Podcast 307: Relief for Menstrual Cramps

Our Podcasts present current information for you to discover which natural remedies are the most appropriate for your wellness.

Lina Kennedy talks with Scott Paton about pain relief and the power of your mind.

Comforté is the only all-natural pain relief cream for menstrual cramps. It uses ingredients straight from the earth, plants, oils and extracts, and is based on a remedy that has been relieving pain for women in an African village for centuries.

Comforté contains only five all-natural ingredients:

Calotropis Procera is a flowering giant milkweed that’s native to Africa and Asia, and has been used medicinally for centuries. Its benefits include fighting infections and possibly shrinking tumors. It has been called “a golden gift for human kind”. In Comforté, its anti-inflammatory powers help ease the pain of cramps. The Journal of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences has reported the results of studies showing Calotropis Procera more effective than the anti-inflammatory drug Phenylbutazone (PBZ).

Carapa Procera
is a tree that grows in Tropical Africa and Northern South America. The oil extracted from its nuts is a powerful analgesic, and helps Comforté provide pain relief in minutes, sometimes even instantly. In addition to relieving the pain of menstrual cramps, Carapa Oil also helps provide relief for people suffering from arthritis, joint pain, and other chronic types of pain. It’s even been effective for treating wounds, along with excema and other skin conditions.

And more…

The National Association of Professional Women (NAPW) honors Lina Kennedy as a 2015-2016 inductee into its VIP Woman of the Year Circle. She is recognized with this prestigious distinction for leadership in esthetics. NAPW is the nation’s leading networking organization exclusively for professional women, boasting more than 850,000 members and over 200 operating Local Chapters.

Podcast 307: Relief for Menstrual Cramps

SCOTT: Welcome back, everybody, this is the Life Enthusiast podcast! We have a very, very special guest today! I’m really, really excited to be sharing some different information than what we normally share. And it’s Lina Kennedy, founder, and president of Alexandria Professional, the global leader in body sugaring hair removal and natural skincare. Hey, Lina, welcome to the show!

LINA: Thank you so much, Scott! I’m very excited to be on your show, because I’m learning more about what you do while I’m here as well, so this is great!

SCOTT: It always works out well! So before we get into cramps, I want to know about what happened in West Africa.

LINA: Aha! Well, this is a long story, but I’ll try to make it more brief for you. I went to visit this company in West Africa because a colleague of mine, who works for the Canadian government, travels to a lot of different countries and a lot of third world countries as well. And she told me that they had a really high quality of raw shea butter, and I use raw shea butter in a lot of the products that we produce for the skincare industry. So first, I took some samples, and they gave me this other green cream sample as well, and I thought: Oh, what’s this? And they said, Oh, it’s great for massaging. I am not really into the massaging industry, but I thought: well, let’s see how this feels because it smelled very minty.

So I spoke to the gentleman from West Africa a few times and he says: “Oh yes, this is a good cream for sports injuries, and great for massaging, it makes people relax, so you can go deeper all these little things.” So I said: “Okay, I’ll use your samples.” My daughters played a lot of sport when they were in school, and whenever they came home with sore shins or banged up knees or something, they would do two things – they would apply this cream, or they would do the Hungarian Care Mud that I have in my product line, which is another whole story for another time, but we always have these things ready at home, we don’t do the meds, we always do the home remedies. So what happened is that the product, I ended up calling it  ‘happy skin,’ and we started selling it to massage therapists and they liked how they could go deeper without the customer feeling so much pain.

So my daughters would use it on their sore joints or knees or shins and things, and it worked. So one day, and this is exactly what happened, she was 13 years old at the time, she had really bad cramps. My daughter suffered like I did when I had my period when you want to just lay down in a fetal position and cry, and sometimes it could last for a couple of days, it really can be troublesome. So she decided that she would use this stuff on her cramps because it worked everywhere else for her. She came to me, we were living in Austin, Texas at the time, and she came to me in my home office and said: “Mom, I hope you’re not going to be upset.” Well, you know, when your 13-year-old teenager says that, the first thing you think of is: Oh my God, what’s happening? So I braced myself. She goes: “I have really bad cramps today, and I tried the ‘happy skin,’ and within just a few minutes, my pain was gone!” I was like: “What?!” Wow.

So I contacted this gentleman in West Africa and I said to him: “I’d like to buy this formula from you for something unique I’d like to do, but I can’t really tell you what it’s all about.” And he says: “Well, why don’t you come and visit us here? Meet my family, come on down and investigate this a little more.” So I did, I went to West Africa, and I visited three of the four hospitals, I spoke with some doctors, some therapists I even spoke with mother and her child, with a man, all the people that have been using this cream for muscular or joint-related issues. Then I found out that in the beginning they actually used it to help people deal with the pain of leprosy, this deep skin pain, the nerve endings, right? So while I was there, it was lovely, I spent 10 days there and it was really great, you know, I sat on the floor and ate with the family, all the children were around because they don’t see many women with blond hair around, it was really such a lovely time.

And then at the end, the man came to me and he said: “We all adore you. I will sell you this formulation.” So we made an arrangement, and we still work together in some forms, and he will always have royalty from the product I sell. I wanna grow this so big that he can take care of his whole village, so that is what we are working towards. So he and his two sons were saying: “Okay, now we want to know what you’re going to do with this because you seem very creative.” So I told him the story I just told you about my daughter, literally they looked at each other and said: “Why didn’t we think about that?” And I was like: “I had to let my 13-year-old daughter think about it.”

So that is the story behind Comforté, our pain relief cream. I put 10,000 tubes out, and the FDA stepped all over me. I was so angry, I really wanted to fight. They came to my factory and demanded that I destroy every tube I had, because first I called it PMS for PMS (Pain Management System for PMS Pre-Menstrual Syndrome), and they said I was claiming that I’m taking care of the disease. And I’m like: “So you want to tell me that period is a disease?” I was so angry.

SCOTT: So they called PMS a disease?

LINA: Yes they did. And they claimed that I was claiming I could take care of that disease. So I was like: “So all of us who have cramps every month, we’re diseased. You call the natural process of birth a disease, the natural process of being a woman is a disease?” We had not-very-favorable words exchanged, with diplomacy, because, you know, they could still chop me into little bits and pieces. I had to destroy all 10,000 tubes, and then there was this really nice woman at the FDA, I was speaking with her, because I was really distraught over this and she says: “Lina, here’s the thing. I would encourage you to consider something like this. Instead of saying it stops cramps, say it is a temporary relief of monthly feminine discomfort.” So we found a way around it, and we now call it Comforté.

SCOTT: What a beautiful story!

LINA: Thank you! I have so many stories, Scott, but we would probably run out of time!

SCOTT: So tell us some stories of the people that use Comforté!

LINA: Well, my daughters, of course, well, just one of them, the other one is one of those very lucky girls who doesn’t have very much pain through her periods, so she is very blessed. One time I was at an event in LA, where I was actually working, I had a cute little studio there, and I went to one of those like B-lister events, and I was there with Comforté, and there was a woman who had gotten a tube several months before, and when she saw that we were there, she came to me and started talking to me, so this is her story: She used our product when she had bad cramps, that was her big problem, really bad cramps, she didn’t feel like she could get out of bed. And Comforté helped her! So she was so excited to meet us at the event And then she proceeded to tell us what had happened to her niece. Some people actually miss work or miss school because of painful periods, her niece is a classic case, two days, every month, like clockwork, she can’t go to school, the cramps are so bad. She was staying home for two days every month until she found Comforté.

Women’s World magazine heard about it, and they put a full two-page spread on these two women, one was very young, the other one was in her mid-thirties, both used Comforté for their problems. I was at a show in Russia, and a woman across from us also happened to have cramps, and at that time we had these little sachets of Comforté, so I gave her one and said: “Go to the bathroom, put this on.” 15 minutes later, she was all happy and cramp-free. And then one time I was at this natural product trade show here in the US, and there was a guy across the hall from me, listening to everything, and he walks over and says: “So, you think this stuff will change my wife’s attitude?” I’ve thought about that for a minute, and then I just said: “well, let me see if you allow me to do a test,” and he goes: “Sure! What do you want to do?” And I said: “If I can punch you in the stomach, kick you in the balls, and just jab you all over, and then give you some of this, let me know if it reduces the pain if it changes your attitude.”

SCOTT: (laughing).

LINA: So he just smiled and walked away. You know, cramps sometimes feel like that. Like you are being stabbed and punched to death. Unless you know what severe cramps are, you cannot imagine what I’m talking about. It feels like there are razors cutting you inside, and things just blowing up and swelling. So, this is an alternative. This is an alternative that I would say the majority of people who use it are very, very, very happy with. If somebody has really, really bad cramps, I always tell them to learn about their cycle, because this will work if they know where they are in their cycle, and start rubbing it on two or three times a day, a couple of days before your period starts, you can prevent the swelling and the pain, and then you can moderate it. There’s no miracle cure for anything, this is about helping yourself as best as you can.

SCOTT: That’s really exciting!

LINA: I just set up a meeting this morning, for 23rd of this month, OBGYN Western New York has invited me to speak for 55-60 people, I will be a guest speaker on Comforté!

SCOTT: Wow!

LINA: So the word is spreading around! I’m so happy! So many women are going to feel much better! Do you know what my slogan is? ‘Love being a woman every day of the month.’ Do you know why? Because I remember when I had my period, every month I was thinking: God, I would give anything to be a guy! Just one week, every month, please! But with Comforté, you can actually love being a woman every day of the month.

SCOTT: That’s beautiful. I love that! So I’m curious. Does it work on other pains?

LINA: Okay, now the cat is going to be let out of the bag. It really is amazing. If you want to use Comforté for your cramps, it’ll be great. But it also works for headaches, neck aches, joint aches, but let me tell you the biggest miracle of this besides the cramps. Here’s a massive kicker. I just did a home party in Canada a few weeks ago for my brother’s closest friend. He suffers from nerve damage in his face from a very bad motorcycle accident 10 years ago. 

Now, I’m going to tell you, and I know this for a fact, I’ve done a lot of research on this: there is nothing in the medical world that will help the damage of the nerves, the pain that’s associated with it. Nothing. They could do injections, they could do anything, but it never really works. The doctors will give you whatever they can, it’ll do all the damage to your body, but it will not take away your pain. And that’s exactly what this guy had a problem with. So he started using it about seven years ago, and he won’t live without it. It takes care of anything to do with nerve pain.

And now, there is a woman in Australia, and her 81-year-old mother is suffering from shingles, from pain, and I said: “Oh my God, I’m going to give you this, you take it home and try,” so she did. And this woman gave us a testimony, it was the first time her mother got any relief. It has no contraindication, it is all-natural, safe, and effective. I wish I had like three lifetimes to go because I have so many stories I could share. First, I’m always approaching the OBGYNs, but it’s for everything. It is all-natural, all plant ingredients, a little bit of menthol, and some flower essence.

SCOTT: And it also has shea butter in it.

LINA: Yes, I add raw shea butter into a lot of my formulations, because it’s very nourishing to the skin, and it helps to carry other ingredients. I got a lot of stories, Scott, I am a walking dictionary of awesome stories from all over the world. It’s a great life when you can do something that helps others, right? Like you do as well.

SCOTT: Thank you, Lina! So Comforté is not just for women, and it’s not just for women who have cramps, right?

LINA: No, but you know, most men are not going to pick up a cute little pink thing that says ‘love being a woman every day of the month.’

SCOTT: Right. So, tell us a little bit more about your company!

LINA: I’ve been labeled the Sugar Queen of the world, because I pioneered professional body sugaring and hair removal globally, so much so that Mylady, which is one of the top aesthetic educational books in the world, wants to publish my theory. My theory is called ‘The Kennedy Theory.’ Can you imagine that? And I live in Austin, Texas! Anyway, that’s what we do, we naturally defaulted from great skin conditioning products into taking care of eczema, psoriasis, keratosis… All the dermatologists I’ve ever met, all the people I’ve ever served in my 25 years, who have keratosis, say their dermatologists told them: “You’ll never get rid of it.” And I can help you get rid of it. And it is 100% natural. I understand sugaring. People are laughing that I am ‘the one with the sugar,” but I am! It came to me because of an accident and a prayer. And I’m writing the book, it will be called The Sugar Queen Book, and there I will tell the whole story.

SCOTT: Well, I can’t wait for that to come out! So, if somebody wanted comfort. How do they get it? Is it in the stores?

LINA: No, not yet. I was very busy developing our Alexandria Professional mother company. But now I am back to make Comforté my top priority because I know when a woman uses it, she will never stop using it when she needs it. And it’s not limited to the cramps. Right now, you can get it online on www.comforteforpms.com, our goal is for you to be able to buy it in department stores, in pharmacies, places like that.

SCOTT: Perfect! So as we’re getting towards the end, I want to ask you how you work with your mind to get the success that you’ve got?

LINA: Well, I think I was gifted with a little thing that happened, you’ll read about it in my book. It’s very easy for me to have this mindset, I believe in myself so much. Your mind can be your best asset or your worst demise that will stop you from reaching any goal you reach for. Because everything in life starts with the mind. I tell people: “Picture these doors in your mind, and if you have this troublesome thought, open a door, put it in there, close the door.”

SCOTT: Perfect! All right, we’ve come to the end of this episode! Thank you very much, everybody, for joining us. Thank you, Lina, for being a wonderful guest and telling us about Comforté! I have to admit that I’m going to give it to my girlfriend so she can carry it around in her purse!

LINA: Great, well done, thank you, Scott!

SCOTT: Thank you, Lina! See you next time everybody!

Author: Scott Paton