The Wellness Trap
Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses, and Find Your True Well-Being
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
AS SEEN ON CBS MORNINGS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE CUT, AND MORE
SELF MAGAZINE’S #1 WELLNESS BOOK OF 2023
A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK FOR APRIL 2023
A searing critique of modern wellness culture and how it stands in the way of true well-being that "will change the way you think about your health—in all the best ways.” (Casey Gueren)
“It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle.” You've probably heard this phrase from any number of people in the wellness space. But as Christy Harrison reveals in her latest book, wellness culture promotes a standard of health that is often both unattainable and deeply harmful.
Many people with chronic illness understandably feel dismissed or abandoned by the healthcare system and find solace in alternative medicine, as Harrison once did. Yet the wellness industry promotes practices that often cause even more damage than the conventional approaches they’re meant to replace. From the lack of pre-market safety testing on herbal and dietary supplements, to the unfounded claims made by many wellness influencers and functional-medicine providers, to the social-media algorithms driving users down rabbit holes of wellness mis- and disinformation, it can often feel like no one is looking out for us in the face of the $4.4 trillion global wellness industry.
The Wellness Trap delves into the persistent, systemic problems with that industry, offering insight into its troubling pattern of cultural appropriation and its destructive views on mental health, and shedding light on how a growing distrust of conventional medicine has led ordinary people to turn their backs on science. Weaving together history, memoir, reporting, and practical advice, Harrison illuminates the harms of wellness culture while re-imagining our society’s relationship with well-being.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Wellness culture is a trap, keeping us stuck in a narrow view of what it means to be well and exposing us to much that is harmful," contends nutritionist Harrison (Anti-Diet) in this incisive takedown. She surveys the dangers posed by the alternative medicine industry, including the largely unregulated vitamin and supplement market, restrictive diets that can induce disordered eating, and Western practitioners' superficial commodification of such traditional Eastern healing disciplines as yoga or Ayurveda. Harrison situates contemporary wellness purveyors in the tradition of 19th-century snake oil salesmen and posits that both exploit medical uncertainties to lure desperate patients into buying products that don't work. Proposing smart and wide-ranging solutions, she advocates for legislation to ameliorate the social determinants of ill health and calls on readers to evaluate potential misinformation by following the SIFT formula: stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, and trace claims to their original source. The historical perspective elevates Harrison's analysis, and her empathy for those who fall for disinformation yields illuminating insight (getting into wellness culture, she writes, "starts with feeling disappointed, unheard, or excluded by the Western medical system"). This is an ideal companion for those disillusioned by the medical establishment.
