic. How can we support ourselves? You mentioned supporting yourself in different seasons seasonally. There's there's things we should be doing in different times of the year.
I know which Chinese medicine. You know, we have these little micro seasons, which we have two a month. And in each of those micro seasons, it's like, you know, maybe eat warming foods, you know, keep your torso warm. So there's a lot of specific things you can do during those cycles. And so there's also different things we can do.
I believe also for our menstrual cycle during certain times of the year. Yes. So again, with the micro season thing in the food, you just have to be careful because not everybody needs more warming. Yes, this is where the breakdown happens and why. So if we think about like theoretically, you have the first two weeks of cycle, which is the cooling phase and the second half, which is the warming phase, it's like a young, right.
And but the reality is that some women are starting in the yen phase in the cooling phase, but they're already overheated. So they actually need a lot of cooling stuff. But those girls with PCOS whose temperatures are 96, they do not need cooling that will actually really hurt them. And on the other side after ovulation, probably 50% of people need warming. Some people are already just right.
So we don't need more warming if you're already living your life the way you're living it. And your temperatures are consistently above 98. You don't have cold hands. If you actually don't need to do anything different, there's nothing indicated. If you're like me, it just got down to like it's been in the 80s in Texas lately.
And you're in Texas to right. Yes. Yeah. And then it just dropped to like 55 and I've been wearing a parka right because I just don't regulate my body temperature very well. So I'm going to as soon as it gets cold for me, even like I like to eat Mediterranean food like metal Lebanese food all when it's hot.
I miss tabooly, Boba Ganesh cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. I have no interest in cold food anymore. Like I just all the salads are gone. I'm eating soup. I'm eating porridge for breakfast like it's gone.
So what you want to do is you want to just ideally, if you're paying attention to the seasons, the first thing you just want to do is like at the end of each season, like we just are switching seasons right now, even though at least you know in your state, don't do it by the months. It's what's happening where you live. That's where fall actually. So as the season starts to change from hot to cold and cold to warm use that as your indicator to do a check in. We talked about the ideal cycle.
And so ask yourself how close am I to that ideal cycle. And then, so say you're moving into a warming phase. You're like, well, my temperatures are really low after ovulation. I'm freezing all the time. And I'm moving into summer.
Actually, you can do the opposite. You can start really double downing on warming and you can make a lot more progress in the warming phase. Then you can in the cooling phase because in the cooling phase, you're just trying to warm without being freezing. So for me, I still eat warming foods like I still have a lot of ginger and turmeric and cumin and cardamom and all those things every single day lots of curry. It's not necessarily spicy.
It's these aromatics that are mostly used in Indian food that are really, really warm. And I almost never eat raw foods. I mean, I do eat hummus and tabooly, but like I don't eat them cold out of the refrigerator. So, you know, that's the things you want to use that pivot between seasons is a check in time. Just check your work.
Like, hey, how's my what's my cycle telling me how many days on what's my period like what's my sleep light, what's my energy like, got like all that and then start using it that way because you know and then even in winter, right, it's time. People, you know, we talked earlier about doing a cleanse and people say like it's January 1st. I want to do a big detox and a cleanse. And I'm going to do the master cleanser and all the time. And all the time, it's like, no, no, no, no, that's not your body's natural time to cleanse, right, even if you're going to do the big thing where you're like, I'm going to clean out the house, I'm going to get rid of alcohol and sugar and all of this stuff.
And I'm going to spend time outside. I'm a do grounding do that in the spring when the season changes because that's the time. Your body letting go of stuff in January, dead of winter, your body needs to hold on to everything. It's like working against you. So it doesn't make it tends to just, you know, of course, after if you want to do dry January, but don't do it like I'm trying to cleanse.
Just, you know, do that in the springtime. You'll get just much, it's not going to hurt you to do it in January. It just is going to have very little impact and it'll have a huge impact in the spring. Yeah. No, I agree.
I know just kind of like those New Year's resolutions, right. I remember watching like a TikTok video. And I kind of I put a little sake in on my podcast about it. But we make those New Year's resolutions and resolutions in January, when again, it's the dead of winter. We're supposed to be conserving energy.
You know, we're supposed to be full. You know, we're gathering still. But you know, around Chinese New Year. So beginning of February, that marks the beginning of spring in the Chinese calendar, right. And these farmers.
And so that is really the time when the energy is really active and we can do more things, maybe it supports us better to make those New Year's resolutions and changes in February instead of January. When that would energy is fresh when it's growing, when things are kind of in blue, you know, at least the service anyway, things are right. You can just follow the season. Yeah, sure. Okay.
Okay. Yes. No problem here. Good. Yeah.
We can try to think what else we need to let's see here. It's just very interesting. And again, I'll edit. So if you need to stop me at any point, let me know. I just think that there's so much.
There is so many really low quality products on the market. Not only low quality, but that would are like borderline dangerous that are being promoted on TikTok. I'm mostly on TikTok on Instagram. And a lot of them, like one of them is like this particular prenatal that people love. And on the front of it says doctor back science back and on the front it says with uswaganda and bi tex in their prenatal.
And I was like, well, first of all, those aren't safe in pregnancy. So what doctor looked at what research to make this product, but so many people use it. They're like, it's doctor back science back. I'm like, I can tell by the label that no doctor looked at that. And no science was read on that because if they read one article about the impact of bi tex in pregnancy or uswaganda in pregnancy, we use uswaganda, but we don't use it in our prenatal, right.
You stop taking uswaganda when to get pregnant. And so I actually found that particular product on Ali Baba. It costs like $35 in Target or whatever, but on Ali Baba, they're sourcing it from Ali Baba, just as like a generic prenatal probably. 80 cents a bottle is what they're paying for that. Our prenatal is $71 I think, but it costs us $49.
So you see, like if you're buying actually quality ingredients, it is going to be more expensive. But I've been really struggling because our whole everything about the work that we're doing at conceivable is how do we make all of this accessible to all of the product? So that's possible to all people, right. Even just going to a naturopath is cost prohibitive for most people seeing a functional medicine doctor, probably only 10% of the population can afford that. And so we had a whole line of clinical grade supplements, but if they took what we told them to take, it's in the up costing like $500 or $600.
And some people can afford that, but that's not what I'm interested in just a few people affording it. And we just looked and looked and looked and you finally found a manufacturer who's partnering with us that now if you're using the app or if you just go to the website, you can fill out a quiz and you will personalize your supplements for you and put them in individual packs. So you don't have to have any bottles. You don't have the big basket anymore. You just tear it off.
And the personalized pack is a flat 80 bucks, no matter what's in there. But some of those we lose money on. Sometimes we make a little bit more money, but we just kind of try to make it across the board, even for whatever it is. That way you don't have to worry about quality. I would say the quality is unpar like our manufacturers like medigenics or thorn, but the reality is is that super high quality personalized for you, no plastic, no BPAs, and about half what you would pay for cheap stuff on Amazon and probably two thirds cheaper than what you pay for premium stuff.
I just feel really excited about that. Please don't pick your supplements, whether you were I don't care if you work with us or not, please don't pick your supplements from what somebody tells you on tick talk. Just you know this I see all these ads like talking about Jared tall, which is like a old person's vitamin and they're like Jared tall is a baby in a bottle and it's got like a million thought like views. You know what I mean? I was like, and then they come into my life and they're like, well, I'm taking Jared tall because that's a baby in a bottle and like, that's just you just got scammed somebody came up with that to sell the product because they make a commission be very, very careful.
Yeah, no, I think I see that quite a bit too, because people will bring in some of their supplements at the shop I've worked at we actually will get the powders and we encapsulate on site. And so we know exactly how much is going into and what exactly where it's sourced from because you really have to be a look for specific things on supplement bottles you need to make sure it's source correct. It's not just a bit of fillers because sometimes your body's just not even doing anything with any of that stuff. And as far as ash bogonda you people think it's really safe to take, but it being like an adaptogen it might not do what you're what you want it to do. Yeah, you have to be careful with adaptogens.
I think people aren't really realize that I didn't even realize that until yeah, you definitely have to be careful, especially when you're pregnant. Yeah, there's very little things even herbal that you can take when you're pregnant and you have to be very careful. Yeah, that's that's I've noticed that a lot too. It needs to be the supplement is they really do need to be you need to look at what you're buying. Yeah, they buy them and it's just like they buy those gummies maybe and it's like sorry, but a gummy is not going to do.
It's not going to do anything. I'm sorry. Let me think. Thank you for that because I didn't think about that. But yeah, so you guys talk about the apps.
Is it you got to stop to thirty or three? Okay, okay, so let's go ahead and bring it to a close. Any last thoughts you want to say I know the app tell us a little bit about that real quick. Sure, just even if you're not trying to get pregnant you can go over to concewel.com or just go to the app store and you can download and use the app for free for the first month. And I encourage everyone to do that.
Really use it like it's not a tracker. It's not something you just pop in three times a month. It's been 15 minutes with it every single day and your period will change dramatically even just in the first month and check out our supplements. That's the deal of the century. I think you get a 20% off coupon right now if you check out in the next week.
And yeah, and if you have questions reach out to me. If you reach out through the website concewel.com it will get to me. Okay, thank you so much and I know you've got to get going. So thank you so I feel like I could I could go through and talk about all kinds of stuff. But I really appreciate your time today.
Thank you for joining me my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.