Flöka's Origin Story

“I went through a TEN-year chronic health journey, and
Flöka was the missing tool that I needed to solve my problem faster.”
Vanessa De Waal, Flöka Founder
flöka founder, Vanessa De Waal

Hi 👋🏼 Nice to meet you, I'm Vanessa.

My intention is to accelerate the rate at which women heal themselves, sustainably- at the root. Whether it's through the Go-Deeper Podcast I host, or the technology we co-create with our community, the intention is always to first and foremost help people.

And here's the story of how that started...

I struggled with my chronic health conditions for a decade, starting from the age of 13. It felt overwhelming, and with so many things going wrong - I saw every specialist. Finally, I got help from an Integrative team. We tracked and correlated everything on a sheet of paper. But I had all of these different apps on my phone- but had no way of sharing it safely with those trying to help me. What my practitioner and I needed was a way to work with them to see these relationships and see my progress in real-time. I had a whole binder of information to share, along with all of these apps. From hormones to gut health I realized how interconnected our health and how we feel really is. Next came the appreciation for the true gaps in women’s health research. At the time we figured out I had PCOS, IBS - and so many other unrelated symptoms that it was a mess. My mum, an M.D. and I spent much time scanning PubMed asking ourselves why there was so little research on questions that seemed very normal for half of us in the world’s people. That's when the idea started seeping in that technology would have to be the great equalizer. It had the potential to accelerate the answering of these neglected questions, that research should address. So, I started learning everything I could.

For as long as I remember, my mum would say “prevention is better than cure- but it’s so hard to change behaviour”. She cares so much about helping others and talked about how unfortunate it was that her reach was only in her local hospital. That deep care of people - and their health- no matter where they come from is a core value that I knew the world needed us to scale up.

When we started I was told “cracking prevention is impossible”. But I knew that it wasn’t because I watched incredible practitioners educate and work their magic every day. I knew the power of changing behaviour in my own life, and from practitioners like my mum.

So I’m here to tell you- whatever chronic health issue or goal you are struggling with: Keep believing in yourself. You will find the help you need. You will find the lifestyle you need. What those are will be unique to you.

To that mental state of flow,

x
Vanessa

Update: Since my story started, it became ours, and I also have kept learning. First, on our team- everyone on the Flöka team has their own connection to chronic health, and I could not be more grateful for the integrity, dedication, uniqueness and mindset of each of them.


I also have a very exciting health update! You can read more about it an an article I wrote here.

Flöka teamFlöka teamFlöka teamFlöka team
"I love learning together and growing together"
-Kritty Arora