Written by: Dr. Amy Beckley, PhD, Founder and Inventor of the Proov test — the first and only FDA-cleared test to confirm successful ovulation at home.
Written on 5/18/21
Amy Beckley:
All right, everybody. Welcome to the Proov Podcast. I am honored to be joined by Christina Chamberlain. This is a friend that I've had for, I just did the math, like 20 years. 19 or 20 years?
Christina Chamberlain:
Going on 20 at the beginning of next year, as a matter of fact. Yep.
Amy:
Right. That's right. We were, I was a wee 21 year old when I met Christina. We've been through a lot. The most notable contribution is that Christina and I actually started MFB Fertility, which is the company that markets the Proov test. So I just want to talk to Christina about what we both went through infertility. We both called each other one day and we're like, now we gotta make sure this technology exists for other women and just kind of discussed why we wanted to do it, how we got it done. So, Christina, thank you for joining us. Please tell us about yourself.
Christina:
As you mentioned I met you and I was at the age of 23. I just moved to San Diego from Indianapolis and we were both working in biotech at the time. So obviously that's our background. You, of course, went on to get your PhD, which I remember going to visit Colorado with you, as a matter of fact, whenever you're looking where you're going to go. And then of course I went on to law school, so we kind of put together some pretty good educational background to actually do what we did to start this company.
But right now I live in Kentucky, which is where I consider myself from, with my husband and my five-year-old who is completely sassy these days. Super smart, keeps us on our toes. I have two dogs and three cats. And so I do apologize if they appear in the frame at any point in time during this podcast. I've known Amy for, like she said, it's almost 20 years now and it’s been an amazing friendship and we've only ever actually lived near each other for what, three or four years maybe.
Amy:
About that. Yeah.
Christina:
And then everything after that has been; you've moved around, I've moved around and we've managed to keep that friendship going. And so I think a lot of that was probably because of our infertility journeys.
Amy:
I definitely do, you know, me being a biologist and you being a chemist and me having the biology background and then you, you know, did some stuff with clinical trials and a lot of regulatory stuff. We were just two very educated women that knew exactly, you know, we were having problems, but didn't really have good answers. Like here we are, these educated women that have put our career first, right?
Like I went and got a PhD, you went to law school, by the time we both got married and settled down, it was late twenties, early thirties. Like we had, you know, basically I like to say we did everything right. And then we were punished because by the time you put all your ducks in a row, so to speak, you're like too old now.
Christina:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I knew from a very young age that I had PCOS, so I had some sort of idea that this could be a problem in the future. But I get the feeling that it kind of blindsided you for sure. And that, that was really, that was difficult for me as your friend to know that you were going through that and I could hear every time I talk to you as a scientist, you were definitely going through the scientific method, right. If we try A and that doesn't work, then we try to B, right. You know, you were going through the constants.
And I remember having those conversations with you and wondering is this in my future, sure enough, there was. It was because I didn't meet my husband till I was 33. Well, 32, I guess, 31 and we got married when I was 33. And then we didn't end up having Dennis until I was 37. So it took us a very long time to get from point A to point B. And we were certainly trying as soon as we got married, so it wasn't like we were waiting for anything in particular. But like I said, I've known for a long time that I had PCOS.
Now what I didn't know is that my husband was also going to have male factor infertility. And so that was a whole different ball of wax that came as a true shock to us. And I remember the day we got one of those sperm microscope kits, and so we were looking at it.
Amy:
That’s cool, by the way.
Christina:
Yes. We were looking at it underneath the microscope. And I remember thinking; that doesn't seem right. And so Matt would look and we're both like, I don't know if that's right. And so that's when we knew we might have a little bit more of a challenge on our hands, for sure.
Amy:
So there's a lot of different types of home sperm tests. A lot of them are sperm checks or it just checks the concentration. I always steer women away from that. Cause it's all about motility as well. So there's some really cool ones; the Yo Sperm tests, it's basically like a microscope slide that hooks on your phone and it counts the modal sperm. (You can get $5 off your Yo Sperm test when you enter MFB5 at checkout!)
Christina:
That would have been so awesome to have back then because we were looking at it right. It doesn't look like a lot and we're not sure what we're supposed to be looking at. So that would have been amazing to have a tool like that back then. How did you get in touch with them?
Amy:
We work with Yo.
Christina:
But originally, I don't remember exactly how you got in touch with them to start with.
Amy:
I honestly think I probably reached out to them and I said, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen because women are missing the fact that they're not looking at mobile sperm, or they're just seeing a sperm count, not swimming to the right direction. It's, you know, it's not effective. And so I think I reached out and I was like, look, this is really awesome. You know, how can I support you guys?
Christina:
Cool. Well, I have to say Andy's one of the most persistent people that I know in my entire life. There have been many times over our shared infertility journey, he's aware, I remember her saying, “I wonder if there's not a way to check progesterone at home.” Right. I think you said that many times along the way and then I think, you know, when I became a patent attorney, you were always asking me, well, is there a patent on that out there? Like what’s the situation out there?
And I always, you know, I don't know. It seems like if it was doable, someone would have already done it by now. And, you know, I think it was both of us having that realization once I think it was after you were done with building your family. And I had already had Dennis, it was, it was shortly after I'd had Dennis, where we finally kind of had that meeting of the minds moment where we're like this is something we need to look into. You’re the scientist, you can figure this out. I had just come off of working for a genetic testing company. So I had some idea about you know, what it took to actually run a company these days. And so I think if my mind remembers correctly, it was one of those long phone calls we have, we can do this, we're smart. We can do this.
Amy:
I think it was because of Jason's sister, her struggles and it was just basically you called me one day. You're like, “We need to do this. No other company's going to do this. We need to do it. There's people out there.”
And then our other friend, Kathy, was going through this as well. And it was just like we have gone through it and come out on the other side and then to see our family and friends also suffering with it, if you could have this simple piece of information, like modal sperm, that would’ve been great information for you to have, right.
That technology now exists. You could have information to know; are you ovulating properly at all? And is it a successful, sufficient ovulation? And we really understand the progesterone production after ovulation. If we could invent that, it'd be huge. It would help so many people. And I think that's how that conversation started; we're done, we built our families, now it's our turn to kind of pay it forward and help other people based on what we had experienced.
Christina:
I explain it to people that we both had such a crappy infertility journey that we felt like we wanted something good. Other than our kids, obviously, which were like, the most amazing things to come out of it, but something good to help all the other women out there. Maybe not make them have to go through all the things that we went through or get help earlier, right?
It's such bull crap that you see this, oh, you have to be trying for a year if you're under the age of 35 and six months, if you're over 35. If you know, you have a problem, you know, you have a problem. I knew I wasn't ovulating. I wasn't going to sit there and wait six months and be like, oh, maybe someday I'll ovulate. You know? I mean, obviously I needed some assistance at that point and so it would've been great to be able to have that test strip back then to be able to show, look, I am never getting a positive progesterone strip. I am obviously never ovulating. It just blows my mind how it's like, there's these tools out there about how you have to help yourself with your own fertility. That's crap.
Amy:
Yeah, I know. My “favorite” rule is three losses. It's like, “I'm sorry. You want me to have three miscarriages and lose three babies before you're going to run diagnostic tests on me?!” It was insane.
Christina:
The heartache that women have to go through, we can talk about it. I had my ectopic loss. We did an IUI because of the fact that Matt didn't have enough sperm, you know, we had to move forward with IUI. And the very first one, I had an ectopic loss and that was devastating to me. And that was only like five weeks. I just couldn't even imagine women going through later losses. I mean, a loss is a loss, I certainly don't want to play the pain Olympics or anything like that. I don't want to dismiss a five-week loss because it was still a loss.
And I still remember the remaining IUI that I did, I still remember, I swear, I saw a positive line on some of those tests, and I know I showed them to you too. And I'm like, I swear, there's a line on there. Right? Like something just, you know, wasn't, wasn't working. I did end up moving to IVF, and people should probably know that, but it was because the ectopic had actually wrecked my tubes pretty badly and so I ended up having to have the tubes removed.
Amy:
So hold on, I'm going to, I'm going to back the truck up for a second. Okay. When you were doing IUI, I don't think I've ever asked you this question, but when you were doing the IUI, were you taking supplemental progesterone after ovulation?
Christina:
Exactly.
Amy:
A lot of people don't. They'll do like Clomid or something like that. And they'll assume that the Clomid made a stronger ovulation and that progesterone is not a problem anymore. Usually the first question I ask is, you're spending quite a bit of money and time and effort doing IUI, try to support it the best that you can.
Christina:
I think the difference there is, a lot of times women are doing it through their OB and not a reproductive endocrinologist, but I've even seen some REs that don't prescribe it, which absolutely blows my mind or won't monitor or whatever. I monitor Clomid, I don't care one way or the other. I feel like if you're willing to take the chance of possibly having multiples, then that's your decision to do. I think, like you said, I don't think it's unconscionable that an OB is not going to go ahead and prescribe, if they're going to prescribe the Clomid why not prescribed the progesterone too. Right.
Amy:
Yeah.
Christina:
Why? What's the point? I mean, it could work and it has worked, and it does work, but I would rather have that insurance policy quite honestly.
Amy:
No, that's right. That's right. I always advocate that it's always better to have too much progesterone than not enough.
Christina:
Absolutely.
Amy:
It’s better to not wonder and to kind of yeah. The insurance policy. Absolutely.
Christina:
Yeah, definitely. Well, I think the beginnings of this company was definitely ragtag shoestring, about as, about as an American success story is you can get really,
Amy:
So let's, kind of walk through this for our listeners, right? So Christina calls Amy, “Oh my gosh. Can you make this work?”
“I think so. I don't know. Well, what do we need to do?” And so the two of us the next day are literally on fda.gov, reading the regulations on what we need to do. We both put in equal amount of money and we bought everything that we needed to do. I went down into my basement. I literally did the experiments. Is this possible? You know,
Christina:
Well I ordered some of their agents and I thought this was hilarious because I remember calling you after I ordered it. I'm like they asked for a company name and I was like, I don't know My Fabulous Basement. I mean, where else are we going to do the work? Right. So that's, that's actually, you know, I think a pretty funny story as to how MFB. Actually, I think we called it my fabulous garage to start. I think I actually put a G on the order form, but I just remember laughing at myself, like, I think, want to know what company we are. Okay.
Amy:
Yeah, no, it stuck. And the reason I liked that is because I kept thinking, you know, like after I had my daughter and she was the progesterone miracle, and we knew that this was like a thing. I was reading papers on, like, you know, at-home progesterone testing. And it was literally the last line. And it was like, and now all we need to do is make a home test period. And that was from like 2003. And it was 2016. I'm like, “Well, where is it people? Where is the test?”
And so, and we had just, you know, kind of thought, Oh, well, it's just, it's in the development. It's in development. Like whatever. And then, you know, we had that conversation with like, you know, what, people aren't going to do it, I'm going to go down to my basement and do it myself. And that's, where the name came from was, you know, we can't rely on someone else, to fix it.
Christina:
[Amy’s] detailed knowledge on how to make assay's went down and, and by golly made it work. I mean, I think it was pretty crude to start, but I think it was at that point, we started thinking, all right, well, can we find someone to make this in a lab for us? How do we find [that]?
Amy:
Well, right. So we had enough money to make these really, really crude, scientific experiments. Maybe I'll dig up one of the old photos and put it in the episode, it’s pieces of paper, are you sure that works? Yes, that works. We needed money to actually make it a test that people could actually take. Right.
So we had to, we had to follow RTA guidelines. We had to do, CGMPS. We had to manufacture in a right place. So we needed money, and we didn’t. We were two women that had gone through IVF, spent tons of money to have our kids, just wanted to do something, to help other people. We didn't have any money. So it was like, okay, now what?
Christina:
Crowdfunding, it's amazing what you can crowdfund these days. Isn't it. We couldn't do it on Kickstarter because they wouldn't let us do medical device testing or things like that. So I think that maybe I was the one that found the Indie Gogo.
Amy:
I think so. I went to Fiber Upwork, so something and paid 50 bucks for a logo or something.
Christina:
Yeah. At that point in time, I had been freelancing myself as a patent attorney. So I knew about all these freelance websites you could go to, to get basically really good work for fairly cheap. And that's how we ended up with our initial logo. We decided on purple because there was pink for pregnancy tests, blue for LH tests. I think there's also some green LH tests out there, but there weren't any purple tests out there. I remember that. Purple was the way to go.
And then we had the butterfly, which is, I think, kind of a signatory for loss. So I kind of resonated for both of us. Then we just put together this campaign on Indiegogo and it just took off like wildfire. It was crazy. I remember every time we would log in like, oh my gosh, look at that. That was a learning experience though, in and of itself. Crowdfunding is not for the faint of heart.
Amy:
Oh, I know. I often have people asking me, Oh, how did she get your crowdfunding to be so successful? Because we had a good product and a good idea. I mean, it had to have been that because if you look back at our campaign, it looks like two scientists putting something together on Photoshop. And it was the branding’s not there, the product absolutely sounds right. The science is good.
Christina:
We aren’t marketing experts by means, that's for darn sure. But we did find a manufacturer to do it for the price that we thought we could, we could get it done from to develop, just to make sure we could develop a test. I think that's pretty impressive. I know we had to bounce around to what we did with two different manufacturers.
Amy:
We had, we had one to start. He did the very initial work and basically put on the lateral flow background, which is the rapid test format. You put it in that format, we said yes, this works. And then he decided he didn't want to do anymore. And then we took that and brought it to somebody else who was able to take that and put it into full CGMP, MTA manufacturing.
Christina:
I don't know if you want to talk about this or not, but at that point, you're the one that really had to take that leap. Right. I mean, you're the one that had to put your money where your mouth was at that point in order to make sure that we could actually get a product that we could sell. And, that was a huge risk for you and your family.
And I'm just so grateful that you guys decided to do that, particularly at that point in time. I think that was around the time when I started having my health issues. And so I was really going to have to start backing away from some of what we were doing so you really had to step it up at that point. So I'm really impressed with you.
Amy:
We were at that point where we used all our money and in order to buy the next lot, I had to take a line of credit and basically put up my life savings as collateral for that. So I was taking this leap of faith of, okay, I'll buy the inventory and then I'll sell it and put it back. We were two scientists, we had never developed a product, we had never scaled a company, we didn't live in San Francisco, we didn't have investor friends.
Christina:
Not on Amazon.
Amy:
I figured out how to sell my stuff on Amazon in a plastic bag and that’s, you know, nobody would give us funding and it was either I have to do this, find a way myself and take that leap of faith or it just never gets done. And I remember having a phone call with you Christina, first; saying, “Look, I support you. This is so awesome. I just can't be who you need me to be.” And it was, it was hard, but I appreciated it. Like I understood where you were, you said, basically I only have so many hours in the day and I have a son and I have a husband and I have to do that.
And I was like, yes, you absolutely do. And I was going to basically call that last lot, the last lot and be like, you know what? We gave it a good college effort. Like you're just not working. And then I remember getting an email from somebody that's basically like, you saved my marriage. Those words, “You saved my marriage,” was like, oh my gosh. I can’t give up. There's so many people out there that need us.
And that's when you took a back seat, always. You're on the board, you're always there to help, you guide the product, everything. But that's when I stepped out and said, all right, we need money and we need resources. We need marketing. We need true business help. And that's when Ellen joined the company a few months later and we got hooked up with the Hillman Accelerator who was funded by P&G which makes Charmin, Bounty, all those kinds of consumer goods. So we got into good hands and that helped us really grow and foster the brand and the technology and the, and the tech.
Christina:
I remember having those initial conversations with Ellen and the team, and I was like, this is who you need. Right? I will always be here to support and do whatever you need me to do in my capacity that I can. But man, in order to take that next step you needed her. That's all there was to it. How long ago was that? Almost two years, probably.
Amy:
That was in 2018.
Christina:
And so the listeners know I started having some neurological problems back in 2017 I think. And we thought for a long time that I have MS. And we're still not certain that I don't have a mass cause I do have lesions on my brain. But I definitely have Rheumatoid Arthritis, which kind of appeared in 2018, which was kind of like the death nail for me as far as what my abilities are.
Since then I've been doing a whole lot of stuff. I've been to the Mayo clinic and I've actually found out I have a primary immunodeficiency. And so I take something called IgG infusions every three weeks. And so I'm doing much better. And I'm glad that I'm able to feel like maybe I'm starting to reconnect with you a little bit.
I mean, I'm still not what you need that's for sure. But I love hearing all the new plans for the product. Particularly the Predict and Confirm that you guys have done, that's genius, just genius. And I know that there's a lot of other collaborations in the mix that, you know, obviously we can't talk about here, but I'm just amazed at where — when this started, what four years ago, has it been four years since 2016? That, we, I remember sitting in a coffee shop trying to figure out our business plan. Something we had to do for the FDA? I can't, I can't even remember what it was back at the time —
Amy:
Quality manual.
Christina:
But the two of us trying to hammer out a quality manual, like we had any clue as to what was required and GMP manufacturing facility, it's kind of comical when you, when you think back on it.
Amy:
We did amazing things between your clinical experience and my lab and your patent stuff. We got under patent pending, which was huge. We formally structured the venture, right? So it was a formal thing. Had all those documents in place, how to manufacture the agreement, I could actually make the product, it was FDA compliant. All those things, we did an IRP trial. We did a clinical trial. I know when I tell people much it costs to get through the FDA and do a clinical trial, they're like, wait, what, how did you do that? Well, when you're two infertile women and you have the brains, you can figure it out.
Christina:
I mean, money is great, but it is not the answer to everything, right? At some point there's gotta be some level of gumption and determination and grit that drives a success at that point. And money helps too.
Amy:
Right. Right. And it wasn't just us. It was all the women. It was the 287 women that bought tests in that Indiegogo campaign that were like, I am all in. I want to support you. This is amazing. And they helped us. They basically took our prototype and transformed it into a validated, clinically studied product. And they helped us throughout the process because they're like, oh my gosh, this product is amazing. Like it needs to be out there. What can we do? And so if we didn't have that support from those 287 women...
Christina:
I laugh. I also think about the fact that from an FDA standpoint, how many times we forward over those documents and in our head, we're like, this is an exempt product. This has to be an exempt product, right. This is an exempt product. And it wasn't until we actually got some success that the FDA decided that they wanted to clear it. And you guys still managed to clear that hurdle and quickly at that because we had all that data. Right. I mean, that's crazy when you think about it that we kind of knew in the back of our heads the whole time, if the FDA comes knocking, we want to make sure we've got our ducks in a row and we can show them. Yes. This is clinically validated.
Amy:
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, basically what happened was the FDA reclassified our product and they have the discretion to do that, but they reclassified our product after so many people were using it and they just wanted to make sure that it was accurate and valid and we're getting the right information. And so, alright, here you go. Here's all our information. And they're like, okay, cool. Here's your clearance. I mean, it obviously didn't happen like that. It was an 11 month process.
Christina:
But we had laid the groundwork for that. Most definitely. Well, I know we don't have a whole lot of time today, but I did want to bring up, I remember you being so annoyed at one point, because we had received some feedback on a grant that we had applied for that basically said; women don't need this type of information.
Amy:
So here we are just trying to survive, trying to get money, right. We're two women that have founded this company and we go to the NIH, the national Institute of health and they have a grant program that helps you with innovative technologies. So they had the SBI, the Small Business Innovation Research Grant. And it was like build a better infertility diagnostic tool. That was basically what they wanted. We're like, sweet. We're going to build this amazing thing. That's going to measure all your hormones. It's going to tell you what they are, and it's going to give you insights. You can share it with your doctors. And they wrote back and they're like, no, women don't need this information. It's actually harmful. And only doctors can have access to this. Not funded.
Christina:
I remember that moment. I remember you're just like, this is such bullcrap. Who do these people think they are? Right. I mean, women are perfectly capable of taking information. Even if they don't have a background in science, we try to make it as easy as we can for them to have information that even if they don't understand it, they get to least take it to their doctor at that point. Right. And so I'm not getting these positive tests. What does this mean?
Amy:
It's a catch 22 thing, right? We talked about this before you gotta be infertile for 12 months or three losses or six months or you're over 35 to go talk to a doctor. And they were telling us women couldn't have this information. So it's like we're stuck. We shouldn't be stuck.
Christina:
You get testing from the doctor, but you can't test home yourself. So good luck with that.
Amy:
So, you know, the one thing that was very, very important for us when we started this company was this has to be direct to consumer product. It has to be something, a woman can buy off Amazon. Like it has to be; go to target, go to Amazon, you know, ordered on the internet.
Christina:
You can do a ClearBlue stick, right? If you can look at an LH stick, if you can look at a pregnancy test, you can read lines.
Amy:
Right. So here's the thing. Now, do you want the lines to say something different, is a different story, right? When women are posting positive pregnancy tests to Facebook boards. Oh my God. Is this positive? Girl, you know it’s positive. You just want someone to tell you, congratulations. It's positive. Right.
Christina:
I can see that from a mile away, zoom in a little bit, which we both have done on all of our pregnancy tests. So do that now. Do you know that? I'm like, look, if you invert it right there, you can see the line, if you know where the line is supposed to be. But, I agree with you. Some people post it like this gigantic, like it's almost darker than the control line.
Amy:
It's interesting, right? People that use Proov, we're not the typical ovulation tests or pregnancy test where one line is positive and two is negative. So it's like kind of a little bit of a mind twist to think of it differently and people are like, oh my gosh, I didn't get two lines. I was expecting two lines. Or I didn't get a positive, I have two lines. I was expecting to get a positive because my thermometer told me I ovulated, or my ClearBlue told me I ovulated, but your Proov tests are wrong because I'm getting two lines.
And I just want to be like, you know what? You took the effort to buy this and to use it. And it's giving you valuable information that you could have ovulated, but your, your PdG levels are just not high enough for that positive. That is powerful information to move you forward. So if you're not getting the results that you want, if you take a pregnancy test and it's negative, do you call the pregnancy test company and be like, oh my gosh, my pregnancy test is obviously wrong.
Christina:
But the difference is, we're here to help though. Right? The difference is, we do have a Facebook user group. The difference is, you can email your tests to you, right? The difference is we will say, okay, you got a positive test on day eight and nine, but not on seven and eight, but not nine and 10. It's possible that your PdG's not staying high enough long enough. Right? Like we're able to help interpret other than yours are not aligned. And then there's a whole group of women that have been doing this for years, that really, really understand how you correlate a chart, a basal body temperature chart to the Proov test, to cervical mucus, to all of those things. And it's crazy for me.
But after I had Denis, all of a sudden I started ovulating on my own, which was complete mind blowing. But I remember when I got the test, I was like, okay, so I'm getting cervical mucus. So I'm going to use this test seven days from the cervical mucus. And it was positive. And I remember calling you going, Oh my God, unbelievable, now I did end up having a hysterectomy. So I have to worry about that anymore. But, I just remember thinking, wow, that's incredible because it never would've occurred to me before. Right. Like after having Dennis because I didn't not ovulate before it never would've occurred to me that maybe I'm ovulating now. Right. Until I had those tests available. So it even helped me figure out what was going on with me. Cause I was having all kinds of wonky stuff going on. So I was kind of crazy.
Amy:
No, I mean, knowledge is power.
Christina:
And I remember you used to let me take a test. So we knew exactly what a negative looks like, literally negative Amy. Here you go. And you're the ultimate Guinea pig too. I imagine you still use them every month. Don't you?
Amy:
Mostly yes. Now we're developing the app that basically digitizes the results and does that, so I use it to help with the app development now.
Christina:
Yep. So see folks, she uses it every month or so, even though she's done building her family, it's still good information to have.
Amy:
Well I'm getting closer to menopause and since I had hormone issues that led to infertility, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a roller coaster for menopause. And so I'm trying to learn about my body. I actually am still doing seed cycling and taking bio identical progesterone because I want my cycles to be normal.
Even though I'm not conceiving, I would get really bad PMS, really bad headaches, spotting like crazy throughout the luteal phase. And so even though my husband's got a vasectomy, so there will be no more babies, but I'm still tracking my cycle and I'm still wanting to make sure it's healthy because it's part of me functioning as a woman.
Christina:
I was lucky after I had my hysterectomy. I haven't been on I haven't been on hormones and I really can't just because of some of my medical issues. I'm not really allowed to take progesterone, but I have thought about it from time to time because I know how much you promote progesterone for overall wellness. So I've definitely thought about it a few times. So I'm actually working with a functional medicine doctor right now. So once we figure out some other things, I feel like there's probably some food sensitivities that are causing a lot of inflammation in my body. And once I figured that out, I might broach the subject with them about maybe doing some bio-identical type progesterone, but you're right. I mean, progesterone is like the magical, symmetrical hormone. Right. And everyone should know what their progesterone level is whether you're trying to have a kid or not.
Amy:
Absolutely. I'm happier working with a functional medicine doctor. We have quite a few that we work with. They're amazing. Like whole body holistic, all natural. I love it.
Christina:
Yeah. So far so good. So we'll see how it goes. I'll definitely keep you updated on that. I've reached the point in my life where enough is enough. Western medicine hasn't really fixed me yet. So we're going to try a combo a couple of days and see how it goes.
Amy:
I always tell people that you are the expert in you and doctors are the expert in medicine and if you marry the two, you can get the best personalized treatment for yourself. So you've had quite the medical history, you know the most about your body, so when you go into a doctor and you say, okay, I want this, you don't start and say, hey doctor, I have a problem. You're like, I have this, this, this, this, this, and it points them to the directed therapy. Right. It's the same thing. What we're trying to do with Proov and fertility is there's literally 91 things that can go wrong and cause infertility. 91. And if you can check some of the boxes. Oh cool. So my modal sperm was ovulating perfectly, well with Proov you can go in and be like, all right, I just check to make sure my tubes are open.
Christina:
That was my next thing. I was like, are your tubes open?
Amy:
Exactly. Right. And so you can advocate for yourself and you can check off boxes and then you could have guided conversations because when you go in to talk to that reproductive endocrinologist or the functional medicine person or whoever it is, it's expensive and you only get like 10 minutes of their time, you want to make the most effective use of those 10 minutes that you possibly can.
Christina:
So that's a plug I'm going to make for functional medicine, is that I got 90 minutes in my first appointment with my doctor and it was amazing and I didn't feel rushed. And when you've got a complicated medical history, you definitely want to not have just 10 minutes to spit it out because they're only going to identify one thing they think they can fix in that visit and screw the rest of it. So, yeah. Well, I think that is a great place to end; that women are smart and they can, they can go through that flow chart, so to speak and check off those boxes and not have to wait the stupid year or three losses or whatever it is.
And I think that Proov is going places. And I'm so excited to see what this next year brings. I know 2020s has been a nightmare, so maybe 2021 will be better for everyone across the board. I'm sorry. I'm going to swap my cat away, geez made it the whole time, but I really want to go to Vegas. I'm actually feeling like I would be up for a trip if that were okay.
Amy:
I don't even know if Vegas is open at this point. I just saw something--
Christina:
It is open but vaccines shall be required. You'll probably want to cut that out of the podcast, but--
Amy:
Do you go to Vegas? You got to get the vaccine. You got to show your vaccination record off the plane.
Christina:
No, I was just kidding. That's my requirement.
Amy:
Oh God.
Christina:
That needs to go back to work in a, in a really bad way, but he can’t go back until he gets a vaccine. So even though I think I already had COVID, I can't prove it because I never got a positive test and I didn't have any antibodies. And we think it's probably because my IgG screwed that up, so.
Amy:
Wow. Hmm.
Christina:
Let me start that again. I missed you and I hope we get to hang out again sometime soon. And I look forward to everything that Proov does in the next year. And hopefully I can write a few blogs for ya.
Amy:
I was just about to say, we're going to have some guest appearances from Christina. DOS, ectopics, male factor.
Christina:
I got all the experience. It's all in my head. I'm just ready to write it down. I don't know if I can do it a thousand words or less, but we'll see what happens. Try not to bore the crap out of your readers. Let's put it that way.
Amy:
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Christina. I appreciate you being on the podcast and on the blog.
Christina:
It was fun. It's good to catch up. All right. Take care.
