Relive the wildest wellness trends that Gwyneth Paltrow has promoted, from milk cleanse to vaginal eggs
But perhaps what she's known for most of all is being the founder of her immensely popular wellness brand Goop.
Since she founded the brand in 2008, she has turned it into a multi-million dollar empire, even expanding to have a full-time team and building a clothing line out of it, G. Label by Goop.
Despite its success, Goop, which sells products like an $1,000 gemstone heat therapy mat and $55 sex oil, has become embroiled in controversy on more than one occasion, as Paltrow has made headlines for some of the wild health 'tips' that she's peddled - and sold - on the platform.
In the new biography about the wellness mogul authored by Amy Odell, she writes that Paltrow become 'indoctrinated' into the world of 'big wellness' after her dad was diagnosed with throat cancer, and she began searching for answers and allegedly went down a 'rabbit hole,' per People.
According to Odell's book, 'big wellness,' is 'an industry that demonizes things like toxins and chemicals present in everyday items that we can't escape.'
Her father's diagnosis, along with a health scare that had Paltrow believing that she had a stroke, encouraged her to seek out all different kinds of doctors and wellness practices - like rectal ozone therapy, something she spoke about during a 2023 podcast appearance.
Over the years, she's backed a slew of bizarre and eyebrow-raising health trends, and FEMAIL has rounded up the craziest guidance she's doled out over the years.
The vaginal jade eggs that ended up in a lawsuit and a $145,000 settlement
In 2017, Paltrow began selling $66 jade and rose quartz eggs on Goop's website, which were meant to be inserted vaginally and were said to have a number of benefits to them.
According to ABC News, the advertising that Goop peddled on these precious stone eggs promised to 'balance hormones,' 'prevent uterine prolapse,' and regulate your period.
At the time, a blog post on Goop further peddled their magic, as the author wrote at the time that the eggs can not only help you sexually, but that they were great for your kidneys.
'Jade eggs can help cultivate sexual energy, increase orgasm, balance the cycle, stimulate key reflexology around vaginal walls, tighten and tone, prevent uterine prolapse, increase control of the whole perineum and bladder, develop and clear chi pathways in the body, intensify feminine energy, and invigorate our life force,' the author wrote in a since-deleted blog post that was obtained by Forbes at the time.
'The jade creates kidney strength - it's known as jing in Chinese energy, and it's all about sexual potency, and even beauty - if your hormones are balanced, your skin will look better,' the post continued.
'It's a holistic combination of things, where one benefit builds to another. Jade also takes away negativity and cleanses - it's a very heavy material, very powerful.'
But it turns out that the jade eggs were not capable of doing all of the above, like balancing out your hormones - and it resulted in a lawsuit for Paltrow.
The California Food, Drug, and Medical Device Task Force filed a complaint in 2018 against Goop for its 'misleading claims.'
Days later, it was settled for $145,000, and the jade eggs were promptly removed from the website - although they came back online years later, this time described as something you can use for Kegel exercises.
Paltrow went on an eight-day goat's milk cleanse that she said helped get rid of parasites
In 2017, Paltrow revealed during an interview with Women's Health that she had recently completed an eight-day goat's milk cleanse in order to get parasites out of her body.
For over a week, she drank nothing but goat milk.
Parasites can be caused by certain foods, like unpasteurized milk, per Cleveland Clinic, and they typically make you very sick.
They are often treated with medication like antibiotics or drugs that are especially targeted to get rid of parasites.
'I'm really interested in the impact of heavy metals and parasites on our bodies,' she told the outlet at the time.
'I think they're two of the biggest culprits in terms of why we feel bad. I'm knee-deep in figuring out ways to clear them from the body, looking at all sorts of potentially weird modalities,' she continued.
However, it was a claim that was quickly called out by many medical experts, like Canadian gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter, who took to her own website to pen a blog post about Paltrow's claim, calling them 'stupid' and 'dangerous.'
At the time, a naturopath named Linda Lancaster had written about parasites for Goop's website, claiming that a parasite is 'anything that infests the body and has a life of its own' - and she was the one who believed goats milk was the answer.
And per Dr. Gunter, that was totally inaccurate.
'This advice is stupid and dangerous and frankly insulting and if Paltrow is really a goat milk cleanse devotee it isn't just her advice that stinks, I bet her gas is atrocious too,' Dr. Gunter wrote.
Paltrow was once stung by bees - on purpose - to get rid of scarring
In 2016, Paltrow revealed that she had voluntarily tried a treatment called apitherapy, which she said was 'thousands of years old' and involved bee venom through an injection or even live insect bites.
'I've been stung by bees,' the former actress told The New York Times during a 2016 interview.
'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,' she admitted.
According to Harper's Bazaar, the therapy is supposed to help heal your skin or old injuries due to the anti-inflammatory properties that are found in bee venom.
At the time, Paltrow even wrote a few blog posts on Goop touting the treatments.
She claimed that she had gotten it for an 'old injury,' which, miraculously, completely disappeared.
Dr. David Manganaro, an internal medicine doctor, was interviewed by the site, and he claimed that the peculiar practice can also be used to 'alleviate joint pain.'
However, in 2018, a 55-year-old Spanish woman passed away from apitherapy following two years of treatment, after she developed an allergic reaction.
She suffered anaphylaxis, which led to her entering a coma and enduring multiple organ failure. She passed away weeks later in Ramón y Cajal University Hospital in Madrid.
Goop once sold $120 'bio-frequency healing' stickers, claiming they had the same materials as NASA spacesuits
Goop once sold something called 'bio-frequency healing' stickers in 2017, which the brand swore would 'rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies,' per Gizmodo.
They claimed that the product, made by Body Vibes, could help reduce anxiety.
The stickers were wearable, and they were said to be made with the same material as a NASA space suit.
'Human bodies operate at an ideal energetic frequency, but everyday stresses and anxiety can throw off our internal balance, depleting our energy reserves and weakening our immune systems,' the since-deleted product description read, as captured by Gizmodo.
'Body Vibes stickers (made with the same conductive carbon material NASA uses to line space suits so they can monitor an astronaut's vitals during wear) come pre-programmed to an ideal frequency, allowing them to target imbalances,' the description concluded.
However, when NASA caught wind of this, they were less than pleased, and refuted claims that their spacesuits were made of any such material.
A representative for NASA told Gizmodo at the time that they 'do not have any conductive carbon material lining the spacesuits,' with another former scientist at the organization labeling it a 'load of BS.'
Goop recommend an at-home coffee enema but warned to only use it if you know what to do
Every year, Goop produces various round-up guides on the best detox practices and beauty and wellness products, which include a myriad of tips and tricks.
But in 2018, their beauty and wellness detox guide especially stood out against the crowd, as they included a $135 At-Home Coffee Enema Implant O-Rama System on the list.
They boasted that it was one of Dr. Alejandro Junger's favorite products, the cardiologist and founder of cleanse system The Clean Program, who often penned pieces for their site.
However, Goop added that they only recommended the product for those who 'knew what they were doing.'
Though it looks like the Implant O-Rama System is now defunct, as the website's domain is expired, a coffee enema promises total detoxification.
Per Healthline, a coffee enema involves injecting brewed and caffeinated coffee, along with water, into the colon via the rectum.
Many report having relief from constipation as a result, but others claim intestinal and liver detoxification, and a boost to the immune system, per the medical outlet.
However, they noted that there was no scientific evidence that a coffee enema is 'helpful in treating any medical condition.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
23 minutes ago
- Times
Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop a ‘noxious and chaotic' workplace
Robert F Kennedy Jr might be the one trying officially to 'Make America Healthy Again', but Gwyneth Paltrow is the original 'Maha Mommy'. Back in 2017, the Oscar-winning actress took a break from Hollywood to launch her wellness brand Goop, which has offered women spiritual salvation via vagina candles, coffee enemas and $15,000 sex toys. But behind the scenes, Paltrow ran her brand like a high-class Hunger Games, according to a book published on Tuesday. Gwyneth, by Amy Odell, who wrote the bestselling 2022 biography of Anna Wintour, portrays the 52-year-old actress as a semi-sociopathic, privileged ice queen who courts people she needs with her charm, only to use and manipulate them for her advantage — and spit them out mercilessly when she's done. Take Andres Sosa, whom Paltrow hired in 2018 as her chief marketing officer from the Outnet, Net-a-Porter's online retailer. Sosa lasted seven months at Goop after Paltrow 'quickly became dissatisfied with his performance … and before long she was rolling her eyes and making her classic vomit face behind his back', Odell writes. Like many gifted founders, Paltrow is portrayed as clueless when it comes to managing the people who helped turn her business into a $250 million company. Within the past two years, Odell notes, Goop lost at least 140 employees, including its chief financial officer, chief technology officer, chief revenue officer, general counsel and chief content officer — Elise Loehnen, who, after surviving seven years at the wellness company, released a book, On Our Best Behaviour: The Price Women Pay to Be Good, that renounced the cleansing culture she helped Paltrow create with her book. Goop's office culture was 'noxious and chaotic', Odell writes. 'Executives struggled to navigate Gwyneth's impatience and perfectionism.' Professional women, Odell writes, would act like 'they were on The Real Housewives. They seemed threatened by each other, based on whom Gwyneth was favouring in any given moment. Paltrow could be warm and caring, but also cold.' Describing Paltrow as having a 'capricious and indirect' leadership style, Odell writes that 'currying favour was the only reliable way to secure one's position' at Goop. Paltrow, who was born in Los Angeles to a director father and actress mother, was notoriously cheap with employees at Goop, Odell writes. Rather than hire freelancers, food editors were expected not only to make Paltrow her lunch, but deliver food to Brad Falchuk, who is now her husband but at the time lived miles away, she writes. The 'erratic' Paltrow would become 'childishly unhappy' when anything went wrong and 'failed to empower experienced people to do what she'd hired them to do', according to the book. This was also true of people who took care of Paltrow personally, the book claims. In the foreword for her 2011 cookbook, My Father's Daughter, Paltrow praised her assistant Julia Turshen as the woman whose 'tireless, artful assistance' she 'literally could not have created this book without'. But one year later, Paltrow unceremoniously dumped Turshen after The New York Times revealed that she ghost-wrote the cookbook, Odell writes. Long before she launched Goop, Paltrow proved she could be snobbish and childish to the people closest to her, Odell claims. Paltrow's former fiancé Brad Pitt, whom she met during the filming of the 1995 movie Seven, is offered as one example. After the couple broke up in 1997, Paltrow told an interviewer that 'Brad and I had very different upbringings. So when we go to restaurants and order caviar, I have to say to Brad, 'This is beluga and this is ossetra.'' Later, Paltrow allegedly told the cosmetics scion Aerin Lauder that Pitt was 'dumber than a sack of shit'. Paltrow also gossiped about the actor Ben Affleck, whom she dated on and off from 1997 to 2000, Odell writes. Though Affleck apparently was a terrible boyfriend who struggled with addictions to alcohol and gambling, Paltrow was attracted to his intellect, Odell writes. 'Affleck at times seemed more interested in playing video games with the guys at his house than being with Gwyneth,' she writes. And yet, 'she spoke openly about how much she enjoyed their sex life'. Ben Affleck and Paltrow at the 1999 Golden Globes RON WOLFSON/GETTY IMAGES Even Paltrow's onetime best friend, Madonna, comes in for a flogging. The pair, who had been besties for ten years, fell out in 2010 after 'Madonna showed up to an island where Gwyneth and Chris Martin [the Coldplay singer who was Paltrow's husband at the time] were vacationing,' Odell writes. 'Madonna seemed to know that Gwyneth would be there, which Gwyneth seemed to find strange … Madonna then insisted Gwyneth and Martin join her for a big group dinner at a long table where Madonna went off on her daughter Lourdes. Gwyneth and Martin were disgusted by the behaviour. 'I can't be around this woman any more,' Martin told Gwyneth. 'She's awful.' Gwyneth agreed that Madonna was toxic and ended the friendship.' But although Paltrow is portrayed as vain, selfish and childish, it's true that she was born with her finger on the zeitgeist. Even today, she can change the national conversation and bask in its spotlight with a single appearance or social media post. A commercial she recorded for the tech company Astronomer last week went viral, capitalising on the attention from a cheating scandal involving the company's chief executive and chief people officer at a Coldplay concert. It was only the latest example of her power. As Odell notes, 'Whatever happens with Goop, Gwyneth will be fine. She has a way of emerging victorious from any calamity … She has convinced the public at every turn to buy whatever she's selling.'
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Gwyneth: The Biography by Amy Odell review – Gwyn and bear it
Gwyneth: The Biography opens, where else, with the vaginal egg, an episode that has come to stand for Paltrow's general ability to sell dumb ideas to credulous rich women using widespread mockery as her marketing rocket fuel. (In case you need a reminder: this was the $66 jade egg Paltrow sold via her lifestyle brand Goop that promised various health benefits upon insertion.) Amy Odell's book, billed as delivering 'insight and behind-the-scenes details of Paltrow's relationships, family, friendships, iconic films', as well as her creation of Goop, takes no particular stand on this, nor on many of Paltrow's more divisive episodes, instead offering us what feels like an earnest jog back through the actor and wellness guru's years of fame. The author writes in the acknowledgments that she spoke to 220 people for the book, in which case we have to assume that a great many of them had little to say. To be fair to Odell, whose previous biography was of Anna Wintour, another difficult and controlling subject – although Wintour did give Odell some access – Paltrow's world is notoriously hard to break into if she's not on board with a project; the author quotes numerous hacks tasked with profiling Paltrow for magazines who found themselves iced out of her networks, and the same happens to her in the early stages of research. Odell's task only gets harder in the second half of the book, which tackles the Goop years. Since, she claims, many of its staff signed NDAs, those sections lack even the modest stream of gossip that enlivens the first half. Which, by the way, is perfectly enjoyable. I ripped through Odell's account of Paltrow's youth as the simultaneously indulged and benignly neglected daughter of two showbusiness big guns, the actor Blythe Danner and the producer and director Bruce Paltrow. Danner is prim and unemotional; Bruce Paltrow is more demonstrative but still emotionally evasive, and Odell reheats some well-documented episodes between father and daughter, such as the trip they made to Paris when Paltrow was around 10, during which Bruce told her: 'I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who will always love you, no matter what.' (Paltrow, in interviews, has always offered up this story as a moving tribute to her dad's love for her.) Odell also tells us the (I think) new detail that, when Paltrow was older, 'her dad once gave her lace underwear as a gift'. It's a small addition but it stands out against what feels like the book's trove of reconstituted material. In 1984, when Paltrow was 12, the family moved from LA to New York. We learn that she felt out-classed at Spence, the Upper East Side private school where the money is older and the blood bluer than in the Danner-Paltrow household. We also learn that, in spite of this, Paltrow – whose biggest nightmare is listed in the senior school yearbook as 'obesity' – manages to form a clique around herself that may or may not have been involved in the drawing of a penis on the library wall. It's small potatoes but we'll take goes into great depth about the Williamstown theatre festival – presumably because the old theatre lags actually agreed to talk to her – a storied annual event in rural Massachusetts where Danner takes her daughter every summer, first to watch her mother on stage, and later, to act herself. I liked these passages, in which you get a real sense of a summer stock scene that has always attracted top actors and their nepo babies. At one point, a barely teenage Paltrow takes the assistant director's seat and the head of the festival fails to ask her to move. Paltrow is entitled, wan, sometimes foul-mouthed, intensely focused and in these scenes, really comes alive. By studying her mother on stage, she learns how to be an actor. And so on to the Hollywood years, where everything becomes less fresh and more familiar. We slog through the background to productions of Emma, Shallow Hal and Shakespeare in Love and then we get to Harvey Weinstein, who during the first flush of #MeToo, Paltrow accused of making a pass at her. Odell quotes from Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's book, She Said, but there's not much more to be harvested on a story broken and pursued by such good reporters. What's left is a trawl through a lot of things we already know – although there is one very funny motif from those years, which involves Paltrow miming throwing up behind the backs of people she dislikes, one of whom is Minnie Driver. (Team Driver all the way, here, obviously.) Also an old friend of Paltrow's claims 'she invented ghosting', which sounds about right. Finally, Goop: this was a story I hadn't been paying much attention to lately, and so a genuine surprise of the book is to learn that the company founded by Paltrow in 2008 has been a much shakier business than advertised. We know that Goop paid to settle a lawsuit brought by the California Food, Drug and Medical Device Task Force over false claims about the health benefits of the vaginal eggs. And we also know it accepted judgments by the National Advertising Division about other false claims. But, as Odell puts it, Paltrow's 'middling run as the CEO of Goop' has ensured that the company 'hasn't experienced sustained profitability … and has lacked a clear business strategy as it ping-pongs from one of Gwyneth's ideas to the next'. Here's a reveal: that Paltrow is such a massive cheapskate she used Goop's food editors to cook for her. 'In the office,' writes Odell, 'it was common knowledge that the food editors would go to Gwyneth's house after work and make her dinner under the guise of 'recipe testing'. When she and Brad Falchuk were living apart, the food editor would bring dinner to his house, too, which wasn't a light lift in LA traffic.' She also asked vendors to donate their services to her and Falchuk's wedding in return for advertising. The difficulty with all this is that Paltrow is a charmless subject who never rises to the level of monstrous. She's an OK actor, a so-so businesswoman – Kim Kardashian, as Odell points out, has had much greater success with her company, Skims. The story, then, is less about how Paltrow became this figure in the culture than why on earth she was elevated in the first place. Odell doesn't have the time or the inclination to get into this, instead offering pat lines such as, 'love her or hate her, for over 30 years, we haven't been able to look away'. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion At the very end, Odell draws a line between Paltrow's peddling of pseudoscience on Goop and Robert F Kennedy Jr, 'a fellow raw milk drinker' and Trump's vaccine-sceptical health secretary, which feels like a sudden turn towards a more interesting and confident authorial voice. If only it had piloted the whole book. Gwyneth: The Biography by Amy Odell is published by Atlantic (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Richard Bacon reveals he's now reliant on heartburn tablets and vitamin injections to cope with the fallout from his heavy drinking - and quit AA because it's 'boring'
Richard Bacon has opened up about his long-running struggle with alcohol addiction - admitting he's sleep-deprived and reliant on heartburn tablets and vitamin injections to cope with the fallout from heavy drinking. Richard was famously just 18 months into his dream job at Blue Peter when he was fired at the age of 22 after admitting he took cocaine in a London nightclub in 1997. He has since been open about his continuing addiction struggles, recently opening up in a candid podcast chat. The presenter, now 49, said that he struggles to take accountability after a doctor told him his addiction is a disease inherited from his alcoholic mother. 'I went to see an alcohol doctor not long ago,' he said in the chat. 'I'm not out of control or anything, but I do think I should drink less. It affects your sleep and I get bored of being tired. 'I don't get enough sleep because I drink too much. I enjoy drinking.' Speaking on The Perfect Day podcast with Jessica Knappett, he added: 'You know you drink too much when you have a lot of Rennie. You know you're middle aged and you drink too much and you're popping those things.' The father-of-two also confessed to a regular habit of having vitamin B12 injections to cope with the after-effects of drinking too much. 'A vitamin B12 injection in your bum is famously good for hangovers. It brings you back to life,' he said. 'At the end of last year and for the first few months of this year, I had one a week. I've got this doctor - he's a bit like Michael Jackson's doctor - he just gives me anything I ask for.' 'At one point I had eight prescriptions and there wasn't really much wrong with me. He's just like, 'you're a bit deficient in this, bit deficient in that. Bit of this, bit of that.' A lot of it's sort of vitamin based, but weirdly prescription based. But it did work… He's terrific.' Richard was sacked from children's TV programme Blue Peter in 1998 after admitting to taking cocaine. To this day he is the only presenter in the history of the show to have been sacked. 'I got a Blue Peter job at 21 and then lost it at 22 and it was a big scandal at the time,' Richard reflected. 'I suppose there's something about getting caught for taking drugs where you can just come back, can't you? It's not one of the worst ones. 'There are far worse ones that make you look like a malicious person. If you beat someone up, do something aggressively sexual, say something racist... those reveal something about you that people don't like. I think the desire to get drunk and get high is something people generally can get over.' Now a successful creator of TV formats and the man behind shows like This Is My House and I Literally Just Told You, Richard admits his lifestyle can still get in the way. 'What I find annoying about myself is if I have a night of not drinking, I'll go into the office - I work on ideas... and I'll just have so much energy, and I'll be better at it.' Despite still drinking regularly, he added he ditched Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) because he found the meetings 'boring'. 'I've gone through loads of periods of stopping, and I've done periods of AA. I admire AA. It's a strange combination of people telling the most dramatic stories you've ever heard that I find really boring. I'm not even joking.' He recalled one meeting in Chelsea with several famous faces in the room. 'This guy was telling this story - he'd come out of prison and he'd gone to prison because he'd got high and he'd stolen a car and he was chased by a police helicopter then he drove through a police barricade. And I remember just sitting there checking my watch going, 'boring!' 'Imagine someone you know telling you that story? But somehow it's just one dramatic story after another, and it became a bit numb to it.' Despite this, he praised the 'generosity' of long-term sober members who continue to attend meetings seemingly to help others. 'If I'd been sober for 15 years, I wouldn't still be going to AA, and listening to more stories,' he said. 'I think for some of them, they are fairly certain they won't drink again but they do want to help. So it's a very positive place. It just didn't work for me.' Richard, who said he was diagnosed with 'a particularly strong strain of ADHD' aged 42, recently consulted a specialist about why he drinks so much - and was told he inherited the destructive tendency. 'My mum's basically an alcoholic. My granddad died of alcoholism. He went, 'Well that's why, it's just genetics.' 'I said, some people think it's the result of childhood trauma or something you've been running away from or not dealt with. And he was like, 'Nah, it's just genetics. It's a disease.' 'So now I think I can just say to my wife: it's not my fault! It's grandad's fault. It's mum's fault.' He added: 'I drink and I enjoy it and I don't seem to get in trouble so it's fine. It's not so much that I'm worried about being dangerous. I just the calories and the sleep. That bit is annoying.' To slash calories in his drink, he said, he avoids beer and red wine and sticks to vodka - particularly in the form of a martini with a twist. 'When you go to a bar and order vodka and they go, what sort of vodka do you want? I think they all taste the same! It's so irrelevant.' The former Radio 5 Live and Capital FM host lives in north London with his wife Rebecca McFarlane and their two children, Arthur, 13, and Ivy, 11. He admits parenthood didn't quite sober him up the way people might expect. '[Rebecca] had always wanted to be a mum,' he explained. 'So it was a really wonderful thing, but I think she looks back with disappointment at me at that time because I was still going out and not pulling my weight and coming in late. 'I think those first few years, I didn't snap into what you're kind of required to do quickly enough. So there was too much of a burden on her.' He continued: 'I hadn't wanted to be a parent until I met her, and then we fell in love really intensely. And she would talk about kids a lot, and that made me think, oh, right, OK. 'I recently tried to imagine having another baby... I'm so pleased I'm out of that phase. Rebecca did the real work here, but it is definitely harder than people say. 'No one really says how hard it is. They're constantly relying on me to keep them alive. It's like, f***ing hell. When they're young - two, three, four - they're flat out annoying.'
