Hormonal health
We are wrapping our children in plastic and calling it care
By Ciara Donlon, founder & CEO of MOSS
A baby is born.
In the first hours of their life, before they have tasted food, before they have felt sunlight, before they have learned the sound of their own name, they are wrapped in a nappy.
That nappy, in most cases, is made from plastic, synthetic polymers, and wood pulp sourced from trees that took decades to grow.
It will be used for two hours. It will sit in landfill for five hundred years plus.
We do this up to eight times a day. For three years. For every baby born.
I have spent the better part of my adult life working with bamboo, not as a founder chasing a trend, but as someone who has watched this material perform under the most demanding conditions imaginable.
Before MOSS, I built THEYA Healthcare, one of Ireland’s first femtech companies, pioneering bamboo-based care for women undergoing breast cancer treatment, backed by clinical trials from UCD (University College Dublin).
When I turned to what came next, the answer was staring at me from every buggy on the street.
We are living through a crisis our children will inherit entirely. Conventional nappies are the third largest single-use plastic item in household waste.
An estimated three hundred million go to landfill every year.
The tree-derived wood pulp in their absorbent cores is responsible for the destruction of one billion trees annually, and the plastic components that make them leak-proof make them essentially indestructible once discarded.
A child who goes through approximately 6,000 nappies in three years generates a legacy of waste that will outlast not just them, but generations to come.
I am not writing this to make parents feel guilty. Parents are doing the very best they can. I am writing this because the industry has not given them a genuine alternative, and I believe that is something we have a responsibility to change.
MOSS was built on one question: what would a nappy look like if it were designed entirely around what was best for the baby’s skin and best for the planet they will grow up in?
The answer was bamboo, and I say that not from instinct, but from evidence.
Through THEYA’s research at University College Dublin, bamboo viscose fibre was tested against cotton across every performance metric that matters for fabric worn against the most sensitive skin.
In antibacterial testing, bamboo resulted in a 97 per cent reduction in tested bacteria. Cotton produced a 0 per cent reduction. In absorbency and breathability testing, bamboo outperformed cotton and all leading competitor products.
When I turned to nappies, manufacturer testing confirmed what the clinical evidence had shown.
MOSS’s bamboo absorption core matches or outperforms conventional wood pulp cores on every performance measure: faster second-cycle absorption, significantly less rewet against the skin, and higher total absorption capacity across every size.
In the MOSS parent product trial: 88 per cent of parents felt their baby was drier, 93 per cent found them softer, 73 per cent reported fewer leaks, and 87 per cent said they would recommend MOSS.
Bamboo is 59 per cent more absorbent than cotton. Ten times more bamboo can be grown per square metre.
It requires no irrigation, no pesticides, no insecticides, no synthetic inputs, while cotton accounts for nearly 30 per cent of global pesticide and insecticide sales and needs 20,000 litres of water to produce a single T-shirt.
Bamboo sequesters five times more carbon per hectare than most trees, regenerates from its own root system without replanting, and harvesting it does not kill the plant.
What that means in practice: a softer material better for the health of the baby’s skin, proven to reduce bacterial load and regulate temperature, is also the most sustainable choice available.
These are not competing priorities. They are the same priority.
We are the only nappy brand in Europe that does not require a single tree to be cut down for production.
MOSS nappies contain no tree-derived pulp, no PFAS, no fragrance, no alcohol, no bleach. They are between 60-100 per cent bamboo.
THEYA Healthcare was recognised by the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards for its work at the intersection of materials science, sustainability, and women’s health.
That recognition mattered less than what it signified: designing for the people the industry had left behind is not a niche. It is the future.
When I turned to nappies, I brought the same lens. Who is being left behind?
Two groups: the baby, whose skin deserves a material free from synthetic chemicals; and the planet, which cannot absorb another generation of single-use plastic waste at current volumes.
MOSS exists for both of them.
I think often about what it means to build something for babies in 2026. These children will live into the 2100s.
The decisions we make in the next decade, about materials, about what we choose to manufacture and what we choose to discard, will shape the world they inherit in ways that are difficult to overstate.
One nappy brand will not solve the climate crisis. But founders have a responsibility to ask harder questions, to look at an industry built on cheap plastic and ask: does it have to be this way?
It does not.
What I found when I went looking was that the sustainable choice was also the better choice for the baby. Bamboo is softer than cotton. More absorbent. Naturally antibacterial, temperature-regulating, and proven to support skin health at a clinical level.
The product that was better for the planet turned out to be better for the child wearing it.
I built MOSS because I believe that the standard of care we offer newborns, in the materials we choose, the ingredients we exclude, should be as considered as every other decision a parent makes.
And because when parents are given a genuine choice, they will make it.
We owe it to them to make that choice available. We owe it, even more, to the children and future generations.
About the author
Ciara Donlon is a multi award-winning entrepreneur with nearly 30 years of experience in corporate strategy, e-commerce, and medical devices.
She is the Founder & CEO of MOSS and the founder of THEYA Healthcare, one of Ireland’s first femtech companies. THEYA’s bamboo fabric research was conducted at University College Dublin in conjunction with four Dublin teaching hospitals. Ciara is a Cartier Women’s Initiative laureate for Europe.
After a decade working in e-commerce in the corporate world, in 2010, Ciara transitioned to entrepreneurship, founding a lingerie business inspired by her interactions with breast cancer survivors, revealing a gap for non-toxic underwear for women undergoing treatment.
This led to Theya Healthcare, where she pioneered bamboo-based post-surgical innovations, backed by clinical research and protected by global patents.
Under her leadership, Theya gained international acclaim for its innovative approach to comfort and safety.
Now, as CEO of MOSS, she is transforming the baby care market, driven by a simple belief: that the everyday essentials of parenthood should give parents genuine peace of mind and protect babies, without compromising their health or the planet.
MOSS publicly launches 5th October 2026. Founding Members can register from 7th September at mossnappies.com
Estriol treatment may ease menopause brain fog and other cognitive symptoms, according to a small observational study of 20 menopausal women.
The study involved menopausal women with an average age of 53.
They underwent an initial assessment of their cognitive symptoms before receiving a customised regimen of estriol and progesterone for 12 months.
Estriol is a natural form of oestrogen that occurs during pregnancy and has been used in Europe and Asia to treat menopausal symptoms including hot flushes and genitourinary symptoms.
It differs from estradiol, the most commonly used oestrogen hormone therapy in the US, by binding primarily to a different oestrogen receptor in the brain.
Previous research has shown that estriol may help protect brain cells and reduce brain atrophy in the hippocampus, the region responsible for learning and memory.
After 12 months of treatment, participants reported significant reductions in brain fog, concentration problems, working memory problems, slower processing speed, verbal memory problems and problem-solving difficulties compared with before treatment.
Senior author Dr Rhonda Voskuhl, a neurologist and member of the Comprehensive Menopause Center at UCLA Health, said: “Oestrogen plays a well-documented role in protecting the brain, yet there are still no approved type and dose of treatment that specifically targets the cognitive symptoms so many women experience during menopause.
“Women are often told to simply live with brain fog, when in fact there is a neuroscience basis for it, and potentially a way to address it. That gap in care is what motivated us to look more closely at estriol.”
Researchers also examined estriol treatment in midlife female mice to investigate how the hormone treatment might work.
Estriol reduced markers of brain pathology in the hippocampus and improved measures of working and spatial memory in the animals.
The findings are preliminary. The study was a small case series with no placebo group or randomisation, meaning the results may not apply to broader populations.
The researchers said larger placebo-controlled clinical trials using brain imaging and standardised cognitive testing are needed to confirm the findings on cognitive symptoms.
The treatment used in the study was invented by Voskuhl and is patented by UCLA. UCLA licenses the patent to CleopatraRX, which sells the treatment as PearlPAK. Voskuhl serves as a medical adviser to CleopatraRX.
Deaf women face barriers to menstrual health information and support at UK universities, according to a study involving 12 BSL users.
Researchers believe it is the first study of its kind.
Participants described difficulties discussing sensitive health issues because universities and healthcare services often rely on hearing-centred communication systems.
The study was led by Professor Jemina Napier from Heriot-Watt’s School of Social Sciences and involved interviews and co-design workshops with 12 deaf women who use British Sign Language (BSL) and work or study in UK universities.
Napier said: “Our findings show that deaf women face many of the same menstrual health challenges as hearing women, but they also encounter additional barriers because information and support are rarely designed around their language and communication needs.
“The burden of constantly adapting to hearing-centred systems can leave deaf women feeling excluded from conversations about their own health.”
Participants reported a lack of accessible information about menstruation, endometriosis, fibroids, perimenopause and menopause, despite working in highly educated environments.
They also reported feeling excluded from informal conversations where hearing colleagues often share experiences and learn about menstrual health.
Researchers identified four main issues affecting participants: communication, access to information, interpreter dynamics and factors including ethnicity, geography and additional disabilities.
Many participants said they preferred discussing menstrual health directly in BSL but rarely had that opportunity because managers and healthcare professionals did not sign.
Instead, they often communicated through interpreters or written English, which some said reduced privacy, comfort and confidence when discussing personal health issues.
Napier said: “A recurring theme was that of the ‘deaf tax’, which refers to the additional emotional and practical effort deaf women need to continually undertake to explain their needs or secure support.
“It’s ongoing emotional labour and fatigue and reduced participation in menstrual-health related activities.”
BSL interpreters were seen as essential, but participants said their involvement could raise concerns about confidentiality, trust and accuracy, particularly when discussing sensitive topics.
Several highlighted that male interpreters appeared uncomfortable discussing menstrual health.
The researchers also found that existing menstrual health information is largely produced in English and then translated into BSL, rather than being created in BSL from the outset.
Abigail Gorman, deaf independent facilitator, health policy consultant and co-author of the report, said: “To be in charge of your own health, you need to be able to recognise when something’s wrong, name it, and ask for help – in an appointment where you can actually be understood. That’s the whole chain.
“But if the information was never accessible in the first place, deaf women can’t even get to step one. If the appointment itself isn’t accessible either, that breaks the chain all over again, when it matters most.
“BSL-first health resources aren’t a nice-to-have; they’re how deaf women get to be equal participants in decisions about our own health.”
Napier said: “The deaf women we interviewed want more visual, culturally appropriate resources designed specifically for them – not a crude translation of existing material.
“BSL accessibility should be the default for menstrual health information and events.
“We need improved interpreter policies and BSL-first educational resources.
“The university sector should also establish a UK-wide, deaf-led health and wellbeing network.
“All these changes would reduce communication barriers and improve access to menstrual health support for deaf women working in higher education.”
Menopausal women in Wales are posing as men to buy testosterone online amid difficulties accessing NHS prescriptions, a consultant has said.
Access to testosterone for postmenopausal women varies between Welsh health boards despite a “very sharp increase” in referrals, according to menopause specialist Dr Michelle Olver.
Olver said she had seen women with testosterone levels up to 12 times the safe level after they bought the hormone online, putting them at risk of permanent side effects.
She said it was “incredibly sad” to see women lying to obtain the drug online because they were being “denied access to something they need”, but said proper counselling and monitoring were needed.
Olver, a consultant in sexual and reproductive health, said: “We want to maintain women in female physiological range for testosterone. We don’t want them to have sky-high levels.
“When you persistently have very high testosterone levels you can get undesirable permanent side effects.
“Nobody wants to have baldness, deepening of the voice or enlargement of the clitoris.”
Testosterone occurs naturally in women, but levels decline with age.
It is prescribed after menopause to help with reduced libido, while research is under way in Wales into whether reported effects on cognition and energy can be scientifically supported.
Women are advised to have a baseline blood test and regular tests afterwards to ensure levels remain within the female range.
Emma Thomas, co-founder of menopause support group Menopals Cardiff and Vale, said members had reported difficulties accessing testosterone through the NHS.
She said: “We hear a lot of women saying their GP thinks there’s no need for it or their surgery won’t prescribe it.”
Prescribing arrangements differ across Wales’ seven health boards, which use a traffic light system. In some areas testosterone is classified as red, meaning only specialists can prescribe it.
There are two amber options.
One involves a GP seeking support or agreement from a hospital specialist that testosterone is appropriate for a patient.
The other requires a hospital specialist to start and monitor treatment under a shared care agreement, with GPs continuing to prescribe it.
The Welsh government said: “All health boards are expected to adhere to the NICE guidelines on identification and management of menopause including providing individualised care when prescribing HRT.
“We are aware this may include some practitioners prescribing testosterone for some women.
“We expect all health boards to conform to any recommendation made by NICE in relation to prescribing testosterone when its guidance is published.”
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