A new book reveals how health-care inequality fueled the spread of anti-science conspiracy theories.
“Wellness is a $6.3 trillion industry, according to a 2024 report from the Global Wellness Institute, an industry trade group. That’s bigger than the GDP of Germany, and nearly four times the size of the global pharmaceutical industry. The real growth has been within the past 10 years—the GWI’s report calls it the “wellness decade.” And women represent most of its consumers.
In a nation known for its relatively poor health, nearly everybody seems to be thinking about how to be healthy: According to a 2024 report from McKinsey, 82 percent of U.S. consumers consider wellness to be a “top or important priority in their everyday lives,” and 58 percent said they were prioritizing wellness more than they had the previous year. [..]
Even as the [wellness] movement repackages traditional practices from China and India, it also promises better health through data collection, biohacking, and at its most extreme end, the Silicon Valley cult of longevity advanced by Peter Thiel and others. [Author of “How To Be Well – Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure At A Time” Amy] Larocca homes in on the often-caricatured type of the Lululemon-wearing, Pilates-toned girlie—“hopped up on her plant-based diet and elaborate adaptogen regimen”—whom she got to know well during her years writing about the fashion world. But she also devotes space to its advocates on the far right, including the conspiracist news site Infowars, which shills some supplements containing the same on-trend ingredient—ashwagandha root—that features in products sold by many mainstream wellness companies, including the Los Angeles hippie-chic brand Moon Juice.
[..] Under Trump, MAHA’s big tent draws in snake-oil salespeople alongside skeptics, paranoiacs, and ideologues. Uniting them is a deep disdain for the health-care industry. After critics pointed out that Means never finished her medical residency, Kennedy replied on X, “Casey is the perfect choice for Surgeon General precisely because she left the traditional medical system—not in spite of it.” Larocca asks: “Is wellness just consumerism, or is it a new politics, a new religion?” Perhaps it is all three.
If MAHA is a religion, it represents a kind of prosperity gospel in a country where access to health care is often determined by wealth. “Good health in America has been elevated as a luxury commodity as opposed to a fundamental right,” Larocca writes. The average American, she notes, spends just 19 minutes a year talking with a primary-care physician. Meanwhile, the average member of Parsley Health—a “direct primary care” health-and-wellness clinic whose standard membership costs $225 a month without insurance—spends at least 200 minutes a year being listened to. In short: To get that kind of attention from a doctor, you’ll have to pay dearly for it.
Nearly a third of Americans don’t have adequate access to primary-care services, including regular checkups, a 2023 PBS News report found. And 40 percent of adults reported that they were delaying or forgoing doctor visits because of high costs. More than a third of all U.S. counties are “maternity care deserts,” lacking a single obstetrician or birthing facility. The country spends more than twice as much money on health care as other high-income nations, with worse outcomes: 40 percent of Americans are obese, and six in 10 adults have a chronic illness.
For both the affluent and the aspirational customer, wellness seems to hold the promise of bridging a gap in medical care. The cost of wellness products and services has a very high ceiling, but the barrier to entry is low—almost anyone can purchase a $38 jar of adaptogenic “dust” that claims to improve your mood, and that option is much easier than bushwhacking your way toward finding a therapist who takes insurance. But most alternative cures are no more affordable than conventional medicine. Neither are members-only urgent-care practices that come with wellness bells and whistles. Sollis Health, for example, promises an average wait time of three and a half minutes or less—if you can pay its annual fee of at least $4,000.
The wellness industry and the MAHA movement may draw from different political cultures, but they both operate from a place of fear: We can’t control skyrocketing infections or health costs, but we can try to manage—or at least tinker with—how we feel inside our bodies. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, “taking care of yourself was going to be the only way to get through our terrifying new world,” Larocca writes.
[..] she [Larocca] doesn’t quite answer the bigger question: What are we owed in terms of our health? How much of it is our responsibility, as consumers, and how much can be laid at the feet of a government that has failed to create wide-scale solutions?
[..] Does any of the stuff detailed in the book actually work? In her conclusion, Larocca, who has subjected herself to more wellness treatments than can be listed here, points to the solutions we already know: hydrate, sleep, exercise, eat plants instead of processed foods, seek out “the best medical care you can manage.” (Hah.) She doesn’t recommend a single product, practice, or service, although she does name one tip that helped her. Spoiler alert: It’s a simple breathing exercise. And it’s free.”
Full article, S McClear, The Atlantic, 2025.5.29