The Cycle

The Cycle is a Los Angeles beverage brand making caffeine-free, no-added-sugar botanical drinks built around the menstrual cycle and the life stages that follow it. The pitch is simple: a functional drink for each phase, in an aisle that mostly ignores women's hormonal health.

The base of every formula is sea buckthorn puree, which the brand highlights as a natural source of Omega-7. Each blend adds herbal extracts matched to a phase. The brand says it chose a liquid format to deliver functional doses, and it publishes the amounts on its website. For Period Comfort, it lists 25,000mg of sea buckthorn puree, 1,800mg of nettle leaf extract, 1,500mg of raspberry leaf extract, and 1,000mg of lemon balm extract in an 8.4 fl oz can. The drinks are sweetened with apple juice concentrate and monk fruit, with no artificial colors, sweeteners, or preservatives. They are also deliberately still. The brand says carbonation makes cramps worse and wants a smooth base instead.

The Lineup

• Pre-Period Comfort is for the luteal phase, with chaste berry, shatavari root, and dandelion root.
• Period Comfort is for the days of your period, with nettle leaf, raspberry leaf, and lemon balm.
• Perimenopause Comfort pairs nettle leaf with maca root and black cohosh, plus inositol.
• Menopause Comfort is for menopause and post-menopause, with nettle leaf, lemon balm, sage, and hops, plus inositol.

The brand positions these as daily rituals. It suggests 1-3 cans a day for the pre-period and period blends, and 1-2 cans weekly or as desired for perimenopause and menopause. All wellness language here is the brand's own, and none of the drinks are positioned as treatments.

Who's Behind It

Founder and CEO Anastasia Sartan is a former Director of Product at Snapchat, and she describes The Cycle as starting as a personal ritual. The advisory bench includes Dr. Mariza Snyder as medical advisor, Eric Plantenberg (former Chief Strategy Officer at Humm Kombucha) on industry, and Basil Beshkov (former Director of Product Development at Health-Ade Kombucha) on formulation.

The Cycle is for women who want a phase-specific, caffeine-free alternative to capsules and tea, and for natural-channel buyers looking for a functional drink with a clear audience and a transparent label.