Hot Flushes, Cool Gimmicks:
Who Else Is Making Money Off Menopause?
Scroll your phone for five minutes and menopause will find you.
Cooling bracelets. Hormone-balancing teas. Serums for “menopause skin.” Supplements promising calm, sleep, focus, libido, sometimes all at once. If you have ever thought “Should I try this?” you are not alone.
But this week, doctors, researchers and clinicians across the UK and US have raised a red flag. Menopause has become a marketing gold rush and women are paying the price.
What The Research Is Saying.
Medical professionals are seeing a clear pattern. More women are arriving at GP and specialist appointments having already tried multiple products recommended online, often from social media influencers rather than clinicians.
Many report that these “solutions” didn’t help and in some cases caused side effects or delayed appropriate treatment.
Doctors are now openly cautioning women to be sceptical. There is limited evidence behind many menopause‑targeted products, particularly supplements, wearable gadgets and beauty treatments that claim to “reset” hormones or eliminate symptoms. As one clinician put it bluntly “If something sounds too good to be true in menopause, it usually is.”
This marks a shift in the conversation. After years of menopause being ignored, the pendulum has swung hard in the opposite direction, from silence to saturation.
“We’ve always had to be discerning”
For many Black women, especially those from African and Caribbean backgrounds, this moment feels familiar.
There is an awareness, often learned through experience, that systems do not always serve us well. Black women are under‑diagnosed, over‑medicated and frequently dismissed when talking about pain, fatigue, mood changes or heavy bleeding. So while some welcome the visibility around menopause, many are also wary.
In community conversations, a consistent message comes through
“Don’t outsource your wisdom.”
Black women are talking about menopause not just as a shopping list of symptoms, but as a life phase shaped by stress, work, race, culture and caregiving. There is scepticism about one‑size‑fits‑all solutions, particularly when marketing imagery rarely reflects Black bodies, Black skin or Black lived experience.
Be Warned
Researchers studying women’s health describe the current moment as “commercialisation without infrastructure.” Awareness has grown faster than clinical training, regulation and public education.
Academic voices are urging a return to evidence‑led care, clear guidance, transparent research and honest conversations about what is known, what is uncertain and what simply hasn’t been studied enough yet. They warn that menopause is being framed as a personal failure to be “fixed,” rather than a natural transition shaped by biology and inequality.
This is particularly urgent for women already navigating health disparities, including fibroids, early menopause and chronic stress, conditions more prevalent among Black women.
What Herbalists Are Saying (and What They are Not)
Importantly, this is not a rejection of holistic or herbal approaches.
Reputable herbalists, especially those rooted in African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous traditions, are speaking against the rush to commodify ancient knowledge. Their message is clear. Plants are not magic pills and traditional remedies were never meant to be stripped of context, culture or personalised care.
Experienced practitioners emphasise:
Gentle, individualised support, not blanket claims
Respect for interactions with medication
Lifestyle, sleep, stress and nourishment as inseparable from herbs
Traditional plant medicine was never about quick fixes or universal claims. It was about individual bodies, slow observation and context, how you live, sleep, eat, stress and move through the world.
In other words ‘slow care, not fast selling.’
So where does that leave us?
This moment asks us to pause.
Menopause is finally being talked about, but talking is not the same as understanding. Visibility is not the same as support. Choice is not the same as freedom when marketing outpaces evidence.
The most powerful shift happening now is not another product, it is women trusting themselves enough to ask better questions:
Who benefits from this message?
What evidence backs this claim?
Does this respect my body, my culture, my reality?
Menopause is not a trend and it is not a problem to be monetised. It is a chapter and women deserve to move through it informed, supported and not sold to.
Let’s Keep the Conversation Going
Have you noticed menopause marketing showing up more in your feed?
Have you tried something that did not live up to the promise or something that genuinely helped?
Comment with your experience. Share this with someone navigating menopause right now. Forward it to your group, because discernment grows in community.
We are not anti‑support. We are pro‑truth.
If any of this resonates, then the question is not whether menopause belongs in workplace strategy, it is why it still leaves so many women of colour behind. That is the conversation we are opening up in The Workplace Gap: Why Menopause Support Still Fails Women of Colour on Thursday 16 April 2026.
This is not a wellness webinar. It is a leadership conversation about power, policy, blind spots and lived experience and what organisations miss when they treat menopause support as neutral. If you are ready to move beyond tick‑box wellbeing and into informed, equitable action, this is your invitation.
Save your seat, share with a colleague and join the conversation.
