There’s a new kind of health revolution happening online. Forget rushed GP appointments and overbooked clinics — today’s health experts are wellness gurus who wear yoga pants, talk cortisol levels, and sell empowerment. Last week, the Wall Street Journal was the latest outlet to show how “hormone balance” and “wellness” have become both diagnosis and cure, promising that better sleep, clearer skin and calmer moods can be achieved through supplements and an unwavering commitment to this new lifestyle.
But before people dismiss this movement, it’s important to remember that beneath the soft lighting and wellness tonics lies a harder truth — a growing number of women have justifiably lost faith in medicine. They’re tired of being misunderstood, overprescribed, or told that their problems are “just hormones”. And into that space has swept the wellness industry — part rebellion, part exploitation of women’s worries.
So it’s little wonder that many women are looking elsewhere for answers, not from experts in white coats, but from each other. Former athlete and registered nutritionist Jessica Barac was hit with crippling anxiety, extreme fatigue, and sudden crying jags during an unexpected perimenopause in her late 30s. Unimpressed by the information available, she began sharing her experiences of the non-medicalised wellness industry online. Now, more than a million people follow her advice.
Stories like hers explain why the wellness economy has exploded. Wellness isn’t a medical revolution so much as a beautifully branded rebellion. The dull, sensible advice of your harried GP — sleep well, eat healthily, exercise often — has been replaced by glossy promises of health and happiness through supplements and tonics.
The wellness industry has extended far beyond vitamins and minerals. Los Angeles photographer Masha Maltsava has cleared her home of “forever chemicals”, swapped her cookware for cast iron, and banished her polyester leggings. She now tracks her stress levels with an Oura ring and uses AI to interpret her lab results.
But herein lies the problem with relying on the wellness industry. What began as a justifiable search for better information has morphed into a multi-million-pound industry. This is where “first, do no harm” collides with “buyer beware”. The tragedy is that women aren’t wrong to seek better or non-pharmaceutical care for certain ailments — the worry is that they’re being sold certainty in place of science. It’s easy to mock those who turn to influencers instead of doctors, but in a world that demands answers, someone will always be waiting to sell you one.
Take 28-year-old content creator Carly Hataway, who spoke to the WSJ about her experience. After years of trying to understand her hormones and why she seemed to be so affected by fluctuations, she wasn’t convinced when her doctor told her to go back on the pill. So she turned instead to an alternative health practitioner who ordered a battery of blood and urine tests. “I finally figured out that my cortisol was really high and that my progesterone and my oestrogen [sic] were low,” said Hataway.
And then, of course, she posted the results to her 70,000 TikTok followers. The flood of support that followed shows why this world is so seductive: rejecting your doctor’s bad advice feels like independence.
The great irony in all this is that the wellness ecosystem is driven by profit. Influencers with something to sell thrive on creating a sense that their target market is missing something in their lives. All the while, the efficacy of the wellness industry is increasingly questionable. Little of this is evidence-based, and most of the research is extremely limited. Influencers often lean heavily on phrases like “preliminary findings” and “emerging science”.
What this trend exposes is a broader collapse of trust in expertise. In this case, the old medical paternalism hasn’t been replaced by better self-guided care, but by naked consumerism resting on junk science.
