Not all wellness trends are good for you

Photo by Darrien Funk

I’m all for self care and wellness but lately I’ve noticed that the internet is bombarded with all sorts of wellness hacks and tips, many of which are conveyed under false pretenses.

It’s easy to fall for a lot of the health products that are promoted online, but with a little research, you’ll notice that a lot of this stuff is based on pseudo-science.

If you want to be an informed consumer, here’s a list of a few wellness trends that are misguided or cause more harm than good.

Literally anything on GOOP

Gwenyth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand GOOP is notorious for perpetuating pseudoscience under the guise of wellness.

On Jan. 24, the new Netflix feature The Goop Lab premiered, and is sadly bound to cause more people to fall for her misinformed wellness advice.

Even though the website claims to consult health care professionals, GOOP basically embodies every piece of bad advice Cosmopolitan has every published, and then tries to sell it to you for $100 and up.

From anti-aging oils, psychic vampire repellents, coffee anemas, and more, at this point it honestly seems like it would be hard to deny that everything on GOOP isn’t absolutely absurd, overpriced, and misguided.

Juice Cleanses

Juice cleansing is another dieting regime that has proven to be harmful to your health, yet many people still turn to this method for weight loss.

By drinking only juice, it is believed that you will detox or “flush” the bad bacteria and toxins from your body, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Juice cleansing limits your caloric intake, which is how you lose weight. But this also leads to being undernourished, which negatively affects your metabolism. It can also make your blood sugar spike and will just all around will leave you feeling hungry.

If you want to improve your health and wellbeing, eating a balanced diet is the best method to achieve that. You can’t “reset” or detox your body by drinking too much juice — it will have you visiting the bathroom more often, though.

Charcoal

From toothpastes, to supplements, face masks and more, activated charcoal products can be seen everywhere lately.

Supposedly, activated charcoal is a multipurpose health solution and acts as another method for intestinal detoxing, as well as a skin detox product, and is also marketed as a method for teeth whitening.

In reality, charcoal is another non-scientific detox product, and has no credible evidence towards it being a health solution at all. It is likely to cause you more problems than to cure them.

Lemon Water

Lemon water is advertised by wellness gurus as a fix-all cure. Some say it boosts your metabolism, others say it helps with digestion. The list goes on, but all the claims are unfounded.

Adding lemon to your water (or mint and cucumbers for that matter) has yet to be proven to have any sort of positive positive effects.

It’s definitely the most harmless trend on the list but until proven otherwise, lemon will simply remain a nice flavouring when added to water, minus the health benefits.

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