Latest / You're Not Too Much / Food Aversions, Founder Friendship and Women’s Wellbeing with Dr. Sipra Laddha

Transcript

Food Aversions, Founder Friendship and Women’s Wellbeing with Dr. Sipra Laddha · You're Not Too Much

0:00
Being licked by a cat is an objectively weird experience, especially if
0:03
you're a dog person and you're used to, like, slobbery,
0:07
jovial faces, and instead you're getting, like
0:11
literal sandpaper being raked across your skin. Like, that's weird.
0:15
And I think the idea that we're competing against each other is
0:18
a very short sighted one. And I think the idea that we are competing against
0:22
a huge problem that has been perpetuated for a lot of reasons for
0:26
decades. That's really the competition. And we all kind of need to work together.
0:33
All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record because that feels right.
0:36
Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,
0:40
everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different
0:43
Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.
0:47
That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And
0:51
the reality is you're just different. And that's fine.
0:55
I want to be clear about something. I'm not a picky eater. I will try
0:59
almost everything. I just probably hate most of
1:03
it. But I will try it. And it's very rarely
1:07
the taste, it is almost always the texture. And this means
1:11
that there are things that I will eat in certain incarnations that I will not
1:15
eat in other incarnations. It's like a whole thing.
1:18
Potatoes. Okay. I love french fries. I
1:22
love baked potatoes. I love mashed potatoes.
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But I cannot. Please hear me when I say cannot eat
1:30
potatoes in soup. Or like whole potatoes
1:33
roasted, that you are just supposed to eat as a
1:37
potato. Can't. That's not.
1:41
Nope. Can't do it. But you give me a mashed potato. Great.
1:45
You give me a baked potato. Awesome. Caveat. Skins
1:49
do not belong in mashed potatoes. They don't. That's just
1:52
laziness. And I didn't ask you to make the mashed potatoes to begin with.
1:56
You didn't have to make them that way for me. So I'm just saying
2:00
skins don't belong. They're not better. The exception to that, however,
2:04
is that I will eat potato skins. But that is probably
2:07
because they are 94% cheese and bacon. And I can make
2:11
arrangements around the rest of it because of
2:15
the distribution of the cheese and bacon. I will eat the skin
2:18
for the cheese and bacon. I would much rather a
2:22
scooped out potato without the skin, but I will tolerate
2:26
the skin because of the cheese and bacon distribution.
2:30
Tomatoes. I cannot eat an uncooked tomato.
2:34
Nope. You want to put a tomato on my sandwich? I reject that. Don't
2:38
put tomatoes on my sandwich. You Want tomatoes in my salad? Nope. Hard.
2:42
Nope. They don't belong there. Tomato sauce is fine.
2:45
It's fine. It's not my favorite. Like, there are good tomato
2:49
sauces. And I also think I like tomato sauce a lot more than I realize.
2:53
I always think I don't like it, and then I eat it, and I'm like,
2:55
oh, this is kind of good. I'm not against it. You could be like, will
2:57
you eat this thing with red sauce? I'll be like, yeah, it's fine. Tomato sauce
3:01
is fine. Tomatoes? Nope. Apples.
3:04
And I don't know why. This is all, like, things that are supposed to be
3:08
healthy for you. That probably tells you what really is the problem. There's
3:12
nothing about an apple that should exist the way it exists. It just, like,
3:15
it's so hard. It's hard to bite into. The texture
3:19
is not okay. But I'll drink apple juice. I
3:23
like apple juice. Go with that. I also don't want apples in
3:26
anything. Like, I don't want apple pie. I don't
3:30
want apple on my sandwich. Who does that? Seriously? Apples don't
3:34
belong on sandwiches. But I'll drink apple juice. That's fine. I have no problem with
3:37
the juice. Same thing with oranges. I really don't like oranges. I don't like
3:41
watching people eat oranges. I'm just like. I just see all the strings, and I'm
3:45
like, there's so many strings in your mouth. It just. It's not right. It's not
3:48
right. My kids love oranges, and I give them their
3:52
oranges because they're good for them. But I don't mind orange juice. I'll drink orange
3:55
juice. I like the flavor, not the texture. Texture is the problem. Drink
3:59
all the orange juice in the world, except for the fact that I'm now old
4:02
and it gives me copious amounts of ingestion, and that is rude.
4:06
But, yeah, I can't do oranges. Beans. No. No beans
4:10
of any kind. Beans taste like a cat's tongue feels, and it
4:14
makes me gag. I actually really like the flavor of beans. Like the
4:17
taste, but the texture. No, no. If I wanted
4:21
to eat a cat, I'd eat a cat. And I don't want to eat a
4:23
cat. I don't want to be licked by a cat either. I don't like cats.
4:26
That's not true. I like other people's cats. I quite like other people's cats. If
4:30
you have a cat, I want to come over and hang out with your cat,
4:32
but I don't want a cat in My house. I have no problem with your
4:35
cat. Being licked by a cat is an objectively weird experience,
4:40
especially if you're a dog person and you're used to like
4:43
slobbery, jovial faces and instead
4:46
you're getting like literal sandpaper being raked across your skin. Like, that's weird.
4:50
And when you eat something and it has the same texture,
4:54
that's not okay. That's not okay. Make beans
4:57
less offensive. And I will eat them, but I can't. I just can't. I just
5:01
can't. I can't eat beans. I try. My mother in law makes stuff sometimes
5:05
and tries to hide the beans in like a puree. And like, good for her.
5:08
And by the way, she does not have to do those things for my children
5:12
at all. My children just eat the things they like. All the things.
5:16
That's like the ultimate in either ironic parenting or
5:19
like childhood rebellion. I don't know which one it is, but the fact that I
5:23
got the children who eat everything without
5:26
complaint, who, like my oldest, there's food she
5:30
doesn't even like and she'll just eat it. She's like, it's fine, I don't really
5:33
care. And I'm like, I have never once taken a bite of something
5:37
that I objectively dislike and been like, it's
5:41
fine, I'll finish it. No, that's not how my gag reflex
5:44
works. No, absolutely not.
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Cannot possibly happen. And she's just like,
5:51
it's fine, I can handle it. She doesn't like blueberries, she eats
5:55
blueberries. She's like, I can tolerate them. I'm like,
5:59
I can tolerate nothing. Coke, freestyle machines. That's not a
6:02
texture thing. That's just an intestinal moral fortitude thing.
6:06
Like, how dare you? How dare you give me
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my syrupy, sweet,
6:14
carcinogenic drink and mix it with other
6:17
people's syrupy, sweet, carcinogenic drinks. That is not
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what comes out of that machine, is not a Coca Cola. It is some
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modified version of Frankenstein soda that tastes
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like sweet armpit. No. And we've
6:33
already talked about this before, but I can absolutely tell you
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where a beverage is from based on the taste alone, without
6:41
looking at any other identifiers of it, because I have a
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beautiful mind and it's only for soft drink locations.
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I say all of this because I am without question
6:53
a successful and fully functioning adult who
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pays my bills, who has sort of halfway raised
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two hecking good kids, who runs businesses,
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and who also might be bad at some of the, like, very
7:08
fundamental parts of life. It is what it is so
7:12
on that note, if anybody else has aversions that they want to share,
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I love hearing about them. I probably share them. There's a lot of them that
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people talk about that I'm like, oh yeah, no, I do that too. But also,
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if you have a tongue that is just like generally averse to everything that is
7:26
not made for toddlers, I would like to hear from you because we do
7:29
exist and we are grown ups and we can do good things
7:33
in life while also being unable to
7:37
tolerate eggs. Not eggs. I'm fine with eggs.
7:40
Apples. Let's go with apples. That's also weird, right? I like all types of
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eggs. All types of eggs. I have no aversions to any types of eggs. People
7:48
have very strong aversions to eggs. I will eat them in any form. But keep
7:51
your apples away from me. Those are not meant for human consumption. They're hard
7:55
and Sandy Bleh. Our guest
7:59
today is Sifulada and she's an incredibly
8:03
important person to me. A lot of people don't know this, but when we
8:07
decided to open up our practice,
8:10
Sipra was literally my first phone call. That's important. Aside from
8:14
the fact that she's just a good friend, it's important because
8:19
technically our companies are competitive. We're in the same space. I don't believe
8:23
in competition. We need more good people in our space, not less.
8:26
But when you find the right people who you can operate
8:30
in business around, your first phone call, when you decide to
8:34
do something in that business is going to be to somebody else who is literally
8:37
in your field, who's going to be a cheerleader for you even though
8:40
you're playing in the same sandbox and it makes the sandbox better. Super excited to
8:44
have Sipper here today. She is the CEO of Luna Joy, which is an incredible
8:48
mental health platform specifically focused on women of all ages. What
8:51
they have built there is spectacular. I'm so excited to talk to
8:55
her today about a number of things, some of which will be
8:59
business related and some of which will be just 2026 toxic hellscape
9:03
related. So Sipra, thank you so much for being here. I'm
9:06
a previous private practice owner, I've worked in the health system and
9:11
Most recently in 2022 was co founder of
9:14
Lunajoy Health where we were very focused on pregnancy and
9:18
postpartum related mental health is where we started and we really expanded
9:21
to women's mental health across the lifespan and this was
9:25
at a time where women's health was basically a category and what
9:29
we found there was what I knew all through my clinical practice that women need
9:32
specialized solutions and we can't give big box solutions to
9:36
everyone and expect for them to work. And so we have now expanded
9:40
or in many states, treating thousands and thousands of women a month.
9:44
And it's just been such a privilege and a joy and honor. And I want
9:47
to actually just jump off of something that you said about calling someone in your
9:50
sandbox first. I was very honored that I was the first person that you called
9:53
when you decided to take on that endeavor. And I really like that analogy. I
9:57
think that the women's health space, we all win through cooperation. And
10:01
really in the mental health space, we all win through cooperation. I am
10:05
friends with competitor CEOs. I've helped them actively, they've
10:08
helped me actively. And I like the analogy of the sandbox because I've never been
10:12
in a sandbox where I've seen the kids run out of sand. There's always
10:16
more than enough sand. And I think the idea that we're
10:20
competing against each other is a very short sighted one. I think the idea
10:24
that we are competing against a huge problem that has been perpetuated for a lot
10:27
of reasons for decades, that's really the competition. And we all
10:31
kind of need to work together a hundred percent. The number of times that I've
10:35
texted you and been like, hey, do you have a resource for? Or you've done
10:38
the same and said, hey, what do you use for this type of whatever? And
10:41
we just send it back and forth like, why would I keep something that could
10:45
help your patients? They're your patients. Like, why would I not share
10:49
that back with you? Why would I not help you make your programs better? I
10:52
don't think we would have gotten to where we got without people like you
10:55
and a handful of other people in this space. We just built together. We just
10:59
built alongside each other, a rising tide. But when things went well,
11:03
we shared the wealth. And when things were awful, we're texting back and forth
11:06
going, how did you get through this problem? That's the only way that you survive
11:09
in this landscape. And I think especially as women and as women who are
11:13
so much less likely to just be able to turn around to our venture
11:16
buddies and be like, we're short on cash. Can you float me
11:20
a cool couple million? That was never an option. That was
11:24
never going to be an option. It's very validating
11:28
because you and I took very different paths, which is not a bad thing
11:32
on either side. But we took very different paths to get to a Similar
11:36
place you guys went in for venture funding. I know you guys went through a
11:39
number of accelerators and things like that. And we just were a couple of
11:43
people in a room with a small amount of startup capital going, this is it.
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This is all we got. We have no more. And it leads to the same
11:50
road. And they're both hard. That's the other thing is they're both hard. There is
11:54
not one way that is harder than the other. But even being
11:58
a venture backed founder, which sounds so much more glamorous than being a
12:02
bootstrapped elbow grease. I know, it's so glamorous. You can tell me about all the
12:05
glamorous.
12:12
Your version of venture funding and
12:16
the Princeton dude bro next to you,
12:19
his version of venture funding is very different. Even though you guys are
12:23
still receiving funding. So that's one of the things I wanted to talk
12:27
about. From just the perspective of us both building our
12:30
businesses side by side and you had a little bit of a head start on
12:34
us. What is it like to be one of the only women in
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the room, probably one of the only women of color in the room.
12:41
And also being the woman of color in the room
12:45
screaming about health disparities for women. Yeah. In front
12:49
of panels full of probably mostly
12:53
white dudes who probably don't realize that women don't get a lot of
12:56
funding. And if they do, they think it's because women don't have good ideas
13:00
or who had no idea that
13:04
there could be a difference between women's mental health and men's mental health.
13:08
I think one thing that has consistently come up is
13:11
that we have received venture funding and I'm very grateful for
13:15
the success in that area. And also it has been such an eye opening experience
13:19
around how decisions get made, who's making the decisions
13:22
and what venture is really optimizing for and
13:26
things like that. But being the brown woman in the room, the woman that did
13:30
not come from a business background until I founded this company and started. Aside
13:34
from starting my own private practice, I was entirely clinical. I mean I was seeing
13:37
patients and I was figuring out workflows and developing clinics
13:41
and things like that. But I think what's been really eye opening is
13:45
that while there's a lot of venture in health care, I actually think that
13:49
healthcare and venture are very disconnected in terms of a lot of the people putting
13:53
the dollars into healthcare venture don't
13:56
know a ton about healthcare. The number of conversations I
14:00
had that were just kind of explaining how basic insurance works, how coverage
14:03
works, how these coverage decisions get made what the limitations are with
14:07
coverage, how you scale coverage, how that goes from one state to
14:11
15 states. A lot of my job very early on was
14:15
literally just laying the groundwork and laying the education that
14:18
was needed in order for people to be able to make decisions that whether or
14:22
not they wanted to invest. And I think that was pretty unique because my
14:26
expectation was that I was going to be coming into rooms with people who knew
14:29
this space. And what I found out quickly is that I had seen the
14:33
space from every angle. I'd operated the space from every angle, as an
14:36
individual, solo founder, as a mom who had gone through
14:40
the system, had four pregnancies, four
14:44
babies, one miscarriage myself. It was just like that kind of
14:47
knowledge, that kind of learning, sitting with women who've been through these
14:51
situations, going through it myself. Like, that was not
14:54
perspective that most VCs that I spoke with had. And
14:58
so before we could even get to talking about investment, I had to
15:02
paint a very clear picture and just buy people into the
15:05
idea that this was even a problem to begin with. The other side of that,
15:08
though, is in some ways it was really empowering. I think one thing
15:13
that I'll be honest, that often gets in founder way is just. Just imposter
15:16
syndrome and feeling like maybe you don't have the answer, maybe you're not going to
15:20
be able to figure it out. Maybe you're not the right person in the right
15:23
seat at the right time. And being in those rooms, it was actually
15:27
so clear to me, whatever ideas I had, that maybe I didn't belong,
15:31
that I not only belonged and there needed to be more people like me, and
15:35
this was like a mission that needed to happen. And whatever
15:39
pain I was going to go through was worth it because,
15:42
yeah, you get a lot of confidence when you're sitting with people who don't know
15:46
the space, who don't know that women's health is a problem. People who, when you
15:49
pitch to, say, oh, let me ask my wife about that. I've had six kids.
15:52
And let me go talk to my wife and see what she thinks about this.
15:56
It's incredibly empowering, actually, to sit there and say, like, hold on,
16:00
no one else is coming. I'm it. I need to go figure out this problem,
16:04
because this is what we're working with. Yeah, I had one of those experiences
16:08
not that long ago. I was talking to somebody about insurance contracting, and he
16:12
was trying to figure out how they could get confident contracts for their own business.
16:14
And this is somebody who had a whole engine behind him, and he
16:18
had Access to all sorts of funds and all of these things. And
16:22
he said to me while we were talking contracting, he was like, okay, why don't
16:26
you just tell the insurance companies they need to pay you more money? And I
16:29
was like, amazing idea. Exactly. If you hadn't thought
16:33
of that, I never would. Nobody has ever thought of that. You just
16:36
fixed insurance. How did you. And so I was like, a lot of the contracts
16:40
are rack rates, and they don't give you negotiation. And to get negotiation, you have
16:44
to do certain things, and that takes years and blah, blah, blah. And he goes,
16:47
okay, so if that doesn't work, then why don't you just collect from the insurance
16:51
and then charge the patient the difference? Mostly because I don't want to go to
16:54
jail. That's really the reason that I don't do it. But also
16:57
because that's why they have insurance. That's not how it works.
17:01
And he was like, floored. Absolutely
17:05
floored that we could operate in this system. And it's one of
17:08
those things where I say this all the time, Mental health is
17:12
not profitable. You can keep the lights on with mental health. You can
17:16
maybe make a little bit of money with mental health, but you're not going to
17:19
get the hockey stick growth that most venture capitalists are looking for.
17:23
You might get to a point where you've built a system so secure that you
17:27
can sell it for a lot of money that represents everything that you've
17:30
built and packaged up. You're not going to turn around and bill insurance and end
17:34
up with all this extra money that you can go Scrooge
17:38
McDuck through. That's not the thing. I get these. I call them Health Tech
17:41
Bros. I get them on the consulting side all the time, where they're like,
17:45
it feels like there's a simple solution to this. We should just charge more. One
17:49
of the big frustrations is when they figure out that they can't charge more. They're
17:52
like, okay, then we'll pay people less. And you're like, you're still breaking the
17:55
system. You're still. You're still participating in the broken system. You're not fixing
17:59
anything. But those are the types of questions I get all the time that you're
18:02
right. I get them. And I'm like, oh, this is why I have a job.
18:07
Because if there weren't people like me, you
18:10
would be in jail. You might still end up in jail, but not for
18:14
anything I had something to do with. I think it also translates into speed.
18:18
We have a number of competitors who are doing a lot of the same things
18:21
that we are who've been around twice as long as us, who have received
18:25
2-3x more funding than we've received. And part of what the
18:29
funding has bought them is time to iterate and pivot and try
18:33
to find the right model and figure it out as they go along. And that
18:36
kind of Runway to do that is very important. I think it's part of what
18:40
venture capital can be useful for doing. But I think that this is also the
18:43
difference when you have someone with lived experience, when you have someone who has been
18:47
wedged in the healthcare system, literally working 80 plus hours during
18:50
residency hours and hours learning all the different kinds of systems. Systems, because you have
18:54
to operate within you kind of like know and see that there's
18:58
one of two or three paths. And so you gotta go do one of
19:02
two or three paths and figure out where you can be innovative, where there's room
19:05
for innovation and where there's really not, no matter how we want it to be
19:09
different and execute. And that was definitely very much the Luna Joy story. My
19:12
co founder was also a psychiatrist, operated within the system,
19:16
built telehealth clinics. And so when we got started, we
19:20
were up and running and generating revenue within two and a half
19:24
months and starting to show that growth. I think
19:27
that's one place where venture capital can be really interesting and
19:31
important. And the other though that I think is really important for us to look
19:34
at is something that you said earlier about mental health alone not being a very
19:38
profitable business. I think that this is really important to know because I think
19:42
venture capital can be a power stick, right? It can
19:45
help you just with scale and do all the things and that
19:49
is really important. But sometimes it can also
19:53
cause blinding of the facts that are in front of you. And I think that
19:56
this has been one thing that my co founder and I had always been
20:00
very focused on. I remember when we got our first check in YC's
20:04
first 125k and we were like, wow. Because we had been
20:07
bootstrapping. We'd literally been taking money from our savings account,
20:11
right? Hard earned money from face to face time with patients.
20:14
And I remember when we got that first check it was just that feeling.
20:18
125k. Nothing is stopping us now. The world is kind
20:22
of at our feet. And then 500 and then 2 million and then 3 million.
20:26
And we had just always been so focused that despite whatever
20:29
capital we're taking in, the way in which we're building and
20:33
the things that we're building can never ignore the fact that
20:37
mental health reimbursement, next to what you need to pay people is
20:40
a low margin business. And so how do we make it personalized? How do we
20:44
make it specialized? How do we make it more effective? How do we scale this
20:47
faster? Those were all questions and those are definitely questions that we
20:51
utilized capital for, but without ever losing sight
20:55
of. This is not acquired customer at all costs and
20:59
unit economics need to be right side up. Because what
21:02
I've seen in mental health is that there's this kind of taking on venture
21:06
funding and blitz scaling. And for people who blitz scale but lose
21:10
sight of the fundamental unit economic issue and don't plan around
21:13
it, there is this key thing in that happens
21:17
of those companies, of their outcomes, their exits and things like that. And then
21:21
we've certainly seen other companies that have taken on venture funding have really
21:24
scaled and very quickly gotten a handle on the unit economics and figured out
21:28
other ways to become sticky, other services to add on and have done well.
21:32
But there is that fundamental factor in there. And I think sometimes
21:36
when you have a lot of money in the bank, too much money in the
21:38
bank, it is almost too easy to ignore some
21:42
business basics. People always talk about don't be afraid to fail, try things.
21:46
And I believe in that. Truly. I believe in that truly. I believe that you
21:49
can recover from almost anything and you learn more from failure than you do from
21:53
success. And I really do believe that. But we also don't talk a lot about
21:56
the fact that successful failure, if we can term it that bouncing back
22:00
from that usually has more to do with money. If you can fail six times
22:03
and afford to fail six times, then there's no problem failing six times. Most people
22:06
don't have that ability. You do get companies that you see pivot
22:10
more or try things more or test the waters a little bit more because they
22:13
have the money in the bank where it's not going to be catastrophic if
22:17
this thing doesn't pay off, if this thing doesn't convert, we'll try something new.
22:21
That's a function of money more than it is a function of innovation. You see
22:25
this narrative around fearlessness, around people who can just quit their jobs
22:28
and throw it all at something if you have the money to do. That's not
22:32
fear, that's capital. That's not fearlessness, that's capital. That's different.
22:36
Yeah, I think it does muddy the waters for people who like aren't in that
22:39
position and don't understand how somebody could do that. You can only
22:43
do it. If you can afford to do it. Yeah. So getting out of the
22:46
business stuff a little bit, I wanted to talk a little bit about,
22:50
yes, Luna Joy, but also mental health as a whole. You did
22:53
not stumble into running Luna Joy
22:57
on accident. Are you comfortable talking about your kind of lived experience around
23:01
that and how you ended up there? Yeah, absolutely. And
23:04
you know, it's interesting actually. For a long time I was not comfortable talking about
23:08
it and I just went and started this company and it was my sublimated response
23:11
to trauma and seeing how badly the system was. And
23:15
as I've gotten further in my journey, I've just realized having these conversations
23:18
is so much a part of what's going to ultimately change
23:22
the field. But back 11 years ago, my twins are now 11.
23:26
I was chief resident in residency, worked in
23:30
the perinatal mental health clinic. And so I was really seeing this kind of
23:33
firsthand, seeing these patients. I was learning the specialization. And then I was
23:37
also pregnant with twins that year. So I was very pregnant. I had this high
23:40
risk pregnancy. They were sharing placenta, developed a lot of anxiety
23:43
and depression. And there was so much normalization in my head around
23:47
this is what it feels like to be pregnant. High risk pregnancy. You're a resident,
23:50
you're not sleeping. All these things are happening. And
23:54
one thing that most medical doctors are really good at is just putting one foot
23:57
in front of the other and getting through. So that was my whole
24:01
speech to myself during pregnancy. Just get through it. And then I got through it.
24:04
And in my mind, in the way that I thought about it, I was like,
24:07
once I deliver the twins and if they're happy and healthy, my problems will all
24:10
go away and I will feel better. I delivered my twins, they were healthy, they
24:14
were a bit early. We had some special nursery NICU time, but they did very
24:17
well. It was the best outcome we could have hoped for. But then what
24:21
happened after that was like the darkest, most scary
24:24
nine to 12 months of my life. Brought them home and the
24:28
twins were happy. My husband was happy that we had these healthy babies. And
24:32
I had really bad depression, really bad anxiety. I
24:35
remember this vividly. I had a panic attack on Christmas
24:39
Eve. We were at my in laws and I remember
24:43
standing outside the twins door and I had this moment where I was like all
24:46
the things were flying around in my head and I could feel my breathing getting
24:50
shallow and I felt like the warmth creep up over me and I was having
24:54
these two conflicting thoughts. One is, I hope they don't wake up because we just
24:57
put them down And I cannot have the next three hours hours be two babies
25:01
screaming. And then also, I hope they don't die and stop breathing. Right. Both
25:05
of these things were simultaneously going through my brain. And I was
25:08
just recognizing very medical. I'm like, wow, this is a lot of autonomic
25:12
arousal. What's happening? And 15 minutes later, I was like, oh, my
25:15
gosh, that was a panic attack. And despite having, again, all the resources, all the
25:19
education, this is what I did for a living. I tweeted anxiety and depression.
25:23
It dawned on me that the boys were five and a half months old. I
25:26
was like, I have postpartum anxiety. This is wild.
25:30
And people around me knew. My parents definitely knew. They're both physicians. They
25:33
were coming in from out of town quite a bit. My cousins had checked
25:37
in on me, like, I hope she's okay. I'm not sure if she's okay. My
25:41
husband, a number of times like, what can I do? It just seems like you're
25:44
off. And I just was not clued in at all. I was like, this is
25:47
just what it must be. And what happened from there was also really interesting
25:51
in that I tried to get help, and it was really hard to get help.
25:55
All of the specialists were cash pay. I had these two babies
25:58
in residency. You don't get paid very much in residency. Right. My husband was just
26:02
finishing law school, just about to get a job, paying for diapers and
26:06
daycare and all the things. I could not afford to see someone for a couple
26:09
hundred dollars cash. And I saw one psychiatrist
26:13
who was general, and she had never treated postpartum
26:16
depression or anxiety. Saw a therapist who's a generalist, and
26:20
she asked me what a fourth degree tear was. I had lots of birth trauma.
26:24
And I was like, oh, gosh, I'm not in the mood to sit here and
26:26
explain to someone what the medical event was. Just to get
26:30
to, like, where I was psychologically. And that was pretty early on, but it really
26:33
started turning my wheels around, how do we serve women?
26:37
My OB was lovely. He got my voice here happy and healthy. But his
26:41
response was like, just keep going. You're gonna be okay. It was like, pat on
26:44
the shoulder, keep going. And I was like, this cannot be the way that we
26:48
introduce women into motherhood, and this cannot be the way that we
26:52
take care of people during literally the most vulnerable times in
26:55
their life. And it is a very important time, even if you just put moms
26:59
away, because by and large, we don't treat women or moms very well. And just
27:02
think about those babies this is not a great start to
27:06
their life. Right. There's lots of studies around how women who are affected with mood
27:10
disorders during pregnancy, during postpartum, just from interactions
27:14
with their babies. These things have lifelong implications. That was a bit of my
27:17
story. I eventually did find the help that I need. My best friend as a
27:21
psychiatrist. And after a couple of hooking me up with the right people,
27:24
moved from this very dark place. But going through that experience
27:28
was really eye opening. Certainly very different experiencing as a patient as
27:32
opposed to just treating someone, which I had been very used to doing at that
27:35
point. And so I went off and I built my private practice. I saw this
27:39
patient population and after a number of years of running that just felt like I
27:43
need to do more. I cannot just see the number of people that
27:46
I see a day and have that be my impact in the world. My goal
27:50
has always been to have massive impact. And I went to medical school not knowing
27:54
that I want to be a psychiatrist. But the overall goal that I feel like
27:57
I've known Since I was 4 or 5, I was a little bit of a
28:00
precocious child, is I wanted to reduce suffering. And as I started to think about,
28:03
like, how do I do that? I recognized it needed to be an in network
28:06
solution. It needed to be integrated into the system. And so
28:09
when we started Moona Joy, the picture was actually really clear.
28:13
You know, my co founder and I were just both very aligned on this is
28:16
a exactly what needs to be built. This is exactly where the pain points are.
28:20
And there was certainly a little bit of iteration. But by and large, what we
28:23
started off with our idea is 98%
28:27
of what the company is doing now. It's been a really special
28:30
journey. You've told me your story before and I think it's so powerful
28:34
to hear it from somebody who was literally entrenched in this system
28:37
and also not being served by the system. And that you
28:42
somehow both fortunately and unfortunately had to learn it as a patient to
28:46
really figure out how to build it as a clinician. I wish that hadn't happened
28:49
for you. But also we ended up with what we have now because of it.
28:52
What we have now is so important. What you've built is so important. But I
28:56
had a different experience. I don't
28:59
think I dealt with postpartum with either of my kids. I did have
29:03
really bad panic attacks when I was pregnant that would go away as soon as
29:07
I turned on a light. I would wake up in the middle of the night
29:10
with panic attack, go in the bathroom, turn on the light gone, literally
29:13
instantly gone. And my OB was like, huh, that's interesting.
29:17
And I'm like, is it just gonna be interesting until I have this kid? And
29:21
he was like, kind of. And then both of my kids were super al dente.
29:25
I've never been pregnant for more than seven and a half months, so I don't
29:27
know what that's like, but both times it happened. But also, my
29:31
dad was a psychiatrist, and he was pretty sick. He
29:34
died seven weeks after my oldest was born. They came to the hospital, and he
29:38
got to hold her when she was in the nicu. She was six weeks early.
29:40
And you see all these videos online of everybody came to see the baby, but
29:44
he came to see his baby, meaning the mother. And that's basically my dad.
29:47
And so he was sitting in the hospital room with me in his wheelchair, and
29:50
we kind of had a way that we could sit in silence together. We didn't
29:54
ever really need to be engaging. I was sitting there. I had just had a
29:58
baby like, 18 hours before. I was exhausted, and he
30:01
was old and dying, and so he was also exhausted. And he
30:05
just sits up in his wheelchair and looks at me and goes, hey. Some
30:09
women get a transient depression after they have a baby. If that happens, we'll deal
30:12
with it. I knew all about it. It wasn't like I was uninformed about
30:15
postpartum, but I just went, thanks, dad. And he was
30:19
like, yep. But it was out there.
30:23
He addressed it. It didn't need to be addressed. I didn't need a PowerPoint. I
30:26
didn't need a pamphlet. It was just, if
30:30
this happens, let me know. I don't think I ended up with postpartum. But what
30:33
I did have was with my oldest, I did try to nurse, but
30:37
she was in the nicu, and I could not produce milk
30:41
to save my life. And after the first couple of days, I would
30:44
get a very acute depression.
30:48
I was pumping. That would go away as soon as I
30:51
stopped. Yeah, it was so intense.
30:56
And I thought I was doing the right thing for my kids. That was outside
30:59
of everything else, because I had never had any intention
31:03
to nurse. It was just not something that was super important to me. I
31:07
just was fine with formula. But for some reason, once she was born, because she
31:10
was premature, because I wanted to, I don't know. I decided that I was going
31:14
to try to nurse her. I was going to try all these things, and it
31:16
didn't work. And it was so intensely stressful that it
31:20
wasn't working. And I went and talked to the lactation
31:23
consultant. And I talked to my OB and I talked to everybody and everybody said,
31:27
I don't think that's actually a thing. I just think you're probably stressed. It's tough
31:30
when you don't make milk. A year or two later I found out that there
31:34
actually is a nursing related dysthymia that nobody knew about.
31:37
Like nobody had any familiarity with. And I was like, that's
31:41
what I was dealing with. Yeah. And everybody dismissed it
31:45
as basically, they were like, if it stops when you're done pumping, then just don't
31:48
pump. And I was like, yeah, that doesn't feel like the answer. What you're talking
31:52
about is, I think, actually a really big prevalent problem, which is that we
31:56
are not educated in women's health. Even lactation
31:59
consultants, OB GYN psychiatrists, like all these people that,
32:03
myself included, that are supposed to be supportive to this population,
32:07
actually have very little training in this. The reason that I knew a lot
32:11
about reproductive psychiatry is a. I chose to take that rotation during
32:15
residency. That was not a requirement. And so lots of people left residency never
32:18
having dealt with a pregnant or postpartum woman. And then through my
32:22
own journey, did a lot of my own, like, what is literature on this?
32:26
I would like have a symptom and then I would go and read a PubMed
32:28
article to see what was out there. And usually you do a PubMed search and
32:32
27,000 things come up and you have to figure out what you want to read.
32:35
And you do PubMed searches on things related to lactation
32:39
or perimenopause. There's a not that much. And often it's like a study
32:42
in Australia or like, you know, study somewhere else. And so not
32:46
only is the information not necessarily
32:50
readily more available until more recently, but the education has
32:54
been there. I had no training in lactation
32:57
at all, going through four years of medical school and four years of residency. Our
33:01
OB colleagues, who I love very much and we work with very closely to get
33:05
people into mental health care, they are struggling as well because there is
33:08
only so much that one person can be responsible for. And they're responsible for the
33:11
baby and the birth and the mom and all the things that can go wrong
33:14
in that time period. They aren't nutritionists, they aren't
33:18
lactation consultants, they don't know all of those things. I think
33:21
menopause is a really good example of this. Obese are the women's health specialists
33:25
and only recently are more and more obese actually learning
33:29
about HRT because it was vilified for such a long time or people getting
33:32
additional training in that. And so there is a huge knowledge
33:36
gap in the system. And so that's why when I think about the VCs or
33:39
the tech bros and it's like, okay, well, let me explain this to you. And
33:43
also, the problem is not just there. It is in medicine. Medicine
33:47
has not been designed for women. Our teaching is not around the differences
33:51
and the unique needs and all that. It's just not the way
33:55
that it's built. So that's deeply problematic. It's really hard to
33:58
get information on pregnancy and
34:02
women's health when you don't study women.
34:06
And because what was it like 1994 when we said women had to be
34:10
involved in medical studies? And you wonder why there's this huge
34:13
dearth of information and why a lot of the research that we base
34:17
some of our decisions on is like 400 years old. I wish
34:21
that was an exaggeration. Who is the right person for your practice and
34:24
where can they find you? People want to reach out to me. Practice aside, I'm
34:28
always happy to lend a list of listening here. I probably spend an
34:32
inordinate amount of time actually responding to LinkedIn messages from other
34:35
female founders. I get that's not a great ROI on my time, but I
34:39
just feel like part of the reason that I've gotten to the places that I
34:42
do the same thing. Someone lent me their time, someone took me under
34:45
their wing, someone agreed to have a conversation. And so if you want to get
34:49
in touch with me, send me a message on LinkedIn if I don't respond, I'm
34:52
not trying to be mean or ignore you. I really do want to talk with
34:55
you. Just send me another message. Sometimes, like my kids usually like tug on my
34:59
shoulder a couple of times and then I will respond. But in terms of mental
35:02
health treatment, people can go to the website if they want treatment there. It's hello,
35:05
Lunajoy.com can reach out to staff
35:08
via the website via text message. Jane is a great
35:12
contact. She's our COO at lunajoy as well for any bigger
35:16
strategic partnerships and things like that. And she's Jane Yan. J
35:20
A N E y a n@hello lunajoy.com we're
35:24
fairly easy to find. Is there a patient population you specialize in
35:27
now or is it women at every stage of the journey? So, you know, when
35:31
I think about the Luna Joe population, it is predominantly pregnancy,
35:34
postpartum, reproductive kind of journey. And then we
35:38
have a large perimenopausal population. So those are the two focus
35:42
areas. But really we see women across the lifespan and we don't
35:45
not treat you if you're not a woman. By to 10% of our patients
35:49
are men. And that's because I think people just tend to bring the
35:53
people they love wherever they found trust and they found a good service. And so
35:56
we do not turn people away based upon gender. But when we think about like
35:59
the specialization of our clinicians, it is around those two areas.
36:04
Sepra, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with me today. I love
36:07
hearing your story. I also love our overlap, but
36:11
in completely differing ways. And the fact that I
36:15
think we need more relationships like this out
36:19
in the founder community or just maybe like more visibility. I bet there's
36:23
a lot that we don't even know about because to something that you said.
36:26
Almost every time that I've asked for support from somebody I
36:30
know or somebody I don't know in this community, they've almost
36:34
always said yes, even if it's somebody that I just met. Especially being a first
36:37
time founder. But being a founder is such a unique experience
36:41
in that it's very much glorified, it's very much
36:45
made to sound very pretty. But the reality is that
36:49
99% of the minutes are super hard. And
36:52
the only person who's going to understand that as well as you do is somebody
36:55
else who has been in those trenches. And so having you in the last several
36:59
years has been invaluable to my own mental health. Not just as a friend, not
37:03
as a kiddosha. I think just highlighting these relationships, we need more of
37:07
them. We need people, we need founders who are getting together with other founders.
37:11
Not to talk strategy, not even though that will be
37:15
part of it. Not to talk about scaling or
37:18
building, but just to say, hey, your experience and my experience, even though we're in
37:22
totally different fields, are so similar and you can do it. And here's
37:25
why, or here's how I got through that, or here's how supporting somebody
37:29
who does literally exactly what I do made my business better.
37:33
Because that's by and large my experience. It was lovely having you.
37:37
Everybody please go check out the Luna Joy website. Cipra is on LinkedIn. That's where
37:40
I met her. So I'm lucky in that way too.
37:44
And now we'll go to Allison who has this week's
37:48
small talk. All right, so we have a small talk from
37:52
Rodney in Texas. Something has shifted in me over the
37:56
last two years and I cannot explain it. I am
37:59
a 44 year old former Marine who Now tears up at and dog food
38:03
commercials at the end of Pixar movies at my
38:07
nephew's school play. I am not complaining. If
38:10
anything, it feels like something opened up that used to be locked, but I don't
38:14
have language for it yet, and I'm not sure what changed. My
38:18
wife thinks it's beautiful. My brothers think it's hilarious.
38:22
I mostly think it's confusing. Have you ever noticed
38:26
a shift in yourself emotionally, not clinically, where
38:29
something just softened? How do you make sense
38:33
of it? I have absolutely noticed that in myself, especially as I get older
38:37
and have, like, specific life experiences or get to parts of my life that I
38:41
hadn't been to before. I've always been the type of person who would, like, take
38:44
people in, but I didn't expect
38:48
how abruptly that faucet would
38:52
turn on after having kids as soon as I had my first
38:55
kid. I mean, we're talking about, like, days in, like, not far enough in
38:59
to even have any understanding of what parenthood actually is. And
39:03
I wasn't particularly like this when I was pregnant. It's not like it was just
39:06
like this emotional, hormonal thing. And it has never stopped.
39:09
I remember after having my oldest, she was probably like a year or year and
39:13
a half old, and we sat down and watched the Lion King. And there was
39:16
a line very early in the movie that I've heard a thousand
39:19
times. Lion King came out when I was in first grade. I've watched this movie.
39:22
I know this movie from start to. To finish. And there was a line
39:26
very early in the movie, and I'm just like. I just started, like,
39:30
leaking from my eyes nonstop. I couldn't figure out
39:33
why that line meant so much more to me today than it did
39:37
10 years, 20 years before. And then I very quickly realized it
39:41
was because I now had a small human. I would be leaving if this happened.
39:45
And that was, like, completely impossible to understand.
39:49
But even further back than that, my.
39:52
My oldest was six weeks early. She was still in the
39:56
nicu. And I had run over to my mom's house to check on my
40:00
dad because my dad was very, very sick at the time. And while I was
40:03
sitting at their kitchen table before going over to spend time with my
40:07
daughter on the news, they had a story about a baby who had
40:10
been found, like, left on a porch or something, and he
40:14
was in bad shape, and he was only a couple of hours
40:18
old when they found him. And it was some neighbor's apartment porch. Like,
40:21
somebody just walked by, dropped this baby in love. And
40:26
historically, I would have looked at that, I would have perceived
40:29
that story and been like, wow, that's. That's awful. Like, I can't believe they would
40:33
do that to a baby. And then they said that
40:36
the baby was in the same NICU that my child was in. And I
40:40
swear to God, I was, like, getting my keys. I got to go get a
40:42
second baby. As far as I was concerned, that was perfectly
40:46
reasonable. I'm gonna go get this is. There's a baby. I have one. I
40:50
could have two. They're in the same place. Somebody didn't want it.
40:53
I want it because I want all babies now. All babies are my babies now,
40:57
and I'm just gonna go get this baby. And obviously, I. I knew that that
41:00
wasn't realistic and that there was other things involved in it, but as far as
41:03
I was concerned, like, I. I got room for one. I got room for
41:07
two, and I will take them, and I will love them, and I will have
41:10
them forever. And I
41:14
feel like that baby ended up getting adopted by one of the nurses or something.
41:17
Who was caring for him in the nicu. I don't know, but I just remember
41:20
every time walking into the nicu, very intent on seeing my own daughter,
41:23
obviously, but also, like, looking around like, you want to come home with me?
41:28
I'll take you. You need a good home. I got a good home. Any babies.
41:31
You want babies. Any babies need home, send them to my way. I got them.
41:34
And that was, like, instant. I mean, my kid probably was less than a week
41:37
old when I was like, when I. When it was just, yes, give me all
41:41
the babies. I also.
41:45
I'm now remembering, remember my dad being
41:48
relatively stoic when I was growing up. He would
41:52
share his affection. He would share stories he would tell you. When
41:56
he was angry, he would tell you. And things made him sad. But
41:59
it was never like, I'm sad, and I'm gonna sit and be sad. It was
42:02
always like, well, shit happens, and move on. I had never seen
42:06
him get overly emotional. And then when he was probably in his
42:09
60s, he was still working at that point, he got
42:13
this infection or something. I don't remember what. And it made him really
42:16
sick. And after that, he cried all
42:20
the time. And not like, I'm sad cry. Like, literally, I had
42:24
never seen him crying before. And the first time I saw it, I thought he
42:27
was choking because he couldn't speak, and
42:30
it scared me. And then I figured out after,
42:34
like, 15 or 20 seconds that he was just choked up. He just. And I.
42:38
I didn't know what to do with it. I had never seen him before. And
42:41
from that point on, for, I want to say the last 15 years of his
42:43
life about. Just about.
42:47
He was very, very emotional.
42:51
He would cry at things. He would get emotional at things
42:55
that I. I had never seen him get emotional at before. He had
42:58
many wells that I had never seen before. And once we understood that, he
43:02
just. It like, unlocked something in him about, I
43:06
don't know, the preciousness of life or. Or how
43:10
much he loved the people who showed up to take care of him or something,
43:12
I don't know. After that, he just. He just
43:16
was much, much more. He was
43:20
capable of emoting in a way that he never had been before. He was also.
43:23
He wasn't a Marine, but he was Navy attached to Marines. So, like, maybe that's
43:26
like. Maybe that's like a progression of
43:30
advanced military service masculinity or something. You, like, you hit
43:33
an age and they're like, okay, you get your tears now. I don't know.
43:38
That's a gross oversimplification. If it's troublesome,
43:42
if it's a problem, I would go talk to somebody because there are a couple
43:46
of neurological conditions that can cause that. You would
43:50
see other stuff too. So it would be unlikely that that would be the only
43:53
symptom. But, like, doesn't hurt to talk to somebody. But if it's just something
43:57
that you're getting used to and you're not used to accessing this
44:00
part of your emotional framework and you're just figuring out how to
44:04
navigate it, and maybe that just takes time. Maybe it just
44:08
takes time. But I think the men who can process
44:12
what they're feeling inside, who do it openly, who do it in front
44:16
of other men, are the key to solving
44:19
so many of the masculinity issues we have, I'd say, in this country, but probably
44:23
in this world. And there is. There is nothing
44:27
biological that makes women more emotional than men.
44:31
It's just the way we've been socialized to believe that it's
44:34
okay for women to be more emotional than men, and it is okay for women
44:38
to be emotional, but it's not an either or. Men experience
44:41
trauma, they experience loss, they experience grief, they experience all of it.
44:45
And being able to access that and process that is what keeps you
44:49
safe and healthy. And the fact that we have spent so much time
44:52
not allowing the men in our society to access those things and process
44:56
those things because it was somehow common on their masculinity is
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bullshit. So if you found it, great. If it's
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interfering with things. If it's popping up at unusual times, like if you
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see a commercial for dog food where a dog
45:11
gets a new home and you're happy for the dog and that makes
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you tear up, that's fine. That's totally
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normal. It might be something you're not used to, but it's
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not like there are people who are just like that. If you find
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yourself crying mid sentence from something that doesn't feel like
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it's accessing any emotional part of you, I would
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go talk to a professional. But other than
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that, enjoy the cry. It's cathartic, and you deserve it.
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Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Meaning?
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I'm sure there are others. I know. Obviously there are others. There's like
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a whole list of rules.