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Home / Whanganui Chronicle

Local Focus: South Taranaki company taking menopause supplements to Oz

Georgie Ormond
By Georgie Ormond
NZ Herald·
20 Dec, 2021 08:06 PM4 mins to read

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MenoMe is exporting menopause-symptom supplements to Australia.

Hot flushes, night sweats, anxiety, joint pain, itchy skin or even the feeling of insects crawling are just some of the symptoms of menopause.

For years the conversation has been swept under the carpet, but the symptoms of menopause affect half of the world's population.

It is well documented that some women escape relatively unscathed, but changes to the body affect everyone.

Deanne Werder-McCrea is a founding director and "digital guru" at MenoMe.

The South Taranaki company is making a splash in the Australasian supplement market with their herbal supplements designed to lessen the severity of menopause.

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Clinical trials showed the supplements lessened the severity of 10 of the 12 most common symptoms of menopause.

The company is run by women who are 40-plus, for women 40-plus.

The proprietary blend of natural ingredients was discovered by a man, with a wife.

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"My uncle Peter Lehrke is a biochemist. He travels to conferences as part of his business and he discovered this product in an expo, says Werder-McCrea.

"It had clinical trials and his wife was going through menopause at the time, so he bought some back and did some tests and then they tried it on her and she said, 'Actually I think you need to do something with this', and so he pulled a team together."

The team includes experts in health and wellbeing and the supplements are made in New Zealand at PharmaNZ where Lehrke is managing director.

Werder-McCrea is the company's digital director and her husband makes sure the orders get to where they're supposed to via a rural courier from Hāwera.

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Online education is a big part of the business for MenoMe which is focused on educating women about changes in the middle years.

"The more knowledge you have the more power you have and you can make informed decisions about helping yourself and moving forward and getting through menopause," says Werder-McCrea.

Rose Stewart is national nursing advisor for Family Planning. She says the symptoms of menopause vary for everybody and are not necessarily all bad.

"Often it is a very positive thing for people because they've had terrible periods or problems with their periods and when they are no longer having periods it makes some people feel free."

Stewart says menopause is the stopping of periods.

"The general rule is if you are under 50 and have had no period for two years, that is menopause.

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"If you are over 50 and you have no period for one year, that's menopause."

She says while there were some exceptions to the rule, it was concrete information.

"Then all the other things that can or don't happen to women around menopause are very variable and people experience it differently.

"Perimenopause is often as big in terms of changes before menopause occurs."

Some symptoms might be misattributed to menopause.

"Like people might say 'baby brain', says Stewart. People just say those things but there really isn't massive evidence that it is a thing, it's just what we say."

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Stewart is adamant that if people are having distressing symptoms of any sort they should seek medical advice.

"If you have had really distressing hot flushes that keep you awake at night then can lead to sleeplessness that then can lead to anxiety and depression.

"If you're having distressing symptoms of any sort you should see your doctor and talk about it."

With many differing views on treatments, literature can be difficult to navigate on topics such as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).

"People can still use HRT," says Stewart.

"In a funny way it went out of fashion, a study on a large group of women found that there were risks associated with it, but the risks increase as you get older.

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"If you're a younger menopausal woman and you have no cardiovascular risk, it's fine to use it."

The MenoMe website has resources for women wanting to know more about menopause and videos explaining how its products work.

"We have a Facebook group with what we call the Forty-Plus Goddesses Group so people sign up to that and they can chat with each other," says Werder-McCrae.

"There are no men in that group, just menopausal women talking to each other."

She says while supplements might lessen the severity of unpleasant side effects of menopause, they are not a replacement for diet and exercise.

"Looking after yourself is really important: good hydration, nutrition, all these things.

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"Stress is a big one, it can exacerbate hot flushes so if you can get the stress down it makes a huge difference.

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