Why Blockchain + DeSci are the future of menopause and midlife health: Part 1

I promise you will understand more when you read this

Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash

Here’s something you might not expect to hear from Hotflash Inc: I love the world of blockchain and am an investor in cryptocurrency.

Why am I telling you this, and what does it have to do with the massive midlife shift?

Stay with me.

I became interested in this entire space in 2018 after reading a since-updated Goop interview with the founder of Abra, a crypto wallet that has expanded into other investing services. If you’re interested in that aspect, you can check out an interview I did with Crypto Radio (a startup based in Dubai) and this interview with Khaleej Times (an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper).

I dabbled, learning as I went, and then in early 2023, I finally got serious about it – making major shifts in how I think about finances. (For those wondering: yes, I have made money. But none of it is ‘realized’ yet, so time will tell.)

However, this journey has grown and stretched me in other ways I could never have imagined. I’m grateful for the nudges from the universe to keep at it.

Along the way, I realized I wasn’t just learning about a new way of investing or a new financial product. I was learning how blockchain technology will change everything.

What Is blockchain?

Blockchain technology is a decentralized, distributed digital system that records and stores information across multiple computers. It is secure, transparent, and tamper-resistant, enabling people to engage with each other (peer-to-peer) without a central authority (no middlemen to mess things up, complicate matters, or slow things down).

As scientist and author Gregg Braden explained on a recent episode of the Know Thyself podcast, blockchain actually works much like human DNA. Mind-blowing stuff.

Blockchain has applications across every facet of life – from finance (transferring money in seconds versus days) to supply chains (tracking airplane parts from around the world) to democracy (fraud-resistant voting to end election disputes once and for all).

Where We Come In: Health Care & Midlife Women’s Health

Blockchain has major implications for health care, including:

• How medical records are stored

• How research is conducted

• How organizations are run

• How information is shared

• How people connect

And this could be huge for tackling the issues that make midlife health – especially perimenopause – so challenging.

Enter Decentralized Science (DeSci)

I wouldn’t have known anything about this if I hadn’t taken the first (very painful) steps to learn while I was in the throes of perimenopause. But I’ve only started piecing it together recently as we enter a crypto bull run (similar to a stock market bull run). One of the key emerging narratives? Blockchain-based science, officially called Decentralized Science, or DeSci for the cool kids.

The basics

DeSci applies blockchain technology and decentralized governance to scientific research. It aims to:

✔ Democratize funding
✔ Make research more transparent
✔ Bypass traditional institutions (academic gatekeeping, biased peer reviews, government funding bottlenecks)

DeSci empowers scientists and communities to collaborate, fund, and share research directly.

Why this matters for perimenopause, menopause & midlife women’s health