Launched today, the brand said it waited until it found evidence it felt confident standing behind before developing its first product for this specific women’s health stage. Ritual’s new Perimenopause Health supplement combines shatavari extract with DIM, evening primrose oil and Vitamin B6. It was developed with OB/GYNs and the company’s Scientific Advisory Board.
Why shatavari and why now?
According to Ritual’s consumer insights, more than half of women aren’t satisfied with the solutions available to address perimenopausal symptoms.
Mastaneh Sharafi, PhD, RD, senior VP of science and innovation at Ritual, told NutraIngredients that shatavari has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries to support women’s reproductive and hormonal health, but only in recent years have human clinical studies on shatavari and perimenopause caught up to that history.
“We didn’t discover shatavari,” she said. “We waited for the evidence to be worthy of it, and once it was there, we had the confidence to build a formula specific to this exact stage of life.”
The shatavari extract in Ritual’s new Perimenopause Health formula is clinically studied to support mood, ease hot flashes and night sweats, and improve sleep in as little as four weeks. It also can support vaginal dryness, physical and mental fatigue in as little as eight weeks. Sharafi added that the extract’s potency allows the company to deliver the studied level of active compounds at a lower daily dose than many other shatavari extracts on the market today.
Beyond treating individual symptoms
Sharafi sees a bigger evolution underway in women’s health, moving away from addressing individual symptoms in isolation and toward understanding the full biological transition.
“That is why we built Perimenopause Health to support the bigger picture,” she said. “We looked at the physiology of this transition and brought together ingredients that work through different pathways.”
Shatavari doesn’t just target one symptom in isolation – a big draw for Ritual. According to Sharafi, studies have found the ingredient supports healthy levels of estrogen, progesterone, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH) and cortisol.
“Those changes can influence many aspects of how women feel, from changes in temperature regulation and sleep to mood, and energy,” she said. “Rather than looking at each experience as a separate issue, we wanted to understand the underlying physiology of the transition.”
Hormone-free doesn’t mean anti-hormone therapy
As the topic becomes more mainstream, brands are also expanding the range of hormone-free options for women. For Ritual, the goal is not to position supplements as an alternative to HRT, but provide women with more options as they navigate this life stage.
Katerina Schneider, CEO and founder of Ritual, told NI that while she’s grateful women’s health categories like pregnancy, fertility and postpartum have started to get more attention in recent years, perimenopause has largely remained an afterthought.
“Hormone therapy is the right choice for some women, but not everyone can or wants to use it, and even for those who do, the timing isn’t always right away,” she said. “We wanted to give women another option with a science-backed, hormone-free product that supports hormone balance and perimenopause symptoms.”
For Ritual, Schneider said this isn’t about the category going hormone-free, but giving women better body literacy so they can make that choice for themselves.
“It’s about evolving the category to help women navigate the transitions between pregnancy, postpartum, and perimenopause,” she said.
What to look for in botanical products
With shatavari emerging as a high-profile botanical in women’s health, Sharafi said consumers and the industry should look beyond whether an ingredient simply has “research behind it.”
“Botanicals for women’s health are having a moment, and with that comes noise, proprietary blends that hide dose, a single small study stretched into a sweeping claim, traditional use treated like clinical proof,” Sharafi said. “With shatavari, we went well beyond asking, ‘Does this ingredient have research behind it?’”
Ritual said it considered the full evidence and quality picture, including human clinical data in perimenopausal women, a finished-product dose matching the amount studied, a standardized extract to help ensure consistent potency, and rigorous identity and contaminant testing.
“With botanicals, purity matters just as much as dose,” Sharafi said. “These ingredients come from the environment they are grown in, and soil can contain contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, or microbial contaminants. That is why quality, transparency, and traceability are such important parts of our approach.”
New life stage opportunity
Schneider said women in their 40s are becoming more vocal and proactive about their health, from advocating for better answers from doctors to demanding greater transparency from brands. She said that shift in consumer expectations, along with the science catching up, made now the right time for Ritual to enter the category.
