I know you weren't expecting a man to talk about vaginal health. Believe me, I get it. And if you'd told me ten years ago that this is what I'd be spending my time on, I probably would have laughed.
I'm not talking about this because I think I understand what you're going through. I don't. I've never experienced vaginal dryness, or that burning feeling, or the moment where intimacy stops being something you look forward to and starts being something you dread. What I do understand is the medical system that's been failing you. And that's what made me angry enough to do something about it.
If you're wondering why a British doctor is the one having this conversation, keep reading. Because the answer says a lot more about the system than it does about me.
The Gap I Couldn't Unsee
I trained in the UK, where vaginal estriol is boring. I mean that as a compliment. It's been used for decades. It's well-understood. It's available over the counter in most European pharmacies. A woman walks in, picks it up off the shelf, and goes home. No appointment. No referral. No six-week wait to see a specialist who might or might not take her seriously. That's just how it works.
Then I started hearing from American women, and what I heard made my stomach turn. Women telling me they brought up vaginal dryness with their doctor and were told to "just use lubricant." Women who were prescribed estrogen pills when what they needed was local treatment. Women who spent months bouncing between their GP, their gynecologist, and their insurance company, only to end up with nothing.
The truth is, most doctors in the US receive somewhere between 5 and 10 hours of menopause training across their entire medical education. For a condition that affects virtually every woman who lives long enough. It's not because American doctors are bad at their jobs. It's because the system never taught them. Menopause isn't on the boards. It's not a specialty that gets funded. It's not where the research money goes. So women fall through the cracks, not because no one cares, but because the system wasn't built to catch them.
I trained in a system where this was straightforward. When I saw what American women go through, I was genuinely angry. Not frustrated. Angry. Because the molecule exists. The research exists. The protocols exist. Women just can't get to them.
Dr. Linda
I want to tell you about Dr. Linda Raeisi. She's a physician, and we've known each other for over 20 years. She's spent years treating women with these exact symptoms using these exact protocols, and what most women don't realize is that European doctors have been prescribing vaginal estriol as a first-line treatment for a long time. It's not experimental. It's not alternative medicine. It's standard care. Dr. Linda has seen what works because she's been doing it.
Her role isn't to sell you anything. Her role is to make sure that what we're offering meets the same clinical standard she'd use in her own practice. Same protocols. Same dosage. Same expectations about what this molecule can and can't do. I'm not going to put my name on something that doesn't meet that bar, and neither is she.
The Science
Want to understand what estriol actually is?
I wrote a detailed explanation of what estriol is, how it works, and why European women have had access to it for 50 years.
Read the Full Estriol ExplainerWhy Vivia Exists
We didn't start Vivia because we saw a market opportunity. We started it because we kept meeting women who couldn't get something that should have been easy to get. Women who knew what they needed. Women who'd done the research themselves. Women who were more informed than some of the doctors they were seeing, and still couldn't get a prescription. That's not a market gap. That's a failure.
What Vivia actually is: the same molecule used in Ovestin, the European standard. Same 0.5mg estriol dosage. Manufactured in an FDA-registered facility in the United States. Physician-formulated by Dr. Linda and me, based on the protocols we were trained on. Nothing exotic. Nothing proprietary. Nothing that requires you to believe in anything other than published research.
We didn't invent estriol. We didn't improve it. What we did was make it available to women who shouldn't have had to fight this hard to get it in the first place.
What We Believe (And What We Won't Tell You)
We're not going to tell you this is a miracle cure. It's not. It's a well-understood molecule that's been used safely for decades in countries where women's health isn't treated like an afterthought. We're not going to tell you it works overnight either. For most women, meaningful change takes 4 to 6 weeks of consistent use. Some notice a difference sooner, some take longer. Biology isn't a light switch.
And we're not going to pressure you into buying anything today. That's not how this works. What I will tell you is this: if you've been dismissed, undertreated, or just left to figure this out on your own, that shouldn't have happened. And you deserve better than "just use lube."
What Is Estriol? The Treatment Most American Women Have Never Heard Of →
Read the full Vivia story: the science, the formulation, and the protocol →
No pressure. No sales call. Just the information your doctor probably didn't have time to give you.
Common Questions
Who is Dr. Umair Khalid?
Dr. Umair Khalid is a UK-trained physician (MBBS, King's College London) who founded Vivia Intimate Bloom alongside Dr. Linda Raeisi, MD. He trained in the UK National Health Service, where vaginal estriol has been a standard treatment for decades. When he saw the gap between European and American menopause care, he built Vivia to close it.
Who is Dr. Linda Raeisi?
Dr. Linda Raeisi, MD, is a Primary Care Physician who has worked with Dr. Umair for over 20 years. She is the clinical partner on Vivia Intimate Bloom, responsible for ensuring the formulation meets the same standard she would use in her own practice.
Is Vivia a legitimate medical company?
Vivia Intimate Bloom is physician-formulated by two doctors using the same molecule (estriol) and dosage as Ovestin, the leading European brand. It is manufactured in an FDA-registered facility in the United States. The science behind estriol is not proprietary. It is backed by over 50 years of published European research.
Dr. Umair Khalid, MBBS
