One of the treatments promoted on Netflix’s The Goop Lab has a dark past that links its methods to multiple deaths. Netflix couldn’t have been unaware of the controversies that would arise following their decision to give Gwyneth Paltrow’s infamous lifestyle brand Goop its own series. The company has been steeped in suspicion from the very beginning, particularly for how they uncritically amplify the voices of questionable pseudoscience and outright quackery in favor of provable data and traditional medicine. For as much as Goop has been mocked by the media for its out-of-touch elitism and dedication to easily refuted ideas, at the heart of the company is a seriously dangerous commitment to anti-science beliefs, all under the protection of pretending that they are “just asking questions.”
This mentality is in full force in The Goop Lab, the first season of which lasts six episodes and contains supposed explorations of concepts and therapies as varied as hallucinogenic mushrooms, intermittent fasting, and psychic mediums. If you’re in any way familiar with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and the often wildly dangerous ideas it espouses, nothing in The Goop Lab will be all that surprising to you. There is, however, one episode where the series promotes a so-called treatment with zero skepticism yet fails to mention the number of deaths connected to it.
Episode two introduces viewers to Dutch self-styled guru Wim Hof, a man who touts the incredible health benefits of extreme cold exposure coupled with deep breathing techniques. Hof holds a number of world records for cold exposure and claims that his brand of exercises can help combat anxiety and depression. This relates to one Goop member of staff who wishes to find a way to ease her panic attacks following the birth of her child. Hof has the Goop people practice this breathing, then participate in an outdoor yoga session, complete with bikinis and several inches of snow, before having them jump into the icy coldness of Lake Tahoe. Every Goop person involved enthusiastically endorses Hof’s method and one calls it a transformative experience.
There is some science behind the notion that meditative breathing exercises and practiced cold exposure can boost your immune system to a degree. There’s a reason cold showers and sauna visits are so popular. If Hof and The Goop Lab simply presented this method as a way to get your endorphins pumping then that would be fine. The issue comes with how The Goop Lab overlooks discussion of the dangers of this method and the people who have died practicing it.
While Hof briefly mentions that his hyperventilation exercises should not be practiced in a pool, no reference is made to the four deaths that have been linked to this (via Miami Herald and CapRadio). Given The Goop Lab’s disclaimer insisting that it is only designed to inform and entertain viewers, you would think this would be a key fact they would wish to discuss. They also overlook some of Hof’s more outlandish and scientifically suspect claims about his method. On his website, the claim is made that the method “is also linked to reducing symptoms of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, sarcoidosis, vasculitis, and several autoimmune diseases.” That’s a very serious thing to claim without thorough scientific backing, and The Goop Lab does nothing to even vaguely question it.
The Goop Lab claims that it simply wants to inform viewers of alternatives to modern medicine. There would be some credence to that justification if they did anything to actually look into the miracle cures they’re shilling. Nobody ever questions Hof’s assertions or his science, including one moment where he insists that his breathing techniques can help the body become “more alkaline”, which is simply not how biology works. The series cannot claim to be informative when it misses out key information and doesn’t seek to offer anything more than blatant promotion for a thing that it likes. That would be fine if they were selling a face cream but the series goes well beyond that with topics like the Wim Hof method, as well as later episodes involving supposed psychic mediums and “energy healing”, both of which receive no skepticism or scientific backing. Goop has always been a purveyor of the questionable and occasionally dangerous, and things are no different on The Goop Lab, only now they have the backing of the biggest streaming service on the planet and, frankly, they should be held to a higher standard because of that.
