In the past few years, as a surgeon, I have become increasingly aware of the scourge of the wellness industry. I am seeing patients who opt for diets, supplements or magical therapies instead of the less seductive though scientifically grounded medicine I have to offer. Like everyone else, I too am constantly bombarded with messages in advertisements and from well-meaning friends as to how this diet or that vitamin is the key to health, longevity, beauty and status.

At the moment, every time I turn on Netflix The Goop Lab appears as a show that I might enjoy watching. Given that Goop exists on a platform of misinformation, privilege and anti-science rhetoric, its safe to say that as a surgeon and health communicator I will not be contributing to actress Gwyneth Paltrows growing wealth by watching her pseudoscience.

The growth of Goop and of the multitrillion-dollar wellness industry is cause for concern. On the surface, it looks full of promise and hope. Dig just a little deeper, beyond the claims of all-natural miracles the energy healing, the cold therapy, the anti-aging treatments and what we find is at best a waste of money and at worst harmful methods that actually compromise your health. Research has shown that for those with cancer, using alternative therapies such as homeopathy or specialized diets led to people opting away from proven treatments and an increased risk of dying from that cancer. Make no mistake: What wellness sells is by no means harmless.

For doctors such as myself, the rise of this brand of wellness is distressing. However, medicine as a profession and a science has no doubt played a part in the genesis and growth of big wellness. For virtually the whole of its existence, medicine has disenfranchised women and to varying degrees continues to do so. Even as medicine has modernized with an emphasis on autonomy and resolving bias, it remains at times paternalistic and patriarchal. It comes as no surprise then that women are overrepresented in the wellness industry, both as consumers and providers.

Medical care has not accounted for what women need and want. Women are more often dissatisfied with medical care, feeling that it has failed to recognize their autonomy and unique biological and social needs. Women are more likely to have chronic illness and autoimmune diseases, both of which can be challenging to treat from a doctors point of view but even more challenging to live with.

Even among diseases for which we have made tremendous strides in treatment, female patients are often left behind. Women who experience heart disease are more likely to be subjected to misdiagnosis, inadequate treatment and poor outcomes. In the realm of pain management, women are more likely to be given anti-anxiety medication than painkillers, diminishing their experience with pain. Even in endometriosis, women face a wait of seven years on average until diagnosis. Women also remain underrepresented in research trials, with that absence translating to science that serves men well but lacks understanding of womens bodies and experiences. These differences are not explained wholly by biology but rather structural biases across the medical industry.

If you feel excluded by medicine, why wouldnt you look elsewhere? The wellness industry has filled a gap in health and well-being that the practice and science of medicine have left wide open. The wellness industry purports to be everything that conventional medicine is not egalitarian, hopeful and accessible. Even though it is elitist, privileged and full of falsehoods, it does not matter to those who seek its comfort. Its offering something that my profession, despite advances and improvements, has not been able to deliver consistently.

Last month, the head of Britains National Health Service delivered a stinging assessment of the growth of the wellness industry and the harms that the willful ignorance of science is bringing. Although it is entirely appropriate that health-care professionals fight the rising tide of medical misinformation, if we do not recognize and address our own role in its creation, the fight will be futile. Medicine needs to understand that we have contributed to the Goops of the world. The elevation of expensive and even harmful remedies is in part our own doing.

To truly ensure peoples safety, medicine must of course denounce dangerous, unnecessary and expensive snake oil, but it must also turn our attention inward and provide care that people need and want, communicated with compassion and supporting their autonomy. If we are to ensure that people are protected against medical half-truths and harmful remedies, my profession must move far away from the patriarchal practices that have alienated so many. Medicine has helped create this problem, and we must do better to be its solution.

Nikki Stamp is a heart and lung surgeon in Perth, Australia.

Excerpt from:
Medical industry partly to blame for Paltrow's horrible 'Goop Lab' - Press of Atlantic City