"We Live In These Bodies And Know So Little"

One of the most striking realizations throughout the morning was how many women arrive at midlife carrying questions they have never been given the tools to answer. Questions about fatigue, brain fog, sleep disruption, mood changes, hormonal shifts, and more. Questions that are often dismissed, minimized, or left unexplained. As Taylor reflects, the issue is not simply that women lack information. The issue is that medicine itself still has significant gaps in its understanding of women’s bodies.

Historically, women were routinely excluded from clinical research. It was not until the passage of the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 that the inclusion of women in NIH-funded clinical trials became a legal requirement. Prior to that, many medical studies relied primarily on male participants, often generalizing those findings to women. Today, according to the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health, understanding sex differences in health and disease is critical to improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment outcomes for women. Yet, despite decades of progress, disparities remain.

A 2022 Harvard Medical School analysis found that women accounted for only about 40% of participants in clinical trials for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and psychiatric disorders—three disease categories that significantly affect women—even though women make up approximately 51% of the U.S. population. More specifically, recent reviews of women's health research continue to identify persistent challenges, including underrepresentation of women in research, inadequate sex-specific data, and structural barriers that limit the development of evidence-based care tailored to women's needs.

The consequences are profound and extend far beyond research journals. Reviews of the literature continue to find that women experience delayed diagnoses, under-recognition of symptoms, and healthcare systems built upon evidence that historically relied disproportionately on male participants. For many women, the result is a familiar experience: knowing something feels wrong while struggling to find someone who can explain why.

Building Perelel Health

Taylor did not initially set out to become an advocate. She set out to solve a problem. Drawing from her own experience navigating an autoimmune disease and fertility challenges, she became increasingly frustrated by the fragmented nature of women's healthcare and supplementation. Women move through multiple hormonal transitions throughout their lives—from fertility and pregnancy to postpartum, perimenopause, and menopause—yet healthcare products often treat women's health as a series of isolated moments rather than a continuum. That realization led Taylor and her co-founders to launch Perelel Health.

The company's mission was ambitious and motivated with the aim to create evidence-based nutritional support tailored to women's changing needs across different hormonal life stages. But as the company grew, Taylor found herself confronting a more difficult truth. The problem was not simply access to products, it was access to knowledge and finding. As Perelel grew, Taylor's commitment extended beyond products. Through the Perelel Pledge for Women's Health Equity, the company committed $10 million toward advancing women's health research and access initiatives, with more than $6 million already deployed to date. What began as a business was increasingly becoming a platform for broader systems change.

"A Product Isn't Going To Fix This"

As Taylor immersed herself in women's health research, she began to understand the scale of the challenge. The issue was not merely individual, it was systemic. "A product isn't going to fix this. We have to change the system," she says. That realization fundamentally changed the direction of her work.

Taylor began studying the policies, funding mechanisms, and research priorities that shape what scientists know—and do not know—about women's health. What she discovered was startling. Despite women representing more than half of the population, advocates continue to raise concerns about disparities in research funding, clinical representation, and investment in conditions that disproportionately affect women. For Taylor, the path forward became increasingly clear. If women were going to receive better answers, researchers needed better data. If researchers were going to generate better data, they needed funding, and if funding was going to increase, someone needed to advocate for it.

From Entrepreneur To Advocate

Taylor’s advocacy soon moved beyond education and into policy. She began traveling to Washington, D.C., meeting with lawmakers, researchers, physicians, and policy leaders to push for greater investment in women’s health research. She also partnered with Mandy Moore on a petition calling for Congress to increase funding for women’s health research, a campaign that generated more than 30,000 signatures. Last year, Taylor convened what she described as the first bipartisan congressional roundtable focused specifically on women’s health research, bringing lawmakers from both sides of the aisle together around an issue she believes should transcend politics. In a political environment often defined by division, Taylor remains convinced that women’s health is one of the few issues capable of generating meaningful bipartisan consensus.

Taylor is careful not to claim progress as hers alone. She describes the work as part of a larger ecosystem of advocates, researchers, physicians, and policymakers. Still, she points to recent funding outcomes as evidence that sustained advocacy can matter: proposed reductions to NIH funding were ultimately avoided, while additional funding was directed toward the Office of Women’s Health Research. During our conversation, Taylor described a future where women no longer spend years searching for answers, where physicians have better information, where treatments are more precise, and where healthcare systems are designed with women's experiences in mind. "What we have ahead of us is a world where research reflects our bodies," she said. "Where women go to the doctor and get answers rather than shoulder shrugs." Those words lingered with me long after the event ended.

More Than Perimenopause

While the morning's discussion focused heavily on perimenopause, the larger conversation was about something much deeper. It was about visibility, representation, and whose experiences become worthy of study. Again and again, Taylor returned to the idea that women often blame themselves for symptoms they do not understand.

They question themselves. They minimize their experiences. They assume they are somehow failing, what if the problem isn't the woman? What if the problem is that the system has not yet caught up to her reality or was designed to never consider her reality.

Taylor believes that meaningful change begins with awareness. That is one reason she continues organizing talking circles and educational events. Her goal is not simply to share information. It is to create space for women to ask questions, compare experiences, challenge assumptions, and recognize that many of their struggles are not individual failures but reflections of larger structural gaps. As she explained, "We can't fix something we don't understand."

A Vision Bigger Than Women's Health

What makes Taylor's work compelling is that it ultimately extends beyond women's health. At its core, her message is about agency. It is about ensuring that women have access to the information, resources, and opportunities needed to make informed decisions about their lives. It is about designing systems that account for women's experiences rather than treating them as afterthoughts.

Perhaps most importantly, it is about imagining a future in which women no longer have to spend years fighting to be heard. The morning ended not with frustration, but with hope. Hope that research can improve. Hope that awareness can grow. Hope that funding can increase, and hope that future generations of women may inherit a healthcare system better equipped to understand them than the one many women navigate today. For Alex Taylor, that future is not simply an aspiration. It is the work.