How wellness culture is toxic for people with chronic illness

Wellness culture is toxic for people with chronic illness and chronic pain, and many chronic illness blogs and influencers get sucked into the culture and spread it with the best of intentions. They arrive so excited to talk about their illness, but slowly over time, they realize that chronic illness is a very niche topic and it’s hard to get followers, never mind make money. Consequently, they start to slide over to wellness. Or sometimes their health gets better and they want to share what worked for them, but they accidentally generalize and cause damage in their effort to be helpful.

The wellness industry makes ridiculous amounts of money off sick people and it’s much easier to become a popular blog or an influencer in that category. Companies who sell supplements, weight loss, juices, yoga routines, crystals, smoothies, diet plans, and life coaching come calling and they come with a paycheck. It usually starts slow, but before you know it that chronic illness influencer is full-on Wellness with supplements to buy, smoothies to drink, courses to enroll in, and constant reminders that you too can feel better if you only want to try hard enough.

It's gaslighting to tell people who are in pain or who are sick that if they only want it hard enough, they can fix themselves. Click To Tweet

Wellness culture gaslights people with chronic pain and chronic illness and tells them their health is their own fault

It’s gaslighting to tell people who are in pain or who are sick that if they only want it hard enough, they can fix themselves. That there’s nothing wrong with their body that a little cleanse, weight loss and some mindfulness and coaching won’t solve. Some common excuses are that they:

• have toxins they need to expel
• aren’t positive enough
• need to eat organic, vegan, or gluten-free, or dairy-free or all of those at once
• need to buy all their meals from a special online service
• are sick all because of mainstream medicine
• should drop all their medication and just focus on feeling better
• are being poisoned by vaccines
• should try a few essential oils
• (If that doesn’t work) try some more essential oils
• (If that doesn’t work) fly to the conference to meet an amazing wellness expert

Now I can already hear the screaming: “Not me, not my wellness coach, they’re not like that!” The problem is that they’re not like that until they are. Many wellness influencers start off consumers just like you. They try a product like it, they start sharing it, but that’s not a sustainable pattern, so they shift their identity and become peddlers of a product.

To make money in the wellness industry you have to do it by exploiting vulnerable people. Click To Tweet

To make money in the wellness industry you have to do it by exploiting vulnerable people. Ask anyone with chronic illness how many invitations they get from acquaintances on Facebook “Hey grl, we haven’t talked in forever!!!!!! I heard you’re sick and I have something perfect for you to try!!!!!! If you stick to it, it will definitely cure you and you support me being a girl boss!!!!!!!”

 

Why the wellness industry is attractive to women with chronic illness

I understand the attractiveness of the wellness industry because, unlike doctors, wellness gurus won’t tell you you’re faking. The medical profession has never been there for women and has always been about gaslighting and blaming women for the doctor’s own ignorance. What options are women dismissed by their doctors left with? They’re already paying $300+ in exchange for the doctor ignoring their symptoms, so investing it somewhere else makes sense.

Enter, the wellness industry where gurus, coaches, influences, and weight loss experts listen and offer solutions.

The wellness industry is attractive because the American medical system is a mess. Women and POC wait longer for pain treatment and are more likely to be offered sedatives than men. A diagnosis like endometriosis takes 8 years on average, and period pain is completely ignored. Illnesses like ME/CFS, autoimmune, and Fibromyalgia are underresearched and often blamed on the laziness of the patient. According to an article on VICE:

 Ingrained sexism means that doctors may regard women as either earth mothers or hypochondriacs; that is, either women possess deep wellspring of internal pain control that they ought to be able to channel during childbirth, or their pain is psychological in nature—a symptom of hysteria.¹

This creates generations of women in pain with nowhere to go.

Furthermore, Instagram, wellness blogs, and more are here to save the day and make women feel like they’re important. They make “Health” feel achievable, that’s not how any of this works. According to an article in New Zealand’s News Hub:

The idea that capital H health is achievable for everyone is a lie, because it ignores that class and income is the greatest indicator for avoiding illness.²

Toxic wellness culture blames people with chronic illness and chronic pain for their own suffering

Although wellness gurus make women feel better by listening, they generally aren’t any less selfish and egotistical than doctors. Their motivation is not to help women, it’s to sell something and make money.

Influencers claim that wellness culture isn’t harming anyone, but they’re ignoring the people they are scamming as well as the shaming aimed at people with chronic illness and chronic pain. This happens when the idea of “Health” switches to blaming people with chronic illness for their own suffering. It even extends to apply to well-known diseases. The “I can’t get sick because I drink cayenne water and that makes my immune system fight every disease that’s ever existed” crowd is killing people, as evident in the Covid pandemic.

COVID contrarianism also reflects another problematic belief held by certain segments of the wellness world: that health is an individual responsibility, maintained through certain diet choices and lifestyle habits, and therefore illness is to be blamed on the ill.

 

Blaming the victim is comforting, it allows for the illusion of control. If you believe that kale juice cures cancer, then it’s the cancer patients’ own fault for their misfortune. You’ll never suffer because you do the right things to stay healthy.  The problem is, when someone believes their health is predicated on their own righteousness, they develop alarming practices that affect the safety of others and can slide into dangerous behaviors.

People who already believe the entire health system is out to get them are more likely to believe what influencers tell them on the internet. Influencers urge you to “listen to your intuition” and “do your research” (on youtube and Insta) instead of listening to scientists and doctors all over the world.

When someone believes their health is predicated on their own righteousness, they develop alarming practices that affect the safety of others and can slide into dangerous behaviors. Click To Tweet

Is everything from wellness culture toxic and horrible?

Not everything from wellness culture is toxic. As I said, bloggers and influencers in the beginning stages often have some good ideas and advice. The truth is eating healthy will help your health (if you can afford it), but it isn’t a cure. The problem is that health is a lot more complicated than the wellness industry and the medical system makes it out to be.

 

1. Your Pain Is Not Real: How Doctors Discriminate Against Women. VICE. Feb 12, 2017. https://www.vice.com/en/article/nz9wbg/your-pain-is-not-real-how-doctors-discriminate-against-women.
2. Fabor, A. (2018, August 29). Opinion: Why Instagram’s ‘wellness culture’ is a scam. Newshub. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/lifestyle/2018/08/opinion-why-instagram-s-wellness-culture-is-a-scam.html.
3. Griffin, A. (2017, June 15). Women are flocking to wellness because modern medicine still doesn’t take them seriously. Quartz. https://qz.com/1006387/women-are-flocking-to-wellness-because-traditional-medicine-still-doesnt-take-them-seriously/.