From at-home stool tests to foot baths claiming to draw impurities from the body, the wellness industry is big business, . As it has grown, so too have concerns that people are taking unproven therapies to treat serious medical conditions. Just this month, the US Food and Drug Administration recalled Natural Solutions Foundation鈥檚 鈥淣ano Silver 10ppm dietary supplement鈥� over its label鈥檚 .
, whose research at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada focuses on the rhetoric of science, medicine and health, has noticed a rise in unsubstantiated claims and celebrity hype in the unregulated wellness industry, whose products promise to increase energy, reduce stress, slow the ageing聽process and more. Rather than expose the claims, however, she wanted to find out why people are drawn to wellness therapies in the first place.
In her latest book, , Derkatch held in-depth interviews with 40 people who use supplements and other wellness therapies in their day-to-day lives. She also analysed the arguments and language used by members of online communities centred around 鈥渘atural鈥� healing. She found that the allure of the wellness industry has far less to do with individual gullibility and far more to do with societal failings.
Advertisement
Wendy Glauser: Let鈥檚 start with the biggest question of the book 鈥� why does wellness sell?
Colleen Derkatch: Wellness sells because it鈥檚 always just out of reach. It鈥檚 like the myth of Tantalus, who was condemned to standing in a pool of water that would disappear when he tried to drink it. Even as you pursue wellness, there is always more you can do to achieve the ideal of wellness.
In my interviews with people who use wellness products, they easily slipped back and forth between the logic of 鈥渞estoration鈥� and the logic of 鈥渆nhancement鈥�. They described using wellness therapies to restore themselves to a prior state of functioning, such as taking melatonin for insomnia. But they also described wellness as a way of enhancing themselves, to become better, healthier, stronger, smarter and more productive versions of themselves. For example, they might continue taking melatonin even when their sleep is restored so they can have more energy to get more done in the day.
Because wellness is a holistic concept that can encompass digestive health, sleep, mood, spiritual health and energy levels, there is always at least one of those aspects that we feel could be restored or enhanced.
In your book, you point out that this kind of messaging, that we should be better, doesn鈥檛 just come from those selling wellness products.
That鈥檚 right, wellness seeps into the everyday language we use to talk about health and wellbeing in mainstream culture. At the grocery store checkout, you see headlines like, 鈥渉ere are five ways to boost your energy鈥� or 鈥渢hree mood-boosting practices you can do鈥�.
Many scholars have described how, over the past few decades, public health policies have downloaded responsibility for health onto individual citizens. Governments tell people, 鈥淚t鈥檚 your responsibility to ensure that you eat properly, get exercise and destress鈥� rather than looking at broad, systemic social interventions that we know improve health, such as walkable cities, effective transit infrastructure, safe and affordable housing, economic security and accessible, healthy food.
We are bombarded with messaging from all sides that our bodies are our own personal projects. We learn that to be good people and to be good citizens, we need to constantly be working on ourselves.
Your book describes how wellness communities, or people who share an interest in natural health products, often also promote the libertarian values of self-governance. Why do these values overlap so much?
We saw this during the covid-19 pandemic. It wasn鈥檛 only communities that we typically see as anti-government pushing against public health policies. It was who called for libertarian responses to the pandemic. The natural health industry emerged largely out of 19th-century fitness culture where strong, healthy bodies signified physical, moral, genetic and even national superiority. One of the first wellness influencers, Bernarr Macfadden, shared a . .
At the same time, it鈥檚 important to emphasise that this is only an element of what drives people to wellness therapies. Most people who use natural health products to support their wellness do so largely because they have not been able to find help or support in other ways. Often, they have chronic or functional conditions that doctors and pharmaceuticals have not been able to alleviate.
As the wellness industry grows, there is also a growth in science communicators who 鈥渄ebunk鈥� the claims of the latest supplement or detox fad. Why do you think this approach doesn鈥檛 usually work?
The reality is that emotions are frequently more persuasive than facts. For example, doctors may only have 5 minutes to spend with a patient before they shove a prescription at them. That鈥檚 not the doctor鈥檚 fault, they鈥檙e operating under very restrictive economic constraints. But I can understand why someone might have trouble trusting the doctor over a naturopath who sits with them for 90 minutes, listens to them, acknowledges their discomfort and considers a broad range of factors that might improve their situation.
Plus, people know about the scandals where drugs were promoted as safe that turned out not to be safe. And they know about the high pharmaceutical profits, like with insulin in the US, for example.
The people I interviewed don鈥檛 place the same trust in science and medicine as those who debunk wellness therapies. So, approaches that emphasise the unscientific foundations of wellness may not achieve a meeting of minds with their target audiences.
At the same time, many wellness companies are mimicking the language of cutting-edge medicine and bringing in biomarker technology and big data. What is going on there?
Wellness has always been closely connected to hacker culture, or using non-standard methods to solve problems that prioritise efficiency. The Silicon Valley culture of optimising one鈥檚 life is deeply embedded in wellness culture.
These days, you can take at-home saliva, blood or stool samples and send them off to laboratories. For example, the company Viome offers routine at-home stool tests. Then it sends users 鈥淧recision Supplements鈥� and customised meal plans, which are tailored to the person鈥檚 stool test results using big data and algorithms. The complete package costs $199 a month.
This evolution comes out of the idea that wellness is a form of enhancement. It also overlaps with values of health self-governance because these services allow people to bypass health practitioners altogether.
Doesn鈥檛 that contradict the connection to nature that wellness seekers are often looking for?
The term natural can mean many things, it doesn鈥檛 always refer to a product鈥檚 origin. It can refer, for example, to how a product might 鈥渂ehave naturally鈥� in the body. For example, Suzanne Somers, the actor who has written many anti-ageing books, has promoted bioidentical hormones for many years. The idea behind bioidenticals is that they mimic natural processes in the body.
It鈥檚 similar with the growth in biomarker testing and tailored supplements. There is an intuitive feeling that people are taking something specifically keyed to their body鈥檚 makeup so it is more natural to the body than a generic, all-purpose product.
In your book, you point out that wellness pursuits give people a sense of control over their exhausting lives, their fears about ageing and even concerns about pollution. Is it possible to disrupt these very powerful motivations?
My goal is to produce evidence about how wellness culture spirals and grows. I hope I can offer scientists, science communicators, policy makers and health practitioners a better sense of the problem here. For me, the problem isn鈥檛 so much that people are misinformed. It鈥檚 that people aren鈥檛 getting what they need in other ways so they鈥檙e trying to address really big problems in the only way that they鈥檙e really able to, which is through individual consumer choices.
For example, people don鈥檛 have control over the chemical contamination in the environment. Unless they want to completely transform their lives and become environmental activists, the most people feel they can do is sign a petition, which is a pretty indirect action, so they also may try a detox diet or a cleanse. Similarly, most of us lead busy, exhausted lives. Few of us have the time or privilege to push back against hypercapitalist workplace demands and broader cultural forces, so we may turn to supplements to give us more energy, to increase our focus, to alleviate stress and anxiety, to improve our sleep and even to cure hangovers so we can get back to work after overindulging.
When I started writing the book, I had thought it would be a cranky takedown of wellness culture, critiquing people for choosing products that are generally not supported by scientific evidence to be safe or effective. But the more time I spent listening closely to the language of wellness, I found that wellness is not itself the problem as much as it is a symptom of broader problems.
My hope is that people will walk away from Why Wellness Sells with a better understanding of how improving collective wellbeing through broad social actions will have a greater, more lasting impact than any individual wellness product or service ever could.
