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The wellness industry is as weird and wild as ever, with more of us looking to alternative ways to stay healthy and improve our wellness. But while wellness tells us to drink the green juice, shouldn't we be questioning what's actually in it?
Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a deep dive into our love-hate relationship with the weird and wonderful world of wellness, self-development and spirituality. How do you look after yourself in the age of anxiety? How can you tell what to believe and what's bullshit?
Join us, Katie, a yoga teacher and coach, and Annabel, a writer about wellness, as we explore the world of wellness and self-improvement and learn how to do wellness, well.
[00:00:00] Katie Gordon: Welcome to Wellness, Questioned, a podcast looking at how to navigate the wellness industry, well. Hosted by me, Katie Gordon and Annabel Lee.
[00:00:15] Annabel Lee: Each episode we cover a different aspect of wellness and self improvement, looking at ethics, scandals and red flags. Hello!
[00:00:24] Katie Gordon: Hi!
[00:00:25] Annabel Lee: Is this thing on? We're back!
[00:00:27] Katie Gordon: Yeah, after quite a long break, longer than planned for sure!
[00:00:31] Annabel Lee: Extended hiatus. We're back and we've got a new name.
So the podcast is being rebranded to Wellness, Questioned because we wanted to give it a name which actually really related to what we're talking about which is questioning wellness and we love Selfie Development for a while but I think we sort of had grown out of it and it wasn't really saying what we actually are doing.
[00:01:02] Katie Gordon: It's clearer what the podcast is, I think, with this new name.
[00:01:05] Annabel Lee: So we've done what all good wellness...
[00:01:10] Katie Gordon: There's no scandal though!
[00:01:11] Annabel Lee: Hopefully, no there isn't!
[00:01:15] Katie Gordon: Normally you have a scandal and then you rebrand but, we've skipped that bit.
[00:01:19] Annabel Lee: We skipped the scandal.
So we're back after nine months?
[00:01:23] Katie Gordon: It's been a while. Yeah, it's definitely been a while. Life got in the way, didn't it?
[00:01:27] Annabel Lee: Life got in the way, I had a major hip operation after five years of being told that my hip pain was to do with trapped, trauma in my hips.
[00:01:37] Katie Gordon: You serious?
[00:01:38] Annabel Lee: People told me that.
[00:01:40] Katie Gordon: Not doctors?
[00:01:41] Annabel Lee: No, like, yoga teachers.
[00:01:42] Katie Gordon: Oh yeah, well yoga teachers.
[00:01:43] Annabel Lee: Obviously! So I've had part of my hip repaired and we've just been living life, haven't we?
[00:01:53] Katie Gordon: Yeah, I'm not sure what I've been doing but I seem to have been quite busy. Working, studying, those things. So yeah, we're back with a brand new season. We're going back into our roots and it's just gonna be me and Annabel chatting.
[00:02:08] Annabel Lee: We're going to try and unpick some of the kind of weird, intrinsic parts of the wellness industry and look at some bigger parts of it, I guess. Things like marketing, things like language around different ways that people sell marketing, kind of jump onto our own, our fears and insecurities and try and offer up, I guess, our thoughts and experiences as people that've worked in and around the wellness industry, around sort of some of the red flags to look out for, some of the things that maybe aren't quite as love and light filled as they might appear on your Instagram feed, to just figure out how we can kind of navigate this space in a way that is kind of aware of some of the problems but still lets us hopefully get some of the good stuff from it.
[00:03:07] Katie Gordon: Yeah, sure, there is good stuff in there.
[00:03:09] Annabel Lee: There is, yeah, there is for sure and I think this is one of the hard things about wellness isn't it, that it's like some of it can be brilliant and there is lots in there but it is so coated in a lot of stuff which is not brilliant. It's hard sometimes to get to the good bits.
[00:03:26] Katie Gordon: Yeah, I definitely find myself looking for the like, what are the red flags here? And maybe being a bit overly critical of some things because I'm suspicious of what's lurking beneath it all. But yeah, I mean obviously we both see value in it as well, otherwise we wouldn't be doing what we're doing and working in wellness.
[00:03:47] Annabel Lee: So today we are talking about...
[00:03:52] Katie Gordon: Wellness bros.
[00:03:53] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:03:54] Katie Gordon: A sort of sub branch of podcasting bros, I guess. There's quite a few of them around. Some of the biggest podcasts are, in fact probably most of the biggest podcasts are wellness bros, or wellness adjacent, at least. I guess we're talking about the scandal recently around Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, those kinds of people and I think we thought it would be interesting to talk about why these people become so popular and well respected and almost kind of owners of their own micro cult, which is a new term we've coined?
[00:04:35] Annabel Lee: You've coined. I like, thanks for giving me the credit!
[00:04:38] Katie Gordon: Either I've coined it or I've heard it somewhere and I don't know if it, if someone else made it up then they coined it but I think, I might have made it up. Anyway, micro cults around personalities and a lot of these people seem to be big confident celebrities. Some of them have credentials. I think Andrew Huberman is adjunct professor or an associate professor at Columbia.
[00:05:09] Annabel Lee: Neuroscientist and tenured professor in the department of neurobiology.
[00:05:14] Katie Gordon: I think it's moving to ophthalmology, I read somewhere. Anyway, he has a science background, so I think that lends meaning. some legitimacy to him that perhaps shouldn't extend to the many fields that he has opinions on, you know, you wouldn't get a cancer specialist commenting on, you know, someone's skin, yeah, or dermatologist, you know, they, they each have their own specialist areas. So being a scientist in one area does not mean you're a scientist in the other, but it should mean that you know how to read studies and data and research and know how to communicate that responsibly.
[00:05:54] Annabel Lee: Andrew Huberman, I actually really was not aware of him at all until quite recently. Has he been coming off within your radar for a while? Because I don't...
[00:06:04] Katie Gordon: Yeah, I think this group of people, and I suppose you can include other people, who are like, more or less dubious in their claims, broadly call them podcasting bros, but people who range from Jay Shetty to Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan and then going more extreme, Russell Brand, Andrew Tate, that kind of branch, who are all very different and are doing very different things, some more allegedly illegal than others and some just a bit dubious. I think they're all on my radar, but they're people that I might automatically have, you know, been quite sceptical of, I'm not quite sure why.
[00:06:54] Annabel Lee: What I think is interesting is that there's been a number of takedowns, I guess, of some of these people over the last, well kind of recently, which is really interesting if you think about the rise of some of these people and how content and social media has fed into them becoming really established as experts and as people that we just go to for wellness advice on anything. Well, not we, but people might go to them for advice on certain things and then now what I think is really interesting in the kind of broader landscape is seeing there's a real trend, I guess, for people to sort of expose some of these people and I think with the Jay Shetty one, it's really interesting because the journalist that wrote the piece had been pitching that for a really, long time beforehand and couldn't place it anywhere because, you know, for whatever reasons, you know...
[00:07:52] Katie Gordon: Well the UK has very strong libel laws, so that, I'm sure that has something to do with it.
[00:07:57] Annabel Lee: You know, as a freelance journalist, it's really hard sometimes to place your story, it has to all be kind of the right place at the right time and I wonder, it's kind of interesting looking at it and thinking, what else is there that's not...
[00:08:11] Katie Gordon: Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah.
[00:08:13] Annabel Lee: And that piece was written by a super experienced investigative journalist. So it's kind of interesting, like you were saying, this kind of spidey sense that we get sometimes about things or when you look online there's so much conflicting information all the time that it's so hard to unpick like what's actually real and what's true.
[00:08:32] Katie Gordon: I think with Jay Shetty, as far as I understand it from reading the article, it seems like he's maybe not the person that he's portrayed himself to be, which isn't like the worst crime in the world. I haven't read his book, but I have looked at his Instagram and actually all of the things he says are just kind of pop psychology. It's kind of like Instagram quotes. I don't actually think what he was selling was anything particularly interesting. So, I think that's something I've been thinking about, like, what is it about him and people like him that sells so well and their marketing is so good, that they're selling this kind of higher level of knowledge that is legitimised by, I think, his experience as a monk, or whatever he was doing, and with someone like Andrew Huberman, by his academic career. So I suppose one of the red flags that I think about is how confident of people being in their claims are they saying something like, this is unequivocally true, and if someone's saying something like that, then usually it's not, because things are more complicated than that.
[00:09:50] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Katie Gordon: But why do these men...
[00:09:53] Annabel Lee: Yeah.
[00:09:53] Katie Gordon: ...who very confidently say they know how to change your life, or why do they have such a cult following? You could say the same about Russell Brand, I suppose. He has had, or has, I don't know, a cult following, which is based around his personality more than anything.
[00:10:12] Annabel Lee: Yeah, charismatic people, you know, in some sense, must have been on some level and also that so many people looking to wellness content or looking, yeah, I guess looking towards wellness for the answers to whatever their, you know, whatever issues they've got are women, so it is interesting
[00:10:38] Katie Gordon: There's a lot of men.
[00:10:39] Annabel Lee: Yeah, there's a lot of men, it's really interesting and then when there are women, I think they probably are held to a higher level of account and yeah, why do we just put our faith in men? It's very interesting.
[00:10:58] Katie Gordon: I'm trying to think of any women that I know that trade off of that kind of platform, but the only ones that I can think of that are like big podcasting names or social media names are kind of the more sort of wafty side of wellness, like the more divine feminine, that kind of thing. I don't think, as far as I know, there are many kind of academic ones that are, I mean, shady. There's academic people on Instagram who talk about studies and influences and wellness people, but not to the same level and I think the ones that I know tend to have a more nuanced view.
[00:11:43] Annabel Lee: It is really interesting that what we want often is a sort of definitive thing we wanna be told, often, I think especially if you're looking for something, if you're like seeking, whatever that might be, whether that's health for your back pain or I don't know, something because you feel overwhelmed and stressed, or because you're having, you know, feeling lost and meaningless and you want specific instructions, often, I do, you know, I want someone to tell me, this is what you need to do, and I want definitive answers, I guess. But the problem with that is, that it doesn't work for everybody, there's no nuance, and it's so, it's a kind of this worked for me, so if this doesn't work for you, then you're not doing it right kind of attitude and I think it is really interesting because there does need to be a sort of a level of confidence of just being like, I don't care. I don't care if you find this offensive or actually maybe I do care, but it's good for my engagement, actually, if I enrage half the people by, you know, saying something really inflammatory. But for the few people that, or for the targeted people that do, are on board with it, actually the enragement is like engagement and that's a good thing if you're trying to build your brand and build your audience.
[00:13:06] Katie Gordon: Well, I suppose that's what the algorithm wants, isn't it? The algorithm wants, like, five things you can do to improve your health quickly. They want argument and controversy, and that's what drives engagement and that's what drives followers and then the more followers that you have, the more legitimate you're seen as being and then you get your book deal and then you get your podcast, and it kind of flows from that and actually all of that is based, you know, it's the same in publishing as well. If you've got big numbers on your social media, you're far more likely to get a big deal because it legitimises it and also they know that people are going to buy the books or they'll listen to the podcast.
So I think there's also, I was reading an article about the platform's responsibility in all of this, like what are the podcasting platforms and the publishers doing to ensure that the people that they're platforming are legitimate, they are who they say they are, they're not making outlandish claims and that's an interesting conversation as well of like, about Instagram as well, what responsibility do they have? I mean you can't fact check everything can you, but what responsibility are there for the platforms in who gets fact checked? Because some people get fact checked a lot more than others.
[00:14:26] Annabel Lee: That's really interesting because the reason I think a lot of people turn towards alternative or complementary practices rather than maybe going down a more traditional medical route is because they feel like they maybe can't trust the traditional system. But then you're going to a space which is so wildly unregulated, where there's this such volume of noise and conflicting opinions that it's just chaos, it's chaos, it's people contradicting each other. So then you find your, mini guru or your micro guru and you stick to them and you trust what they say because you feel some kind of affinity or you kind of, you understand... because ultimately like brands are... they're stories, aren't they and we know them and we understand where we stand with it and that's why certain people are kind of, in quotes, marketable, because we get the story and we buy into it and then we feel like, okay, so I trust this person and I know they're a doctor or they were previously a spiritual person and then we stick to that and we trust that person above like RGP or evidence, you know, real evidence and I think that's when there's like, so much room for conspiracy theories, you know, it's really worrying because then you're so connected to this person and you'll believe whatever they say.
[00:15:54] Katie Gordon: I think it happens on a sort of more micro level as well, like the smaller influencers who are representing brands that there's this kind of seemingly legitimate brand but there's lots of things going on in the background that nobody knows about and it's just more dangerous when it's people with millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers and I think part of it is that reading papers and looking at evidence is quite boring, it's quite laborious, you have to read a lot and look at it and know what you're looking at and understand what studies mean and what a big study means and what a small study is and all those different kinds of things, whereas if someone, you're like, oh he's a doctor, he studied in academia, he's saying if I take this supplement, you know, that will make my life better, great, okay, I'll do that. It's like quick and easy. But again, same as wellness, supplements are really unregulated, I think certainly in the US I'm not sure about the UK.
[00:16:53] Annabel Lee: I think there's different, it depends on lots of different things as to whether they're going to help with, whether you sort of ingest things or whether they're food or there's different layers of regulation for all different types of things that you might buy. I think that's a really good point. I've been reading quite a few studies recently for work and the language that studies are written in is so specific to academic writing and in good studies, they are very measured and you won't get these outlandish claims and all the, any researcher that I've ever spoken to has always been so measured in explaining the findings from a study to me, but what we want as human beings is to understand the kind of the nub of the story so we want to understand okay so this study means yoga is better at curing back pain than Pilates. Probably that wasn't what the study found but there was one piece of evidence in there that might suggest that and the studies, in my experience of looking at studies, it's always so much more nuanced than we than people take away from it and...
[00:18:04] Katie Gordon: I saw something recently about a well respected yoga training centre. I read it and I thought, that sounds a bit too certain. So it was something about how yoga helps with cancer recovery or prevents recurrence and they'd written something like practicing yoga prevents recurrence or something fairly categorical. I was like, that sounds weird. So I went and read the study and it didn't say that and you know, if people who are supposedly leading the field and are evidence based are representing studies like that, then I mean, what hope is there for anyone else?
[00:18:40] Annabel Lee: Yeah and that's also really interesting because, I mean, in my case, I do both, so I write and I read things that might be published somewhere, but there's a level of fact checking that will go into that, and you can't just publish something without, you know, somebody will check that, your editor will check it, but for somebody like that yoga training, no one's fact checking that for them and you know, it's very unlikely that somebody's going to say, this is just wrong, and this is misleading, so it's in a way it's sort of easier for brands sometimes, especially those kind of mid level brands, to sort of get away...
[00:19:16] Katie Gordon: Yeah and this was on Instagram, so a load of people being like, oh, this is amazing, it's brilliant and actually someone who knows about the stuff was like, actually, that's not what they said and they eventually took the post down, but that post should never have been posted in the first place, it's irresponsible. I think all of us have a responsibility. If there are studies, particularly on something like cancer that affects so many people and is so emotive, if you're going to say something helps prevent recurrence, you need to be really very certain that that's correct before you're posting it and I suppose I hold institutes like that to a higher standard than someone like any of the wellness bros we've been talking about, because they're literally supposed to be reputable. I know these wellness bros are supposed to be reputable as well, but yeah, it's a different level, I think.
[00:20:04] Annabel Lee: We talked about the sort of definitiveness that we see sometimes, which is a kind of a red flag.
[00:20:12] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:20:13] Annabel Lee: I guess the other thing that's kind of helpful to come to things with is with a sort of questioning mind and sort of not like accepting that some things might, just because you've heard someone talk about it in a really compelling way, who's really engaging, good at talking about their subject, doesn't necessarily mean. I do this all the time when I listen to a podcast, I'm like that's the most amazing thing I've ever heard because I think podcasts are quite personal, aren't they? I, very often listen to podcasts in my headphones when I'm walking and I'll think that's the most profound comment I've ever heard and then I'll sort of reflect on things and I'll think, oh, actually, it's like, can I just live on eating 20 types of fruit and vegetable a week?
[00:21:01] Katie Gordon: Or raw liver!
[00:21:02] Annabel Lee: I know that's a hard no for me. But I guess there's a sort of a line to tread, which I know we're always trying to do, but it's between being open to things, but also putting a questioning mindset on things, even if they're being platformed by somebody that you really trust.
[00:21:23] Katie Gordon: It kind of crosses with marketing, doesn't it? But it's like what's someone's motivation for saying something? Are they selling something? Do they work in the field that they're talking about? Are they currently working in the field that they're talking about? So, Andrew Huberman, I think is a neuroscientist. So if a neuroscientist is talking about a different field, I would have some level of skepticism, but unfortunately all of this takes work because you have to listen to something and then think about it, whether it might be true or not, rather than just being finding some information. It's increasingly difficult to find reliable information, and that kind of goes for news sources as well a bit because so much of what we're listening and hearing, everyone's got motivation for saying what they say for promoting whatever they promote. Unfortunately, you have to sort of look beyond a bit.
[00:22:16] Annabel Lee: There's this really interesting report that Edelman, which is a big PR firm put out each year called the Edelman Trust Barometer. I haven't looked at it for a while, but I used to look at it a lot when I was working like purely in PR and that was saying for a long time, our trust in media is going down. So it is really hard to know what sources to trust. I know we've both read Naomi Klein's amazing book Doppelganger recently and that book which is gosh, 10 out of 10 recommend.
[00:22:48] Katie Gordon: Quite depressing.
[00:22:50] Annabel Lee: But fascinating and in that book she talks about this idea of the mirror world and this idea that there's this kind of complete alternative place, you know, but we're in sort of two worlds almost now where some people have a complete distrust for mainstream news sources and there's no kind of arguing around it. It's just, it doesn't exist anymore. So it's this idea that, you know, what one person believes is factually correct and is a proven source of information, somebody else might completely disagree with that and I think when we're looking at, you know, what can we believe and what, I don't know, are coffee enemas good? We would probably categorically be like, no. But there are some people who, you know, have researched that and who do believe that is really going to help them and you can't, it's just always coming to things with a bit of a questioning mindset. It's helpful.
[00:23:48] Katie Gordon: And I suppose there's also an idea of if someone really loves getting a coffee enema, like what harm is that doing them? As long as it's not doing them harm, doing the people around them harm.
[00:23:57] Annabel Lee: And they're not getting, you know, if they need medical care, this is the thing that I've been thinking about a lot, is like when alternative practices prevent people from getting actual real medical support, then I think it's a bit of a problem, or they're spending loads of money and time.
[00:24:14] Katie Gordon: I think there's also a case that if your alternative practitioner is legitimate, they will be saying and encouraging you to also see a doctor or specialist as well and if they're saying, oh no, you don't need that, then I would question what their motivation is for that.
[00:24:37] Annabel Lee: Yeah, and likewise if somebody's raving about that on a podcast, you know, why?
[00:24:41] Katie Gordon: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Annabel Lee: That's a really good point. Any other red flags on wellness influencers, bros?
[00:24:51] Katie Gordon: I mean, maybe avoid men on podcasts! No, there's great men I'm sure on podcasts, actually there are great men, Conspiratuality is a great podcast, although the episodes are extremely long. Yeah, they have more detailed investigations into these sort of things.
[00:25:11] Annabel Lee: And we love Maintenance Phase, Michael Harbs and Aubrey Gordon.
[00:25:16] Katie Gordon: Oh, and If Books Could, is it If Books Could Kill? The new one. I don't know any science bros that I like, but there are people out there who are legitimate. They don't have these huge, big, cult followings of people who, it seems, kind of hang on their every word and believe every single thing they say and I guess that's part of the key is that, like, I don't want anyone to believe everything that I say because I get things wrong and I don't know everything. So, I wouldn't do that about anyone else, there's nobody that I would listen to and be like, what you're saying is absolutely true. Like, you've got to question everything which is exhausting, but also, I think, necessary.
[00:25:59] Annabel Lee: And that it's a red flag as well, isn't it? That this idea of not, you can't question it, you know, it's coming back to that definitive thing. This will work for you, I am right, I know everything across every facet of health and wellness.
[00:26:15] Katie Gordon: Yeah, and I think that goes for things like yoga teacher trainings and stuff as well. I mean, unfortunately, the bubble that I'm in is not extending to the whole world and I've heard recently about people questioning things on yoga teacher trainings or other trainings and being told, well that's just the way it is, so if someone can't tell you why something is done a certain way, then that would be a bit of a flag for me. So why, is something done a certain way? If you're asking questions, are those questions maybe met with genuine conversation, or are they being shut down? And the same across the board, if you're asking questions, is another problematic term, isn't it? But if you're questioning someone's level of knowledge, you might piss them off, but they should be able to back it up with something.
[00:27:06] Annabel Lee: Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Why is there defensiveness around certain topics or off, you know, usually because people don't feel secure in talking about it.
[00:27:16] Katie Gordon: If you're questioning someone's study, they should, or someone's interpretation of a study, they should be able to give you a reasoned argument of why they've interpreted it in that way.
[00:27:26] Annabel Lee: Yeah, so in summary, just listen to podcasts about wellness hosted by women, like ours!
[00:27:33] Katie Gordon: Yeah, I mean, it's certainly a safer approach.
[00:27:36] Annabel Lee: And approach. And if you want to question us, Question Wellness, come and find us over on Instagram, we are @wellnessquestioned and we welcome your feedback and admitting we don't know everything.
[00:27:51] Katie Gordon: Or new topics as well!
[00:27:53] Annabel Lee: Yeah, or other weird stuff you've spotted from the wellness world. We'd love to hear it. See you soon!