Drew Barrymore Taps the Menopause Gold Rush

The ever growing market of meno scams

Colin Hawkins/Getty Images

It is always hard to write about medical bullshit because the energy it takes to debunk it is infinitely more significant than the lack of effort and research it took to create it. A good faith argument is honest and uses science, which is hard to apply to unstudied supplements sold as cure-alls…like this one…

My feed has been littered with ads for this product for the past 48 hours. Apparently, Dr. Kellyann and Ms. Barrymore have found the one true elixir that can “support hormonal weight management goals” (no idea what that fucking word salad means), “ease hot flashes,” “promote a healthy mood,” “promote digestive health,” AND “help get your sleep back on track.” And you can get this menopause alchemy, all for the low, low price of $179.95 for three months! 

Wow, the cure for EVERYTHING MENOPAUSE IN ONE PILL! 

TAKES A BIG BREATH. SERENITY NOW! SERENITY NOW!

Establishes some inner peace…

Ahem.

The General Claims

Any supplement that can help you lose weight, treat hot flashes, correct sleep, and help your gut and your mood is a fucking miracle in a bottle. This is a big red flag. The “can treat everything including unclogging your kitchen sink” is a standard snake oil sell-job, which is simply taking a page from the patent medicines that were heavily advertised with wild claims and patient testimonials in the 1800s and early 1900s. The claims made about the “Dr. Kellyann &ME Peri + Menopause” product reminded me of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Tonic from 1837, a common patent medicine that was a “A Woman’s Cure for Women’s Ills” and could 

Give quick relief and effect a permanent cure in all cases of irregularity, faintness, headaches, cirrhosis, megrims, displacements, periodic bearing down pains, dizziness, palpitations, depression, pains in the back, and those dull and listless days when you feel fit for nothing.

If a product could do all of this, Big Pharma would have marketed the shit out of this years ago.

Verdict: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which, spoiler alert, we will not find.

The Inventor

Who is Dr. Kellyann?

She is a naturopath and bone broth wizard. She also seems to think people can boost their immune system as she co-wrote a whole “For Dummies” book about the topic. Boosting your immune system is not a thing, and I guess those “For Dummies” books might not have the most robust backing research. Really stretch out the “o” in robust when you read that last sentence.

Verdict: The creator of the product is not a recognized medical expert. 

The Product

The first ingredient is chromium, and this is what the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements has to say about this ingredient:

Scientists do not currently think that chromium is necessary for good health, and chromium deficiency has not been reported in healthy people. However, in 2001 scientists did consider chromium to be an essential nutrient, and they set recommended amounts based on the evidence available at that time.

The recommended daily intake for chromium is 25 mcg. 

Here is the product label for the peri & me or whatever supplement.

I can find no clinical trials for chromium in menopause for hot flashes, weight loss, sleep, etc. Chromium has been looked at for weight loss, control of blood sugar for people with diabetes, high cholesterol, and for PCOS and the results, such as they are, are not robust enough to make any recommendations. For example, regarding weight loss, the NIH Department of Dietary Supplements states 

Some chromium supplements are marketed for weight loss and to reduce body fat and increase muscle mass. However, clinical trials have found only a very small benefit. This benefit is unlikely to make any difference in health or appearance.

The real issue here is not the chromium but the three proprietary blends!!! Three! The Hormonal Health Blend, the Menopause Symptom Relief Complex, and the Digestive Wellness Complex. One exclamation mark for each proprietary blend.

A proprietary blend is basically a secret recipe of herbs and spices that might as well be translated as, “it’s super secret and we won’t share it with you but trust us that that it actually works and is safe, even though we provide no actual proof”. The amount listed tells you the total weight of the combined products, not how much of each individual ingredient, so you have no idea exactly what you are taking. Products that contain proprietary blends are not recommended and are considered riskier when it comes to causing liver damage. When I previously interviewed Dr. Ryan Marino, a toxicologist, he confirmed that proprietary blends are particularly problematic. 

Verdict: Promise me you won’t take this. It has three proprietary blends. 

Drilling Down on the Claims

Another red flag is when products claim they can help you lose weight or “boost” your metabolism. First of all, it’s medically illiterate to make this claim, as you can’t actually boost your metabolism. I know you see ads about this all the time, but it is not possible. Secondly, and more concerning, is that these products may be more likely to be adulterated with pharmaceuticals or even untested compounds! You can read about a summary of some of these kinds of products and the concerns they raise here. 

Verdict: Red flag #4

Supporting Research on the Site

All the supposed health claims on the site, such as “88% Of Women In User Group Felt Improvement In Fatigue Levels,” have an asterisk, which, if you scroll down to the bottom, takes you to this peach of a comment:

Sigh. They may as well have said, we gave it to some friends. 

There is no scientific literature quoted, not even in a predatory journal! 

People have asked me about a few other similar products and if maybe those who make them turn later around and put their profits into research. Not that I have ever seen. Also, using money from selling supplements to study that supplement injects a significant amount of bias and would need the level of scrutiny we see with studies from Pharma. People need to study the supplement first before bringing it to market if they want to help people.

Verdict: This is going from bad to worse. 

What Do the Guidelines Say?

I am sure you will be shocked to learn that none of the ingredients in Dr. Kellyann &ME Peri + Menopause supplement made it into the 2023 Menopause Society position statement on non-hormone therapy. How Dr. Kellyann can have knowledge about the secret blend of herbs and spices in her supplement that is unknown to actual experts boggles the mind (please read that with the heaviest of sarcasm).

Verdict: Red flag #6. I think. I’m losing count.

There is REAL potential for harm here. 

I just read a case report from 2023 of a woman who developed drug induced liver injury (DILI) from taking MenoFit, a supplement which includes a proprietary blend, and claims to reduce hot flashes, improve sleep, boost metabolism etc (sounds familiar, hey?). You need to be VERY WARY of these kinds of products.  

You can read more here about supplements and how to think about them. It can be confusing as a very limited number are recommended, for example, iron for iron deficiency or prenatal vitamins.  

A good rule of thumb is to avoid multi-ingredient supplements that are not multivitamins, especially those with proprietary blends, and/or make claims about weight loss/boosting metabolism. These have not tested in any meaningful studies and harm can come from several ways: the listed ingredients themselves may be harmful, they may be contaminated with bacteria or fungi, or they can be adulterated with other substances, even active pharmaceuticals or completely untested compounds or straight-up poisons. Read this post about how many of them don’t contain what they claim. This is REALLY a buyer-beware situation. And even more concerning, women seem to be at higher risk for drug-induced liver injury when compared with men. 

What can I say about Drew Barrymore being a brand ambassador, for a multi ingredient supplement created by a naturopath that contains three proprietary blends and makes a wild range of medically unsubstantiated claims, including the ability to boost metabolism? 

Nothing positive.

Supplements are BIG BUSINESS, given how easy they are to make, sell, and then promote on social media. How big a business? Glad you asked. A recent study looked at the top ten liver supplements sold on Amazon. Not one of the sixty-five ingredients that were identified in these products is recommended by either the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases or the European Association for the Study of Liver. So, I mean, there’s that. Also, 35% of the reviews were fake, so there’s also that. But how much money in sales did these ten supplements generate on Amazon in one month? $2.4 million dollars. Yes, $2.4 million in one month on one platform for ten useless products that cost very little to bring to market. It’s really depressing.

Cashing in on the menopause gold rush isn’t championing women’s health, it’s nothing more than garden variety misogyny because in my opinion you must have little regard for women to exploit the gaps in medicine so egregiously. If you cared about women, you would do a modicum of research, not sell an untested supplement with a proprietary blend!

Who knows, maybe there is more money in supplements than being an actor and talk show host. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me.

References

NIH Office Dietary Supplements Fact Sheet Chromium https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Chromium-HealthProfessional/

Navarro VJ, Khan I, Björnsson E, et al. Liver injury from herbal and dietary supplements. Hepatology. 2017;65(1):363–73.

Navarro VJ, Barnhart H, Bonkovsky HL, et al. Liver injury from herbals and dietary supplements in the U.S. Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network. Hepatology. 2014;60(4):1399–408.

Lu RJ, Zhang Y, Tang FL, et al. Clinical characteristics of drug-induced liver injury and related risk factors. Exp Ther Med. 2016;12(4):2606–16.

Dadlani A, Anudu A, Marginean EC. Unexpected Drug-Induced Liver Injury Associated With MenoFit: A Synbiotic Menopause Supplement. ACG Case Reports Journal 10(9):p e01153, September 2023. DOI: 10.14309/crj.0000000000001153

NAMS POSITION STATEMENT. The 2023 nonhormone therapy position statement of The North American Menopause Society. Menopause 2023;30:573-590. DOI: 10.1097/GME.0000000000002200

Eltelbany, Ahmed, Hamid, Osama, Nanah, Rama, Paleti, Swathi.iver Cleansing Imposters: An Analysis of Popular Online Liver Supplements. The American Journal of Gastroenterology 118(10S):p S1008-S1009, October 2023. | DOI: 10.14309/01.ajg.0000954920.30407.c4