HN Gopher Feed (2017-07-07) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
How 'Wellness' Became an Epidemic
19 points by prostoalex
https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/how-wellness-became-an-epidemic.html___________________________________________________________________
taxicabjesus - 45 minutes ago
A 90's Aerosmith song goes, "There's something wrong with the world
today, I don't know what it is..." I don't know either, but I've a
few observations...With regard to the "wellness" industry. Mostly
it's a sham, but so too are many medical treatments. Women are
particularly vulnerable to medical profiteering - I posted about
this yesterday [1]...[1]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708472 There?s something
grotesque about this industry?s emerging at the moment when the
most basic health care is still being denied to so many in
America and is at risk of being snatched away from millions
more. People are focused on Wellness because they're not getting
it from their doctors. Sometimes a conventional medical
practitioner's diagnosis is helpful, but usually they miss the big
picture.I took lots of people to & from their doctor appointments.
Sometimes all a person really needed was to feel safe, but their
doctors couldn't prescribe that. So they'd go from doctor to doctor
to doctor looking for answers, but never finding them. But what?s
perhaps most striking about wellness?s ascendancy is that it?s
happening because, in our increasingly bifurcated world,
even those who do have access to pretty good (and sometimes
quite excellent, if quite expensive) traditional health care are
left feeling, nonetheless, incredibly unwell. This section
reminds me of one passenger in particular... She wanted help, and
had a few resources, but her doctors only made her condition worse.
Sometimes doctors do good work, sometimes they don't know when to
stop. "Wellness" is for those who've given up on conventional
medicine.
zzalpha - 36 minutes ago
"Wellness" is for those who've given up on conventional
medicine.You mean, given up on medicine.All this other stuff?
It's not medicine. It's snake oil. Chicanery. Placebo wrapped
up in meaningless ritual to make it "feel" real. It's the new
iteration of numerology, tarot, psychic reading.The only thing
that it, in some cases, brings to the mix is empathy, something
frequently missing in our overburdened medical system. And in
that respect it has value.But medicine? That it is not, unless
you define "medicine" as anything that makes you feel better, in
which case you've basically robbed the term of its meaning.
mathperson - 7 minutes ago
I am surprised a comment this correct to be down voted down on
hn. I thought this place tried to be evidence based...
taxicabjesus - 23 minutes ago
You must have missed this ProPublica piece:When Evidence Says
No, but Doctors Say Yes - https://www.propublica.org/article
/when-evidence-says-no-but...There's a slander against
"alternative medicine" that goes something like, "What do you
call alternative medicine that works? Medicine. " The inference
is that Medicine adopts what's useful. If a herb is actually
useful, the pharmaceutical industry will figure out what the
active ingredient is and figure out how to synthesize it,
etc.My corollary to the slander is the truism: "What do you
call medicine that doesn't work? Medicine. " The ProPublica
story linked above says that heart stents [are now known to not
be] helpful for anyone that's not actively experiencing a heart
attack, but thousands get inserted every year anyways.[edit -
clarification [] above]
StavrosK - 5 minutes ago
Why do you care about what doesn't work? If the things that
work are in the set "Medicine", that's the only set we need
to be concerned with.Sure, it's worthwhile to try and figure
out which medicine doesn't work, but we know for sure that
anything non-medicine does, by definition, not work.
Mz - 30 minutes ago
I can't manage to read this entire thing, not just because it is
long, but because it is so sneering. Study after study after study
indicates that diet, exercise and lifestyle have measurable impacts
on morbidity and a long list of serious, often deadly, conditions.
But if you actually try to advocate that people attend to their
health first and foremost by eating right, exercising and making
good lifestyle choices, you are some crazy weirdo?I don't think it
is any mystery at all that it is happening alongside so many people
not having access to proper insurance, doctors, etc. If you can't
afford to go to a doctor, then reading something for free on the
internet and tweaking your diet in hopes of not needing a doctor
makes all kinds of sense.
darawk - 9 minutes ago
While true, almost everything peddled on Goop is snake oil and
pseudoscience. It deserves to be sneered at.
andreyk - 8 minutes ago
The writing is a bit sneering and sarcastic, but I think it's
pretty clear this is entirely about the new-agey-too-expensive-
shady-pseudo-science kind of wellness and not about eating right
and excercising. And this is not at all about people who can't
afford insurance - the tagline is "Why are so many privileged
people feeling so sick? Luckily, there?s no shortage of cures.".
lambda - 2 minutes ago
But if you actually try to advocate that people attend to
their health first and foremost by eating right, exercising
and making good lifestyle choices, you are some crazy weirdo?
I don't think that's what the article was sneering at.It was
sneering at the idea of fearmongering about what people eat, but
then trying to sell them on a whole bunch of unregulated
supplements and quack remedies.There is an awful lot of
"something free on the internet" that is just complete bullshit
designed to sell you something.
devoply - 1 hours ago
My theory is that it's because simply operating in the social
hierarchy is sickening. There are many things that you want that
are totally not under your control but under the control of other
people often for no good reason. So it's best never ever to
interact with the social hierarchy unless you absolutely have to
and specifically for money. And even then force your own rules to
get the money. Dave Chapelle is an excellent example of how to deal
with the entertainment industry.This article is a good example of
how participating in the social hierarchy and letting them tell you
what your needs are and how to behave is ludicrous. It's mostly
just bullshit sold by leaders because of their esteemed status in
the hierarchy.In the past leaders sometimes deformed their skulls
from childhood to differentiate themselves from the masses, this is
an example of that same sort of behavior.
ktRolster - 49 minutes ago
I think you have an interesting point, but I have no idea what
you're saying. What would "deforming their own skulls" correspond
to in modern society?
devoply - 41 minutes ago
The high social classes to visualize the fact that they were
different from the people they ruled deformed their own skulls.
Or certain tribes deformed their own skulls to differentiate
themselves from other tribes. It seems to be just some stupid
arbitrary thing that they do to differentiate themselves. Sort
of like wearing a bunch of rings around your neck to elongate
it because it's beautiful.
[deleted]
bpodgursky - 1 hours ago
When nobody (aka the privileged class described here) has real
problems or responsibilities anymore (no kids until late 30s, if
then, no shortage of money for healthy food and housing) you focus
on the trivial problems that earlier generations would have laughed
at.