Real money is to be found in serving a demographic known as “the worried well.” who spend on anything from scented candles and bath oils to high-tech kit costing thousands. “We only enter the NHS if we are ill, it is never about enhancing our health,” says Baker. Turning the adjective “well” into a noun is to add a price for being better. The anxieties of the better-off are being monetized.Take, for example, NAD+.
Wellness relies on celebrities rather than scientific journals to spread its message. It even has its own poster boys and girls, such as Dr. Mark Hyman, who is, like Enayat, a medical doctor and functional medicine practitioner. Hyman has written 10 bestselling books and is a friend to the rich and famous. Like Enayat, he references studies and articles in peer-reviewed journals.Article content
Paltrow is notorious for flogging wellness nonsense. She has claimed, wrongly, that bras cause breast cancer, for example, and that women should steam-clean their vaginas. They really should not. She was forced to pay $205,750 in civil penalties for claiming that her smooth $115 crystal eggs made of jade or rose quartz would “increase vaginal muscle tone, hormonal balance, and feminine energy in general.
And, of course, within wellness there are real healers, real experts and scientists. There are good therapies and things that work.