Debunking Goop Labs: Part 2 — Musings of a Modern Mermaid

Welcome back to the second part of my Goop expose (not a real one but fun none the less). While this was a fun thing to write about and an entertaining couple of hours watching this train wreck, I can’t advocate enough that no one watch this show or use Goop as any kind of anything in their lives. If you want a more feminist, women-centric, a multi-topic website I suggest Refinery29. They actually use science and real skepticism with things that have yet to be proven. It is truly amazing and so much better than this mess. Ok, enough with the intros, lets dive in!

The Health-Span Plan- This episode is all about aging; how to age well, how to be healthy as you age, and if there are any genetic issues in your family that you can contract and how to handle that. The first part of this is great because they are using two actual doctors to deal with this idea. The premise is that by taking a blood test, the women will be able to find out what their biological age is and then will be able to also test if they have any genetic predisposition for diseases. The goal of these two doctors is to also treat illness or potential illness/aging with nutrition. Once the women in Goop take their blood test, they will then be given a new dietary recommendation to help keep them healthier and potentially combat disease. Dr. Longo is the main doctor who is developing this method, and on top of developing this nutrition idea, he is also working on developing a method of fasting with nutrition supplements. It is a method that is mimicking fasting, but not making the person go completely without food. Dr. Longo goes on throughout the rest of the episode to talk about how fasting is amazing for you and your health, and can apparently help you live longer. His main assertion is that with fasting, your body starts to attack the bad cells in your body and the good cells multiply. That is a very simple explanation but since I am not a doctor, that is the best I can do. Gwyneth decides to do this fasting diet for 5 days where she gets to have a little bit of food, that gets less and less every day, and on day 3 of this fast, she starts to tell just how absolutely horrible she feels. She says this even on the last day of her fast, but then when speaking to the doctor again tells him how great she feels because fasting is amazing. She lies straight to the camera after telling us how hard it was during her time fasting on her own. This minor moment proves to me that she cannot be trusted since in her own life she is not willing to always practice what she preaches. The science of fasting is still incredibly new and not flushed out. It should also be noted that Dr. Longo mentioned multiple times that it can even encourage the mind to develop an eating disorder since you are forcing yourself not to eat, and counting calories so carefully. So proceed with caution.

On top of changing their diets, 3 of Goop’s employees decide to do facial treatments. One gets 100 acupuncture needles in her face to stimulate collagen production (not so crazy), one gets threads surgically implanted into her face to stimulate collagen and help hold up her skin (super insane), that will dissolve over time, and Gwyneth got a vampire facial where she got her own platelets needled into her face (scary but becoming normal). At the very end of it, Dr. Longo then goes on to say medication is the worst thing a person can do to their bodies. Obviously do not take meds you don’t need, but so many people need medication to survive and he was arguing that even that was bad for you. Yet another man who wants to say that one thing cures everything. While the idea of fasting is currently being tested by so many doctors, I would have to say that once again Goop falls flat by suggesting all meds are bad and promoting procedures and tests that no insurance covers. So I have to say it’s a no from me over during this episode.

The Energy Experience- This may be the most insane one yet. This one is all about energy healing. Yes, you read that correctly. Energy healing. John Amaral is the expert of this particular idea, and he says he is an energy healer and chiropractor. I am all for the chiropractor part, the chiropractic work is amazing, but he claims that he can move people and make them move based on the energy around them and be able to heal them through that. While I agree that there is an energy around people, I am more willing to believe that ghosts exist than I am to believe that this man can tap into your energy 4 feet around you and then move you and heal you based on that. He claims he can cure any alignment you have, as well as mental illness. He also claims that by moving the energy around you, he can heal all the trauma you have experienced throughout your life. The only footage we see in the episode of this happening is with Julianne Hough, who is a dancer and can move in these crazy ways, and Gwyneth who has seen him before and uses him a lot. We do not see the other two Goop employees and we are told it is because they had emotional experiences and not any movement because their bodies were ok. As much as I am here for using different methods to help with pain and other physical alignments, this man and Goop are advocating for this method for all doctoring needs. They even talk about how a man was able to get cancer cured with energy work. I am here for everyone to do what they need to do to make themselves feel better, but suggesting that getting energy work is the only thing that can be used to truly make a person feel better is madness and dangerous. I love yoga and use yoga to help cope with pain and anxiety, but I still see a doctor and take medication to help cope with the problems that I live with. There is nothing wrong with that and to suggest that you should use a real doctor; there is something wrong with suggesting that you should only use energy to heal is.

Are You Intuit- Laura Lynne Jackson is a medium and a psychic. And while I like to think of myself as a very open person when it comes to the afterlife and psychic instances, it is not easy to trust it on the television, especially from Goop. She goes on to say how everyone can be psychic and it is just learning how to let yourself be open to that energy in order to learn to understand these things. Since this doesn’t really have to do with not seeing a doctor, not using it to solve any real problem, I am ok with this being explored. Laura even goes on to say that therapy is amazing and is not a bad thing but that working with a medium can bring you more closure. So while I am still super skeptical and not sure how true this whole thing is, it wasn’t hurting anyone and they were not advocating for anything horrible. Laura even tells the one person who is skeptical in this that it was ok and she just needs to work it out on her own. I really appreciate that she wasn’t forcing this on her like many other experts were forcing their way or opinions on people who were being skeptical.

All in all, this show went a lot better than I thought it was going to. Goop is infamous for failing to be a trustworthy site and has harmed women many times over for the things they have said. Gwyneth even mentions multiple times that they wanted to do other things but the Netflix legal team said no. This to me is very telling and explains a bit why this felt so much milder then I was expecting. While this show ended on a positive note, there was a lot of things wrong with it, and Goop as a whole. I would still caution people against watching this show or visiting the site and would like to remind you all that while natural and unconventional methods are fine, never be afraid to pair that with actual medical science.

Madey

Cover image found here