The Truth About Prenatal Care, Supplements For Women, Hormone Health, & Postpartum Ft. Victoria Thain Gioia Of Perelel

0:00Welcome to the Bostics, starring Lauren Bostick and Michael Bostick. Together, they are the Bostics. Victoria Thane Joya is on the show. She is the co-founder and CEO of Parallel. The first OB-GYN founded Vitamin Company, offering doctor-formulated research-backed supplements. I liked this episode as a mother because Victoria is a mother of four, and she understands the whole landscape when it comes to running a business, caring about health, and also managing her children. So this conversation was very much relatable to me, and I think it will be relatable to you, especially if you're someone who wants to be pregnant, is thinking about getting pregnant, or maybe you are pregnant. Some topics here are the MTHFR gene mutation. We discussed the truth about prenatal vitamins, creatine for women, hormone health, postpartum

1:01mental wellness, and balancing it all as a mother and a business woman. Victoria, welcome to the show. Why are we seeing MTHFR everywhere? It's everywhere. I mean, in general, I think it's a little overblown, but because I don't know what you do with that information, except for, say, okay, then I should take a more bioavailable format because my body can't process folic acid in the same way, but why doesn't everyone just take a more bioavailable format of folic acid, which is methylated folate? And so folic acid is the synthetic format, and it requires everyone, out of everyone, that your body methyls it to convert it into folate. So it's like folic acid has to be methylated into folate, and then your body can absorb it, or you could just start with folate. I don't think a lot of people know that, and even when you were talking, we just started talking about this, but we're clear now, and we've covered this on this show, if you have the MTHFR gene mutation, got it one time, then you cannot convert folic acid in your

2:08body, right? Or you can't do it as effectively. You can't do it as effectively. So people know, okay, I got to take a methylated vitamin to do that. Yes. But I don't think a lot of people realize you could just take, even if you don't have the gene mutation, you could take the methylated, I didn't know that. Yeah, because it's also just reducing the body burden. You know, we're taking a lot of supplements today, like let's reduce all of the processes our body has to make, and so across all different formats of ingredients, like take the most bioavailable format that has the fewest steps for your body to absorb them. So it's almost like, why is the stuff that's not, and I'm going to flood this, why is it not, why is the stuff with folic acid? Is it folic acid? Well, I don't even understand why the other stuff's not on the market. So folic acid, it's like a history piece, so tell us the history, I'm not going to get it all right. Okay. Dr. Biotti, who is our medical co-founder, and there's a reason why she is, folic acid was identified in the 80s with its connection to birth defects, neural tube defects, most

3:16primarily, but other birth defects as well, like claths. And that's before sort of methylated folate was a new, which is a newer ingredient, and more advances had been made in the supplement category. And then the second part of it is that folic acid is heat stable. And so when these studies came out connecting folic folate to these birth defects and folic deficiencies to birth defects, the best way to solve it in mass, especially before like the supplement industry was as sort of widespread in the 80s, was to fortify our food system. And so with that, you needed something that was heat stable that could go into breads and pastas and cereals. And so that's why folic acid is the most talked about, and that's why studies were done on folic acid. We're not going to redo those studies that would be unethical. We're not going to have a control group of women that don't get folate or folic acid. So they're never going to be redone with methylated folate, but there are studies that have shown

4:18that methylated folate is as affected if not better than folic acid. So but the wide studies that like really showed nothing versus folic acid aren't going to be redone again. And how did you become interested in this in the first place? This is neat. Yeah. Yeah. This is definitely neat. My daughter, our second child, Imogen, was born with a cleft seven years ago. She is a beautiful, happy, healthy seven-year-old today, and she's had four surgeries and that's not ever pain that you want your child to go through, but would never change a second of her. She had a cleft and there was two different ways that clefts conform. We found this from our care team and our surgeons. There's the sort of blueprint clefts, which are genetic, which we tested for, and it was not a genetic cleft. And then there's the second part, which is sort of the construction type, which is the formation clefts, which can be related to sort of external factors, one of which is nutrition,

5:18a nutrition-related deficiencies such as folic acid. And so as a type A millennial mom, when we were getting this diagnosis, meaning with the care team and planning surgery, after my 20-week scan, I started digging deeper and wanted to figure out the why, and I didn't really have some of the other kind of external factors. So, it seemed likely that it was a nutrition-related birth defect, and I then tested and I found out that I had the MTHFR variant, and so all of this kind of got me into this rabbit hole learning about folic acid and methylated folate, but more than that, like the prenatal vitamin category as a whole, and what was in the market, what was serving women, and that's kind of the whole journey. And so that was a piece of it, but I think it was more so what was missing in the category in general. Just so I'm so clear on this, if you have MTFHR, and you take a prenatal without the

6:26active form of folic acid, does that equal something happening to the baby or not always? No, no, no, no, and I really don't want to say that at all, and there are so many factors that can contribute to these types of birth defects, and I'm just asking from an ignorant, I don't know. Yes, yes, but I just, I do feel like that is something I really want to clarify because there's so many things like you have multiple kids too, like so many things have to go right to have a healthy child, which I didn't even realize until you start on this fertility journey and you start learning all about this and the ups and downs, and so there's so many things that have to go right. So no, it does not mean that at all. It just means that your body isn't properly processing it. I had other things going on. I had two kids backed back. I was taking a gummy prenatal lineman that was number one in the market that was missing all sorts of other things too.

7:26She actually had some calcium deficiencies. She has a couple of fake teeth. So there I was clearly nutritionally depleted going into this pregnancy, and that probably contributed to some of these things, but it's not pinpointed on this methylated folic discrepancy, but this was something that I realized in the category and then kept digging and there's more and more in the prenatal vitamin category that I learned. We just had the glucose goddess on the show and she was recently pregnant and had a child and she was talking about just like the nutrition in the nutrition deficits when you're building a child in your body, right? And she was just saying like, if you do these things, you're going to have this, and if you do these things, it's going to be hard. So she's just saying how hard it is, but like people are starting to talk about nutrition and supplementation more and more and more now. And I think for the longest time, there was a little bit of a like, oh, it kind of doesn't matter what you eat. And I'm going to be careful here as the man on the show, but I think people are now starting to say like, well, it does matter and you and you will have potentially different outcomes with different nutritional diets.

8:28Yeah, completely. And like going into a pregnancy, like being nutritionally sufficient, going into a pregnancy, how you prepare your body for the like conception phase two, like there's so much more that you can be doing. And it's like, we don't just need to be surviving a pregnancy and like, there can be optimal outcomes. Like a woman can be thriving. She can have energy. She can feel good and supplementation is a key part of that. Do you feel so empowered by taking what has happened with your daughter and having such a big cause? It's almost like your daughter pointed you towards this. She's our muse. And she knows that. And so she like feels this special connection to parallel. She actually told me earlier this week, they're doing like a sheer a sheerau project for their school for women's history months. And she told me that I was her sheerau and I like truly cried. Like, yes, she's our muse. And like I don't think of it as a she would be any different, but you know, she started us down this road and we built something to support women.

9:29That is so much bigger than this situation. And yeah, it's really cool. And I feel like recently we had one of her last in this sort of time period appointments at the Children's Hospital and then like I went and saw it. We have 35 people on the team and we've like really built this business to support a lot of women and it's a, I'm really proud of what we've been able to do out of this and for her. Is there anything that you've done during this process with your daughter over the last seven years that you feel like it's really helped you as a mom? Yes, I do. I feel like self-care for the mom follows by the wayside. For sure. I have four kids. I run the business. Like you're just go, go, go. How old are you? What's the youngest or tallest? I know oldest to youngest. Yeah, oldest. It's eight, seven, five and our youngest will be two this month. Eight, seven, five and two. Yeah. You're busy. So what do you do for yourself? I really believe in like exercise that's always been my destressor.

10:33I have high levels of anxiety. So carving out that time and like it is your phone free time. You can't be on your computer. You can't check your email. It's like you have to kind of put it down. So that's big for me and that's like my non-negotiable and it's always been since I was a kid. I used to be a big runner. So I feel like making sure I continue to carve that space has been my personal me time and then just kind of like the general care. It's okay for you to say you're just hanging on because I have these young, these guys that are my friends that are like, but they don't have no kids and they're just living their life and they talk to me about their extensive morning routines and their wind down routines and these son of cold plunge sessions and these dates they go on. And I got interviewed was a yesterday by business insider or something like that and that they were like, well, what is your routine? I'm like, listen, I'm hanging on by a thread in the morning and at night I'm like barely getting in what I need to get in. And I think for parents out there with young children, Scott Galloway was on the show and he's like, oh, you guys are in Vietnam, like you don't really realize it when you're

11:33in it. And again, like people, we're not the first people to be parents and you know, many people do it under much harder circumstances. But I think when they're in this pocket of this age where they literally can't put their pants on by themselves or feed themselves, like you're just hanging on doing your best. Yeah. Like I think we're a little bit in this phase of just trying to survive. We're not thriving. But it's okay. Like, it's also the funnest age and like it's, you know, it's going to get better and maybe it's just because I have an eight year old where like he's so fun to be with. I mean, they're all so fun to be with, but like he's actually self-sufficient and I know it'll get easier in some ways and then bigger kids, bigger problems, but right now I'm just trying to survive. But then I do. I think that's real though. I mean, that's, we're just hanging on. I'm not. I'm not sitting over here lying. I'm surviving. Yeah. I'm surviving. I sprinkle myself here in in strategic ways, but I am surviving. No, but I mean, when we had no kids, we had these beautiful long morning routines with walks and teas and all and journal and all sorts of stuff.

12:36I'm like, I don't have that anymore. I'm just like crashing out of the house. I find hacks, but like where I can definitely find hacks, little, little holes, but I, it's definitely a lot at this age. We have five, six, three, and I don't even know. Yeah. Exactly. We're hanging on by. I think that's, that's, but what, what adds the other layer is, you obviously are also in a relationship. Try and take care of yourself. You're running a company. The company is doing very well. You have other people looking to you to solve and make sure that they're like in safe hands. It's a lot. It's stressful. Yeah. There are days. So we've been doing the business for almost six years now and the beginning problems is like all chaos and you're all hands on deck and you're doing all the work and you know, six years later, like running the business, you're also running the team. Like we have a lot of people and it's different problems and it's different challenges and sometimes it's a little bit more overwhelming and so it's like I have like four mouths to be at home and then I've got like 35 mouths to be at work and like maintain their happiness

13:40and health and sort of what they're doing and it's definitely been a shift over the last six months of like what I spend most of my time doing but trying to balance it all. What do you think about creatine while pregnant? I did it every single day. I'm curious to know your thoughts as someone who sort of deals with it every single day. I mean, I think it's beneficial during pregnancy. I think you need a lot of these kinds of things more during pregnancy like protein and creatine because you're basically running a marathon and your protein needs increased and sort of maintaining your muscle health and your cognitive health which is huge on the creatine side is all really important. So I think that's really important. It's just I think there's some like studies out there that make it feel scary but it's all about the dosage and I think that's a lot of in the supplement category of like more is not more. And so you just need to make sure you're taking like the safe and effective dose during pregnancy

14:44and just talking to your doctor but yeah go talk to your doctor I did five grams. What do you guys like? We dose at three grams. We have creatine in our protein product so it's a triple support protein which is protein plus fiber plus creatine kind of all the things that women need in this kind of category and so why make her potion source like let's make it easy for her and put it in one scoop for women it is three to five grams. We because we're found in by an OBGYN she is very much on the like do no harm and what is the like baseline you need and then if someone needs more they can kind of layer that in for their diet but like again going back to just keeping it as safe and effective as possible. Are there things that you guys have identified as a primarily female company that maybe men have been on to or during for a while that women have not. So for example like I've been taking creatines since I was 12 years old right a lot of guys probably say that. Have you really been taking it since you were 12 like you were 12 in the kitchen. Yeah I was I was slamming a slam and I was slamming.

15:44I feel like a tall tail slamming muscle. I was slamming muscle. I was slamming muscle. I was slamming muscle. I was slamming muscle. I think you might have been 14 not 12. I was taking a mean note 12 I was literally 12. I'm going to ask mom about that. Slamming these things I was wearing a muscle shirt walking around like this in the house but what I guess my point is is what I realized with Lauren she started weight training with me. The years ago now and started taking supplements that I and what I was like a light bulb moment as a man I was like why did I not talk to her about some of these supplements or some of these workouts or some of these proteins that I was taking are telling me what you were doing. Which well. No no and I think a lot of men out there are just like oh that's like men take that. And now the more women in our lives are saying okay I'm taking creatine or I'm supplementing with protein or I'm taking these other things you've discovered that maybe men have been getting more of that women should look to more. Yeah and I think creatine and protein are perfect examples of that but I think there's like you can go back further of all of the research studies were done on men.

16:48So then it's kind of leaning towards men and while women are not actually small men. So great to have some studies done with women and really seeing what the benefits are for women. So I think that's like if you really went back what drives some of that but then also I feel like there's definitely been a transition for women in the last five years maybe a little longer but I think really in the last like five years about muscle health for women and muscle mass and like how important that actually is the like women have lived in diet culture and kind of salads and less is less and really realizing that women actually start to lose muscle mass at age 30 much faster than men and it's exasperated by hormonal fluctuations such as perimenopause like women have hormonal fluctuations much more so than men lucky us but like we need to actually think about that and so I think the more that research has come out

17:48and more of that conversation it's realizing that women need these things even maybe more so than men and there's so many studies behind them there's so many studies clinical studies behind creatine and it has been this like Jimrow ingredient and then there's actually recent studies on creatine around cognitive health. Yep I slept that last night I woke up and slammed five grams of creatine just because I slept bad. Yeah and then he has to do a performance he's like this is how I take creatine and it's like an inch of water in the cup and it's he's like chugging it like it's a shot of tequila you're so proud of yourself. No but but to your point there's things that I think the quote unquote Jim bros have known about where it's like I know if I have a terrible night of sleep one of the first things I'm going to do is have maybe a double dose of creatine not right at once but five in the morning and maybe five after the workout and it does have neurological protections and in cognitive benefits for doing that especially if you have a bad night arrest. Yeah no I think it's huge and I think it's important that it's just becoming part of the conversation for women and women's health and like actually how important muscle health is for

18:54women in terms of longevity and bone loss and bone density like all of our grandmothers had osteoporosis or similar issues like we can start preventing that but we need to start presenting that now and sort of building up our muscle health and our bone density. One thing that I've noticed from creatine this is so weird is I notice that my skin is tighter to the muscle. So a lot of people are like oh it makes you bloated I've found that creatine like gives you that very useful tightness of the skin around the muscle and I don't even know how to describe what I'm trying to say someone's listening to you on me what I'm trying to say but it's like it's almost like the muscles more toned and the skin connects to the muscle more. Like firmness in the skin? I don't it's like it's a lot like you know how Kim Kelly looks it's like Kim Kelly. A lot of women and again I don't want to paint every woman but this the woman in my life would say I don't want to take creatine and protein and weight lift because I'm

19:54going to get too buff and jack. Not me. And I always laugh at these women because I'm like do you know how hard we're trying as men to just get a little bit of my it's like you know this idea that you're going to take a little creatine and it just doesn't work but what happens when you do take some of these supplements is yeah you'll be able to get more hydration to the muscle you'll be able to build it in a more effective way you'll be able to retain it longer and so you're gonna you're gonna have that look. When you work directly with your incredible OBGYN what have you learned from her when it comes to supplements like everything I mean she has such an amazing approach and she she is a medical doctor she's an OBGYN she's delivered many of my children but she has such a holistic lean to her practice but she really focuses on like efficacy safety research and like what she sees with her patients so there's been ingredients that are really popular out there and she is like an absolute no she's like we cannot include that in our product.

20:54What are those ingredients you know we're gonna ask certain things it's certain things just can have like liver toxicity so there's some around like some PMS ingredients even some like menopause ingredients and so she's like those are no we're not including those in our products she's really cautious about the dosage like she we're creating products that women can take every day and so what is safe and effective and like there's a lot of clinical studies at certain dosages so we can use that to know that it will still be effective but it's safe for a woman to take every day and then I think the other part that I really learned from her and her philosophy is just that like supplements are just that they're supplements to a healthy diet and so we need to think of them that way but it needs to be part of your daily routine like how does it fit in and I think that's also been like the biggest learning as we've made products and formulated she's all about like tolerability how does it fit in the use case like think that went into our formulation with our protein

21:55like we were talking about protein we were talking about fiber we were talking about creatine and she's like this woman needs all of those like let's make this easy for her how do we make this something she can take every day how does this fit in her routine and because she's like that's the only way this woman's going to take it every day and she's seen patients for 25 years and she's like the biggest issue is like making sure someone sticks to this routine and whether it's like a new diet or a supplement and all of those things like how does it fit into their routine so that's been like I think a big insight where it's like as a woman or you'll just be like oh they'll they'll just change the routine and they'll add that to this and then they'll make a smoothie every day and she's like well that doesn't always work how does this fit into their routine and she's really pushed us on that side which has been really helpful knowing everything that you know now because obviously you've been around the right people and done your research if you got pregnant today what would you do yeah I would be really focused on my nutrition

22:58ahead of pregnancy and I think that's the biggest difference that I didn't realize with my first and going into a pregnancy how important it actually was to be on the right prenatals taking the right supplements you know thinking about egg health like all of that and it's not immediate it's not like especially for egg health it's like three months in advance at the very very least if not like six months to a year so that is something that I've learned through this journey of like really preparing your body for a pregnancy and then like we've done a clinical study on our conception support pack and shown that taking that for at least three months like increases key nutrients that are critical for a healthy pregnancy and so preparing in advance I think is the the biggest piece that I would would focus on and what about when you actually are pregnant so I think a prenatal is sort of non-negotiable and taking those ingredients I would take parallel

23:58and have sort of the focus on because your needs change between different trimesters and so that's why I think how we built out our system of you get something that's specific to first trimester, second trimester, third and fastening I think that's so smart yeah I mean look you could take everything all at once and take 10 pills a day but that would be really hard to tolerate so like let's actually be really specific of what exactly you need when and what you don't need at different stages so I would take that but I think more so I would also be really focused on my nutrition actually think that protein I probably wasn't very good about that when I was pregnant at least with my first two the second two were during parallel so they're the strongest most well adjusted of the bunch you're going to hear that in the future and be like you hear that or the stronger ones they are they're well adjusted feel like you're like less nervous with the last kids and they're like I tell my figure it out because I'm the oldest I say what happens I said mom and dad were the youngest and healthiest and then so they had me and then as you guys came along their bodies were deteriorating

25:01and so you got the weaker still yeah I like that but I actually think prenatal nutrition and like your protein needs are so much more important when you're pregnant and women don't realize that at all and like you can't tolerate food and you have a version like I hated chicken and so I feel like I ate no protein and that actually probably would have like yes probably benefited the baby but more benefited how I felt and how I recovered and how like I felt postpartum like the whole process I feel like could have been just felt easier I'd have more energy and like balance my blood sugar better that's like the first one I feel like too I just you don't know what you don't know and it's the postpartum hits you so bad have you heard people talk about a lack of folate as it relates to postpartum I haven't heard that as much as in the postpartum period I feel like you think more of like iron depletion and energy and like all of what you go through and then

26:02you're just kind of like on the other side of it and everyone cares about the baby so I think it's more like general depletion than folate everyone is throwing around this word clean what does that actually mean in the supplement and protein world well it means nothing is not a regular word so I think everyone actually ends like sort of the same in beauty like it actually means nothing so we have to double click of like what does it mean to be clean and it's something that really needs to be looked at in the supplement industry because it's not regulated in that way so supplements are not regulated for sort of efficacy and safety and so it's on the onus is on brands or the products to actually test and kind of measure what's in their products in terms of heavy metals contaminants solvents any of those things that you don't want in your products so there's different layers of this that's gone on since we've been in the industry over the

27:05last seven years and most of it's been good because it's kind of pushing consumers have become more aware of this so they're pushing brands to do the right thing so one of the things that we did from day one was what's called third-party testing and that means that every finished lot well actually it doesn't mean that every finished lot but for us it means that every finished lot so every time we make the product even if you make it four times in the year every time that comes that is done we send it to an external lab who third-party tests it to make sure that it has one what we say isn't it isn't it so they test for like the dosages and sort of the potency of the product and then they test for contaminants and that's microbials and solvents and heavy metals and the heavy metal thing is also this interesting conversation in this category everything that comes from the ground has trace levels of heavy metals is unavoidable so if a solvents says they're free from heavy metals it it may be true but it probably means that

28:10they don't have critical ingredients especially in a prenatal like they probably don't have magnesium or zinc or iron those are important ingredients they are going to have trace levels of heavy metals but it's what is that level so you third-party test to make sure that those are below USP standards or in our case we make sure they're below Prop 65 standards it's a California regulation and it has really strict standards for what can actually be sold in a product but you can actually go above that you just have to you'll see like a Prop 65 warning on the box and then the like next step of this to actually verify clean is third-party certifications so that's things like the clean label project which tests all different products independently for the same sort of things of contaminant well first they test for potency to make sure that what's on the label is in the product and then they test for contaminants solvents test decides and heavy metals

29:11and then you can be clean label certified and you can receive a purity award which means you have the lowest of a lot of those levels and there's another certification which is NSF certification was sort of the same thing and does the same thing and has their own set of standards so we've done both of those to really kind of show to the consumer our commitment to quote unquote clean but there are certifications that can set that standard but in general anyone could say clean because it's not actually regulated wild so the third-party testing is important when you're getting a supplement it sounds like yes very you want to make sure any product you buy they are third-party testing every single lot not just saying they do it once a year every time they make the product they should be third-party testing and verifying what's in it and any contaminants with all you guys research what have you found when it comes to postpartum anxiety and depression are there different things about it is it all the same is it under one category I mean we haven't

30:13done a ton of independent research on that we are working on things on our mom multi pack and sort of doing some clinical research of how it affects that and what are sort of the precursors to postpartum depression and anxiety like sleep deprivation and energy and like how can we help sort of minimize the precursors to that but we haven't done a ton of research on that I can only say from my own personal experience I had like really severe postpartum anxiety and I feel like those are very different but they're grouped sort of the same right now and not I mean I just think there's so much more to that conversation that can be pulled forward and like people talking about that because I think so many women suffer from both both postpartum depression and anxiety but they're all kind of grouped as the same and not really talked about separately it totally should be different buckets because I remember feeling depressed but then at the same time

31:14I had it such bad intrusive thoughts thoughts were coming into my mind that I'm like where did this come from like it's not like I watched a movie about it like it's not like I was like you you're like all the knives are gonna fall out onto the baby and stab the baby and you're like what where did this come from it's like very very weird when you're doing stuff with the baby you think is the baby gonna slip out of my hands and like crack his head open I think everyone has these thoughts when you're walking in it's like oh I could like knock that over or I could like you know hurt myself but you like obviously catch yourself real quick and don't do but then it's with when we do mean what a man tries to relate to postpartum I'm just wondering what's going on here yeah I don't think you can really understand what is it just like that like but if you'd like to explain to childbirth yeah next let me tell you yeah childbirth is like well what they do is they put you on these really uncomfortable couches and oh my god and then I've heard about this so many times and then the the woman yells at you for being uncomfortable on the couch it's really inconsiderate if I have another baby I might just tend to a home birth and make you take up

32:17trip and then you you try to get postmates to find the room you're in it's a really tough thing that may have to go and you had to carry my placenta downstairs god forbid that thing is eight pounds yeah well you know my back was thrown out and Lauren was just really not being considered about honestly each time it's you've gotten less considerate towards me the difference the differences are different feelings the depression is you feel this for me you feel almost a little hopeless you feel like there's a for me I felt like there was like a like if I had a windshield the windshield needed to be wiped like it felt like I couldn't see and I was dissociated and I was anything was overwhelming and then the anxiety feels for me like intrusive thoughts and it's funny I've had intrusive thoughts with all three babies but it's gotten less each time like by a huge amount but I mean I have never spoken to a mom that didn't have a couple of intrusive

33:20thoughts after and I could be wrong but it's almost like I'll buy the third I was like okay Lauren like you're just this is what's gonna happen and just be prepared yeah you kind of just like go for it and jokes aside and with the for for our first child and we've talked about it on the show she had postpartum anxiety and depression and I had no clue what to do I didn't know I had it though either you don't know you know you have it you just yeah and I think a lot of partners in the like I remember for me and not it wasn't about me but I had just had no idea what was going on I had no idea how to support it I didn't even know it was a thing I think a lot of guys aren't aware about the thing and all of a sudden one day you're with your significant other and then there's like they're different they change and now I know so I there's things that I could do to potentially help work through that situation but back then I was like snap out of it I I've gotten beat up for it yeah I did plenty of times since then but I didn't I just think it is what's wrong with you well I didn't know I fucking wrong so for the guys listening with your girls if they're pregnant or if they're like just know that this don't don't say what's

34:22wrong with you don't speak just don't speak don't don't ask what's wrong with them just sit there and be quiet he would breathe and I would be like do you have to breathe like that yeah I had all these same conversations actually with our fourth I had really bad anxiety in our first trimester because I had had quite a few pregnancy losses between babies and so for this last one I was also doing like shots of blood thinners and it was just complicated and I feel like it felt so much pressure and I started having like panic attacks which like during the first trimester was so like I didn't know what was wrong with me and I went down like such a deep spiral before realizing that I was having like a severe like postpartum anxiety spiral while pregnant and that's also a thing and then like found out that that's really common that people don't talk about either it's funny that you say this because one of my friends is pregnant right now and she called me and she's like a month in and I said sometimes when you get pregnant you almost feel you're so happy that you're pregnant like of course like you're out of your mind but you're there's also a little bit

35:26of for me of depression that I felt a little bit in the beginning and I don't know if it's that it's that it's because you know that it takes a lot of work and commitment to carry a child and there's so many ebbs and flows that you're kind of like oh my gosh this is going to be a lot but sometimes you're or and I don't know if it's your hormones but you do sometimes feel a little up and down yeah what your hormones are going crazy yeah and so like we don't really talk about that like that actually affects your mood and what's wrong with you like your hormones are on a roller coaster I think I've been beaten up for this for years I'm just gonna get it again you can you can simultaneously feel really grateful and excited but also like a little blue blue is the word I would use depressed is not it it's not like I felt fully depressed you just feel blue or like overwhelmed yeah little bit and I think that that I mean sometimes it happens during your period too yeah women are you know we ebb and we flow and you have to give a space

36:30to do that because we're not a straight arrow that's boring like you guys I'm just kidding as a joke it's a joke we are hormonal we're hormonal like that's all parts of it sorry we're fun no it's I mean listen it's it's you're building a human right you're taking basically a almost a year to do it yeah it's pretty intensive you think about it now that I've experienced it a few times with her I'm like well like it's it's pretty wild and then after that they're just there and you're just expected to like get on it right yeah it's like just bounce back yeah and here and now it needs to eat and it needs to wake up and yeah it's a lot it's a lot it does help that my husband's a good partner right oh god you got that in there one time in the episode really good part he really helps a lot and I know that that's not the fun in the episode you do have a lot he helps well I wouldn't have it any other way I got to be honest if you didn't help I'd be like what the fuck are you here for call the sperm bank because if you're not gonna help I don't know I'm out no I tried it I tried to be helpful yes helpful okay so if someone is listening and they

37:35have MTF MTHERFRFRFR what are the things that they need to do is it as simple as really just changing their vitamin yeah just take a methylated I mean everyone should just take methylated vitamin it's not just folate like take all the methylated formats take the keylated formats like take the things that are most bioavailable to you I feel like just in general but that's it there's nothing else that you've seen that makes a difference with it I mean transparently I probably haven't done a I kind of went down this rabbit hole and then spiraled and decided to start parallel and spend more of my time on that but I think we just focus on what is the most bioavailable format of ingredients and go from there you do probably not want to take too much folic acid because your body's not really gonna process it properly and then sort of remove it as properly but I just think in general take like the most bioavailable format of every ingredient the way Gary Breckett explains is if you're pulling raw oil out of the ground you can't just put it in your car you need to put it you need to refine it and then turn it into gasoline and put it in your car so it

38:38works well that's over my head so what what what we're doing if you have that MTHFR gene mutation is you're taking the raw materials that your body can't turn into gasoline and you're just and you're putting it in your body it just literally doesn't work so if you could just take the form like you're saying right off the bat you're you're giving your body what it needs right away without having to put it turn it into refinery you guys also sent me the cellular hydration thing that I loved and I took it on like a bunch of my vacations what is that it's our electrolyte so this is everything that we do at parallel as we don't do sort of single ingredient products we really think about what does this woman need out of this so we were asked a ton of like what electrolyte should I take especially during pregnancy and we brought it to Dr. Raiotti and she was like well like I'm not just going to suggest electrolytes one it is great electrolytes and it's great for hydration it doesn't have crazy amounts of sodium so it's safe to take every day especially during pregnancy you don't want to overdose yourself on sodium which tastes so good but it tastes amazing and then it has collagen in it as well so it's added cellular hydration

39:40boost or sort of that beauty from the inside out and hyaluronic acid yeah so that was the thing I like some really good skin boosts and so we love that flavor and then we're gonna kind of explore how else we can make that fun this summer if our audience could start with one product from you guys I know they listened to the episode with Alex your co-founder but what would you recommend they start with what's your favorite product so I live by the mom multi-pack I guess maybe I should have answered that of what's my only thing of self-care is I take my vitamins every single night because I think that they help me from getting sick but I think for general all women and women who might not be in like the pregnancy postpartum season of their lives not that I'm actually in that is protein I think that we forget how important protein is as women and we typically under eat protein you need a gram of protein for every pound of body fat and that's really hard to get out of a diet and I feel like we created a protein that has your protein and your fiber where fiber is also critical to your health and I feel like no one talks about

40:43that either because it involves poop and digestion but like people are talking about it more now it's becoming a thing fully and there's like the gut brain at like fibers so important so it's giving you all of that and it gives you your creatine and it's all in one scoop so it's like so easy to add that to your daily routine and you kind of check the box on all three before you go you have to tell us you guys are backed by Unilever Ventures how was and also a couple of different growth partners what is that like from a business perspective total off tangent question yeah it's great we have really great partners so and I don't think that's always true we have an all-female board and mostly all moms so they really understand what we're doing and I feel like that's made all the difference in having them as partners and it's actually been great I would say the fundraising path to getting there was not so great but we're really really fortunate to have some great partners now the fundraising part is

41:45a bitch yeah that was on the post pre-partum we did it also in like April of 2020 when we just had this idea and so there was no fundraising it was COVID the market's been we was like basically bad for like a five-year stretch yeah well while we launched the business so we probably made you a better business people though and you know what it did in every dollar had to count and we raised like not even a quarter of what we planned to to get this off the ground but we weren't willing to cut any of the products because it was like conception each trimester and postpartum and we're like well we can't that that's that's the whole thing you can't cut any of that that's what this woman goes through so we had to get like really creative and everything that we did and I do think it made us better on the other side even though it didn't feel that way in the moment well I just think a lot of people that were in the more flush times it was like here's a shitload of money and then just grow to grow don't worry about being efficient and when the market got tough it's like hey we can't back this anymore left a lot of

42:47people high and dry yeah would you really think about it it's like it never made sense to just build a super unprofitable highly scaled business no you couldn't like sustain without just injecting more and more and more cash into it it didn't make any sense like we're not software businesses we're selling products so you have to make sure you have like a sustainable business model if you want to be here for the long term if you're going to get people hooked on products you need to continue to be able to sell them yeah and then I just think like you know a lot not not enough founders talk about and it sounds like you have great partners but you got to be careful with some of these people on the financing side because they get your hooks in a way where like there's so many horror stories of founders taking terrible terms raising too much money like selling their company ending up with nothing it's just it's a mess might as well just slow and steady wins the race yes I have a finance background and that's how I started my career so I was very fortunate to know what not to take in terms of those terms and even though some things I feel like we got a little desperate and had to take some things but I don't know founders that don't have

43:52that background it's really tricky where can everyone stop parallel goat you guys go try that hyaluronic acid collagen concoction you will love it and where can everyone pick up the all the goods at parallel health dot com it's p-e-r-e-l-e-l health dot com and check us out you guys can use code skinny at parallel health dot com slash skinny get 20% off your order thank you so much for coming on that was amazing and tell Alex that we say hi of course you killed you