On a Friday afternoon in July, as many New Yorkers fled the scorching metropolis streets, a few dozen out-of-towners descended on Instances Sq.. They got here bearing gold letter balloons spelling out LFVN, the inventory image for LifeVantage, the corporate they’d come to advertise, and foam cutouts of its navy blue complement bottles. LifeVantage’s chief government officer, Steve Fife, rang the Nasdaq change’s closing bell, a celebration of the Utah-based firm’s new merchandise and rewards packages. Displayed on the aspect of the seven-story Nasdaq constructing had been commercials selling the corporate’s dietary dietary supplements and their energy to “optimize well being.”
At first look, LifeVantage, value some $84 million, appears decidedly mainstream. It boasts plaudits from Nasdaq, has blue-chip buyers like Constancy and BlackRock, and Erin Brockovich, the long-lasting crusader for company accountability, sits on its board of administrators. Its merchandise are extensively obtainable; a bottle of its predominant complement goes for round $56 on Amazon.
However in interviews with LifeVantage distributors, executives, and former scientists, in addition to in courtroom filings, paperwork obtained by way of information requests, and on-line materials, a sample emerged in the best way the corporate and its representatives have sought to straddle the mainstream and the perimeter.
LifeVantage and a few of its distributors promote — and in lots of instances, distort — scientific proof to tout the advantages of the merchandise they’re promoting. Whereas that could be widespread amongst complement firms, what has specialists and a few workers uniquely involved is how LifeVantage has capitalized on conspiracist enthusiastic about Covid-19 and the broader well being care system to attract clients and sellers trying to withstand mainstream medication altogether.
“Don’t be afraid to stand up and go along with what you realize,” Erin Brockovich informed a crowd of 5,000 elite LifeVantage distributors at a 2019 gathering, alluding to her high-profile combat to carry a gasoline firm to account for polluting groundwater. “We’re lastly proudly owning ourselves and going, ‘Yeah, I don’t assume so. That isn’t working for my well being — and let me please be in control of my very own well being and what I do know is going on to me.’”
However the sheen of educational science and Wall Road, and the emphasis on private wellness, has obscured what former workers say is a rising push inside LifeVantage’s large salesforce to undermine evidence-based medication and promote shoddy science.
On the 2022 Well being Freedom Summit, a web-based occasion that featured numerous outstanding anti-vaccine advocates, two of the corporate’s distributors appeared onscreen to advertise Protandim. One, Andrea Ebert, went on to recommend, with out proof, that the complement would possibly reverse what she characterised as dangerous results of the vaccines in opposition to the coronavirus, utilizing speaking factors generally utilized by anti-vaccine teams to tout the complement.
“Possibly you or the one you love have been coerced into getting this jab, and had severe and deep regrets, and are struggling health-wise from it,” she stated.
Nathalie Chevreau, a biochemist who served as a senior scientific researcher for LifeVantage from 2014 till 2019, informed STAT that distributors additionally routinely made inaccurate claims — together with, in some instances, that the merchandise might assist with most cancers — at company occasions.
“When the distributor[s] got here onstage and would begin speaking, generally my hair was standing up,” Chevreau stated. “We’d should go and cease them, and say ‘you can’t say that.’”
Like a few of its opponents within the dietary complement area, LifeVantage makes use of a choreographed multi-level advertising and marketing operation, counting on some 54,000 lively impartial distributors to recruit much more salespeople, promote its flagship complement, Protandim, and push product traces aimed toward weight reduction, skincare, and pets. In personal on-line gatherings, Fb teams, and Zoom periods, distributors are skilled to advertise Protandim’s purported potential to cut back oxygen-free radicals, and to recommend that scientific proof helps a broad spectrum of potential advantages.
“LifeVantage may be very pleased with the science that backs our merchandise,” Fife informed STAT, including: “Folks wish to take management of their very own future, bodily and financially.”
LifeVantage claims that Protandim will increase the exercise of the Nrf2 pathway, which produces antioxidants within the physique. Joseph M. McCord, a biochemist credited with inventing the Protandim compound who went on to function the corporate’s lead scientific officer, gave occasional talks to LifeVantage distributors describing how elements of the dietary supplements — equivalent to plant extracts, like milk thistle or ashwagandha — would possibly regulate a biochemical pathway by switching on specific genes.
“Chances are you’ll not have any thought what I simply stated,” McCord informed an viewers of elite distributors in 2010. “However you’ve gotten a job — you’ve gotten an obligation — to be taught what this implies.”
McCord co-authored round 17 revealed research on LifeVantage merchandise. In some in vitro lab research, and in others utilizing mice, Protandim appeared to cut back oxidative stress, a measure of the presence of oxygen-free radicals or different reactive species. The research embrace one performed beneath the auspices of the Nationwide Institute on Growing older, one of many Nationwide Institutes of Well being, revealed within the peer-reviewed journal Growing older Cell in 2016. Amongst its findings: Protandim elevated the median lifespan of male mice by 7% — which the paper characterised as a “small however statistically vital” change that wasn’t seen in feminine mice.
In an interview, McCord famous that not all of the analysis was primarily funded by LifeVantage, and stated the research advised the Nrf2 pathway was a promising avenue for continued analysis and improvement within the complement area.
However he acknowledged that few conclusions may very well be drawn about Protandim’s effectiveness in people, and that the long-term security in people has not been studied.
A handful of small-scale research have evaluated Protandim’s results in people; by the researchers’ personal account, “outcomes had been blended.” A research of 29 adults revealed in 2005 advised Protandim decreased measures of oxidative stress after a month, however lacked a placebo group. One other, revealed in 2016, checked out 38 runners to see whether or not the complement improved their efficiency, or decreased a measure of oxidative stress, over a interval of 90 days, and located that it did neither. There isn’t any analysis demonstrating that lowering oxidative stress can enhance well being outcomes, although restricted research have linked oxidative stress to a variety of well being points.
But LifeVantage promotional supplies and distributor pitches are inclined to spin these outcomes positively.
It’s not unusual for complement makers to make claims that elevate eyebrows. The Meals and Drug Administration has the authority to control dietary dietary supplements, however, in contrast to medicine and biologics, these compounds aren’t authorized for security and effectiveness earlier than they hit the market. When the FDA does crack down, it’s actually because issues have emerged. The Federal Commerce Fee has oversight of promoting within the U.S., however it and the FDA face sisyphean duties in a ballooning business the place promoting more and more takes place by way of personal channels.
Even with this latitude, LifeVantage has run afoul of regulators. Although its earlier incarnations date again to 1988, the corporate has existed in its present kind since 2005, when smaller complement makers merged to kind LifeVantage. It initially offered Protandim Nrf2 Synergizer by way of stores like GNC. Round a decade in the past, having shifted to a multi-level advertising and marketing mannequin, LifeVantage started to ramp up spurious claims in regards to the energy of its pure compounds to halt or reverse results not solely of the growing older course of, however of circumstances together with most cancers and Alzheimer’s. These claims might need resonated with these searching for alternate options to mainstream medical therapy, or who had been determined to deal with severe well being issues with few different choices.
However the claims had been in some instances false or wildly deceptive. In April 2017, the FDA warned LifeVantage to cease making claims associated to illness prevention or therapy. The CEO on the time, Darren Jensen, responded that “LifeVantage reaffirms its dedication to compliance and to not advertising and marketing its merchandise for the prevention or therapy of most cancers or every other illness.”
Nonetheless, McCord informed STAT he has severe considerations about how LifeVantage and a few of its representatives have frequently twisted analysis to market merchandise. One of many causes he left LifeVantage in 2013, he stated, was its tendency to prioritize advertising and marketing considerations over scientific ones. When LifeVantage remade itself as a multi-level advertising and marketing firm, this concern “went from unhealthy to worse,” he stated. “I assumed it was an inappropriate technique to promote a reasonably severe product.”
Following the FDA warning letter, LifeVantage appeared to lean extra closely on disclaimers that its merchandise are “not meant to diagnose, deal with, treatment or stop any illness,” and instructed its distributors to do the identical.
In a press release, a LifeVantage spokesperson wrote that the corporate “has a number of approaches to make sure that our Consultants” — the corporate’s time period for its distributors — “make authorized, truthful and never deceptive product claims,” together with a coverage that prohibits unauthorized private testimonials and “any declare that LifeVantage merchandise are helpful within the treatment, therapy, prognosis, mitigation or prevention of any illnesses or indicators or signs of illness.” The corporate works to teach its representatives and to take motion in opposition to problematic pitches, the assertion stated.
And it famous that “our Consultants are impartial contractors” who “generally problem our Insurance policies and Procedures.” In these instances, the assertion stated, “we take applicable motion.”
However that hasn’t stopped some distributors from toeing the road of reality.
While they may comprise disclaimers, latest movies from distributors, together with these among the many firm’s elite ranks — who’ve recruited top-performing groups — routinely flout that decision for warning.
For instance, in a video posted on-line in November 2020, April Wagner, a distributor excessive up within the firm’s ranks, primarily addressing potential LifeVantage distributors, highlighted the purported advantages of merchandise together with a brand new formulation of Protandim.
“What if you happen to might have the blood of a 20-year-old, or lengthen your life by 7%?” Wagner requested.
Paul Coates, former director of the Workplace of Dietary Dietary supplements on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, reviewed lots of the scientific research on Protandim, together with the one demonstrating a 7% enhance in lifespan for male mice, and stated he discovered them to be largely nicely designed, if small in scope. However Coates additionally stated the corporate and its representatives frequently went too far of their statements. “The claims are usually not supportable by this type of research,” he stated.
In inside conferences, distributors themselves have raised considerations in regards to the accuracy of data some representatives use to promote merchandise. In an April 2019 Zoom assembly, a recording of which was reviewed by STAT, led by Charlotte Venter, an elite distributor based mostly in Australia, sellers expressed alarm at what they characterised as inaccurate materials that had too usually crept into pitches, equivalent to {that a} probiotic product might assist with gluten intolerance.
One distributor informed the group she anxious that sellers would possibly “take a few of these issues as gospel after which go and duplicate that, not solely to their groups, however probably to clients.”
Shortly after STAT contacted Venter to ask in regards to the video, it was faraway from her YouTube channel.
By the time the pandemic hit, LifeVantage was poised to profit from concern and confusion round this new well being risk, in addition to a newly distant labor pool.
In a Might 2020 Instagram publish, the corporate shared a line graph of its share value labeled “LifeVantage Inventory Throughout Quarantine,” a short-lived bump that noticed its inventory value rise from about $10 in March 2020 to upwards of $16. Textual content above the chart learn: “Stunned by what you see? We’re not.”
Although there was little proof to assist claims they might thrust back or assist deal with Covid-19, dietary dietary supplements grew to become a lovely possibility for these searching for treatments based mostly on pure compounds, together with people in anti-vaccine circles and different teams who resist mainstream well being steering. The worldwide marketplace for dietary supplements grew 7.5% in 2021, ending that yr at practically $60 billion — a determine that dwarfed predictions issued earlier than the pandemic, in keeping with the Diet Enterprise Journal.
LifeVantage is considered one of numerous complement makers which have recently gained traction with fringe alternative-health activists, who see its messaging round self-determinism as resonating with their specific considerations, and as signaling an openness to unorthodox attitudes in the direction of well being.
The general public-health restrictions applied to curb the consequences of Covid-19 catalyzed a rising variety of activists who make up the “health-freedom motion.” The motion champions the notion that people ought to make their very own choices about well being, even when these decisions contradict the consensus of medical doctors or public-health officers. And its members have lengthy fought for a complement market freed from regulatory oversight.
These dynamics signify a entrance in a bigger battle over reality, stated Thomas H. Murray, president emeritus on the Hastings Middle. The motion’s rhetoric is an echo, he stated, of “our incapacity as a rustic to agree on who’s reliable and what’s true.”
These disagreements flared throughout the pandemic, when even primary well being data grew to become a goal for skepticism or misinformation.
Fife, the LifeVantage CEO, stated the corporate was “very cautious” to not tie product launches to the pandemic.
However language in distributor pitches has invoked Protandim’s purported potential to restore injury from the virus, or supposed adversarial results from the vaccines.
On-line, distributors have advised that Protandim might assist combat off Covid-19. In a clip that Wagner, the elite distributor, posted to TikTok in September 2021, she holds a yellow caplet in a single hand and a Protandim bottle within the different, and urges viewers to strive “considered one of these magic tablets” which have been “medically studied.” Protandim, Wagner stated, “will enhance your glutathione by over 300% — glutathione is our grasp antioxidant, and there are even research on Google Scholar that present growing glutathione ranges will inhibit the Corona illness.” (The related papers look like surveys of beforehand revealed literature — not medical research performed for the reason that onset of the pandemic.)
“The concept these dietary supplements could be marketed in a means that individuals have the next threat of utilizing these sham snake oil merchandise is outrageous,” stated Bryn Austin, professor within the division of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard’s T.H. Chan Faculty of Public Well being. “If folks flip to dietary supplements marketed with claims of boosting immunity,” Austin stated, it’s probably they’re not following the proof on what would really defend in opposition to Covid-19.
Kelsey Brennan-Patrick, who owns a dance studio in Phoenixville, Pa. and has been a LifeVantage distributor for round six years, informed STAT that within the early days of the pandemic, “we had been all attempting to grasp and determine what this virus was.” She stated she was conscious that claims that Protandim might stop or deal with diseases together with Covid-19 had been off-limits. However anecdotally, she’d heard that the complement would possibly assist mitigate signs. (This isn’t supported by scientific proof.)
“It was onerous for us, as an organization, as a result of we couldn’t talk it like that,” she defined, citing the corporate’s disclaimers round stopping or treating illness. “So we needed to be very compliant and simply type of lead the horse to water.”
Ebert, the distributor who offered on the Well being Freedom Summit, stated she was conscious of different sellers inside the firm who shared her skepticism of public well being laws and vaccines, and who noticed the complement — which she has referred to as a “golden bullet” — as a step towards well being freedom.
She informed STAT she leads a workforce of round 100 distributors and isn’t against science, however questioned the motivations of well being officers who established vaccine mandates and the businesses that manufactured them — a typical anti-vaccine speaking level.
“Within the medical world, there’s science spelled with an ‘s,’” Ebert stated, “after which there’s science spelled with a greenback signal.” (Researchers have estimated that the vaccines, and the large marketing campaign to make them accessible to the general public, have saved as many as 3 million lives within the U.S. alone.)
In a follow-up message, Ebert informed STAT she couldn’t categorize the beliefs of different LifeVantage distributors, and reiterated that “we by no means declare to treatment, stop or mitigate illness.”
With out large-scale managed research demonstrating Protandim really helps folks, LifeVantage has needed to depend on a collection of ever extra aggressive gross sales ways hinging on fragments of restricted findings.
Well being-freedom teams spent the peak of the pandemic stoking distrust as a fundraising ploy, and now courtroom new audiences for hawking merchandise and beliefs alike. An organization that claims its merchandise are backed by “science” — but stands to revenue as science deniers in its gross sales pressure tout them as a panacea of alternative — harms customers, well being misinformation specialists stated, by pushing falsehoods together with tablets.
In the meantime, because it rings in a “strategic transformation,” together with a revamp of product choices, equivalent to a brand new line of collagen merchandise, and distributor-compensation plans, LifeVantage can also be searching for contemporary scientific expertise. In a job posting at the moment reside on its web site, the corporate seeks a senior analysis scientist with a “industrial mindset.”
In spite of everything, it reads: “we’re within the enterprise of monetizing merchandise and concepts, not conducting analysis for the sake of analysis.”