Inside Gwyneth Paltrow’s $1,600 hormone summit there’s plenty of Goop, but also some good

On a sunny spring Saturday, a well-heeled, mostly middle-aged crowd of about 100 Gwyneth Paltrow devotees gathered at Goop headquarters in Santa Monica for “Goop Immersive: Hormonal Edition.” As I waited for my cappuccino in a line of VIP shoppers and newsletter subscribers sporting an abundance of Chanel handbags, I felt underdressed in jeans, sans blowout. The site sells a wide variety of products and wellness supplements, like “Madame Ovary” and “DTF”, a supplement that purports to support “women’s desire, arousal and mood.” A search for the words “hormone health” on Goop.com offered some 230 results, including podcast episodes, products and articles, like one titled “Can Seed Cycling Bring Your Hormones Into Balance?” There are devices to promote pelvic floor health, vibrators — some with red light therapy — and lube. Doubling down, Paltrow, along with middle-aged peers Barrymore and Cameron Diaz, is an investor in Evernow, an online hormone-prescribing company founded in 2019 that aims “to build a new way of delivering healthcare based on science, innovation and women’s lived experience with menopause.” Opinion Opinion: Menopause doesn’t have to be miserable The government should spread information about and expand access to hormone therapy, the best option for most of the 55 million Americans in menopause. These terms are not even remotely medically accurate.” As women seek whatever resonating nuggets they can find from Goop, social media, celebrities, TikTok doctors and people professing to be “hormone experts,” there’s a lot of misinformation, and little supervision — including of the herbal products sold to women struggling for a solution, which are unregulated in the U.S., said Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a clinical professor at Yale Medical School’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. “I’m so happy to see that this is a conversation that’s moving into the forefront.” Gwyneth Paltrow speaks before a crowd at the Goop Immersive event in Santa Monica.