If there is one wellness category that has gone from niche to everywhere this year, it’s hormonal health. It feels like all of a sudden we’re talking openly about cycle syncing, PMS, perimenopause and supplements, and the ways our hormones can affect everything from our mood to digestion. At the same time, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has found a new audience among wellness consumers—myself included—looking for more personalized, holistic approaches to health. That’s what initially intrigued me about Elix’s Cycle Balance ($48) when I started doing some personal health research last year. The thousands of rave reviews kept my interest. Here’s my honest review.
The Benefits of Elix’s Cycle Balance Supplement
Unlike many wellness products I try for a few weeks and move on from, I’ve been taking Cycle Balance every day for nine months, and I love it. Essentially, it’s a personalized liquid herbal tincture designed to support menstrual wellness. But, rather than giving everyone the same supplement, Elix gives you a thoughtful quiz (I think it was 50 questions) to learn more about your cycle, symptoms, sleep, mood, stress and overall well-being.
The company also asks you to send them a picture of your tongue (it’s optional), which I had certainly never been asked to do for any other customized supplements. When I asked them what they learn from this, Elix founder and CEO Lulu Ge told me: “The tongue is the only internal organ you can see without a scalpel. It’s purely muscle, richly supplied with blood and nerves, and its cells regenerate roughly every 10 days. That makes it an unusually honest, real-time snapshot of what’s happening inside the body.”
The picture helps the brand read four things: “Color, which reflects the state of your Qi and blood; Shape, which reflects nourishment and fluid metabolism; Coating, which reflects digestion and metabolism; and Moisture, which reflects hydration and fluid balance.” Ge says that no single sign is a diagnosis, but when read together, and combined with the questionnaire, the brand can identify patterns leading to symptoms.
That’s the core of Chinese medicine after all: Pattern diagnosis signals how the body is out of balance, not only where it hurts. Once Elix has all of this data, it can choose which herbs go into your customized tincture. “We work from a library of 46 organic medicinal herbs,” says Ge, whose own experience with painful periods led her back to the Traditional Chinese Medicine practices she grew up around. “Each one is selected for its role in supporting hormonal, digestive, circulatory or emotional balance. Every individual formula draws 12 to 18 of those herbs to address the full pattern rather than a single symptom.”
Elix is not working from a single fixed base and peppering in some herbs to call it personalized, like many other companies in this space do. Each formula is unique to the individual. However, there are some herbs that commonly show up because of their benefits, such as angelica sinensis (regulates hormones), white peony root (builds blood; relieves pain), bupleurum (relieves pain; anti-inflammatory) and licorice root (regulates GI; balances the formula), which are all in my blend. The formulas also evolve as your body changes. “Someone’s needs at cycle one are rarely identical to her needs at cycle eight, which is exactly how Chinese medicine has always worked: The formula follows the body,” Ge says.
How It Works, and Why I Keep Taking It
When I first started taking Cycle Balance (three droppers of herbal-flavored liquid under my tongue every morning), I wasn't expecting a dramatic overnight transformation—Elix set the expectation well. But after one cycle, I felt a difference in my energy and my stress response, and after two cycles, my hormonal headaches were pretty much nonexistent (and aside from a random one here and there, they’ve stayed that way). Prior to Elix, I was going to bed and waking up with the same headache for more than a week at a time—it landed me at the doctor’s office once—so this was an incredible improvement, and I couldn’t attribute it to anything else.
Now I know not everyone will experience this type of result, but if you spend a little time reading other customer reviews, you’ll understand the “magic,” which is a word I’ve used to describe it when singing its praises to my girlfriends. At 39 with two toddlers, my hormones definitely have their ups and downs, and Cycle Balance has helped find exactly that: balance. And nine months of use is more than enough time to see patterns from cycle to cycle rather than judging the product based on one particularly good or bad month.
The only negative I can find is that the tincture isn’t very travel-friendly. The bottle somehow manages to leak a little bit, even when I think I’ve screwed the lid on tight. But I’m not willing to go without it, so I manage. I pack it in a plastic baggie by itself.
The Clinical Testing
In a 12-week clinical study involving women ages 18 to 36 who were experiencing menstrual-cycle symptoms, 90 percent of participants taking Cycle Balance daily experienced improvement in PMS and menstrual symptoms; 85 percent reported better cycle regulation; and 80 percent said they canceled fewer plans and felt more productive.
The Bottom Line
I would recommend this to anyone with frustrating symptoms who is seeking to prioritize their hormonal health. And judging by the flood of glowing reviews on Elix’s site, thousands of other women agree with me.
