I reviewed all 161 of GOOP’s wellness products for pseudoscience | Hacker News Reader

I reviewed all 161 of GOOP’s wellness products for pseudoscience

drjengunter.wordpress.com

36 pointsokket18 comments

Talk about taking one for the team. Thank you, Dr. Gunter. The keyword list contains some of my absolute most and least favorite things, a variety of topics one often doesn’t see on HN:

> Keywords: jade, crystals, vagina, coffee, enema, supplements, toxins, medical conspiracy theories, Epstein Barr Virus, mediums, vitamin B12 injections

Spoiler alert:

> The goop store is 90% quackatorium

I'm curious about the pseudoscience behind vitamin B12 injections? Correct me if I am wrong but if a person is very B12-deficient, injections are a way to relatively quick fix that whereas tablets wouldn't do much at that point. Supplements is another. If you don't eat certain foods, you might get deficiencies. The way to get that checked is via conventional science though.

That's something a doctor will tell you. Not something a website should suggest upon you.

Fair enough.

She stated in the post

> At In Goop Health there are free vitamin B12 shots, which are unnecessary unless you have a vitamin B12 deficiency. Hopefully, the new goop scientists can calculate the odds that all the women attending a goop event are vitamin B12 deficient? Perhaps they will also point out that oral works quite well, so the injection is for show?

My uneducated guess would be that someone who is so B12-deficient to require an injection (rather than just taking a daily pill) is unlikely to be able attend a Goop wellness event on account of the neurological damage :)

> The majority of health products (90%) could not be supported by science.

10% could be? Outcome more positive for Goop than expected.

Looking at the mentioned prices on the review, I'll wager that for that 10% which might (!!) be supported science you are better off going to a store which is 1) cheaper 2) doesn't resort to pseudoscience.

Pharmacies here (NL) have two points of sale: one for prescribed medicine, one for over the counter. But the over the counter also sells other stuff such as a thermometer for babies, pads, tampons, and candy such as liquorice and peppermint. IMHO a pharmacy should not sell candy, or any pseudoscientific BS for that matter. Other than that you're better off going to such a store -if they got what you need and are open, that is.

A lot of pharmacies I see in Europe and UK sell homeopathy, and by according to a schoolmate who graduated in Pharmacy and inherited the license to run one from his dad (Italy is weird like that), homeopathic products are among the biggest cash cows for them, together with supplements.

> A lot of pharmacies I see in Europe and UK sell homeopathy

Same at major chain pharmacies in the US.

Worse, it is often placed to promote it over actual medicine.

Go in looking for over the counter relief for runny or itchy eyes or for a runny or congested nose due to seasonal allergies, and you will often find that the homeopathic crap is placed on the chest level shelves so it is the first and easiest seen.

The real stuff is two or three shelves down.

Condoms, tampons, pads, and menstrual cups are all very well supported by science and/or common sense (presumably someone would notice a non-functional tampon).

The other bit was some of the supplements do contain vitamin D, which does actually have use due to the (relatively) high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in modern society - that’s why milk in America has vitamin D in it. Of course as the article notes, those supplements were advertised for acne, which vitamin D has no effect on :D

Dr Gunter did a good job here, although I find her analysis a little shallow. A large part of the article is devoted to the discussion of what has been excluded. Now, as for the included items, I'd expect a more in-depth discussion.

For example, as for essential oils, she notes "a pleasant smell is not a medicine." I know WebMD might not be the best source of health information, but they sum up the current knowledge regarding aromatherapy use cases quite well.[0] I'm not a fan of aromatherapy but you can't just say there is no medicinal use for it in spite of evidence from several scientific papers (mild cases of anxiety mainly, see the meta-research [1]) - you need to be very precise, especially if you claim to do research.

[0] https://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/aromatherapy...

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135361170...

Agreed. Especially considering the earlier stated acknowledgment "that spirituality and religion can have a beneficial impact for some people."

Completely agree. On an unrelated side note, I like to plan potential talent hires/people/thinkers I'd like to work with based in part on thoughtful comments I see people making and keep a running bookmark list of said people - thought I'd bookmark you in it to eventually maybe reach out to, and turns out I already had you bookmarked! Based on your HN profile description, sold even harder; here's my reply relating to down-vote system to an HN moderator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18133326 :)

Thank you! Your comment made me realize I definitely spend too much time on HN...

Feel free to email me someday if you dare expose who you are to me - matt@engn.com :)

Ignoring WebMD for a second because there are no citations in the article so all we have is the word of the person who wrote the article, it's usually not enough to cite a single contrary article to make a claim that someone hasn't done research properly. I can't access the article you cite, however a single meta-analysis from 1995 from a journal dedicated to alternative medicine in nursery and midwifery doesn't sound like the ultimate source; a casual check on Cochrane Review (https://www.cochrane.org/CD009215/PREG_aromatherapy-for-pain...) suggests that there are simply too few scientific studies to be able to say anything about whether it works or not (which is a polite way to say that if it did work, we'd know by now).

I casually browsed a few of them and from what I found is that aromatherapy works for some people mainly in mild cases of anxiety, not for pain relief. Some articles:

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gps.1688

"In summary, lavender is effective as an adjunctive therapy in alleviating agitated behaviours in Chinese patients with dementia."

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gps.473

"Post hoc analysis suggested that at this time of day the AM consistently reduced motor behaviour when compared with CA (p = 0.05). This provides preliminary evidence of a measurable sedative effect of aromatherapy massage on dementia within a robust scientific paradigm."

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S152695230...

"Our results suggest that aromatherapy-massage might be an effective intervention for postpartum mothers to improve physical and mental status and to facilitate mother-infant interaction."

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2648....

"There were no statistically significant differences in the physiological stress indicators or observed or reported behaviour of patients' ability to cope following any of the three interventions However, those patients who received aromatherapy reported significantly greater improvement in their mood and perceived levels of anxiety They also felt less anxious and more positive immediately following the therapy, although this effect was not sustained or cumulative"

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1440-1819....

"These results indicate that in chronic hemodialysis patients hiba oil is an effective, non‐invasive means for the treatment of depression and anxiety, and that lavender alleviates anxiety."

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ptr.26500303...

"Although the overall number of supervening infections and their characteristics were not modified by the treatment, the frequency of relapse at least appears to have been significantly lowered in the group receiving treatment compared to the group receiving placebo."

* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smi.1402

"These findings suggest that peppermint aroma may be useful for relieving stress. "

* https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11695-007-9170-7

"Our results suggest that lavender aromatherapy can be used to reduce the demand for opioids in the immediate postoperative period."

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