HerWellReport Independent Women’s Health Research

HerWellReport

Press and citation

Last updated September 27, 2026

HerWellReport is an independent editorial site covering women’s midlife bladder, urinary and menopause health. This page exists for journalists, researchers, clinicians and anyone who wants to cite our work or reuse our data.

What this site is

We research supplements and treatments marketed to women in midlife and report what the evidence actually shows, including when it shows very little. Every article carries numbered inline citations and a full source list, and every source is opened and checked before it is cited.

We are product researchers, not clinicians, and we say so on every page. We do not claim first-hand testing of any supplement. We publish no invented ratings, no testimonials, no fictional reviewers and no aggregate-rating schema. Where the cheaper or non-commercial option has the better evidence — pelvic floor training, bladder training, vaginal oestrogen, hormone therapy — we say that plainly, including on pages that earn us commission.

The site is funded by affiliate commission, disclosed at the top of every page that carries an affiliate link and in full on our affiliate disclosure. Our review method is set out at how we review.

The ingredient dataset

We publish a structured, openly licensed dataset of the ingredients used in bladder and menopause supplements marketed to women. As far as we can establish, nothing else in this niche publishes machine-readable ingredient data with evidence grades, documented interactions and a primary source for each row.

You may copy, redistribute, adapt and build on the dataset, including commercially, provided you give attribution. The suggested attribution line is:

HerWellReport supplement ingredient dataset v2.0, CC BY 4.0 — https://herwellreport.com/press/

The CC BY 4.0 licence covers the dataset only. Article text, images and page design on this site are not covered by it and remain all rights reserved; for those, normal quotation with a link is fine, and anything more should be requested by email.

Fields

  • ingredient — common name
  • also_known_as — botanical name, branded extract names and synonyms, semicolon separated
  • category — bladder, menopause or both
  • studied_for — what the ingredient has actually been studied for, which is frequently not what it is sold for
  • evidence — the grade, defined below
  • evidence_note — the strongest study or review, its verdict, and the honest limitation
  • interactions — named drugs or drug classes, semicolon separated; empty means none documented in the source, not none in existence
  • cautions — specific, actionable safety points, semicolon separated
  • helps_stress_leaks — yes, no or unclear
  • helps_hot_flushes — yes, no or unclear
  • primary_evidence_url — the single authoritative source the grade rests on
  • source — the HerWellReport page covering the ingredient in full

Methodology

Every row is built the same way. We identify the strongest available evidence, preferring Cochrane reviews, NICE, the European Association of Urology, the American Urological Association, The Menopause Society, NIDDK, the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, NCCIH, NIH LiverTox and European Medicines Agency herbal monographs, then peer-reviewed systematic reviews and randomised trials. Supplement vendor pages, affiliate roundups and content farms are never used as sources.

Three rules govern what gets written. Every source is opened and read before it is cited. No number, percentage, sample size or finding is ever reproduced from memory. And where the evidence is weaker than the marketing implies, that goes in the body of the note rather than a footnote.

The HerWellReport Evidence Grade

Every ingredient in the dataset, and every claim we assess in a review, carries a HerWellReport Evidence Grade — a fixed, eight-level vocabulary running from strong to none. The grade describes the state of the human evidence for one specific use; it is not a rating of the ingredient, the brand or the product. Where evidence differs by outcome or by route of administration, the grade is split (for example, “moderate intravesically; none orally”). The definitions:

The eight grades

  • strong — consistent findings from large or pooled randomised trials. Note that this can mean strong evidence of no effect.
  • moderate — randomised evidence pointing one way, with real limitations of size, duration or consistency.
  • limited — some randomised evidence, but small, conflicting, short or at high risk of bias.
  • early — one or two small trials, or a plausible mechanism with human data only beginning to appear.
  • traditional — long-standing documented use accepted by a regulator on that basis, without demonstrated efficacy.
  • background — observational or indirect evidence only; relevant context rather than a reason to take it.
  • very limited — human data exists but is uncontrolled, tiny, or measuring something other than the claim.
  • none — no human trial evidence for the claimed use.

Where a grade differs by outcome or by route of administration, the field says so — for example “moderate intravesically; none orally”. Route matters more in this subject than almost anywhere else, and collapsing it produces false claims.

Known limitations

  • Six of the 65 rows carry no primary_evidence_url. These are early entries whose grading predates this field and which we have not yet re-verified to the current standard. We would rather leave the field empty than point at a source we have not personally opened.
  • An empty interactions or cautions field means nothing was documented in the sources we opened. It is not a safety assurance.
  • Ingredient-level evidence is not evidence that a finished product works. Multi-ingredient formulas are almost never tested as sold, and undisclosed proprietary blends cannot be matched to any trial at all.
  • Nothing in this dataset is medical advice. See our medical disclaimer.

For journalists

We are happy to be quoted, and happy to be quoted saying a product does not work. Subjects we can speak to with sourced material to hand:

  • What bladder and menopause supplement labels do and do not have to disclose, and why a proprietary blend makes a product unassessable
  • The gap between ingredient-level research and finished-product claims
  • Why route of administration — swallowed versus local — changes the answer for both probiotics and oestrogen
  • Documented herb-drug interactions that women over 45 are most likely to run into, including thyroid, anticoagulant and liver signals
  • What treatment guidelines actually recommend first-line for leaking and urgency, and why almost no consumer content explains it

Email hello@herwellreport.com. We aim to respond within one working day and can usually turn round a sourced comment the same day.

What we do not do

Stated plainly, because being asked wastes everyone’s time:

  • We do not sell links or exchange them.
  • We do not accept sponsored posts, paid reviews, or payment to publish anything on this site.
  • We do not publish guest posts.
  • We do not publish press releases or manufacturer copy.
  • We do not publish testimonials, before-and-after images, or star ratings.
  • We do not accept payment to change, soften or remove a published assessment.

We do sometimes pay for clearly labelled advertising placements on other sites, to reach readers who would not otherwise find us. Any such placement is marked as advertising and has no bearing on anything we publish here, in either direction.

Corrections

If you believe something here is wrong, tell us and show us the source. Email hello@herwellreport.com with the page and the specific claim. We correct errors of fact promptly and note material corrections on the page itself. If you are a manufacturer disputing an assessment, send the evidence rather than the objection — a trial of your finished formula will change our mind faster than anything else.

Published by HerWellReport Editorial. Dataset v2.0, last updated 29 August 2026.