I have been on a bit of a de-influencing kick over on my Instagram page lately. My mission is pretty simple: educate people about health and wellness while hopefully preventing a few of you from falling victim to the $6.8 TRILLION global industry that is health and wellness. Yes, trillion. With a T.
Before anyone gets confused, I make my living in health and wellness. I have for years. I believe deeply in exercise, nutrition, sleep, preventive health and taking care of the body you’ve been given. I also believe there are supplements worth taking, health technologies worth using and products absolutely worth spending money on.
What I don’t believe is that taking care of your body should require 17 supplements, a vibration plate promising to shake away all your problems, a parasite cleanse, a continuous glucose monitor you don’t medically need and a $4,000 machine promising to somehow improve your mitochondria while you sleep.
Somewhere along the way, wellness stopped simply being something we do and became something we are constantly being sold. And the sales pitch generally comes in one of two flavors.
Option A: Thank God you found this person because they have finally discovered the hack, secret, protocol or missing piece that will help you ______ by ______. Lucky you, they are willing to share this life-changing information for the perfectly reasonable price of $299.
Option B is a little darker. You are in imminent danger. Your hormones are broken. Your cortisol is through the roof. Your gut is leaking. Your lymph isn’t draining. Your liver is apparently incapable of doing the job it has been doing your entire life, and there is a very good chance you are currently housing a family of parasites. But don’t panic. They sell something for that. And don’t worry about the exorbitant price because there’s a payment plan. Besides, who can put a price on evicting the tapeworm you didn’t know you had?
This is where the health and wellness industry has become incredibly good at what it does. It knows how to sell us two things that are very difficult for human beings to resist: hope and fear. Hope tells us there might be an easier, faster or better way to get something we desperately want. Lose the weight. Sleep better. Have more energy. Fix the bloating. Stop aging. Balance the hormones. Get rid of the brain fog. Feel like ourselves again.
Fear works from the opposite direction. Instead of promising something we want, it convinces us something terrible might already be happening. Health is the perfect place for this kind of marketing because every single one of us has something to lose. Nobody wants cancer. Nobody wants dementia. Nobody wants heart disease. Nobody wants to lose their independence as they age. Nobody wants to feel exhausted, gain weight, lose muscle or discover too late that something was wrong.
So when someone shows up on your phone and confidently tells you that the headache you had Tuesday, the bloating you had after dinner and the fact that you woke up at 3 a.m. are all signs that your body is desperately trying to tell you something, you listen. Especially when that same person conveniently has the answer linked in their bio.
This is exactly why I started de-influencing on my own Instagram page. I don’t want to tell people that everything in wellness is garbage, because it isn’t. I want people to get better at separating what might actually improve their health from what has simply been marketed well enough to make them believe they need it. There are supplements with good evidence behind them. There are incredible health technologies. There are products I use personally and professionally because they are useful and supported by science. Making money in the health and wellness industry does not automatically make someone a snake oil salesman.
The problem is when the marketing has to convince you that you are sick before it can convince you that the product works. That is where I want all of us to become a little harder to influence.
Before you buy the supplement, sign up for the protocol, order the test or start the cleanse, ask a few questions.
What exactly is this supposed to do? Is there quality research supporting it? Who is making the claim? Are they also selling the solution? And perhaps most importantly, did I believe there was something wrong with me before I watched this video?
Sometimes the most effective health advice is also the least marketable. Sleep enough. Move your body. Lift heavy things. Eat enough protein, plants and fiber. Drink water. Don’t smoke. Limit alcohol. Maintain relationships. Get appropriate health screenings. Know your blood pressure and basic health numbers. Go to the doctor when something doesn’t feel right.
None of that is particularly sexy. There’s no secret protocol, seven-day reset, miracle powder shipped to your door or quiz revealing which toxin has apparently been ruining your life since 2007. It also doesn’t come with a payment plan.
The wellness industry will continue inventing things for us to buy because there are trillions of dollars proving that we will buy them. Some will be useful. Some will be useless. Some will probably be downright ridiculous. My goal with de-influencing isn’t to convince you to stop spending money on your health. Spend money on your health. I just want you to stop assuming that spending money is the same thing as improving it.
Your health probably isn’t hiding behind a checkout button. And unfortunately, there’s no affiliate code for going to bed.
