Health Update: Wellness industry doesn’t want you well – What Experts Say

Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh

At first glance, the “well­ness in­dus­try” looks mar­vel­lous. It speaks about pre­ven­tion. It men­tions gut health, cor­ti­sol, mi­to­chon­dria and hor­mones.

But if you watch close­ly, you’ll no­tice some­thing pe­cu­liar.

It nev­er wants you fin­ished.

It wants you im­proved. Op­ti­mised. Detoxed. Bio­hacked. Re­set. Re­bal­anced. Re­ju­ve­nat­ed.

But nev­er done.

A cured pa­tient is a ter­ri­ble cus­tomer.

A per­ma­nent­ly “al­most bet­ter” one is ex­cel­lent for busi­ness.

The mod­ern well­ness econ­o­my is not built on restora­tion. It is built on main­te­nance of mild dis­sat­is­fac­tion. You are not sick enough to see me ur­gent­ly. But you are un­well enough to buy pow­ders, drops, ton­ics, in­fu­sions and pro­grammes de­signed to cor­rect im­bal­ances you did not know you had.

And the ge­nius of it is this: the symp­toms it tar­gets are uni­ver­sal.

Fa­tigue. Brain fog. Bloat­ing. Low mood. Poor sleep. Low en­er­gy.

Who does not have those?

We live in a world of chron­ic sleep debt, end­less stim­u­la­tion, emo­tion­al over­load and ul­tra­processed con­ve­nience. Of course, peo­ple feel sub­op­ti­mal. Of course, they want re­lief.

The well­ness in­dus­try steps for­ward gen­tly.

You don’t need dis­ci­pline. You need a de­fi­cien­cy.

It is rarely your habits. It is rarely your stress. It is rarely your sched­ule.

It is zinc. Or mag­ne­sium. Or vi­t­a­min K2. Or some­thing new that sounds both sci­en­tif­ic and rare.

There is al­ways a com­pound which is eas­i­er than change. A pa­tient ar­rives car­ry­ing a small phar­ma­cy pur­chased on­line. They are not fool­ish. They are hope­ful.

Hope is prof­itable.

The un­com­fort­able truth is that the sup­ple­ment in­dus­try is struc­tural­ly dif­fer­ent from med­i­cine. Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals must prove ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty be­fore mar­ket­ing. Sup­ple­ments, in many ju­ris­dic­tions, must mere­ly avoid be­ing overt­ly poi­so­nous.

The bur­den of proof is in­vert­ed.

If harm is not im­me­di­ate­ly ob­vi­ous, it is al­lowed to flour­ish.

This cre­ates a per­fect storm. In­flu­encers present cer­tain­ty. Al­go­rithms re­ward en­gage­ment. Con­sumers seek re­as­sur­ance. And some­where in the mid­dle, nu­ance evap­o­rates.

Tik­Tok is now prac­tic­ing med­i­cine with­out a li­cence.

That sen­tence sounds dra­mat­ic. It is not.

Scroll for 30 sec­onds and you will en­counter ad­vice on in­sulin re­sis­tance, cor­ti­sol rhythms, thy­roid op­ti­mi­sa­tion, hor­mone stack­ing, liv­er detox­i­fi­ca­tion, fat-burn­ing pep­tides and in­tra­venous vi­t­a­min cock­tails that promise post-Car­ni­val res­ur­rec­tion.

The al­go­rithm does not care whether the ad­vice is cor­rect. It cares whether you watch. Con­fi­dence scales. Ev­i­dence crawls.

And so the pub­lic learns med­i­cine from the most per­sua­sive rather than the most ac­cu­rate. But here is where the re­al prob­lem be­gins.

The well­ness in­dus­try rarely sells a so­lu­tion. It sells an iden­ti­ty.

You are not mere­ly tak­ing sup­ple­ments. You are bio­hack­ing. You are up­grad­ing. You are join­ing a com­mu­ni­ty that un­der­stands what the main­stream does not.

Main­stream med­i­cine, in this nar­ra­tive, is slow. Con­ser­v­a­tive. Out­dat­ed.

Well­ness is cut­ting-edge. What is nev­er men­tioned is that many of the “cut­ting-edge” in­ter­ven­tions rest on mech­a­nis­tic plau­si­bil­i­ty rather than out­come da­ta.

The detox in­dus­try is per­haps the most el­e­gant ex­am­ple. Af­ter in­dul­gence, there is guilt. Af­ter guilt, there is a drip. In­tra­venous cock­tails of vi­t­a­mins and an­tiox­i­dants of­fered as re­demp­tion for ex­cess.

If your liv­er works, you do not need detox.

If your liv­er does not work, a vi­t­a­min drip will not save it.

But re­demp­tion is emo­tion­al­ly com­pelling. It is eas­i­er to book an in­fu­sion than to change be­hav­iour.

Feel tired? Buy some­thing. Feel tem­porar­i­ly bet­ter. At­tribute im­prove­ment to the prod­uct rather than to rest or hy­dra­tion. Re­peat.

The body, mean­while, con­tin­ues to keep score in ways no in­flu­encer men­tions. Sleep de­pri­va­tion rais­es cor­ti­sol. Chron­ic stress al­ters glu­cose me­tab­o­lism. Seden­tary habits stiff­en ar­ter­ies. No sup­ple­ment over­rides phys­i­ol­o­gy in­def­i­nite­ly.

Here is the vil­lain­ous part.

The in­dus­try does not cor­rect un­der­ly­ing dri­vers be­cause those are in­con­ve­nient. Re­al change in­volves sleep hy­giene, di­etary ad­just­ment, move­ment, bound­aries and some­times un­com­fort­able re­flec­tion about how we live.

That is not glam­orous con­tent.

A cap­sule is.

Some sup­ple­ments have ev­i­dence.

But ev­i­dence-based sup­ple­men­ta­tion is not the same as end­less op­ti­mi­sa­tion.

Op­ti­mi­sa­tion is a tread­mill. There is al­ways an­oth­er bio­mark­er to tweak. An­oth­er lev­el to un­lock. An­oth­er mol­e­cule trend­ing.

You nev­er ar­rive.

And that is the point.

Pa­tients now en­ter clin­ics re­quest­ing in­ter­ven­tions framed in vi­ral lan­guage. They speak of hor­mone crash­es, adren­al fa­tigue, dopamine de­ple­tion, tox­ic over­load. Some of these terms have ker­nels of truth. Many are dis­tort­ed be­yond recog­ni­tion.

What con­cerns me is not that peo­ple are cu­ri­ous. Cu­rios­i­ty is healthy.

What con­cerns me is that ac­count­abil­i­ty is ab­sent.

When a doc­tor pre­scribes in­cor­rect­ly, there are con­se­quences. When an in­flu­encer ex­ag­ger­ates, the penal­ty is of­ten more en­gage­ment. The asym­me­try is stag­ger­ing.

But here is some­thing the well­ness in­dus­try will nev­er ad­mit.

Most of what peo­ple are seek­ing can­not be bot­tled.

The most rad­i­cal act in mod­ern health is not buy­ing an­oth­er sup­ple­ment. It is sim­pli­fy­ing. Sleep­ing. Walk­ing. Eat­ing recog­nis­able food. Say­ing no to sched­ules that erode you. These in­ter­ven­tions are pro­found­ly un­prof­itable. Which may be why they are rarely vi­ral.

What trou­bles me most is the qui­et mo­ment when some­one with a se­ri­ous ill­ness de­cides that “nat­ur­al” must be safer than nec­es­sary.

I have seen pa­tients with di­a­betes aban­don in­sulin for cin­na­mon or chromi­um be­cause a video promised re­ver­sal.

I have seen blood pres­sure tablets stopped for mag­ne­sium pro­to­cols. I have seen can­cer pa­tients pause chemother­a­py to pur­sue un­proven in­fu­sions mar­ket­ed as im­mune mir­a­cles. But phys­i­ol­o­gy does not ne­go­ti­ate with hope. Blood glu­cose ris­es whether or not you be­lieve in sup­ple­ments.

Tu­mours do not slow be­cause a pro­to­col sounds com­pelling. When ev­i­dence-based treat­ment is de­layed, dis­ease does not wait po­lite­ly. It pro­gress­es. And by the time pa­tients re­turn—of­ten qui­eter, thin­ner, more fright­ened—the bi­ol­o­gy has ad­vanced be­yond where it once was.

Tik­Tok will con­tin­ue to prac­tice med­i­cine with­out a li­cence. But when com­pli­ca­tions arise, when ar­ter­ies nar­row, when liv­ers in­flame, when glu­cose climbs, the al­go­rithm will not be in the re­sus­ci­ta­tion bay.

Health is not some­thing you op­ti­mise.

It is some­thing you prac­tice.

And the body does not fol­low trends.

It fol­lows pat­terns.

Choose yours care­ful­ly.