The wellness industry is worth over a trillion dollars globally. Some of it helps. A surprising amount has made people more anxious, more confused, and significantly poorer.
Detoxes and cleanses
Your liver and kidneys detox your body continuously and effectively. There is no juice or three-day protocol that improves on that. Americans have spent billions on products that do nothing — and in some cases cause harm through electrolyte disruption and disordered eating patterns.
Optimization culture
Tracking sleep scores, HRV, macros, steps, and recovery metrics has produced people who are more anxious about their health than any previous generation while being no healthier. The monitoring has become its own source of chronic stress — which is, ironically, terrible for every metric being tracked.
Supplements with no evidence base
The supplement industry operates with minimal FDA oversight. The majority of products don’t have robust clinical evidence supporting their label claims. Americans are spending $50 billion annually on things that, for most people, do nothing.
The idea that all stress is bad
Wellness pathologized stress so thoroughly that a generation now treats any discomfort as a signal something is wrong. Some stress is adaptive and necessary. The relentless pursuit of calm has produced people less equipped to handle the normal difficulties of being alive.
Wellness as a substitute for actual healthcare
Cold plunges and adaptogenic mushrooms are not a substitute for a doctor. The wellness industry has flourished partly in the gap left by unaffordable healthcare — and some Americans are managing serious conditions with lifestyle interventions that simply aren’t adequate.
The monetization of self-esteem
Body positivity, self-love, confidence — real and valuable concepts that have been packaged and sold back to the people who needed them most. The commodification of self-acceptance is one of the more cynical moves any industry has pulled in recent memory.
The wellness personality
Green juice, cold plunge, red light panel, morning routine content. Wellness has become an identity and an aesthetic — subject to all the social comparison and status anxiety it was supposed to relieve.
Sleep tracking making sleep worse
A significant number of people who begin monitoring their sleep develop anxiety about sleep quality that makes sleep worse. The device meant to improve rest becomes the reason rest is harder to find.
Taking your health seriously is worthwhile. Letting an industry monetize that indefinitely is something else. Which of these hit home? Drop it in the comments, and follow for more.
