Our commitment to our community
Smart supplements not snake oil
Our supplement range is developed by a naturopathic, research and scientific team with years of experience working with women in menopause. Together, they analyse peer reviewed trial data for 100’s of whole foods, plants, minerals and vitamins to select the very best ingredients to go into our blends.
We use the Green Climactic Scale1 and the Menopause Specific Quality of Life (MENQOL) protocol.
The medical profession remains uncertain on why we experience menopause at all2.
How do our studies work?
Tested in real life, by people like you.
Our impact study participants are recruited via social media and screened purely for any underlying health conditions that may make our blends inappropriate or difficult to evaluate. We use the Greene Climacteric Scale3 and the Menopause Specific Quality of Life (MENQOL) protocol to assess symptom severity prior to the tracking study, the same framework used in doctor surgeries to identify menopause. Participants then track the most bothersome symptoms each week by SMS and long-form surveys. Insights gathered help us validate the results seen by individual ingredients in clinical trial settings. This data is then supported by 1000’s of customers who track the efficacy of our formulations every day in the real world and share their results directly with us too. Which means you know our blends have the seal of approval from people just like you.
Why are product studies so important?
Evidence is everything. Filling the knowledge gap, together. In-field consumer studies test the real-life efficacy of every supplement we make.
The truth is there simply isn’t enough research into menopause. We are one of 5 mammals that experience this life-stage. The rest live in the sea. The medical profession remains uncertain on why we experience menopause at all1(impacted, in no small part, by the fact that less than 2% of public medical research is spent on female fertility in the UK). Drawing observations from the animal kingdom, some speculate that the end of our fertility may be designed to enable us to pass on wisdom acquired to others in our ‘clan’.
In Chinese Medicine, it is believed that this ‘Second Spring’ allows us to draw the energy that had been focused in our womb and reproductive organs, to our heart and minds. Neuroscientists point to the fact that our brain, post menopause, actually grows additional grey matter - challenging the myth that this journey dampens our sharpness.
Three in four of us feel ‘blind-sided’ by menopause
Research by the think tank Gen-M2 in 2021 revealed a stat that chimes with the conversations we have in our community. Most of us experience symptoms long before we identify the cause. A study by Newson Health found that we will wait, on average, between 3 and 4 years before being ‘diagnosed’. During that time, suicide rates peek for women. 1 in 10 of us will leave the workforce. And countless lives are impacted.
Participants then track the most bothersome symptoms each week by SMS and long-form surveys. Insights gathered help us validate the results seen by individual ingredients in clinical trial settings3.
Hormone irregularities make evaluating inventions difficult.
The brilliant complexity of the female form is often held accountable for the lack of gender balance in clinical studies and research. And increased and irregular hormone fluctuations in menopause make it even harder to evaluate the impact of intervention.
‘Difficult’ doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ‘do’.
We are committed to analysing all the data that exists relating to all menopause. To verifying what we create with our community. To rooting out pseudoscience. To respecting practices that have been handed down, generation to generation - but may not have the budgets of big pharma behind them to undertake clinical trials.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK447620/
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/menopause-perimenopause-symptoms.html
3. The MENQOL-Intervention survey consists of 32 questions/symptoms divided into 5 domains: vasomotor (3 questions), psychosocial (7 questions), physical (16 questions), sexual (3 questions) and medical intervention (3 questions). Prior to the trial commencing, LIMINAL trialists are asked whether they have experienced a particular symptom in the previous week and how bothered they are by the symptom from “0” (not at all bothered) to “6” (extremely bothered), in a Likert scale format. In addition, they are asked to track key symptoms on a weekly basis to allow us to evaluate the typical time frame in which participants saw results against those symptoms. Higher MENQOL scores indicate poorer quality of life.
