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  1. #1
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    Gwyneth & Goop

    Gwyneth Paltrow Thinks You Need $60 Sex Dust
    BY LAUREN CARUSO, SENIOR DIGITAL EDITOR, JANUARY 22, 2015, 5:35:00 PM



    Today in Things Gwyneth Paltrow Thinks You Really, Really Need (TM): Sex Dust. $60 Sex Dust, no less. The woman who is downright obsessed with chopped salad (her words, not ours) is going crazy over a brand called Moon Juice. GP featured a four-ounce jar of the stuff on Goop this week and was nice enough to supply her readers with a recipe for Sex Bark(!), so you’re not just pouring it down your throat all willy-nilly.

    In the brand’s words, the purpose of Sex Dust, an “aphrodisiac warming potion,” is to help “send waves of blood to all the right places.” It’s made from an herbal tonic called he shou wu, which Google says helps delay graying hair and knee replacements. Gwynnie promises that it’ll promote “enjoyable sex and fertility for both men and women.” Oh, and it’s low-glycemic, just like its cousin Spirit Dust. Thank goodness.

    According to the Goopster, "The spirit dust feeds harmony and extrasensory perception through pineal gland de-calcification and activation, while the hemp seeds feed the brain, nourish the eyes, stimulate blood cells, and beautify hair and skin." Just in case you’re feeling extra ****ed off from the long line at Dean & Deluca. Just kidding. There’s never a line at Dean & Deluca.

    All jokes aside, the woman always looks like she just emerged from a cashmere cocoon made by a thousand gluten-free hummingbirds, so maybe she’s onto something.
    Sex Dust
    A lusty adaptogen to ignite, excite and cultivate the sexual flow in both men and women. This ancient, warming elixir sends waves of sensitivity and power to all the right places, as it supports your primordial energy and vital essence. A holistic approach to deeply nourished sexual vigor, supports not only the bedroom flow but your highest creative potential.

    Add one teaspoon to 8oz of any hot or cold liquid. Delicious with nut milk water or tea. 15.5 servings per jar. Don't be afraid to double dose!

    Wild Crafted Ingredients: Ho Shou Wu, Cistanche, Cacao, Shilajit, Maca, Epimedium, Schisandra, Stevia

    Quantity 1 $60.00
    More on Gwyneth and TCM here. More on Ho Shou Wu here.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  2. #2
    Greetings,

    Wasn't He Shou Wu trashed a few years ago as being toxic to the liver? I guess it comes down to who is selling it and who is making money off of it.

    Why spend that kind of money on something you can make yourself for so much less?


    mickey

  3. #3
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    It's all in the marketing, mickey

    If I could get celebrity starlet endorsement like these, I could sell qi beaters like hotcakes.

    But seriously now, the creator of Moon Juice Sex Dust claims she never went to college. I wonder now if she even went to TCM school. What qualifies one as a 'health master'?

    ‘I never went to college a day in my life’: The woman behind Gwyneth Paltrow’s mind-altering ‘sex dust’


    Gwyneth swears by moon dust, but what is it? Getty Images

    By HANNAH FERRETT
    03:39, 16 Mar 2016

    GWYNETH Paltrow swears by adding a teaspoon of moon dust to her daily morning smoothie, but what is the mood-boosting powder and who created it?

    Moon dust is the brainchild of Amanda Chantal Bacon and comes in six varieties - sex, spirit, action, brain, goodnight and beauty. Each blend is supposed to radically enhance one area of your life, so whether you need help in the sack or are more concerned with a good night's sleep there's one for you.

    Amanda explained: "Gwyneth and I are successful in our fields. We have disposable income and choose to use the adaptogens [plants with holistic effects], herbs and plants several times a day.

    “We don’t say you have to have mucuna [a medicinal herb] or you will be fat, sick and nearly dead. We are just a resource for this stuff, and maybe you just sprinkle some raw herbs on a bowl of spaghetti.

    "I never went to college a day in my life. I just took art classes, travelled the world, and worked.”


    Looking to boost your sex life? Perk up with the powder Getty Images

    Amanda is a health master, with two of her Moon Juice shops already open in Los Angeles.

    Although she hasn't been to university, she's been obsessed with clean living since she was a kid and was so ill she was regularly sick.

    She said: "I had severe respiratory problems at a very young age, and I coughed so much at night that I threw up.

    "I went on antibiotics and did the whole Western rigmarole, but one day in a health-food store an ayurvedic [holistic] doctor heard me coughing and told me to stick out my tongue.

    "Within minutes he said to stop eating sugar, wheat and dairy, and I was completely healed in a matter of days."

    That wasn't the end of her problems though, with the moon dust guru suffering a slew of health issues when she hit her teenage years.

    With mood and learning problems as well as pre-diabetes, Amanda began to look into her diet. She claims to have completely healed herself by using herbs and supplements.


    Rachel McAdams is also a fan Getty Images

    She added: "I find that I’ve been able to transcend all of those diagnoses."

    Amanda doesn't have any qualifications in nutrition or medicine, but has a herbalist on hand to help her come up with the powders. They are influenced by Eastern cultures and have been a major hit with other celebrities too, such as Hollywood actresses Shailene Woodley and Rachel McAdams and star Zoe Kravitz.

    Fans claim the dusts improve their hair, skin and nails, but anti-ageing expert Dr Lionel M Bissoon is not so sure. He remains "a bit skeptical" about their promises, querying whether they contain enough active ingredients to have much impact.


    Zoe Kravitz has hit the moon dust too Fame Flynet

    Amanda's dedication to her diet has been questioned before. After her food diary, which contained many herbs and supplements, was published in a magazine many poked fun at it - but Amanda insists the teasing is actually positive.

    She argued: "When you strip away the bad manners, the questions that are coming up are valid and intelligent: ‘Does it work? Is it safe? Is it too expensive?'"
    Gene Ching
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  4. #4
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    True that, Gene! Moon Juice has a very well composed marketing presence that would convince the targeted female audience that they absolutely need this product.

    Regarding the formula itself, it is interesting, though I doubt the "dust" is enough to get much of an effect, though some folks are very sensitive.

    He Shou Wu builds blood and essence.

    Cistanche is Rou Cong Rong - a moist Kidney Yang tonic - libido is linked the Kidney function (esp the Yang) in TCM. This herb is also good for keeping your poop regular, cause, you know, nothing kills the mood like missing your daily BM.

    Shilajit is an Ayurvedic substance that is basically an ooze that comes from the rocks in the mountains of the Himalayas. Contrary to the Wikipedia entry, it has been shown in several studies to have adaptogenic, cardioprotective and immune modulating effects.

    Cacao is raw chocolate substance, which as you know is an aphrodisiac for women

    Maca is a root from Peru that is very nourishing, stimulating to the nervous system and has p-methoxybenzyl isothiocyanate which supposedly can have aphrodisiac effects as well.

    Epimedium is Yin Yang Huo or ***** Goat Weed... any questions? Oh, TCM cautions against long term use of this substance 'cause it'll harsh your Kidney Yin with too much Yang movement.

    Schisandra is Wu Wei Zi, the 5 Flavored seed - it's known for its astringent qualities and its ability to "calm the spirit" - 'cause, you know... nothing kills the mood more than getting into an argument 'cause you're all tense. This might actually help to moderate the drying effect of the ***** goat weed.

    Not a bad formula, but for 60 bucks... sheesh.

    peace out

    herb ox

  5. #5
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    Deceptive goop

    When Gwyneth's Goopy Jade Eggs get Busted...

    Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop product claims 'deceptive,' watchdog group says
    By Dianne de Guzman, SFGATE Updated 8:08 pm, Wednesday, August 23, 2017


    Gwyneth Paltrow attends book signing at goop-in@Nordstrom at The Grove on June 8, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Goop has come under fire for a number of products the site sells, with a watchdog group criticizing various health claims in the site's product marketing. Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images For Goop
    Photo: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images For Goop

    Gwyneth Paltrow-run lifestyle website Goop is being called out again for its wellness products, after a consumer watchdog group cited more than 50 instances in which the site offered "deceptive" health claims in marketing for its products.
    The group has filed a complaint with the California Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force to look into Goop's marketing practices.
    Truth in Advertising compiled a list of instances it felt Goop falsely claimed that its products (or third-party products) could "treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms" for a variety of health issues, from thyroid dysfunction and infertility to uterine prolapse and hormonal imbalance.
    "These [Goop-endorsed products] include crystal harmonics for infertility, rose flower essence tincture for depression, black rose bar for psoriasis, wearable stickers for anxiety, and vitamin D3 for cancer," TINA.org wrote in a blog post on its site Tuesday.
    "The problem is that the company does not possess the competent and reliable scientific evidence required by law to make such claims."
    The group fired off a letter to Paltrow and the Goop group about its findings, asking on Aug. 11 that the company modify how its content, in what TINA.org labelled as "illegal health claims." The group gave Goop a deadline of Aug. 18 to make changes to the product descriptions, before they took its issues with the site to the California Food Drug and Medical Device Task Force.
    At its preset deadline, the group felt that the changes Goop made were not enough and sent a letter to California regulators.
    In a statement to BuzzFeed News, a Goop representative said that "while we believe that TINA's description of our interactions is misleading and their claims unsubstantiated and unfounded, we will continue to evaluate our products and our content and make those improvements that we believe are reasonable and necessary in the interests of our community of users."
    The representative went on to say that the company felt it "responded promptly and in good faith to the initial outreach from representatives of TINA and hoped to engage with them to address their concerns. Unfortunately, they provided limited information and made threats under arbitrary deadlines which were not reasonable under the circumstances."
    Paltrow and Goop's health claims have come under fire for various products over the past few years, since its jump from a beauty newsletter to selling wellness products. Goop made past headlines for promoting $120 Body Vibes stickers that were allegedly made with "the same conductive carbon material NASA uses to line space suits," saying the stickers would "rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies." (NASA, in turn, refuted those claims, and a former chief scientist at NASA was quoted as saying, "Wow. What a load of B.S. this is.")
    Goop was also criticized for selling jade eggs, claiming that inserting the egg-shaped stones into a woman's vagina would balance hormones and improve the user's sex life. That information was disputed by San Francisco obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Jennifer Gunter, who said that using the jade egg as directed could lead to bacterial vaginosis or potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome.
    The site also drew recent comparisons to radio show host Alex Jones's InfoWars and the two sites' shared love for selling wellness items with questionable health claims.
    Gene Ching
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    Coffee enema + Jade egg = ?

    She may not be a trusted health advisor but I give her props for marketing.

    Why Gwyneth Paltrow Is Not Your Trusted Health Advisor
    The actress’ Goop website promotes health gear and diets. It also has pushed vagina eggs and coffee enemas. That has brought it some harsh criticism.


    Gwyneth Paltrow is widely known for her Academy Award-winning performance in the 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love.

    She’s also popular with many comic-loving cinema fans for her role as Pepper Potts in the Iron Man series.

    Paltrow is also known as the founder and owner of Goop, a lifestyle website that features healthy living content, style advice, and a robust e-commerce section that sells all the products you need to live the Goop life.

    The website, in fact, has become popular enough that it just completed its second Goop Health Summit, held in New York City this past week.

    It’s Goop that’s added the word “controversial” before Paltrow’s long list of accomplishments and acclaims.

    Goop, which started in 2008 as a newsletter Paltrow produced herself, is today a multimillion dollar lifestyle brand with product extensions, licensing agreements, educational summits, and even a print magazine.

    Alongside stories about what florals are best to wear in the winter, you can find vitamin packs geared to helping you work faster and stronger.

    Beside a story about the parasites hiding on a playground, you can find cautionary pieces about asbestos in cosmetics.

    The Goop mission is to help you navigate a world that’s filled with toxic and potentially dangerous products.

    “We take a curious, unbiased, open-minded, and service-centric approach to the work we do,” Goop writes on their website.

    But that “unbiased” approach has left many skeptics in its wake — and with some evidence to back up their suspicions.

    Goop and its controversies
    Take, for example, a $66 jade egg that raised eyebrows and ire last summer. The egg’s promise, the site says, is “to increase sexual energy and pleasure.”

    Goop writes that their “beauty guru/healer/inspiration/friend” Shiva Rose turned them on to jade eggs, calling it a “strictly guarded secret of Chinese royalty.”

    When the egg first hit Goop’s site, the condemnation was swift.

    “We’re never particularly surprised when our stories break the internet, but we were surprised by the reception of the jade egg, which stirred up a formidable debate about the practice,” Goop editors wrote in a piece that followed the egg’s release.

    They then backed up their sexuality boosting stone ovum with letters from fans who said the practice has worked wonders for them.

    Carol Queen, PhD, the staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, co-founder of the Center for Sex & Culture, and author of “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone,” calls the jade egg “too good to be true.”

    “I’ve been horrified by a lot of her sex-related items because it doesn’t seem that either she or her doctor associates know enough about sexuality, the genitals, etc.” Queen told Healthline. “She also hasn’t chosen to find someone who does know a lot and, of course, if she did, she might have fewer things to sell.”

    Queen says any attention to sexuality and sexual health is likely always a good thing, but the jade eggs — and many of Goop’s other products meant to promote sexual energy — are just a bridge too far.

    “A person can be credulous when it comes to alternative claims, and if they don’t know enough about health and sexuality to begin with, they won’t be able to easily assess whether what they are hearing is correct information,” she said.

    “Now, the placebo effect is a thing, and if a person believes that the item has a positive effect on their vaginal health, they are touching themselves to insert it, focusing on that area of the body, actually caring for its wellbeing, all this might have some good effects,” Queen added. “The ‘but’ of this statement has to do with the energy the stone supposedly possesses and that’s not a scientifically sound idea. It’s also about the egg itself. It won’t be a comfortable size for everyone. It can be difficult to insert if it’s too big for an individual. It can be even harder to take out. And stone isn’t always a safe material to insert into the body. It can have microfissures that might collect bacteria, for instance.”

    More recently, a $135 coffee enema stirred the unease of many medical experts.

    The enema, named the Implant-O-Rama, was listed as part of the brand’s “Detox Guide.” The other items listed in the guide (scrubs, saunas, and such) look to cleanse every pore, pocket, and pleat of your body, but the enema was the target of much indignation.

    Enemas had a heyday in the alternative medicine world in the early 1900s, but as word spread of the potential dangers, the colon cleanses waned in popularity.

    In fact, in 1919, the American Medical Association condemned the use of colon cleanses. More recently, the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology said in a statement that coffee enemas are “not merely useless but potentially dangerous.” The Mayo Clinic reports that coffee enemas have been to blame for several deaths.

    Despite these warnings, enemas and colon cleanses have seen a robust return as the rise of “alternative” medicine increases in popularity.

    Paltrow’s Goop is perhaps the most high-profile proponent of the practice, but they’re certainly not alone.

    “In the past, we referred to lotions, potions, and elixirs with unproven efficacy as snake oils,” Zach Cordell, a registered dietitian nutritionist and an assistant professor of nutrition at Daytona State College in Florida, told Healthline. “We still have many of these around today, where people will use scientific sounding words, pick and choose what they want to believe, and it will bring people in. If you have a big soapbox to stand on, you are likely to have a larger payout.”

    Despite numerous requests by Healthline for comments on this story, Goop officials did not make a representative from their organization available for an interview.

    What’s Paltrow’s responsibility?

    Alongside these controversial products are seemingly harmless items such as bath soaks and menstrual cups.

    The latter is listed as an alternative to pads and tampons, “many of which are made with harmful chemicals,” the Goop site states.

    “Her celebrity gets people in the door and perhaps the controversy does, too, but she’s just one very high-profile player in a field that has a long history [of] alternative therapies,” Queen said. “Not everything that can be described that way is problematic, nor is it likely that all the things sold on Goop are dangerous. But a customer might want to do a little due diligence on items they’ve never encountered, or ask themselves if there are ways such an item might be unsafe.”

    But Donna Flagg, creator and founder of Lastics & Lastics Body, a body products company, says Goop and Paltrow are only a vessel, not a maker, for these products and their claims.

    “Goop is essentially a retailer, a store. My opinion, with regard to Goop and Gwyneth, is that she is a target for one of two reasons, but more likely it’s some combination of both,” Flagg said. “One, she sells a lifestyle, but more importantly, a philosophy which challenges much of the establishment. That philosophy touches all aspects of our lives. That makes her a broader threat than, say, a company making moisturizers. Through her business, she exposes a lot of companies and their practices who do not want to be exposed.”

    “Two, she is a famous, beautiful, and beloved woman,” Flagg continued. “This gives her tremendous influence among her audience, influence that is authentic, which no amount of money can buy.”

    Flagg adds that these larger companies may try to discredit her influence by promoting the controversies.

    “Generally, the responsibility of claims falls on whoever makes the product,” Flagg said. “Manufacturers formulate, test, and package the products. They are the ones who have the information about their product’s performance, not the retailer. A retailer is a customer of the manufacturers, and treated as such.”

    For their part, Goop writes, “We test the waters so that you don’t have to. We will never recommend something that we don’t love, and think worthy of your time and your wallet. We value your trust above all things.”

    However, their process for selecting items and retail partners isn’t transparent.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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  7. #7
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    Apitherapy


    Woman dies after having bee-sting therapy

    3 hours ago


    SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
    Apitherapy is the use of substances from honeybees to treat medical conditions

    A woman has died after undergoing bee-sting therapy, a form of treatment backed by Gwyneth Paltrow.

    The 55-year-old Spanish woman had been having live bee acupuncture for two years when she developed a severe reaction.

    She died weeks later of multiple organ failure.

    Researchers who studied the case say live bee acupuncture therapy is "unsafe and unadvisable".

    It is thought to be the first death due to the treatment of someone who was previously tolerant of the stings.

    The woman's case has been reported in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology, by doctors from the allergy division of University Hospital, Madrid.

    She had been having the treatment once a month for two years at a private clinic to improve muscular contractures and stress.

    During a session, she developed wheezing, shortness of breath, and sudden loss of consciousness immediately after a live bee sting.

    She was given steroid medication but no adrenaline was available, and it took 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

    The woman had no history of any other diseases like asthma or heart disease, or other risk factors, or any previous allergic reactions.
    What is apitherapy?
    Apitherapy is the use of substances from honeybees, such as honey, propolis, royal jelly, or even venom (extracted or from live bees), to relieve various medical conditions. One type of apitherapy is live bee acupuncture.
    Although some benefits of apitherapy have been reported, they have mainly been anecdotal.
    Bee-venom therapy has been used for treating conditions including arthritis and MS.
    The theory behind the treatment is that bee stings cause inflammation leading to an anti-inflammatory response by the immune system.
    But the Multiple Sclerosis Trust says "there is no research to show it is an effective treatment for people with MS". They said a 2008 review of non-conventional approaches to treating MS found that there was only marginal evidence for bee-venom therapy.


    GETTY IMAGES

    In an interview with the New York Times in 2016 Gwyneth Paltrow said she had tried apitherapy.
    "I've been stung by bees. It's a thousands-of years-old treatment called apitherapy. People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It's actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it's painful."
    And on her wellbeing website Goop she says she was "given 'bee-venom therapy' for an old injury and it disappeared".
    Last year, Gerard Butler revealed he had been injected with bee sting venom to try to help reduce inflammation from stunt work. He ended up in hospital after he was injected with the venom of 23 bees. He said he felt like his heart might explode and as if he had ants under his skin.
    The doctors found severe anaphylaxis had caused a massive stroke and permanent coma with multiple organ failure.

    The report's authors called for:

    Patients to be fully informed of the dangers of apitherapy before undergoing treatment
    Measures to identify sensitised patients at risk should be implemented before each apitherapy sting
    Apitherapy practitioners should be trained in managing severe reactions
    Apitherapy practitioners should be able to ensure they perform their techniques in a safe environment
    They should have adequate facilities for management of anaphylaxis and rapid access to an intensive care unit
    But they acknowledged that because the treatment often takes place in private clinics, these measures may not be possible.

    One of the report's authors Ricardo Madrigal-Burgaleta concluded: "The risks of undergoing apitherapy may exceed the presumed benefits, leading us to conclude that this practice is both unsafe and unadvisable."

    Amena Warner, Head of Clinical Services for Allergy UK, said:

    "The public need to be very aware of the unorthodox use of allergens such as bee venom. This will come with risk and, in susceptible individuals, can lead to serious life threatening reactions."
    Threads:
    bee stingers for needles
    Gwyneth & Goop
    TCM Fails
    Gene Ching
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  8. #8
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    just asking questions

    goop is finally going to fact-check its bull**** claims
    hazel cills
    today 9:35am


    image: Getty

    goop doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to recommending alternative ~* wellness *~ treatments. The company has endorsed experts who claim that gmos cause depression, bee-sting treatments that killed one woman, and sticking jade eggs up your vagina. And after many, many, many people have called out goop’s dangerous and unsubstantiated recommendations, gwyneth paltrow says she’s finally hiring a full-time fact-checker for goop.

    In a long profile of paltrow and goop over at the new york times magazine, writer taffy brodesser-akner reports that while all of the negative press about the site over the past few years may have generated some nice traffic, paltrow has decided goop needs some extra support:

    After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, g.p. Made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from condé nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a ph.d. In nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former stanford professor. And in september, goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.p. Chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”

    in other words, it seems like goop is finally going to have to answer for its bull**** wellness claims. It’s also a big deal considering that goop was originally supposed to make their magazine with condé nast and in partnership with anna wintour, but paltrow reportedly backed out of the deal because of the journalistic constraints of the company like...fact-checking! “goop wanted goop magazine to be like the goop website in another way: To allow the goop family of doctors and healers to go unchallenged in their recommendations via the kinds of q. And a.s published, and that just didn’t pass condé nast standards,” writes akner. “those standards require traditional backup for scientific claims, like double-blind, peer-reviewed studies.”

    and whenever an outlet has criticized goop for peddling information that’s false or could hurt people (such as when an advertising watchdog group accused the site of incorrectly claiming many of its products could cure depression, anxiety, and infertility, to name a few), paltrow and her partner elise loehnen respond that they’re not making statements, they’re “just asking questions.” and it doesn’t hurt that the crazier the post, the more people visit the site, which paltrow herself reportedly admitted to a class at harvard:

    “i can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: To corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about g.p. Herself and turn them into cash. It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “it’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” the room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “vagina! Vagina! Vagina!” as if she were yodeling.

    Keep yodeling gwyneth, but now your yodels will have to be legally vetted.
    vagina! Vagina! Vagina!
    Gene Ching
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  9. #9
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    quarter B

    How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million
    Inside the growth of the most controversial brand in the wellness industry.


    Gwyneth Paltrow.Credit Amanda Demme for The New York Times

    By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
    July 25, 2018

    On a Monday morning in November, students at Harvard Business School convened in their classroom to find Gwyneth Paltrow. She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all, using her phone, as they took their seats along with guests they brought to class that day — wives, mothers, boyfriends. Each seat filled, and some guests had to stand along the back wall and sit on the steps. The class was called the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports. The students were there to interrogate Paltrow about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business, and to learn how to create a “sustainable competitive advantage,” according to the class catalog.

    She moved to the teacher’s desk, where she sat down and crossed her legs. She talked about why she started the business, how she only ever wanted to be someone who recommended things. When she was in Italy, on the set of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” she’d ask someone on the crew about, say, where the best gelato was. When she was in London, on the set of “Shakespeare in Love,” she asked a crew member where to find the best coffee; in Paris, she asked an extra where to find the best bikini wax; in Berlin, the massage you can’t miss. She wasn’t just curious. She was planning this the whole time.

    The first iteration of the company was only these lists — where to go and what to buy once you get there — via a newsletter she emailed out of her kitchen, the first one with recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins. One evening, at a party in London, one of the newsletter’s recipients, a venture capitalist named Juliet de Baubigny, told her, “I love what you’re doing with Goop.” G.P., as she is called by nearly everyone in her employ, didn’t even know what a venture capitalist was. She was using off-the-shelf newsletter software. But De Baubigny became a “godmother” to Paltrow, she said. She encouraged her vision and “gave permission” to start thinking about how to monetize it.

    At first, Goop — so named not just for her initials and for, you know, goop, but because someone along the way told her that all the successful internet companies had double O’s — appealed to an audience that admired G.P.’s rarefied lifestyle. Martha Stewart (for example) was an aspirational lifestyle brand, true, but the lifestyle was so easily attainable once Stewart took her wares to Kmart and Macy’s.

    G.P. didn’t want to go broad. She wanted you to have what she had: the $795 G. Label trench coat and the $1,505 Betony Vernon S&M chain set. Why mass-market a lifestyle that lives in definitional opposition to the mass market? Goop’s ethic was this: that having beautiful things sometimes costs money; finding beautiful things was sometimes a result of an immense privilege; but a lack of that privilege didn’t mean you shouldn’t have those things. Besides, just because some people cannot afford it doesn’t mean that no one can and that no one should want it. If this bothered anyone, well, the newsletter content was free, and so were the recipes for turkey ragù and banana-nut muffins.

    By the time she stood in that Harvard classroom, Goop was a clothing manufacturer, a beauty company, an advertising hub, a publishing house, a podcast producer and a portal of health-and-healing information, and soon it would become a TV-show producer. It was a clearinghouse of alternative health claims, sex-and-intimacy advice and probes into the mind, body and soul. There was no part of the self that Goop didn’t aim to serve.

    “I want to help you solve problems,” G.P. said. “I want to be an additive to your life.” Goop is now worth $250 million, according to a source close to the company.

    The students nodded studiously as she spoke about her clothing line and CPGs and “contextual commerce” and open rates and being “cash positive” and “radical wellness” and how she likes to hire “smart people with founder DNA” and working mothers: “That ***** will get things done.”

    For all the students’ questions about those newsletters and their use of all kinds of three-letter acronyms, it felt to me as if everyone was missing the point. G.P.’s business began in 2008 and was incorporated in 2013, but it really started when she was being hunted by the paparazzi and living in such a lonely, high-altitude world that she could basically be friends with only Madonna. Or even before that when, as a 19-year-old, she would run lines with her mother, the actress Blythe Danner, and Danner noticed that it was all too easy for her, that there was something preternatural about her talent (an assessment one of her former co-stars also said to me almost verbatim). Or maybe even before that, when some combination of her parents’ DNA formed a genetic supernova that would allow for her name to appear in the same paragraph as the word “luminous” 227 times when searching in a LexisNexis database.

    The outside world began to creep in. The students asked second-date questions about the topics she has been criticized for, starting with charges of elitism. Someone asked how she planned to engage with people of lesser incomes. She said: “It’s crucial to me that we remain aspirational. Not in price point, because content is always free.” The things they were making — the clothing, yes, but also the creams and oils — couldn’t be made cheaply. “Our stuff is beautiful,” she said. “The ingredients are beautiful. You can’t get that at a lower price point. You can’t make these things mass-market.”

    They nodded, mesmerized, stars and dollar signs in their eyes. They took notes, but why? When G.P. said “aspirational,” she wasn’t kidding. Her business depended on no one ever being able to be her. Though I guess it also depended on their ability to think they might.

    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  10. #10
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    Continued from previous post


    Goop products, including the Dry Brush, the Jade Egg and the Rose Quartz Soothing Face-Massage Roller, on display at Goop’s wellness summit in Los Angeles in June.CreditMatt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

    The minute the phrase “having it all” lost favor among women, wellness came in to pick up the pieces. It was a way to reorient ourselves — we were not in service to anyone else, and we were worthy subjects of our own care. It wasn’t about achieving; it was about putting ourselves at the top of a list that we hadn’t even previously been on. Wellness was maybe a result of too much having it all, too much pursuit, too many boxes that we’d seen our exhausted mothers fall into bed without checking off. Wellness arrived because it was gravely needed.

    Before we knew it, the wellness point of view had invaded everything in our lives: Summer-solstice sales are wellness. Yoga in the park is wellness. Yoga at work is wellness. Yoga in Times Square is peak wellness. When people give you namaste hands and bow as a way of saying thank you. The organic produce section of Whole Foods. Whole Foods. Hemp. Oprah. CBD. “Body work.” Reiki. So is: SoulCycle, açaí, antioxidants, the phrase “mind-body,” meditation, the mindfulness jar my son brought home from school, kombucha, chai, juice bars, oat milk, almond milk, all the milks from substances that can’t technically be milked, clean anything. “Living your best life.” “Living your truth.” Crystals.

    Goop’s first newsletter left G.P.’s kitchen in 2008, right when the economy was collapsing around us. It wasn’t just the homes people no longer owned and the jobs people no longer had. It was the environmental crisis. It was the endless exposure of corruption. Whom exactly were we trusting with our care? Why did we decide to trust them in the first place? Who says that only certain kinds of people are allowed to give us the answers?

    These phenomena gave an easy rise to Gwyneth Paltrow, who was at first curating teas and lingerie and sweaters she thought you’d like. But people were looking for leaders, and she was already committing public displays of ostentatious wellness: She showed up at a movie premiere with cupping marks on her back; she let bees sting her because I don’t know why. Suddenly Gwyneth Paltrow, the movie star, was a major player in an industry that was big business.

    Other celebrities followed. Jessica Alba’s Honest Company was worth more than $1 billion at its peak, but it really offers mostly cleaning and beauty products. Miranda Kerr has a line of organic beauty products. Amanda Chantal Bacon’s Moon Juice, a line of supplements, is a ship launched directly from Port Goop. None of them aim to treat every single aspect of the human as wholly as Goop does. Nothing is as elemental an extension of its source as Goop is.

    The Goop campus in Santa Monica consists of four squat gray buildings, where in June a diverse group of about 200 young, exuberant, well-dressed people were working hard to plan the coming weekend’s event, the In Goop Health wellness summit. G.P. sat at her desk behind the glass walls of her office, which was spare and also decorated in shades of gray. Her golden hair fell over the paper she was reading. She was wearing a tank top, shearling-lined white Birkenstocks and Goop x Frame wide-legged palazzo jeans. Back when she wore them at Harvard, I’d never seen anyone else wear them. Now she was making them, and everyone else I knew was wearing the same style.

    We ate salmon hand rolls. She was trying to be low-carb today, but it wasn’t happening. There was too much going on. The wellness summit, a daylong immersion in Goop-endorsed products, panels, doctors and other “healers,” was a “heavy lift for the team.”

    “It’s intense, man,” she said. She reached behind her to her bookshelf, which held about a dozen blue bottles of something called Real Water, which is not stripped of “valuable electrons,” which supposedly creates free radicals something something from the body’s cells. “It’s insane, and then I have to do a lot on the day, and I really don’t like speaking in public, and I have to keep getting up in front of a crowd.”

    The summit is great, don’t get her wrong. All three so far have sold out, with tickets ranging from $500 to $4,500, the highest of which included two dinners with G.P. plus two nights at Casa del Mar. But lately she has been wondering if the summit does everything it needs to. She worries that she’s just serving the same customers over and over. She met a woman who took a very long bus ride from she thinks rural Pennsylvania to the Goop summit in New York in January. “Seventy-nine percent of our American customers aren’t in New York or Los Angeles,” where these summits are held, she said; they’re in secondary markets.

    So how do you bring them in? There have been pop-up Goop stores everywhere from Dallas to Miami. There would be a digital pass to the summit. But you can’t taste a plate of ancient grains and avocado in citrus dressing on a computer. You can’t feel someone push warm oil with a jade roller over your skin through an iPad. You can’t eat a piece of chocolate that will supposedly not just regulate your hormones but restore your sex life — chocolate! — on your phone. You can only watch some panels and one-on-one conversations. So she’s thinking they might take the thing on the road. Can you believe this? She was incredulous. She still remembers sitting in her kitchen in London, celebrating a day when $45 had come in because of an advertising partnership.

    The newsletter was at first kind of mainstream New Age-forward. It had some kooky stuff in it, but nothing totally outrageous. It was concerned with basic wellness causes, like detoxes and cleanses and meditation. It wasn’t until 2014 that it began to resemble the thing it is now, a wellspring of both totally legitimate wellness tips and completely bonkers magical thinking: advice from psychotherapists and advice from doctors about how much Vitamin D to take (answer: a lot! Too much!) and vitamins for sale and body brushing and dieting and the afterlife and crystals and I swear to God something called Psychic Vampire Repellent, which is a “sprayable elixir” that uses “gem healing” to something something “bad vibes.”

    That was the year after G.P. met Elise Loehnen, 38, a former magazine editor who had been ghostwriting for G.P.’s friend, the extremely extreme personal trainer Tracy Anderson, in whose business G.P. is a minority stakeholder. Loehnen wasn’t just interested in wellness; she was obsessed with it. Wellness, she argued, isn’t just about a spa you’re going to or a cleanse you’ve started or a diet you’re on. It’s how local your food is. It’s how the chickens you eat all went to the right schools. It’s the water you drink. It’s the cures you never thought possible. It’s the level of well-being you didn’t even know to ask for.


    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  11. #11
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    Continued from previous post


    Paltrow and Elise Loehnen, Goop’s chief content officer, at the wellness summit.CreditEmma McIntyre/Getty Images

    G.P. was so excited by the way Loehnen thought. Over the last few years, as wellness went mainstream, G.P. allowed her two sides — the G.P. who was known to sit without underwear over mugwort steam to regulate her hormones and the G.P. who wanted the $2,132 straw pocketbook from Sanayi 313 that is, to be clear, made of straw — to finally be one.

    With Loehnen as editorial director, Goop began publishing extended Q. and A.s with doctors and healers like Alejandro Junger, a cardiologist who created an anti-inflammatory regimen and recently talked on Goop’s podcast about frog venom as a psychedelic for healing, which, O.K.! Steven Gundry, a cardiac surgeon, believes that lectins, a protein in some foods, are dangerous for people with autoimmune diseases. (There are a great many people who do not believe this.) Anyone from an acupuncturist to a psychic to an endocrinologist to a psychologist addressed questions that the modern woman couldn’t seem to find answers to: Why am I so unhappy? Why am I so tired? Why am I so fat? Why don’t I want to have sex anymore?

    There were stories that talked about bee-sting therapy (don’t try it; someone died from it this year) and ashwagandha and adaptogens and autoimmune diseases — an autoimmune disease at every corner, be it thyroid disease, arthritis or celiac disease; trust them, you have one. Last year, G.P. gave a platform to her friend Shiva Rose, a healer who talked about inserting a jade egg into the vagina, which she says concubines did and which she claimed could help prevent uterine prolapse. This did not go unnoticed! They sold a brush that would help your lymph flow, a salt shampoo that would detoxify your scalp, a water bottle with rose quartz in it that would infuse your water with positive energy.

    Goop knew what readers were clicking on, and it was nimble enough to meet those needs by actually manufacturing the things its readers wanted. When a story about beauty products that didn’t have endocrine disrupters and formaldehyde got a lot of traffic in 2015, the company started Goop by Juice Beauty, a collection of “clean” face creams and oils and cleansers that it promised lacked those things. When a story about “postnatal depletion,” a syndrome coined by one of the Goop doctors, did even-better-than-average business in 2017, it introduced Goop Wellness, a series of four vitamin “protocols” for women with different concerns — weight, energy, focus, etc. Goop says it sold $100,000 of them on their first day.

    The weirder Goop went, the more its readers rejoiced. And then, of course, the more Goop was criticized: by mainstream doctors with accusations of pseudoscience, by websites like Slate and Jezebel saying it was no longer ludicrous — no, now it was dangerous. And elsewhere people would wonder how Gwyneth Paltrow could try to solve our problems when her life seemed almost comically problem-free. But every time there was a negative story about her or her company, all that did was bring more people to the site — among them those who had similar kinds of questions and couldn’t find help in mainstream medicine.

    With assaults coming from all sides, Goop began to dig its heels into the dirt, not only because dirt is a natural exfoliant and also contains selenium, which is a mineral many of us are lacking and helps with thyroid function. Now Goop was growing only more successful. Now Goop was a cause, and G.P. was its martyr.

    In February, G.P. invited me over to dinner at her house, which lay heart-stopping beneath the Los Angeles palm trees and an impossible sky. She wore a white shirred-neck dress by Tibi that would be advertised in the Goop newsletter the next week as she stood in front of her stove, steaming clams and grilling bread in her devastating kitchen. She wore no apron and cooked the meal herself right in front of me. She wore no apron and cooked it herself right in front of me and drank a whiskey on the rocks.

    A woman who has worked for G.P. for a long time stood beside her, cooking an entirely separate dinner for G.P.’s children. The meal we would eat — the clams and the bread — took only a half-hour to make, but G.P. said it could have taken only 15 minutes if we weren’t talking so much. It is a recipe out of her fourth cookbook, “It’s All Easy,” which she wrote in the wake of her divorce from Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay. Suddenly, as a single mother, she wanted to create recipes that followed her particular set of food values but that she could execute quickly.

    G.P. asked what I would like to drink. I asked for a glass of red wine. G.P. gave the nod to someone over my left shoulder. I turned to see Jeffrey, the same man in a shawl-collar sweater who opened the door for me earlier. He nodded back.

    “Is he your butler?” I whispered to her when he was out of earshot.

    “No, he’s a house manager,” she said. She doesn’t know what she’d do without him. “He’s the best. He’s from Chicago. He’s so incredible. He helps me with everything.”

    Chris Martin walked in and sat down at the kitchen island and introduced himself. He saw my tape recorder and immediately told me that though I seemed nice and trustworthy, he had no interest in being part of my article, so please keep anything he says out of it.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  12. #12
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    cute title

    cracking up...

    03 FEBRUARY 2019
    Cracking the truth on vaginal eggs
    A stone egg inserted into the vagina is believed to provide a series of health benefits.


    Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop to pay $145k over vaginal egg claims

    Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle website Goop has agreed to pay $145,000 over its claims about vaginal eggs, after the California Food, Drug, and Medical Device Task Force filed a complaint against the company.


    Vaginal eggs may not be all they're cracked up to be.

    Love eggs, yoni eggs, jade eggs, vaginal jade eggs... There are even more names for the device than there are benefits.

    These eggs are made from a variety of materials; however, the most common are smoothed rose quartz, black obsidian or nephrite jade.

    These stones are believed to strengthen vaginal muscles, increase libido, enhance feminine energy, improve physical appearance and prevent and alleviate uterine prolapse.

    In order to reap these health benefits, the egg needs to be inserted into the vagina.

    In an interview with Women’s Health, medical doctor and sexologist Dr Elna Rudolph states that the egg should only be inserted for about 15 to 20 minutes at a time. “I wouldn’t advise anybody wear one 24/7 – you need to relax your pelvic floor at times.”

    Loud criticism

    Over the last year, the love egg has come under scrutiny and a lot of criticism after Goop, the affluent lifestyle site owned by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, published an article praising the incredible healing qualities of the stones.

    The story, now removed from the site, stated that the stones can provide women with various vaginal health benefits.

    Gynaecologists, however, emerged in droves to deny any health benefits attributed to the stone and claimed that there was no scientific evidence to back the claims made by the site.

    In an interview with Health, gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter warns that using these eggs can be really harmful, “The stones are really porous, so I’m not sure how they could be cleaned or sterilised between uses… [It’s] especially an issue when one of the recommended ways to use it is sleeping with it in. We don't recommend that tampons or menstrual cups be left in for longer than 12 hours, and those are either disposable or cleanable."

    Speaking to Vogue, physical therapist Stacey J Futterman Tauriello, who specialises in pelvic-floor rehabilitation, states, “Saying that [a jade egg] can alleviate uterine prolapse is absurd. Prolapse is a laxity of ligaments. [Strengthening] the pelvic floor helps support those organs, but it doesn’t change the structure of them.”

    Insufficient scientific evidence

    Last month the Goop site had to settle a R2 075 000 lawsuit over the health benefits the site attributed to the egg. According to court documents, the claims about the egg made by the site were not backed with scientific evidence.

    In a statement, Goop noted, “This settlement does not indicate any liability on Goop’s part. While the company has not received any complaints regarding these product claims, it is happy to fully refund any Goop customer who has purchased any of the challenged products.”

    The vaginal jade eggs are still for sale on the lifestyle site.

    Image credit: iStock
    Lauren Mitchell
    That being said, more people prolly know goop from this whole jade egg kerfuffle.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
    Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart

  13. #13
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    She's a delightful and sexy ignoramus. I'll give her that.
    Kung Fu is good for you.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Jamieson View Post
    She's a delightful and sexy ignoramus. I'll give her that.
    That stuff sells! Images Illusion Hollywood affiliation (on some levels) etc all work within the marketing and capitalistic world of imagination and self congratulatory praise

  15. #15
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    Ibogaine

    From jade eggs to ibogaine. Gwyneth gots GOOP going on...

    Gwyneth Paltrow Says Psychedelics Are The Next Wellness Craze — & She's Not Wrong
    CORY STIEG
    MARCH 6, 2019, 12:15 PM


    PHOTO: PHILLIP FARAONE/GETTY IMAGES.
    Usually, when Gwyneth Paltrow says something wildly inaccurate about health or wellness on goop, a chorus of "actually's" reverberates throughout the internet. But in a new interview with The New York Times, the actress and CEO addressed the dangerous pseudoscientific advice that occasionally appears on goop, explaining that it's never meant to be prescriptive. "Somehow gets translated into, 'Gwyneth says you should do this,'" she told The New York Times.
    When asked what she sees as the "next big thing" in wellness, Paltrow gave a surprising answer: "I think how psychedelics affect health and mental health and addiction will come more into the mainstream," she said. After clarifying that she had never personally used psychedelics before, she said, "I mean there’s undeniably some link between being in that state and being connected to some other universal cosmic something." As it turns out, she might be onto something.
    Just like Paltrow didn't invent yoga, she also didn't invent psychedelic drugs. Since the 1960s, people have contested their use for treating depression and anxiety. But promising new research suggests that using psychedelic drugs such as LSD, MDMA, psilocybin (aka "mushrooms"), and ayahuasca, in conjunction with psychotherapy can improve symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). This is still an emerging field, but is gaining mainstream attention from people looking for an alternative to antidepressants. Just yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray that contains ketamine, an anesthetic drug that goes by the name "Special K," and can be used to treat depression.
    So, yeah, psychedelics might be the "big new thing" that Paltrow described. In The New York Times interview, she named "ibogaine, that shrub from Gabon" as one she had heard of. Ibogaine is a powerful psychedelic drug that occurs naturally in West Africa, and is used in rituals and healing ceremonies. However, ibogaine may significantly reduce withdrawal from opiates and even eliminate substance-related cravings, according to MAPS. For this reason, there's a lot of interest in researching how ibogaine can be used treat the opioid epidemic.
    Paltrow's summation about psychedelics connecting people to a larger "cosmic something" isn't that off, either. Using hallucinogens, experts believe, helps people develop greater "levels of spirituality," which researchers believe improves emotional stability, and reduces symptoms of anxiety, depression, and disordered eating. There's also a more physiological change that takes place: Hallucinogenic drugs re-structure the function of neurons in the brain, which essentially "repairs" circuits that may malfunction in a person with anxiety or mood disorders, according to a 2018 study.
    Whether or not this is exactly what Paltrow was referring to in the interview remains to be seen (on goop, likely). So, while this might seem like one more far-out thing she's promoting, it's worth knowing that it's kind of legit.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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