Five expert-backed ingredients helping perimenopausal women thrive

A major trend at SupplySide West 2024 was that women of all ages are making more proactive choices about their health and using nutrition to make it happen. But this is especially true during perimenopause and menopause.

According to a Nutrition Business Journal (NBJ) survey presented at the education session “Women's health: The trends, clinical studies and ingredients helping women thrive,” nearly half of perimenopausal and menopausal women are currently taking supplements to address symptoms, and this market is growing every year.

But which ingredients are actually up to the challenge of meeting the unique needs of women? At the seminar, five Ph.D.-educated women health experts picked their favorite ingredients to help ladies feel better and accomplish more through these phases of life.

The ingredients below were some of their top picks.

Saffron

Saffron is renowned as an expensive and unique spice. But extracts of this potent bright-red herb are also showing great promise in gummies and pill-based supplements, according to Devon Gholam, Ph.D., VP of science and innovation at Step Change Innovations, which specializes in helping companies sell science-backed ingredients.

“Most of the health benefits studied have been around mental health, like sleep and relaxation,” Gholam said. And while those benefits can be universal, she noted saffron has been studied specifically in perimenopausal and menopausal women. Saffron’s long history in the kitchen also helps it stand out.

“The safety is well-established because we use it in cooking and culinary cuisine all the time,” Gholam said. “The usage level for extracts is about 30 milligrams, which is very low.”

She added many different, standardized branded extracts are available.

Fenugreek extract

The most promising ingredients for women aren’t just ones that address specific symptoms, according to Amanda Rao, Ph.D., founder and director of the clinical research organization RDC Global. They’re ones that address the hormone imbalances behind those symptoms. For this reason, her top pick was LibiFem, a patented extract of the popular hormonal health ingredient, fenugreek.

The ingredient “works with your body to balance your natural levels of estrogen and testosterone,” Rao said. “That’s something that’s actually helpful for the whole life stage of women.”

Specifically, within the context of aging, she pointed to two promising areas where fenugreek can have an impact.

“As you age, obviously, you lose muscle mass,” Rao explained. “Testosterone is really important for that. And then, of course, overarching all of this is libido. Because when we talk about menopause, we should also talk about sex.”

Lemon verbena

A big takeaway from the NBJ survey presented during the session was that female consumers are far more likely to take supplements formulated specifically for women. According to Karin Hermoni, Ph.D., owner of the consultancy firm Imagine Health, the herb lemon verbena definitely fits the bill.

Hermoni referenced “great results” from a study that assessed the ability of the patented lemon verbena RelaxPLX to improve sleep quality.

“But then when you carve out what happened in women [from taking the ingredient], you see that the results are much better,” she observed, adding “women are embracing that as an indication of its support for relaxation and sleep.”

Hermoni said the emerging research makes lemon verbena promising for women of all ages, but especially those approaching middle age. Sleep disruption was listed in the NBJ survey as the number one symptom of perimenopause.

Pre, post, synbiotics and probiotics

The time of thinking just in terms of probiotics or prebiotics is finished. All are part of the same conversation, explained Stephanie-Anne Girard, Ph.D., director of scientific affairs at contract research organization SGS Nutrasource.

She noted it’s a conversation that can have big health implications for women.

“We know that these ingredients have a huge impact on the gut, and we know that the gut is pivotal for health,” she said. “So much science is emerging on the bidirectional communication between your gut and the different organs in your body.”

At SupplySide West in 2023, the gut-brain axis was a major point of discussion. But just a year later, “We know about the gut-brain axis, the gut-lung axis, the gut-heart axis – all of these different axes that exist in our body stemming from the gut,” Girard said. “And it’s bidirectional, so from the brain to the gut, the gut to the brain.”

Girard added a growing amount of research is examining the impact of probiotics specifically in the vagina.

“It’s a very different microbiota,” the scientist explained. “It’s less diverse, but that’s not to say less complex. There are a lot of bugs in there, and who’s there, what they do, and how they influence pH can have big consequences. Probiotics have a huge potential impact in that aspect.”

Creatine monohydrate

Abby-Smith Ryan, Ph.D., has been studying creatine monohydrate supplementation for women for nearly 20 years, and her research has helped put this popular sports supplement on women’s health radar. With each passing year, Ryan said, new research continues to show additional ways that creatine can positively impact women’s health.

“We’ve looked at the use of creatine across the menstrual cycle, specifically on things like muscle and bone health, inflammation, and even brain health and neural drive,” she said. And while she advocates utilizing creatine across women’s life span, Ryan said midlife is particularly promising.

“There’s a big opportunity from perimenopause all the way into post-menopause,” she said. “We know a lot about the impact on bone health in particular, and there’s so much potential to understand further mechanisms.”