Zavia Pittman

Opinions Writer

I have a complicated relationship with wellness. As a concept, it can be an excellent tool for people to finally start caring for themselves and focusing more on their overall health. As an industry, however, it is full of money-grubbing grifters who make people obsess about their health and feel bad about themselves. And it’s very easy for you to be a wellness girl today and a full-blown wingnut tomorrow.

Of course, in a society where access to healthcare and health-related services is complicated, people will find ways to fill in the gaps. Additionally, many people are rightfully skeptical of the healthcare system and medicine. Issues like the opioid crisis and news of drugs being ineffective or causing terrible side effects are frightening to the general public. Some wellness supplements are cheaper than expensive prescription drugs not covered by health insurance. Many wellness products appeal to consumers by seeming all-natural and use terms people are familiar with, unlike long and confusing medicine names. 

Let’s not forget about the wellness girlies.

Outside of the societal reasons people get into wellness, many young people start their wellness journeys simply because it makes them feel better. We take a multivitamin because we feel like it balances us out. Some women take cranberry pills for their feminine health, and your average gym bro might take turkesterone because it makes him push harder (at least in his mind). 

And to that, I say go for it and live your best life. People have the right to take things that make them feel good, and it’s not like these are hard drugs. I even have a bottle of multivitamins on my shelf that I think I should take more often. 

However, my problems with wellness creep up when I see people denouncing modern medicine and science, not to mention being hyper-fixated on their health. It usually starts with people getting into a toxic relationship with their supplements. They think the supplements can do no wrong, and when a particular ailment doesn’t subside, or a new one pops up, their first thought is to use more. Now, instead of taking one multivitamin, they are taking Vitamins D, C, and B, magnesium, and fish oil for good measure.

Soon, they distrust doctors and believe they can cure themselves of any ailment with an array of powders and pills. Let’s not forget that most of the supplements we take, whether $5 or $55, are not regulated by the FDA. Many of them like to cite a bunch of studies proclaiming the benefits of the drugs they’re selling, but if you look deeper into these studies, the results are marginal at best most of the time. If you compare the research behind penicillin and most of these wellness products, you’ll see how little we know about them. 

I’m sure thousands of people have felt real benefits from using wellness products, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about empirical research. In the same way the healthcare industry often profits off of people being sick, wellness companies (big and small) profit from your mistrust of that industry.

As I said, wellness has great potential, but we must be responsible when engaging with it. A lot of wellness is simply marketing, and many ways to aid your health don’t involve paying for a bottle of vitamins. Medicine helps, and not all doctors are terrible. It’s good to get some info from people with expertise to help you.