Thriving Through Menopause: Monica Molenaar of Alloy Women’s Health On Wellness Tips for Women Over 45

An Interview With Shawna Robins

Take Estrogen, and depending on your symptoms, make sure to start in perimenopause or soon after. I call myself an estrogen activist, but it truly will solve the symptoms you’re experiencing now while also helping to protect from chronic disease in the future. I believe in this so much that I have devoted the last six years of my life to creating access for women to this life-changing, life-sustaining treatment.

Menopause is a significant transition in a woman’s life, often accompanied by various physical and emotional challenges. However, it is also an opportunity to embrace wellness and thrive. How can women over 45 navigate this phase with grace and vitality? As part of this interview series, we had the pleasure to interview Monica Molenaar.

Monica Molenaar is the co-Founder and co-CEO of Alloy Women’s health, a digital health company revolutionizing the way women age by providing access to the information, expertise, and science-backed solutions they need to feel their best during perimenopause, menopause, and beyond. In addition to menopause treatments, Alloy offers solutions for hair and skin health. Molenaar was inspired to “solve menopause” after her own negative experience when she went into surgical menopause at 40. Together with her business partner, Anne Fulenwider, and an incredible team of experts and professionals, Molenaar launched Alloy to get women the solutions and treatments they need with ease and convenience. Monica and the team at Alloy believe menopause care is a need-to-have, not a nice to have, for all women.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to ‘get to know you’. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your backstory?

I grew up in NYC, a typical GenX latchkey kid with divorced parents. I went to Brown University and majored in European History and Urban Studies and always felt like I was supposed to do great things I was passionate about — but didn’t know what that should be. I went to Stanford Business School in 2001 with my then boyfriend/now husband, as a way to get some business skills (or so I thought), but my career path after graduating was non-linear. A perfect storm of events, an inflexible corporate role and no technology to allow for remote work forced me to leave my job when my older son was almost a year old, and I spent the next 10 years in and out of the workforce, working in spurts full-time, part-time and sometimes, not at all.

I only found my groove professionally after 40, when I had my ovaries removed after a positive BRCA1 diagnosis. I was thrust immediately into surgical menopause, knew I wasn’t having more kids, and realized, now was the time I had to go for it. My goal was to feel like I had achieved something by the time I turned 50, which just occurred in March 2024! The only problem was that I discovered I was unemployable — I hadn’t worked in several years and wanted to do something different than what I had done before, and the world had completely changed around me. I was too old and experienced to start at the very bottom, and not experienced or specialized enough to get a job that fit what I wanted and thought I could do. At a certain point, I realized that the only way to get the experience I needed to get a job was to create it myself. And that’s when I found my passion for entrepreneurship — having a big idea, finding like minded people to work on developing it with, and working together as a team to create a great business. Tapping into my long-earned network of friends and acquaintances made it fun and interesting, and I started to finally realize the things that I’m good at.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to your particular career path?

My entrepreneurial process always starts with something that I’m personally interested in and excited to spend my time on. My first venture, a retail, online, and wholesale food business called Seed + Mill, was a bootstrapped enterprise I started with two partners, and it gave me both the confidence and the skills I needed to do what I’m doing today at Alloy Women’s Health. After 3+ years of working at Seed + Mill, it was clear to my partners and me that the business would be better served with one of us, not three of us, in charge, and I knew at that point it was time for me to move on to solve other problems.

That’s when my kids finally convinced me to get a puppy, and through him, I met my Alloy co-Founder, Anne Fulenwider, who coincidentally had gotten a puppy at the same time. The dogs met while on a walk and hit it off and coincidentally so did we! At the time, I was thinking hard about my next move, and unbeknownst to me, so was Anne. We started walking the dogs together every morning for a few weeks and talked about all the things old friends do, even though we had just met — we were both in our mid-40s at the time, processing the first part of our adult lives and thinking about what the next half of our lives would look like.

During my dog walks with Anne, our talks included the various medical issues we and our families and aging parents were experiencing, and finally at a certain point I said, “You are the editor-in-chief of a national women’s magazine, so you know how to create content that speaks to women. There is this huge life stage that is about to hit all of our friends and they don’t even realize it, so we need to let everyone know. I think you should quit your job so that we can solve menopause for ourselves and our friends in a way that we deserve to experience it.” And miraculously, through a chain of serendipitous events, that’s exactly what happened!

Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the menopause and women’s wellness fields? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?

We joke at Alloy that I am patient zero but it’s true. I am a true representation of what all the women going through this normal stage of life experience that we are on a mission to change — all the symptoms, the lack of support from the medical community, the fear and shame and stigma around being in menopause at 40, what I thought that meant about my femininity and worthiness as a person, all of it. From pills, patches, gels, spray, and even pellets, with and without testosterone, I have tried every form of estrogen. I have been told all the crazy and dismissive things that doctors tell patients. I have used topical testosterone at varying times in the last 10 years, first when it was prescribed to me as the only thing that might help me get my libido back (which I knew was more complicated and loaded than simply rubbing a little testosterone on my arm), and now because I know it’s important for the structure of my body and brain. I’ve had parts and pieces cut out of my body to avoid the estimated but un-nuanced 80% chance that I would develop breast or ovarian cancer. And I’ve done 5 years of intensive research on menopause from every angle, from reading scientific papers to speaking with experts, and thousands of women themselves about their experiences. If you aren’t talking to women about estrogen at this stage of their lives, you are doing them a grave disservice, and also adding unnecessary and significant cost to the system down the line when it comes to treating Alzhheimers, Cardiovascular, Osteoporosis and frequent fractures, diabetes, colon cancer, recurrent UTIs, and a whole host of other diseases that disproportionately affect women and that can be largely prevented, with safe, effective, and inexpensive treatments, if dealt with in time. I really understand our consumer, because I am her. I am not only solving the problems for myself but every woman going through this today, tomorrow and in the future.

Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?

My biggest life lesson is to focus on gratitude. It helps me block out the noise and chatter around me and in my head.

But from a business perspective, what I’ve learned is that whatever you are thinking, you can bet that there are at least 10 other people in the world having the exact same thoughts as you. The difference is in who can effectively execute the idea.

Can you share any specific dietary recommendations that help alleviate common menopause symptoms?

Hands down, fermented foods every day, as much and as many as you can fit in — kimchi, miso, kombucha, yogurt (a few friends and I have been making L. Reuteri cultured dairy, which is AH-mazing. I eat it now every day.

I am also a big believer in protein and fiber. Nuts, hemp seed, chia seeds, lentils, chickpeas, pumpkin seeds, whole grain sourdough…I focus a lot on getting the best ingredients I can find, which is also fun because I live in Europe now and the options of fresh, non processed foods are endless.

I’m on the one croissant per day diet, so it’s not so much about restricting what you eat, but making the choice for quality and variety, and certain important characteristics, like protein, fiber, and probiotics.

How important is mental health during menopause, and what strategies can women use to maintain it?

Mental health is important at any age, but in menopause, you really get tested from all sides and need to use your Superwoman powers to get through it. All of us are balancing some cocktail of work, kids, romantic relationships, familial relationships, aging parents, financial needs…it’s a lot. So how do you keep all of those balls in the air and maintain your wits?

I have a few strategies. First, I try not to sweat the small stuff. I have learned to mentally prioritize all the things I need to do in my life, and I’ve gotten fairly ok at letting things go that I know I cannot control at all. Then, for all the rest, it’s a matter of being deliberate, thinking about what’s important and what really needs to get done, and then filling in around it. At the moment, my biggest priorities are my health, my work, my husband, and my kids.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a dog (who is now 6) who is the bedrock of my mental health, and has been the most incredible addition to the family. Walking every morning with him for an hour starts my day off on the right foot.

Maintaining my friendships is critical to my mental health. I have a lot of friends who show up in my life in different ways. I have the friend from high school who I talk to every day, about everything and nothing. We’ve been doing it for 36 years, and it’s the way we both stay centered. I am fortunate to have at least one good friend from every stage of my life, from high school to college to my early working years, motherhood, and my more recent move to a new country…I really value my friendships and rely on them greatly.

I’m also not above a good massage, and ideally 90 minutes at a minimum!

What role does exercise play in managing menopause symptoms, and what types of exercise are most beneficial?

This is the lesson I really wish I had learned a long time ago, but the beauty is, it’s never too late to start. I always saw exercise as a means to get skinnier, but I never did, so I always questioned why was I putting all that effort into it. It made me feel worse rather than better because I never could reach the goal, and therefore, I never integrated exercise fully into my daily routine.

But now, I’ve realized that it’s not about that — in fact, skinny is not a goal. I want to be strong and able to balance myself and stand upright and ski and hike and do whatever I want without feeling limited physically. Thanks to a friend of mine, I started working out with a great trainer on Zoom during Covid. I had a weekly commitment to her which kept me accountable and I owe everything to her for getting me on the road to lifting weights, as it has been a huge game changer that I never saw coming.

I have also learned so much about the benefits of strength training from experts like Holly Rilinger who started the Lifted Method, Gabrielle Lyon, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and Dr. Vonda Wright and so also joined a gym and have become religious about lifting weights, at least 5 days per week. If I miss a day, or potentially a period of a few weeks I know I’m going to go back as soon as I can because it’s an investment in my long term health and makes me feel like a rock star. Am I excited that it’s much easier now to go into a store and try on clothes that fit and that make me happy when I look in the mirror? Of course, but that’s not why I do it anymore.

Ok. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share “5 Things You Need to Know to Thrive Through Menopause”? If you can, kindly share a story or example for each.

1. Take Estrogen, and depending on your symptoms, make sure to start in perimenopause or soon after. I call myself an estrogen activist, but it truly will solve the symptoms you’re experiencing now while also helping to protect from chronic disease in the future. I believe in this so much that I have devoted the last six years of my life to creating access for women to this life-changing, life-sustaining treatment.

2. Don’t forget about your gut microbiome — eat fermented foods or take a high quality synbiotic like the one we offer at Alloy. It’s more important than we’ve ever realized in helping to regulate everything in your body, protect you from disease, and keep you regular, but the typical Western diet no longer includes fermented foods like so many other cultures.

3. Topical estrogen is a game changer — both for your vagina, your face, and your skin generally. Two years ago, after I accidentally induced genitourinary symptoms in myself, including incontinence, from taking half my normal dose of estrogen for 3 months, I discovered just how effective vaginal estrogen is. In fact, it was so effective so quickly that I thought to myself, I wonder what would happen to my skin if I put it on my face?! I tried it and after two months of use, realized that the true anti-aging ingredient out there for skin is estrogen. In fact, women lose 30% of dermal collagen during the first five years of menopause and then 2.5% every year after that, due to declining estrogen. The sticky residue and texture though wasn’t ideal for the face and so we combined the benefits of estrogen with the emollient consistency of a facial moisturizing cream and that’s how Alloy M4 cream was born. M4 combines the benefits of estrogen with the luxurious consistency of a cream that can easily be applied to the face. And thanks to a recent independent clinical study M4 was proven safe and effective

4. Lift (heavy) weights regularly and consistently. Consistency is the key. The more you go, the more you want to go. I really like the new (to me, at least) method of focusing on different body parts each day (e.g. back & biceps, chest and triceps, legs & core) so that you don’t overwork each area but still end up working your body the majority of the week.

5. Maintain and nurture your social networks. Friends are key. They are the family you choose. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call someone, even if it’s been a while. Check in, see how they are doing, make a plan to get together. Don’t wait for people to reach out to you. You can have lots of friends show up in your life in different ways, but each one is important.

Can you discuss any alternative therapies or natural remedies that have shown promise in supporting women through menopause?

Contrary to popular belief, the most natural remedy is estrogen. Estrogen loss is responsible for the lion’s share of physiologic and emotional symptoms that women suffer from during the menopausal transition. The form that is prescribed today is molecularly exact to what your body produces naturally, and so there is nothing more natural than that, and nothing else will give a woman back her estrogen.

That’s not to say that estrogen is the ONLY thing that is important. Beneficial bacteria through probiotics are critical. Fiber and protein are essential. Eating a varied diet. Moving your body. Lifting heavy weights. Getting enough sleep. Having people around you who you like to be with, who make you feel loved and safe and happy. These are the most effective natural remedies to support women through menopause.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Visit myalloy.com and follow Alloy Women’s Health on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and be sure to join our webinars which are informative and fun!

This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!

About the Interviewer: Shawna Robins is an international best-selling author of two books — Powerful Sleep — Rest Deeply, Repair Your Brain and Restore Your Life, and Irresistibly Healthy — Simple Strategies to Feel Vibrant, Alive, Healthy and Full of Energy Again. Shawna is the founder and CEO of Third Spark, an online wellness hub for women over 40 who want to reignite their sleep, reset healthier habits and respark their lives. Shawna is a sleep expert, hormone health expert, and a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBHWC). She has been featured on many podcasts including Dr. Mindy Pelz’s “The Resetter Podcast” and in Authority Magazine, Thrive Global, and The Huffington Post. A free download of her latest book can be found at www.thirdsparkhealth.com/powerful-sleep/ You can follow her on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.