
How ‘Wellness’ Became an Epidemic - prostoalex
https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/how-wellness-became-an-epidemic.html
======
Mz
I can't manage to read this entire thing, not just because it is long, but
because it is so sneering. Study after study after study indicates that diet,
exercise and lifestyle have measurable impacts on morbidity and a long list of
serious, often deadly, conditions. But if you actually try to advocate that
people attend to their health first and foremost by eating right, exercising
and making good lifestyle choices, you are some crazy weirdo?

I don't think it is any mystery at all that it is happening alongside so many
people not having access to proper insurance, doctors, etc. If you can't
afford to go to a doctor, then reading something for free on the internet and
tweaking your diet in hopes of not needing a doctor makes all kinds of sense.

~~~
andreyk
The writing is a bit sneering and sarcastic, but I think it's pretty clear
this is entirely about the new-agey-too-expensive-shady-pseudo-science kind of
wellness and not about eating right and excercising. And this is not at all
about people who can't afford insurance - the tagline is "Why are so many
privileged people feeling so sick? Luckily, there’s no shortage of cures.".

~~~
Mz
I was responding in part to this:

 _There’s something grotesque about this industry’s emerging at the moment
when the most basic health care is still being denied to so many in America
and is at risk of being snatched away from millions more._

If you think only rich people are going to read Goop and buy crap off of it, I
think you are mistaken. And that quote (above) is basically where I stopped
reading.

The title on HN now has _Wellness_ in quotes. But it is not actually in quotes
on the article itself. I think it is important to make a clearer distinction
between actual wellness programs that do genuine good and the stuff that tries
to market itself that way and is more questionable.

For personal reasons, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. But I think
this is an important distinction to make.

~~~
coldtea
> _If you think only rich people are going to read Goop and buy crap off of
> it, I think you are mistaken. And that quote (above) is basically where I
> stopped reading._

Do people think that telling others they "stopped reading" an article before
it was over makes their opinion on its contents more valid than having
actually read it all AND calmly?

> _If you think only rich people are going to read Goop and buy crap off of
> it, I think you are mistaken._

Maybe not "only", but mostly rich people will. Including middle/upper middle
class people who can afford all they need, even if not technically rich.

For certain, very few single black mothers working their arses off in minimal
wage to make ends meet will go to check the Good catalogue...

~~~
Mz
_For certain, very few single black mothers working their arses off in minimal
wage to make ends meet will go to check the Good catalogue..._

Do you have some kind of data or evidence on that? Or is that just racist,
classist assumption?

------
bpodgursky
When nobody (aka the privileged class described here) has real problems or
responsibilities anymore (no kids until late 30s, if then, no shortage of
money for healthy food and housing) you focus on the trivial problems that
earlier generations would have laughed at.

~~~
dualogy
Earlier generations would have laughed at that because they had mostly figured
it out --- though not via studies, just over the millenia. Early to rise, tend
to the ranch or the herd, a little bit of this repair a little bit of that
repaint, flowers for the bees, good amounts of siesta, good amounts of fiesta,
spring/rain/well water and fresh local nourishing food from better soils with
no processed concoctions engineered for hyper-palatibilty..

(And to be sure: not all of them all of the time, sure there were all kinds of
health issues rampant throughout the centuries but chiefly for those who
couldn't follow such a tranquil pastoral life, the warriors the slaves the
city-folks etc, sure --- just enough in the numerous lucky fertile peaceful
not-overpopulated-or-overfarmed pockets of all continents)

Most of this above ends up echoing again and again throughout all the various
seemingly-diverse "healthy living" fads and manifestos. Yeah it's a bit silly
we need to label the fairly old-school natural and all-out mundane aspects of
a conducive-to-human-health regimen "organic" or "fresh & regional" or
"paleo/primal" or "intermittent fasting" (or take some obscure berry or seed
from some remote forest tribe and blow it up as the next "super food"), but
that's just how human memetics have always worked, since well before the days
of the "yellow press", so .. so what =)

~~~
bsder
> Earlier generations would have laughed at that because they had mostly
> figured it out --- though not via studies, just over the millenia. Early to
> rise, tend to the ranch or the herd, a little bit of this repair a little
> bit of that repaint, flowers for the bees, good amounts of siesta, good
> amounts of fiesta, spring/rain/well water and fresh local nourishing food
> from better soils with no processed concoctions engineered for hyper-
> palatibilty..

Uh, yeah.

Get up for third shift at the mill or mine (sleep disruption increasing
accidents). Breathe toxic fumes the entire time you're there. Lay on your back
the entire shift while they roll boxcars over you for you to weld. Quitting
time--shower and then stop in to local bar and drink until your
back/side/whatever quits hurting so much. Head home, crash into bed, and maybe
help with the gardening or livestock you are raising in order to not starve.
Get terribly sick in your mid-fifties and die from something horrible before
you reach 65.

Yeah, the previous generation had it _soooooo_ figured out.

~~~
ticviking
There were like 2-3 generations where that was the majority lifestyle. Most
humans in all of history had an existence that more closely resembled the one
you quoted.

~~~
bsder
Roughly 1850-1970 is 3 generations even if I classify a generation as 40 years
instead of 20. It's roughly 6 generations if I classify them as 20.

And, I suspect most people wouldn't want to live in the world much prior to
1850. There was a fairly nice article where husband and wife historians
attempted to live a colonial/pastoral lifestyle. The wife had a nervous
breakdown because all she basically did was cook and clean, and the husband
came home completely exhausted day in/day out.

Being "healthy" doesn't matter much if it takes all your energy to survive.

There was a reason why colonial America consumed so much alcohol ...

------
taxicabjesus
A 90's Aerosmith song goes, "There's something wrong with the world today, I
don't know what it is..." I don't know either, but I've a few observations...

With regard to the "wellness" industry. Mostly it's a sham, but so too are
many medical treatments. Women are particularly vulnerable to medical
profiteering - I posted about this yesterday [1]...

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708472)

    
    
      There’s something grotesque about this 
      industry’s emerging at the moment when the most 
      basic health care is still being denied to so 
      many in America and is at risk of being 
      snatched away from millions more. 
    

People are focused on Wellness because they're not getting it from their
doctors. Sometimes a conventional medical practitioner's diagnosis is helpful,
but usually they miss the big picture.

I took lots of people to & from their doctor appointments. Sometimes all a
person really needed was to feel safe, but their doctors couldn't prescribe
that. So they'd go from doctor to doctor to doctor looking for answers, but
never finding them.

    
    
      But what’s perhaps most striking about 
      wellness’s ascendancy is that it’s happening  
      because, in our increasingly bifurcated world, 
      even those who do have access to pretty good 
      (and sometimes quite excellent, if quite 
      expensive) traditional health care are left 
      feeling, nonetheless, incredibly unwell.
    

This section reminds me of one passenger in particular... She wanted help, and
had a few resources, but her doctors only made her condition worse. Sometimes
doctors do good work, sometimes they don't know when to stop. "Wellness" is
for those who've given up on conventional medicine.

~~~
zzalpha
_" Wellness" is for those who've given up on conventional medicine._

You mean, given up on medicine.

All this other stuff? It's not medicine. It's snake oil. Chicanery. Placebo
wrapped up in meaningless ritual to make it "feel" real. It's the new
iteration of numerology, tarot, psychic reading.

The only thing that it, in some cases, brings to the mix is empathy, something
frequently missing in our overburdened medical system. And in that respect it
has value.

But medicine? That it is not, unless you define "medicine" as anything that
makes you feel better, in which case you've basically robbed the term of its
meaning.

~~~
taxicabjesus
You must have missed this ProPublica piece:

 _When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes_ \-
[https://www.propublica.org/article/when-evidence-says-no-
but...](https://www.propublica.org/article/when-evidence-says-no-but-doctors-
say-yes)

There's a slander against "alternative medicine" that goes something like,
"What do you call alternative medicine that works? _Medicine._ " The inference
is that Medicine adopts what's useful. If a herb is actually useful, the
pharmaceutical industry will figure out what the active ingredient is and
figure out how to synthesize it, etc.

My corollary to the slander is the truism: "What do you call medicine that
doesn't work? _Medicine._ " The ProPublica story linked above says that heart
stents [are now known to not be] helpful for anyone that's not actively
experiencing a heart attack, but thousands get inserted every year anyways.

[edit - clarification [] above]

~~~
StavrosK
Why do you care about what doesn't work? If the things that work are in the
set "Medicine", that's the only set we need to be concerned with.

Sure, it's worthwhile to try and figure out which medicine doesn't work, but
we know _for sure_ that anything non-medicine does, by definition, not work.

~~~
tvanantwerp
Except the range of possibilities isn't ['works', 'doesn't work']. Rather,
it's ['works', 'no effect', 'harmful', 'works and is harmful at the same
time'].

A banal example: proton pump inhibitor drugs used to treat acid reflux will,
over very long timeframes, cause nutrient malabsorption resulting in more
brittle bones. They also have what's called a rebound effect, where dropping
them cold turkey leads to a huge jump in stomach acid production and worsening
of symptoms. So while effective to reduce stomach acidity, they also have
long-term negative effects and a sort of withdrawal that makes the original
problem worse. It's a weird and complicated situation, and certainly not the
most intense example.

~~~
StavrosK
Okay, sure, but again, the things that have "no effect" are not worth even
mentioning at all. _That_ is what the debate is about, not whether medicine
that works is also harmful.

~~~
watwut
They are worth mentioning, because they are often expensive and take a lot of
time. They are often uncomfortable or painful. It is not neutral.

------
devoply
My theory is that it's because simply operating in the social hierarchy is
sickening. There are many things that you want that are totally not under your
control but under the control of other people often for no good reason. So
it's best never ever to interact with the social hierarchy unless you
absolutely have to and specifically for money. And even then force your own
rules to get the money. Dave Chapelle is an excellent example of how to deal
with the entertainment industry.

This article is a good example of how participating in the social hierarchy
and letting them tell you what your needs are and how to behave is ludicrous.
It's mostly just bullshit sold by leaders because of their esteemed status in
the hierarchy.

In the past leaders sometimes deformed their skulls from childhood to
differentiate themselves from the masses, this is an example of that same sort
of behavior.

~~~
ktRolster
I think you have an interesting point, but I have no idea what you're saying.
What would "deforming their own skulls" correspond to in modern society?

~~~
devoply
The high social classes to visualize the fact that they were different from
the people they ruled deformed their own skulls. Or certain tribes deformed
their own skulls to differentiate themselves from other tribes. It seems to be
just some stupid arbitrary thing that they do to differentiate themselves.
Sort of like wearing a bunch of rings around your neck to elongate it because
it's beautiful.

~~~
ktRolster
That......in no way answered the question.

~~~
devoply
How does deforming your skulls correspond to modern society. In modern society
we do the same thing that our leaders do, my point was humans have been doing
this forever. It's stupid and arbitrary.

------
coldcode
Snake oil has always been popular and profitable. All you need is a good
story, some people to say it helped them when nothing else did, and a supply
of anything at all to sell to cure what may or may not even ail you.

------
mirekrusin
My little shitty theory for all those lupuses, celiacs and what not (auto-
immunue system fuckups) is simple - it's just neural black box trained
throughout evolution to keep the meat that we call "myself" together and
avoiding disintegration in general. It works fine as long as it gets flow of
input that it knows (was trained on) - from womb (that's pretty stable because
there are berries that weird, new stuff doesn't pass through and you're
getting broken down, simple form nutritions), then birth is probably more
important event, oxytocin during labour triggers stuff that kicks off couple
of things in your (baby) body (that's the first things we're messing with -
scheduled cesarians (80% in brazil!) means this step is skipped together with
vagina's bacterial flora that you're not covered with etc), then our immune
system expects sucking on mother tits to get lots of feedback (when to sleep,
first foreign bacterias travel from our mouth to moms nipples, mother's immune
system responds with antibodies that we suck back and learn how to deal with -
that's another thing that we're loosing a bit, after fashionable epidural shot
to make birth less painful babies don't want to drink milk, mothers don't
produce enough - we're on bottle/formula - step skipped). After that for
couple of years our immune system was trained to live in filth on today
standards - from licking everything (little rocks, dirty feet, sucking fingers
covered with soil dirt - this is invaluable info for immune system, gets it's
thresholds, what's bad and what just goes out 100% with shit and what not) -
we're loosing this as well by living in hermetic, antibacterial wiped flats -
immune system gets confused, there supposed to be things to fight against but
it's all sterile, then first weird thing comes in, the immune system is like
"oh shit, those are relatively huge foreign invaders, red alert!" and we get
first allergies; immune system has memory of how to fight stuff, so it'll
remember to have this allergic reaction next time as well; things that it
could learn before from mother's immune system via breast/licking dirt around.
Then we've got another change which is food that our parents (recursive) never
ate (from aspartame to prozac), we're chronically feeding ourselves with mono
diets (sugars via juices and others) that overload our organs (pancreas, type
2 diabetes; or gluten messing up gut walls) - those things are not bad in
moderation when mixed with dozen of other things but if you feed your body
with just that all the time for years, it gets fucked up... so, when in doubt,
think "what my ancestors were doing". this applies to mental health and other
things in life, just like taking naps at work are being rediscovered, funnily
enough it's just what babies do at creche; too stressed or burnout? go to
fucking nature and do nothing for few days. too tired? maybe move your ass a
bit instead of sitting for 10 hours etc.

