Opinion: ‘Wellness’ needs a warning label

Erin gave $5,000 and eight years of her life to wellness culture. She was trying to find a cure for her psoriasis, migraines, severe chronic stomach pain, anxiety, depression and exhaustion — all of which fell under the diagnosis of “leaky gut syndrome” according to her naturopathic doctor. Instead of a cure, Erin ended up with an eating disorder, worsened psoriasis and wasted time and money.

Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian, journalist and author highlights Erin’s story in her new book “The Wellness Trap: Break Free From Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses, and Find Your True Well-Being.” Harrison calls out leaky gut syndrome as a “dubious diagnosis” because it isn’t a recognized medical condition, but it leads people down the rabbit hole of expensive supplements, detoxes and cleanses, elimination diets, and other alternative, unproven treatments.

In her book, Harrison dives deep into the problematic wellness industry, worth $4.4 trillion worldwide in 2020 — an industry that boasts of untested treatment methods that “science just hasn’t caught up with yet.” In exchange for our money, it promises to cure us of various ailments, from chronic pain and inflammation to cancer.

Harrison emphasizes that her goal is not to shame people for falling into wellness traps. “We’re all just doing the best we can to take care of ourselves, but the system is set up to take advantage of our desire for self-care and security. ... It’s only human to look for ways to cope, and it’s a sign of our resilience that we try.”

“If you like wellness and it’s not hurting you,” she says, “by all means do your thing.” But that’s the catch. How much do we know about the industry behind wellness? It’s important that we understand what wellness is really offering before we choose to give it our money, time and health.

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At what cost?

There’s a reason that the worldwide wellness economy is worth $4.4 trillion. Many of these products don’t come cheap. Let’s take a look at the detox cleanse, a concept that has been trending recently due to celebrity Rebel Wilson’s controversial detox and calorie restricting. Google searches for “cleanse” and “detox” have spiked every January since 2007, according to Google Trends. Another quick google search reveals that a three-day cleanse kit — consisting of 18 bottles of juice — costs $120 on Amazon, and much more from other brand websites.

Michael Hobbes, co-host of the podcast “Maintenance Phase” came across a detox kit in a grocery story and proclaimed, “why would it cost $85 to not eat for a week?” in a 2021 podcast episode debunking the Master Cleanse. Hobbes and co-host Aubrey Gordon spend each episode debunking myths and junk science around weight loss, wellness and diet fads, and they have spent two episodes on different types of juice cleanses.

Not only does this wellness ritual cost money, but it costs time and resources. With the celery juice detox trend, the health benefits are supposedly lost if you don’t consume your celery juice within 12-24 hours. That means most people would need to have a juicer at home and the time to make celery juice — and according to Gordon, you can’t just have any juicer. You need the most expensive kind for the best results.

Unless you really like the taste of celery juice, there is no need to choke it down to heal your maladies. Juice cleanses and detoxes aren’t necessary, and they don’t have magic properties. “There’s no cleanse that will get rid of ‘all the toxins in your liver,’ ... your liver is the filter for things your body doesn’t need,” Gordon says on a “Maintenance Phase” episode on the celery juice fad. “You have a liver, you have kidneys, if those are working, you are filtered.”

Many wellness fads fall into this same problem: they’re expensive and time consuming, they promise luxury, health and beauty, but their touted benefits have no scientific backing.

Mistreatments and misdiagnoses

A 37-year-old woman named Jennifer turned to alternative medicine, seeking help for her abdominal pain. When their tests and solutions couldn’t make her pain go away, and they instead blamed inflammation, she returned to traditional medicine. They found that “she had a tumor that had been totally missed” by her alternative medicine provider. “If we hadn’t caught it and had the surgery now,” her doctor told her, “you probably wouldn’t have lived to see 45.” Harrison tells this story on her podcast “Rethinking Wellness with Christy Harrison” to emphasize that alternative methods often miss real conditions that could have serious impacts if left untreated by traditional medicine.

The real cost of putting your health in the care of the wellness industry is the risk of misdiagnoses and mistreatment. According to a 2019 article published by the American Cancer Association, almost 40% of Americans believe cancer can be cured by alternative medicine, such as special diets, supplements and herbs, high doses of vitamins and homeopathy. But cancer patients who use alternative therapies have much higher death rates.

If these methods are causing cancer patients to delay surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, they are putting lives at risk and giving false hope for a “natural” cure. “If there was a ‘natural’ cure for cancer,” Harrison told The New York Times, “why would reputable sources want to keep that information hidden?”

Wellness culture wants us to believe that “what you put on your skin or bring into your home will make or break your health,” Harrison writes in her book. This black-and-white thinking can lead people to believe that if they don’t follow all of the prescriptions of wellness culture, they must be killing themselves — a harmful train of thought that increases stress and can make everyday life difficult to enjoy.

Aspects of wellness culture can work for individuals and improve mental, spiritual, emotional and physical well-being. But fear-based marketing by an industry that takes our money and time without returning on its promises is not acceptable. “Wellness culture, like diet culture, makes failure out to be the individual’s fault,” Harrison writes, but you aren’t at fault if wellness culture hasn’t cured you; the industry has failed you.