Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure At A Time

If you’ve ever tried adding apple cider vinegar to your diet or beauty routine you might have fallen for one of the most popular, dubious wellness trend to date. But, don’t beat yourself up, marketing is all about changing your mind and buying into something that isn’t really proven.

Wellness. Self-care. Clean eating. Non-toxic. Doing a cleanse.

What goes through your mind when you hear these words? For me, I picture a beautiful young woman with flawless skin and a thin body sitting in a well lit cafe sipping on a green juice.

Wellness is such a broad term. In How to Be Well, Amy Larocca, investigates where this term came from and all the aspects it covers. Larocca began her writing career covering fashion back when you had to know a person who knew a person in order to get into the elite coveted space of a fashion show. She took her background as a fashion writer and saw how the elitism of the wellness industry has catered to the haves and have-nots. No longer do women spend millions and millions of dollars on fashion trends to stand out to others. Health and its pursuit is the new fashion and only the woman who spends the most will achieve it.

As a female Gen-Xer myself, I really understood where Laracca was coming from on her approach to this topic and how it is forced upon women in general. No longer is our focus just on beauty and keeping our young looks. Now the pressure has shifted to how to be our "healthiest" self. Our generation grew up in the shadow of mothers who were always on diets. At 14, I would go to in person Weight Watchers meetings with my aunt. The humility of being weighed in front of a group of people were all older than me is something I don’t think I will ever shake.

Now that I have been dealing with a chronic illness for more than half my life I am very aware of all the “wellness” grifts that try to claim they can cure every chronic illness out there. I have tried a lot. Raw food diet, juice cleanse (which is really bad on kidneys), fasting (interferes with medications), CrossFit, running, supplements, and more that I can’t even remember.

But, that’s just the physical side of “wellness”, the food and diet side. In How to Be Well, Larocca covers wellness in 5 different ways. Cures, Glow, Spirit & Soul, Pure & Beyond.

The chapter “Self-Care” under the Cure section of the book was a little eye opening. The marketing industry has really jumped on this term. So much so that commercials for dye free laundry detergent tout that their product is part of a self-care routine.

What stood out to me was where the term “self-care” came from. It originated in the medical community for diagnosing patients on whether they were well enough to take care of themselves after they left the hospital. Such as: taking a shower on their own, cooking for themselves, if they could go to the bath room unassisted. I wish we could roll back time to this much more simple acceptance of “self-care”. Seeing daily tasks that we need to do every day as “self-care” and not a dreaded chore would help change mindsets towards so much more positivity.

In the Glow section of chapters it covers the beauty aspect of the wellness industry. Well, actually, the beauty standard of always having to look young, age gracefully and have that “glow”. If it can be bottled it can be sold. Body positivity was a trend for awhile until the GLP-1 meds made it impossible to just accept your body for the way it is. (I will not hate on anyone that choses to take them. They just aren’t for me.) Even down to how we have to dress to be well. Certain brands market in such a way that when you see someone wear their products you just know only really health conscious people wear them (or should I saw afford them).

Probably one of the most controversial sections of the book is the section Pure. We have our current MAHA movement that says if we remove all toxins, do internal cleanses and go all natural then we can cure all sorts of diseases. A clean environment a clean home, clean toys, clean cooking tools, clean, clean, clean.

Here’s the thing. All this focus on clean is creating so much fear that we miss the fact that we can only control so much. We miss the fact that the greatest determination of health is the financial bracket we currently find ourselves in. All these wellness trends are created from other people trying to raise their own financial bracket and who just might be selling you a “cure” that will only just make you sicker. (Raw milk? Hello?!)

So, if you think you have never fallen prey to a wellness scam or if you’re curious about just how many are out there I encourage you to take a read of How to Be Well. The author is very honest about the fact she still might fall prey to those self-care and wellness trends. I mean, I can’t honestly say I will never, either. But, it’s good to be aware, have the questions out there and be skeptical for your own benefit.