Congratulations. Apparently It's Your Fault You're Ill.

What the Wellness Industry Lies About and Why

I saw a post on Substack recently celebrating the healing power of sunlight.

Before anyone starts aggressively throwing a vitamin D supplement at me, let me be clear:

Sunlight is good.

Fresh air is good.

Nature is good.

I am not about to spend 3,000 words arguing in favour of living in a windowless bunker illuminated (softly) only by the glow of a laptop and simmering middle-aged resentment.

What interested me wasn’t the sunlight.

It was something within the post that I find quite insidious.

The post laid out a kind of story:

Once upon a time, doctors understood the healing power of sunlight.

In an age before Big Pharma, health care and wellness involved using “natural” things to optimise us.

Then pharmaceuticals arrived.

Then the people who made money from the pharmaceuticals forgot about natural things.

And then, the rest of us all forgot and became riddled with unnecessary chemicals and nasty medicines that harmed us.

Until only the most well-informed and clever people now currently understand that “natural” is best.

Everyone else is a brainwashed eejit who doesn’t understand how to be healthy.

The implication being that modern medicine took a wrong turn somewhere along the historical path, and that most of human suffering could be solved if we’d simply stop ignoring the wisdom of our ancestors and spend more time outside.

It’s a very, very seductive story.

Over-simplified.

But seductive.

It tells us if we return to the wisdom of our forefathers and their natural remedies we can strengthen our immune systems enough that we won’t have any need for Big Pharma and its toxic medicines.

But I’m going to happily blast that story out of the water by saying:

Do you know who ate a totally organic diet?

Spent hours in the sun?

Didn’t eat a single highly processed food?

Drank fresh fluoride- and chlorine-free water?

Breathed in fresh, clean air every day?

Lived without plastics and pollution?

Ate only freshly grown vegetables and whole foods?

EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!

AND MOST OF THEM DIED A HORRIBLE DEATH BEFORE THEY’D REACHED MENOPAUSE/THE POINT OF EXPERIENCING ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION DUE TO AN ENORMOUS STRANGLING PROSTATE.

Before the Industrial Revolution, global mortality rates were exceptionally high and extremely volatile, resulting overall in an average human life expectancy of only around 30–40 years. These figures were primarily driven by extremely high levels of child and infant mortality.

Most of which we’ve managed to limit, in no small part, due to the magic of vaccinations.

That being,,, erm,,. science

When modern medicine and public health interventions took hold, global mortality rates underwent the most radical transformation in human history.

Between the mid-19th century and the present day, death rates dropped severely, life expectancy doubled, and the reasons why people died completely changed.

These changes took place due to scientific advances that increased our understanding of how disease took hold and the public health measures and medicines needed to prevent and treat it.

But today, it’s as if we’ve forgotten all of that important data.

If Beverley (who is usually white and bored) in Oklahoma tells us in her podcast from her middle-class, very affluent-looking kitchen that juicing broccoli with the essential oils of a mermaid’s toenails can cure cancer, apparently the world now believes her.

I’ve lost count of the number of times, as a disabled person with chronic illnesses, that I’ve been asked if I eat wholefoods, have changed my diet to cut out processed foods, if I’m getting enough sunlight and time “in nature”. Have I tried organic wholefoods only? Am I drinking celery juice? Taking supplements? Tried breathing properly? (Yes, I’ve actually been asked if I’m breathing properly. Er… I dunno, I just know if I stop doing it how I’m doing it, it probably isn’t going to end well. )Cut out processed sugar? Am I filtering my water? Do I practise yoga and meditation? Have I checked my house for mould? Checked my fillings for mercury? Am I familiar with how the body keeps the score? Polyvagal theory? Have I tried sitting with a bucket on my head in the middle of the woods at night and had people throw grapefruit at me while chanting “om” at the owls and beating me with bulrushes?

The answer to all of those is a resounding YES!!

I have!

(The woods thing was when I was a student and, honestly, didn’t really have anything to do with wellness and was more about boozeness. I joke. I haven’t done it but would in a heartbeat if I thought it would help in any small way.)

So, back to that post I saw about spending time in the sun.

It had a huge amount of likes and restacks.

And, depressingly, I think I know why.

(Get comfy, I’m going to share some thoughts on that.)

Because it makes illness feel simple.

The wellness industry has built an empire on the lie that illness is simple.

That your body is trying to tell you something.

That everything happens for a reason.

That every symptom has a root cause.

That every root cause can be found.

That every illness can be healed.

That every problem has an answer.

And if you’re still sick?

Well, you just haven’t found the answer you need yet.

You haven’t eliminated enough foods.

You haven’t healed your gut.

You haven’t regulated your nervous system.

You haven’t balanced your hormones.

You haven’t detoxed.

You haven’t grounded.

You haven’t meditated.

You haven’t bought Karen’s £497 course on healing ancestral trauma with cauliflower yoghurt and a vision board.

There is always another opinion with a microphone.

And the answer always seems to be available for immediate purchase behind a paywall.

From someone with precisely zero medical experience but who watched a YouTube video, then did an online course and ultimately reached the pinnacle of their training by healing their toenail fungus with vinegar and tenacity.

The reason these wellness stories sell so well is because uncertainty is terrifying.

The idea that illness can hit for no apparent reason, stay with you for decades, and refuse to respond to your years-long best efforts to get rid of it is deeply frightening.

Most people would rather believe illness is controllable.

Even if that control is imaginary.

Actually, especially if that control is imaginary.

Because if illness is simple, then illness is preventable.

And if illness is preventable, then we are safe from being hit with the health tragedy stick.

Or at least we can pretend we are.

The problem is that many of us who are actually ill eventually discover something very complicated and full of grief.

Illness isn’t simple.

Not even remotely.

I’ve lived with chronic illness for many years.

In that time I’ve tried things.

Many things.

ALL THE THINGS.

Sensible things.

Ridiculous things.

Things that helped.

Things that did absolutely bugger all.

Things that definitely made me question my life choices and contingency planning.

And one of the most surprising discoveries I made was that the longer I was ill, the more years I followed the people who sounded like they knew what they were talking about and found myself in yet another wellness dead-end berating myself for failing to get well, the less interested I became in certainty.

The less interested I became in miracle cures.

And, ultimately, the less interested I became in people who seemed very confident.

Because confidence and understanding the complexities of illness are just not at all the same thing.

The healthiest people among us often believe illness is simple because they haven’t had reason to discover otherwise.

They still imagine the body is a predictable machine.

Put good things in.

Get good results out.

They believe their health is a result of their wellness efforts and not actually down to luck and a whole big dollop of herd immunity granted to them by science.

They have health privilege and don’t even know it.

They believe if they exercise, sleep, eat vegetables, manage stress, they will avoid illness knocking at their door and dismantling their ableist assumptions.

And largely, for many people, the things they do to look after themselves are beneficial.

But they are not even slightly the whole picture. Our bodies are very finely tuned and balanced. Our external world influences far more than we realise. And our genetics and generational history affect us in ways scientists don’t even understand after years of study.

To think that a middle-aged woman bouncing around in Lululemon leggings, waving turmeric at you, is going to have the answer to why your vertebrae are crumbling or your brain developed a tumour is to simplify a miracle of nature and flatten the complexities of our relationship to our world, our history and our genealogy to a disrespectful degree.

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but, I promise you, there will be a day where the promises of the wellness industry won’t be enough.

Not because you have failed to look after yourself but because, as much as billionaires would like us to forget, WE ARE NOT IMMORTAL AND MONEY DOES NOT BUY TIME.

And most of all:

HEALTH IS A TEMPORARY STATE, NOT A FIXED REALITY.

I’m going to say it again for the people at the back.

Health is a temporary state, FOR EVERYONE, not a fixed reality.

There will come a time for everyone when a doctor looks quietly at you and a diagnosis is given.

Or an accident takes place.

Or cancer develops.

Or an autoimmune condition arrives.

Or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis turns up after a virus.

Or a neurological illness surprises its recipient.

A time where something regarding your health comes knocking that medicine doesn’t understand.

So, then suddenly “wellness” becomes less easy to understand.

The uncomfortable reality is that many illnesses remain poorly understood.

Some people do everything right and still become ill.

Some people do everything wrong and live to ninety-eight.

Life is not fair.

Bodies are not spreadsheets.

And biology does not care how much turmeric you’ve consumed.

One of the things that frustrates me about wellness culture is that it victim blames some while telling others they are powerful.

It tells people they can heal and have agency.

Which sounds lovely.

Until you realise what’s actually hidden behind that perspective. It’s nuanced but it’s there.

If healing is entirely within your control, then illness must be your fault.

If health is a choice, the inverse of that means that sickness becomes a failure.

If wellness is available to everyone if they do the right things, then those who remain ill must not be trying hard enough.

This is why chronically ill people are so often bombarded with advice and are so frequently furious about it.

People cannot tolerate randomness, so they look for explanations.

Have you tried yoga? Have you tried cutting out gluten? Have you tried meditation? Have you tried positive thinking? Have you tried sunlight?

(Ma’am, have you tried shutting up?)

The underlying belief is always the same.

Surely it can’t be this complicated. Surely there must be an answer. They must be lazy and inhaling Benson & Hedges with a side order of McDonald’s and despair for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

But sometimes there isn’t an answer we can pinpoint or understand. Sometimes there is just a frightened person trying to manage the changes and new reality, rather than being able to travel towards a cure. Sometimes there is just learning to adapt.

With no recovery.

Sometimes there is grief, and then possibly acceptance.

Sometimes there is a person in a life that now holds a number of different realities and truths, because an illness can’t be cured, and that’s not the ill person’s fault.

It isn’t their fault that they got ill and it isn’t their fault that they can’t get well.

That truth is very much harder to sell.

No one is getting rich telling people:

“Life is uncertain, bodies are vulnerable, and some things remain beyond our control. Soz.”

There isn’t much money in that.

There is, however, a great deal of money in convincing relatively healthy people that illness is simple and that their health is being granted to them because of what they’re doing, and that level of health will continue to be a fairly permanent state if they continue what they’re doing in order to be well.

Because simplicity, certainty, fear and hope all sell.

And we are usually quite happy to buy into the dream that we won’t be touched by illness and suffering if we do all the right things.

I was a ballet dancer with 20 years of training.

I ran.

Swam.

Rock-climbed.

I didn’t really drink alcohol.

I didn’t smoke.

I ate wholefoods and slept well.

I used sunscreen.

I hydrated well.

I did everything right.

And at 28, I got ill and then I didn’t ever get well again.

No matter what I tried.

At age 28. The peak of my youth.

And believe me when I say I tried.

When you get ill that young you (ironically and metaphorically) throw everything you’ve got at the problem.

But, let’s go back to that post I saw online about sunlight.

The photograph of patients lying in the sunshine in that post tells one narrow story.

What it doesn’t show are the children who died before antibiotics.

The women who died in childbirth.

The people who died from infected wounds.

The people whose illnesses did not respond to sunlight.

The dead aren’t really ever mentioned in wellness narratives because they ruin the simplicity.

We don’t generally like to live day by with the existential reality that we’re all only a couple of missed breaths away from permanently leaving the room.

It’s a lot of dread for a human brain to sit with without causing you morph into Munch’s Scream.

The truth is that sunlight can be beneficial.

Modern medicine can be beneficial.

Nature can be beneficial.

Pharmaceuticals can be beneficial.

These things are not enemies.

And this is definitely not an “either/or relationship.

When used together they can be powerful, but there are no simple answers and health is not a permanent state, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves it can be if we just do all the right things.

The world and systems we live in are more complicated than the wellness industry would have us believe.

And health, and how to have it, is much more complicated than the wellness industry would like us to believe.

So before you look at a person with chronic illness and clumsily decide to infer that they are not trying hard enough to be well, please remember the likelihood that, yes, they’ve tried everything and they know something you don’t:

Namely, that illness is not anything to do with what they have or haven’t done, and your unsolicited advice is making them feel well enough to start punching throats.

Please forward and share this article with anyone you feel might benefit from it. Particularly anyone you know who lives with chronic illness and/or disability and has to deal with the impact of the wellness industry’s lies.

Also, please share Moss and Matchsticks with anyone you think might enjoy my way of looking at the world and who would appreciate being part of the Moss and Matchsticks community here on Substack.

You’re very welcome here.

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