femtech:brief #08: Fitness
👋🏽👋🏽 Hello and welcome to the 8th edition of femtech:brief. We are happy and grateful to have you here with us two months since this adventure started!
This week we embark on a journey that explores yet another highly important topic for women independently of their age, lifestyle, or health condition: female fitness. We visit femtech solutions that focus on helping women better understand when and how to exercise, and what fits best for their diverse needs and stages in life.
Lifestyle changes mean different things for different women. For some, they could mean changing eating and fitness habits. For others, they could mean taking daily medication and vitamins. But for some women they can lead to increased dependence on family and friends, which can be hard on them psychologically.
Empower your Body
More startups are now emerging that are working to address fitness issues for women. Baby2Body is a health and wellbeing coaching platform dedicated to optimising women’s wellness in their reproductive years. Experts at Baby2Body have developed fitness programs, customisable nutrition guidance, and empowering wellbeing support, which can be accessed via their app.
At Baby2Body they are working on several workout routines and other useful information that can help women throughout pregnancy and postpartum. Here are some interesting examples:
Dance workout: For women who would like an exercise routine that keeps them entertained and motivated.
Video source: https://www.baby2body.com/blog/dont-miss-our-first-dance-workout
5 things you need to know about postpartum exercise: every postpartum workout routine is also unique to you — mentally and physically.
Running during pregnancy: If you were a regular runner prior to conceiving and are carrying a low-risk pregnancy, there is no reason to stop running just because you’re pregnant
Fitness and Cycles
Jennis is an app for women that helps them map their workouts to their cycle. Founded by Olympic and World Heptathlon Champion Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Jenny has raised £1M in pre-seed funding.
Jennis uses science-backed expertise to help users adjust their fitness program to their personal hormonal and menstrual cycle, helping them achieve maximum physical and psychological benefits.
👁️ Bonus read
Emotional fitness during menopause
What is emotional fitness and why does it matter? Emotional fitness is the idea that keeping a healthy mind - with regular mental training and exercise - is highly important to the overall health of the body. Learning to manage thoughts and feelings can have a strong impact on people’s motivation and daily activities.
Bia Care is a modern menopause clinic that gives you the fuel and energy to take on menopause. Together with Imperial College London, they're working to improve menopause services in the UK. At Bia Care, they consider that emotional fitness is as important as body fitness and thus, they develop specialized care plans tailored to each women experiencing peri-menopause and menopause. The plans include: hormone therapy, pelvic floor health, nutricion, and emotional fitness. About emotional fitness they tell us: It's no secret that thoughts become things. Learn to manage your thoughts through our scientifically proven emotional fitness programme.
💡Did you know?
Exercise is among the best things to help you prevent osteoporosis
According to healthywomen, as women get older, they become at greater risk of developing osteoporosis. Of the approximately 10 million people who have osteoporosis in the United States, 8 million are women.
Among other things, such as eating fortified foods, quit smoking, and taking supplements, exercise is key to helping women prevent osteoporosis:
For under 50
Focus on weight-bearing exercises like running, dancing, hiking, stair climbing and jumping rope. For lower-intensity exercises, try fast walking, using a stair-climbing or elliptical machine, and doing low-impact aerobics.
Do these alongside muscle-strengthening exercises like weight lifting, push-ups, planks and stretching using resistance bands.
For over 50
Exercise: Aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. Weight train, walk, hike, dance or use resistance bands.
That’s all for today!