Here Are Five Lies That Wellness Culture Tries To Sell Us. Don’t Believe Them.
Iโm sure whoever invented the concept of โwellnessโ did it with good intentions. I mean, to be โwellโ generally means being healthy in body, mind, and spirit, so theoretically, wellness is a wonderful goal to aspire to.
But wellness in 2019 isnโt what it presumably set out to be. The term has been co-opted by quacks, celebrities, and influencers whose interests lie more with making money than with helping people achieve optimal health.
It has devolved into a privileged culture of charcoal detoxes, crystal-infused water bottles, celery juice, and $200 sweatpants that are all somehow necessary for our โself-care.โ It has become a new religion, one in which โeating cleanโ is the path to righteousness.
The Wellness Industry
Just in case you were wondering, the wellness industry is now worth $4.2 trillion dollars, and yes, I said โtrillion.โ That doesnโt mean that all of that revenue comes from sales of vibrational stickers and mushroom tea, but itโs a huge number nonetheless, and itโs growing. Wellness culture is here to stay.
Wellness culture isnโt all dark corners and shadiness. Some of it is good, especially the parts that encourage us to put ourselves first, to take a break, and to nourish ourselves properly. But now even the idea of ‘self care’ seems disingenuous, having been overused by people trying to sell something.
Their claims and lies about the power of wellness can be really destructive to our emotional wellbeing, and to our wallets.
Here are the top 5 nutrition lies that wellness culture tries to sell us.
Your body needs help to perform normal functions.
Cleanses, detoxes, methylation, and glutathione spray (ahem Dr Hyman).
Sure, good nutrition is a must, but these โextrasโ that wellness sells us as โessentialsโ are total BS. Seriously, you do NOT need an IV vitamin infusion.
Wellness culture thrives off of the belief that we canโt trust our bodies to work the way theyโre supposed to; that everyone needs to hack their system to make it better and more efficient, to clean it, to boost it.
The truth is that the body isnโt a car engine that needs to be cleaned. All it needs to is be fed and watered with a reasonably nourishing diet, and treated to some activity.
Hereโs a tweet sent to me by someone in the wellness industry, doing what ‘wellness gurus’ do: take a slice of truth and twist it into something that he can make money from. He admits that alkaline diets don’t change the body’s pH, but we still need them to ‘take the stress off of’ our body’s systems.
This guy sells alkaline diet plans, of course. His argument is completely false, yet it sounds โscience-yโ enough that the layperson might believe it. At any rate, the underlying message that heโs throwing out there is that our bodies canโt do what theyโre meant to do, without special diets and treatments.
Beware of people like him, who use their own ‘science’ to sell you things.
You have some sort of mystery disease.
Wellness culture loves to scare people in order to push product. It thrives on the suggestion that maybe you have some scary disease that you didnโt know about – maybe a โsensitivity,โ candida, or adrenal fatigue.
There arenโt legitimate tests for most of the conditions that wellness says weโre walking around with, and therefore you canโt measure outcomes after a supposed โtreatment.โ This is the perfect situation for convincing people that they have something bad happening to them, and then selling them a cure for it.
Lots of people will say they feel so much better after their colonic/chelation/infrared sauna, but Iโm going to go out on a limb and say that most of the time, this is the placebo effect and/or the effect of changing their diet from low-quality to more nourishing foods. It has nothing to do with the treatment they did.
Hey, the placebo effect is a powerful thing, and let’s be real: if something isn’t dangerous and it makes you feel good, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try it.
The issue? Thinking you have a condition that you probably don’t have can be a cause of some major anxiety, and these treatments/supplements can be expensive. Also, it’s never good to be swindled into believing something that’s not true, especially when it’s about your body.
So do your homework before you accept anything that a random naturopath/nutritionist/health coach/trainer etc. tells you.
Celebrities and spirit-talkers give great nutrition advice.
Anthony Williams is the perfect example of how incredibly blind to reality so many people are.
This guy calls himself the Medical Medium, but has no nutrition, medical, or science background. He says that he gets his nutrition ideas โfrom spirit,โ which is an incredibly crazy assertion that should lead any reasonable person to turn and run from anything he has to say. He invents organs (the stomach gland) and chemical compounds (cluster salts) and seems completely comfortable doling out BS advice that he has no business giving.
He managed to make celery juice a trend big enough that the price of celery doubled. It’s frightening that a person like that could achieve that level of influence.
A recent study showed that only 1 out of 10 influencers give correct information about health and nutrition, and Iโm willing to bet the numbers arenโt much different for celebrities and gurus like Mr Williams. So why in the world would we take nutrition advice from the likes of Salma Hayek (juice cleanses), Shailene Woodley (eating clay), and Khloe Kardashian (teatoxes)?
We’ve been convinced by wellness culture that someone is automatically qualified to dispense health advice if theyโre conventionally attractive (ie thin, white), have a huge number of followers, and/or is a celebrity.
I think we want to be or be associated with those people so badly, that we take their advice seriously, even if itโs completely absurd. (spirits giving nutrition information, come on)
Hereโs some advice: if it sounds crazy, it probably is. No matter how great you think a celebrity looks, it’s doubtful that they owe everything to whatever wellness fad they’re pushing. Don’t blindly follow advice just because it’s popular.
Food is medicine. Big Pharma is out to cheat you.
No, itโs actually not. And no, theyโre not.
Yes, I know that a nourishing diet is the first-line defence against illness. That much is true.
But taking a pass on medication that you need, in favor of healing something serious with food, isnโt a good idea.
The best example I have is alternative treatments and diets for cancer. Although research tells us that people who choose alternative cancer treatments in place of conventional ones are more likely to die, there are plenty of voices in wellness culture telling us that chemo is toxic and harmful.
Hereโs a tweet from someone fear mongering about chemo and promoting naturopathy aka alternative cancer treatment:
Wellness culture often tries to convince us – mostly women – that mainstream medicine and โBig Pharmaโ are out to get us, take our money, make us dependent on medication, and not make us better. This is an outright lie.
I understand that so many women out there are frustrated with their doctors right now. That they havenโt gotten the answers to their health questions and issues via allopathic medicine.
But itโs one thing to try an alternative treatment in conjunction with what your doctor recommends, and very much another thing to do it because youโre convinced that โBig Pharmaโ is a malevolent entity that doesnโt have your best interests at heart.
Donโt fall prey to conspiracy theorists. People who work for pharmaceutical companies want to cure horrible diseases just as much as we want them cured. And please, if you have a serious illness, listen to your doctorโs advice.
You are what you eat.
The expression is somewhat true, because youโre more likely to be physically healthy if your diet is mostly nourishing. And while we know intellectually that assigning worth to someone based on their diet is absolutely wrong, wellness does it all the time with its morality-based labels.
A person โeating cleanโ is superior in the eyes of wellness, versus someone who eats โprocessedโ foods.
In a culture where our diet tends to become our identity, being able to afford $12 cold pressed juice seems to somehow put a person in a higher moral ranking than someone who canโt afford more than plain water. You are โbetterโ if you eat โgood, cleanโ food.
You’re a bad person if you eat ‘bad’ food. Or so wellness says.
It all comes down to this: eat what you can afford. You are not your diet, no matter what you eat and how much you spend on food.
While it can be tempting to try some of what wellness culture is offering, make sure you go into it with your blinders OFF. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.