Help Yourself #8...

Long title for this month's choice: The Wellness Trap: Break Free from DIET CULTURE, DISINFORMATION, and DUBIOUS DIAGNOSIS--and Find Your True Well-Being by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

Not quite the same as a true self help book, honestly kind of an anti-self help books book. More a watch out for these things sort of book. 

It was good. Not just because I agree with a lot of what she was talking about, but I am sure that was a big part of it.

It's a book about how Wellness itself has become an industry. That even as people are starting to push back against the diet industry the Wellness industry has grown like crazy. Think about diets, work out programs, essential oils, supplements, goop as a whole. All of it rolls into the whole wellness idea. And we all want to be healthy and happy and it seems like it's pretty harmless. Except when it's not.

She did a whole section on the crunchy to conspiracy link that leads a lot of people from wanting to buy organic vegetables to becoming anti-vaxxers. And how the "natural" health MLM folks target stay at home moms when they are feeling their most vulnerable. She also talked about how you cannot get someone who is a conspiracy theorist to change their mind by showing them studies and trying to logic them out of their beliefs. How it all gets wrapped up in to the conspiracy. 

She also touched on one of my own personal eye rolls, which a LOT of people never mention and I appreciated that she did. The fetishization of indigenous cultures. How we (speaking in the generic white people we here) put a lot of lip service to "This natural cure is the best because it's from the (insert local tribe here) people." and we ignore all of the cultural reasons for why they used that particular plant, or that particular salve, or tea. We take the herb and turn it into a product.

It's not just here in the US or in Canada with Native Americans or First Persons, it's all over the world. Imagine a place where white people have rampaged in an colonized and you've got a product that's been taken from the culture and marketed as a cure all, but without all of the cultural significance behind it. You aren't really practicing yoga, you are doing the poses from a yoga practice, sort of thing. Might be beneficial, for sure, stretching and meditation can be super helpful, but it's really not correct to say you are practicing yoga, which is a lot more than just the poses. 

She also gave a good little recap of the SIFT method for checking out things you hear. And this works for anything you see on line, not just things in the Wellness category. 

Stop

Investigate the Source

Find better coverage

Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.

Basically when you read something, ESPECIALLY something that triggers an emotional knee jerk reaction, follow the SIFT method to check it out. Stop reading what you are currently looking at. Open a new tab (assuming you are online here) and Google the source, who are they? Do they have a history of posting nonsense or inflammatory rhetoric? Or are the highly credentialed and respected?  Find better coverage, which is tricky. But basically go see who all is reporting this blockbuster news. Is it all fringe publications or only publications that cater to a certain subset of people? Is there something in a reputable news source that address this? Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context. This one is always so important. A quote can be cropped to make it seem like the person is saying the opposite of what they were actually saying. A study can be quoted as proving something and then when you find the study it does nothing of the sort. And sometimes the study itself is really flawed. Look at the process used for the study, the sample size, the methodology. 

And don't ever share stuff that you haven't checked out. Not even with a "If this is true..." caveat. It just helps to spread mis and dis information and feeds that nasty algorithm. Which she talks about as well. How easy it is to end up down the rabbit hole of Wellness because the algorithm keeps feeding you more and more extreme information. 

It wasn't a lot of deep details, mostly a good overview book. She covered a lot of information in a few pages. But I think that's what she was trying to do. To touch on all of the ways you need to be careful. Basically to make you a little more cynical. Which, of course, I think is a great idea. 

So FINALLY I'm back on track with a self help book that I found helpful. 

What would 20 something me have gotten out of it? Well she'd have been really confused because most of what was talked about in this book wasn't around 30 years ago but...I think the general theme of don't believe everything you read, verify information, all of that would have been well received. And it might have saved me a few thousand dollars over the past decades in trying the latest new thing. 

Yes, even as cynical as I am, I am a sucker for the Wellness Industry too. Aren't we all looking for the latest and greatest thing? And I really do want to believe that that particular lotion is going to make my skin look fantastic, or that one supplement is the answer to my wildest fitness dreams. Generally I don't believe it, but sometimes...sometimes I do. 

This is a good reminder to really do that extra layer of research, real research not reading a few more blog posts by randos touting how great is was and you can buy it through this link, but do that extra due diligence before trying it out. 

Now to start thinking about what next month's book will be. Hopefully I'm at the start of an upswing!