Keto. Paleo. Gluten-free. Vegan. Fasting. Four-hour meal windows. Anti-aging creams, hair serums, CBD oil, vitamin water, customized multi-vitamins, IV drips, MCT oil, step counters, and that magic hairbrush that’s supposed to balance the positive and negative ions in your hair. Any of these sound familiar?

We are living in the age ofwellnessand you can hardly crack a magazine, scroll through social media, or do a Google search without being bombarded with the latest theory on how to be your healthiest, best self.

Ironically, it might just be making your mental health worse.

The Wellness Industry Does Not Have Your Best Interests at Heart

It’s important to remember that the wellness industry is just that — an industry. No matter how wholesome the message, companies and individuals that sell wellness products and routines have one primary goal: to turn a profit.

The institute reported that the wellness industry cracked the $4 trillion mark in 2017, with the “personal care, beauty and anti-aging” segment worth more than $1 trillion and “healthy eating, nutrition and weight loss” coming in second at just over $700 billion.

When the Pursuit of Wellness Becomes an Addiction

Wellness industry marketing is no different than that of any other industry. First, marketers make you believe you have a problem: You have too much of something — body fat, wrinkles, cellulite, gray hair — and not enough of something else: energy, beauty, and time.

Then they appeal to your desires and fears. This product or service will make you happier and healthier; this particular diet holds the key to longevity.

So, you buy in. One product leads to another, and once you’re hooked on the quest for wellness, logic doesn’t apply. It doesn’t matter that the last trend you tried didn’t make you feel any better or happier, because there’s always the next thing that promises to be the genuine article.

Worse still, the results the industry promises are almost always impossible to attain, ensuring consumers never stop seeking them.

Ways the Quest for Wellness Makes Us Feel Worse

This rapacious industry does more than drain your bank account. Searching for the perfect diet or beauty and self-care routine can become an addiction that’s never satisfied, leaving you perpetually comparing yourself to others.

Shame

Pursuit of perfection

With so many components to physical and mental wellness, the pressure to constantly practice only the best wellness hygiene can cause stress, anxiety, and depression. There are simply too many choices, too many conflicting dogmas, too much pressure to find the “right” solution, and too little evidence to validate any single practice as the right one.

Tips for Navigating the Wellness Industry

So what should you do? How do you pursue wellness without falling prey to an industry that tells you’re never well enough? Below are a few tips.

It’s important to take care of your body and mind, and there are many great tools and programs that can help you do it.

Our goal at Talkspace is to provide the most up-to-date, valuable, and objective information on mental health-related topics in order to help readers make informed decisions.

Articles contain trusted third-party sources that are either directly linked to in the text or listed at the bottom to take readers directly to the source.

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