Top 6 Things Wellness 'Experts' Get Wrong About Health

I cringe when I see almost anything posted online these days about health and wellness. It's not that there isn't good information out there—the unfortunate truth is that the content that gets the most eyeballs is typically the most sensational, peddled by influencers or "doctors" who have no qualifications to discuss what they're talking about.

Take Dr. Joe Dispenza, for instance. He's a New York Times bestselling author who claims in his Instagram bio to be a "Researcher of epigenetics, quantum physics & neuroscience." His qualification? He's a doctor...a chiropractor. Not exactly the same as a neuroscientist.

There's too much content out there to keep track of it all. Who has the time to really look into the financial funding, educational background, and claims of every single "health" authority they come across?

So let me make your job easier. Today, I'll tell you the top 10 things wellness experts get wrong about health so you can spot the lies yourself.

1. It's their way or the highway. There is nuance to almost everything in health and fitness. If you ask me a question, the first part of my answer is typically "it depends." What's right for one person could be wrong for another. I try to stay away from absolute black-and-white claims. Yes, I tell everyone to eat their protein—but if you have phenylketonuria, an inherited disorder that prevents the body from metabolizing amino acids properly, you'll get a different answer. Most wellness charlatans grab your attention by making their claims the end-all, be-all.

2. They want to sell you an expensive product. It's always so convenient when a wellness guru tells you what your problem is, and they just so happen to sell the perfect supplement to fix it! How nice is that?

3. They claim there's a food or food group that is going to kill you. Vegetables are full of anti-nutrients, all grains destroy your gut, meat gives you cancer, carbs make you fat, seed oil inflammation is your biggest problem...the list goes on and on. The science simply doesn't support these claims. There's a kernel of truth in all of them, but it's just plain wrong to terrify people into cutting foods out of their diet based on cherry-picked data.

4. They don't take real life into account. The routines and rituals they propose are either unrealistic for your schedule or would cause you to become so isolated from others that they would create health problems in and of themselves. They tell you to wake up at 5 AM, insist you never go out to eat because of seed oils in your food, demand that you exercise for far more time than you can spare, and more. Health and fitness are supposed to enhance the rest of your life, not become your life.

5. They feed on fear. Any choice to better yourself made out of fear is going to be a slippery slope toward unsustainability. These wellness influencers stop you in your tracks and grab your attention in your feed with outlandish statements like "broccoli causes cancer," "you'll destroy your hormones if you don't intermittent fast," or "you should banish western medicine altogether." And every day the claims change. Who can keep up with it all?

6. They stand on a moral high ground. To them, health and wellness become an issue of morality. You'll get the sense that they think they're better than you because they abstain from certain foods or activities. They'll make you feel ashamed for not eating organic (what a loser you must be!). They could never relate to someone who overeats—because they could never be that lazy and unmotivated! And didn't you know your clothes are made of microplastics now? They can't believe you didn't upgrade your entire wardrobe already.

This is a topic I feel very strongly about. I fell prey to so much of this messaging in the past, and it took over my life. I'm fighting for your attention in these blog posts—there's so much information out there to consume. My only goal is to make sure what I'm telling you will enhance the quality of your life, not degrade it.