If you've ever found yourself standing in a supermarket car park in November, coat off, fanning yourself with a Lidl receipt while your kids stare at you with mild concern — this one's for you.
A new wearable device designed to tackle the hot flushes of menopause has just arrived on the Irish market, and it was partly brought to life by an Offaly engineer who previously worked in Formula 1 and aerospace. Which, honestly, feels like the appropriate level of expertise for something that needs to outsmart your own hypothalamus.
The MyCelsius bracelet works by cooling the skin at the wrist by 10°C in under 10 seconds, triggering a signal to the brain to stop the sweating and flushing associated with a hot flush. It's worn like a watch, looks like one too, and has five different cooling modes — including a night-time setting designed to reduce the heat-related sleep disruption that so many women going through perimenopause and menopause know all too well.
The science behind it
The wrist isn't just a convenient place to wear something — it's one of the most thermally sensitive parts of the body. That's the principle the MyCelsius team built the device around.
"The wrist is one of the most thermally sensitive parts of your body and applying cold to it sends a signal to the hypothalamus — the body's thermostat — to stop the sweating and flushing associated with a hot flush," explained co-founder Aonghus O'Donovan, who studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Limerick before going on to work at Dyson and later in Formula 1 and aerospace engineering.
"It uses advanced thermo-electric cooling to create a soothing, cold sensation directly onto the wrist. By lowering local skin temperature, it helps the full body feel cooler in moments of sudden heat."
The device also works against heat caused by hormonal changes, stress and anxiety — which, as any woman navigating perimenopause will tell you, don't always politely arrive one at a time.
Aonghus O'Donovan
Three years in the making
O'Donovan, 33, co-founded the company with CEO Maxime Kryvian, 37. The pair invested three years of research into developing the non-medical device, which they say has a cooling system five times more powerful than competitor products and an 80% efficacy rate for women experiencing hot flushes.
Crucially, the product wasn't developed in isolation. The company worked closely with a community of women throughout the process, allowing their real experiences to shape the bracelet's design, feel and functionality. That kind of input matters — particularly when you consider that almost four in ten women in Ireland have reportedly considered leaving their jobs because of menopause symptoms. That's not a statistic you can design around without actually listening to the people living it.
More than just a gadget
Hot flushes are often described as an intense wave of heat starting in the torso and rising into the chest and neck — sometimes accompanied by flushing skin, sweating, palpitations and anxiety. For some women they happen several times a day. For others they're a nightly disruption that leaves them exhausted and short-tempered by morning, which doesn't exactly help when you've got a school run at half eight and a full day of work ahead of you.
The MyCelsius bracelet is now available on the Irish market. For more information, visit mycelsius.com.
