If you are struggling with a hormonal imbalance, maybe perimenopause has started? Or you just aren’t sure if all your symptoms are perimenopause? If you’re looking for HRT as a woman, there are a lot of companies that have something to offer. But I am not interested in one part of the solution. I want the whole solution.
So I started comparing My Life Force and Winona in terms of perimenopause and menopause symptom relief. Here is what I found. Let’s look at some quick stats side by side:
| My Life Force | Winona | |
| Getting Started | A licensed phlebotomist is sent to your home to do a blood draw, which measures over 50 biomarkers | You fill out a quiz online that mostly directs you to articles on their website, unless you click that you are ready to buy |
| How it Works | You meet with a clinician one-on-one to review your blood work and determine if things like HRT are right for you | You decide on a plan based on the treatment options they have, read over a document about 100 symptoms of menopause, and have chat features to check in with your doctor |
| Ongoing Care | Blood draw for review of key biomarkers 4x per year1:1 Clinician meeting 4 x per year Personalized dashboardPersonalized health coach | Chat functions if you need to adjust your treatment |
| Costs | $149 per month | Based on the products you buy, like vaginal estrogen cream at $89 per month or estrogen tablets at $54 per month |
| Treatment Options | Wide array of prescription HRT and supplement options, all at a 30% discount for membersAdditional treatment options for secondary conditions as revealed by your blood draw | DHEA supplementsEstrogen and progesterone patches, creams, or capsules |
| Signing Up | Easy and fast | Oddly harder than you would think |
Let’s look at those characteristics in more detail.
Topic Contents
My Life Force vs. Winona: The Sign Up Process
I’m going to start with the sign-up process.
Winona
Winona seemingly makes it easier to get started. Basically, if you want help and immediate symptom relief, you should be able to just click on the bright purple button that says “Get Started.”
But when I tried to get started and sign up I was a little shocked at how convoluted the quiz was. They start you off with a quiz, and each of the answers generates several follow-up answers.
After clicking my way through all of them, I realized that most of them are there to redirect you to an article on the website if you aren’t ready to purchase products right now. For a company that only offers a few HRT options for women, you’d think they would push more for actually being able to sign up.
Conclusion: Winona has an unnecessarily complex sign-up process.
My Life Force
When you visit the My Life Force website, there is a button that makes it very easy to sign up, and when you click on that button, it isn’t something that just redirects you to an odd quiz or a bunch of articles. You can literally put in your credit card information and start your membership within a few minutes.
Conclusion: My Life Force has a simple sign-up process. All of their pages have a section that explains the process and makes it easy to get started.
Winner: My Life Force
My Life Force vs. Winona: Getting Started
So what is the process like getting started and setting everything up?
Winona
Getting started with Winona can be a bit of a challenge, but as is the case with most health websites, you start with a quiz. The quiz is designed to determine what your needs are basically, are you looking for information, or do you already know you have menopause and you want pills now.
Eventually, after you go through a lot of unnecessary redirects, you might find the button that helps you sign up for your consultation and your medication.
Conclusion: Winona makes it kind of hard to get started, but after filling out a quiz and scheduling your telehealth appointment, you pick the meds you want, and once they arrive in the mail, you get started.
My Life Force
After you have signed up for your membership, getting started with My Life Force is pretty easy. You schedule your appointment with a phlebotomist. This is one of the few companies that has phlebotomists in almost every state who come to your home and do the blood draw, so you never have to worry about finding time to schedule an appointment at a clinic.
Conclusion: My Life Force makes it much easier to get started. You sign up, schedule your phlebotomist to either come to your home or an in-person clinic, and within a few days, you have your results.
Winner: My Life Force
My Life Force vs. Winona: How it Works
How do they each work?
Winona
Winona is designed like a Telehealth company, but specifically for menopause. So, in effect, it works by setting you up with a quick Telehealth service, where you list your symptoms, and then connecting you with a prescription that gets sent through the mail for HRT.
It’s nice to be able to get some form of prescription medication without having to wait on your doctor for several weeks or months, and it is always nice to have specialized care, but Winona really leaves a lot to be desired, and most of that “lot” is found in My Life Force, surprisingly.
Conclusion: Winona works by scheduling a telehealth appointment, sending you prescriptions in the mail, and basically being done.
My Life Force
Once you have your blood draw, you only wait a few days before you generally get your results. With the results, you get a one-on-one consultation for 45 minutes with a clinician, and they go over all the things they have found.
Those things review the 50-plus biomarkers from your blood draw, so you get more information than just menopause symptoms or hormone balance. Still, during this time, they will talk to you about whether HRT is right for you, and if so, how to get started with that.
They will also go over other options for lifestyle changes and treatment that might benefit you if you are looking for preventative hormonal balance or dealing with perimenopause symptoms. The clinician will review all the biomarkers as they relate to other areas like metabolism, vitality, and cardiovascular health, too. They might make recommendations for lifestyle changes or supplements that you can take in addition to HRT or instead of HRT.
Conclusion: My Life Force works through a monthly membership program, and after paying for that they send a phlebotomist to your house to get a blood draw four times per year, after which you go over those results with a clinician, start your personalized care plan and personal health goals, and monitor those goals through your personalized dashboard with help from a health coach.
Winner: My Life Force. The personalization here is just hard to beat.
My Life Force vs. Winona: Treatment Options
Now, let’s look at the treatment options they have.
Winona
When you look at the treatment options, they do mention that they are a company specializing in menopause symptoms and in HRT, but realistically, that means they have a few treatment options at best.
You can buy things like progesterone or estrogen capsules, DHEA supplements, and some body creams, but literally nothing else.
Conclusion: Winona doesn’t really have a lot of treatment options. just a few estrogen and progesterone creams and pills.
My Life Force
As mentioned, you have access to a lot of different treatment options. But treatment isn’t just pills or cream. It also extends to supplements like DHEA (made with a proprietary blend that increases efficacy) and lifestyle changes.
After you have your one-on-one appointment with the clinician, you’ll be redirected to your personalized dashboard. This is the place where you get to see a visual breakdown of what your blood draw results indicated, and with that, the recommendations that might be given to you for treatment options to help improve areas that showed concern.
You get paired with a health coach who’s there to help you through this process, establishing your personal goals for your health and menopause symptom management.
The membership includes four blood draws per year, so you get one per quarter, and each time the phlebotomist can come to your house to take the blood draw, and each time you’ll get to meet with the clinician to review your results. The results get updated into that dashboard, so if you are looking at it over time, you’ll be able to see the improvements or fluctuations in each health category, including your hormonal balance.
This makes it possible to alter any of your treatment options and your personal lifestyle goals in order to achieve optimum health in all areas, not just hormones.
Conclusion: My Life Force has significantly more treatment options not just for perimenopause or menopause symptoms, but for overall hormonal balance, vitality, cardiovascular health, and more.
Winner: My Life Force (again?)
My Life Force vs. Winona: Costs
And of course, no review would be complete without comparing costs.
Winona
The costs of Winona are fluctuating for each person because it’s based on what all you add to your cart each month. Things like different creams are usually $89 per month, but pills might be around $50 per month, and if you’re combining several creams or pills, you might pay more than My Life Force’s monthly membership cost without reaping any of the additional benefits.
Conclusion: Winona only costs what you decide to buy, with no membership options (and no membership discounts).
My Life Force
Part of the ability to get those regular blood draws and monitor changes over time is because of the membership. You aren’t just paying for drugs. You are paying for the long-term access, repeated blood draws, and ongoing services from the dedicated health coaches.
All of this means that it is going to come with a higher cost because you’re paying for services.
Conclusion: My Life Force is obviously more expensive, because it comes with more in terms of treatment and ongoing care options.
Winner: My Life Force (I swear I’m not doing this on purpose)
My Life Force vs. Winona: Ongoing Care
And finally, what about ongoing care?
Winona
Winona just doesn’t have any ongoing care. Yes, you have a chat function where you can message the doctor to say that you don’t like how something is working, and maybe that’s something is the estrogen tablets, in which case you really don’t have a lot of other alternatives from Winona except maybe an estrogen body cream.
Conclusion: Winona doesn’t really have any ongoing care other than the option of messaging your doctor to say that you want to change the medication you are on. What a letdown.
My Life Force
As I’ve already mentioned, there are a lot of options for treatment and, in particular, ongoing care. While the cost might be higher, that is simply a result of having access to ongoing support, regular blood draws, and regular reviews of your health status.
As symptoms of menopause tend to get worse with time, I want to be able to monitor whether the HRT I am using is actually working and not just in terms of how I feel, but in terms of my hormone balance and other indicators. I want to know if something like brain fog isn’t just because of a hormonal imbalance, but also because of a micronutrients imbalance or a problem with my metabolism, all of which I can fix with the ongoing care from My Life Force.
Conclusion: My Life Force has as much ongoing care as you want or need, so long as you pay for your membership. I love that you get continued access to blood draws, updated personalized dashboard content, meetings with your clinician, and your health coach to keep you on track for your health goals.
Winner: My Life Force. The ongoing care means you’ll get support throughout your journey.
Summing Up
If you are looking for hormone replacement therapy as a woman or any type of relief from menopause symptoms, you can buy things very quickly from Winona, and the website is very feminine in its design, and though it says it is specific to menopause only, I have found that My Life Force actually provides a better array of options for menopause treatment and for overlapping and secondary conditions.
After comparing things like cost, treatment options, ongoing care, and the sign-up process, there was a clear winner every time: My Life Force.
So if you want something with an easier sign-up process, more treatment options, and the opportunity for ongoing care, stick with My Life Force.
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