Your health is for sale. It's time to take it off the market.
Label your news and information to protect your health.
Welcome, health heroes!
Dr. Alice Burron here from The Health Navigator Group, a company aimed at helping you make the best health decisions possible. From believing we need electrolyte drinks in the summer, weight loss drugs to lose weight, and having to avoid entire food groups to be healthy, we are constantly making less-than-ideal health decisions. Why? The answer is simple. We are unaware.
You are a victim of health information unless you intentionally protect yourself, even if you don’t think you are. We all are - our health is for sale. Companies are marketing directly to us and we’re falling prey to bad health ideas, influences, and products.
Today, I want to discuss how you can avoid being a victim of poor health information by giving you a system to filter out worthwhile health information.
Not all health information is equal in its value.
It’s hard to tell what’s worth your attention and what’s helpful—and most aren’t either. If you’re like most, you fall prey to poor health information time and time again, even when it comes from seemingly reliable sources.
“Wellness,” a term that is used by makers of beauty products, medications, health coaches, and mental health providers alike, is one of the fastest-growing, most aggressive markets in the U.S. Millennials are especially susceptible because they are more preoccupied with health and wellness than any other prior generation.
Although this seems positive in theory, it actually leaves them more susceptible to wellness marketing. Millennials and Gen Z are purchasing more wellness products than older groups. This trend aligns with millennials' strong prioritization of health, where 53% consider health and wellness a top priority, second only to family.
But we are all susceptible to reading poor-quality health information. Our health is for sale — including our mental health.
My quest is to help people sort the wheat from the chaff of health information, so to speak. Empowering people with health wisdom is the top of my objectives for this forum. So, in that spirit, I want to give you a quick, reliable way to address any health information you may find.
This applies anywhere you read your health news (including this very newsletter, TikTok, Instagram, suggested Apple News Stories, and even your coworker’s opinion).
A better system for understanding health news.
Picture a label for each headline you read. Each one listed below is a “bucket” or category into which you can sort each piece of content. Ask yourself what bucket the health information fits into and immediately call it out for what it is.
Note that some health information can be in more than one bucket.
Here are the labels:
🛍️ Buy and Try. Information trying to convince you to buy or try something.
🔍 Empowering. Information trying to clarify health concerns or approaches.
🕴️Inflating. Content that inflates the author or originator of the information. For example, the person writing or telling you the information wants to showcase themselves or their position. It’s important to be critical when reading information from so-called experts. Are they really? Celebrities also create credibility for their message, inflating the product or information through their popularity status.
🤯 Scare Tactic. Information that attempts to emotionally influence you to take the action they recommend. The action will also fall under the label of buy-and-try, but they elevate the concern to evoke strong emotions.
🌸 Caring. The information is trying to encourage, validate or support you somehow. It may or may not contain credible information.
📱Educating and informative. Information that attempts to educate people. Again, it may or may not contain actual credible information.
💬 Opinion. Content that offers an opinion on a health topic—sometimes to vent or gain notoriety or popularity—but it could also offer an alternative perspective. Be sure to trust the person giving the opinion before falling prey to it.
Given the above buckets of health information, where do you think this article fits? I aim to make my articles empowering, caring, educating and informative, with a touch of opinion. I don’t intend to scare anyone but to give you information that will empower you to make better health decisions. Am I hitting the mark? You tell me!
At the end of the day, your health and wellness are on the line. Become a health information detective so you can spot health misinformation and call it for what it is. After a little practice, you will develop a keen eye for the propaganda tactics and tropes used to market pseudoscientific health and wellness products, services, and practices.
Here are some recent articles that I’ve been reading this week. They’re all interesting, but use the labeling method as you read to sort them for yourself.
Now that we have a system for how to digest this information, I’ll be referring to this method of critiquing content from here on in this newsletter. Lots of health information runs across my desk, and a lot of it I want to share with you!
A CLOSER LOOK
I’ve covered several of these topics recently here at Health Shift. Here’s a closer look at them. (Did I hit the mark on my intended labels of empowering, caring, educating, and informative, with a touch of opinion?)
💧How much water do you really need? Hydration is a key part of the Core 4 — but how much you should be consuming on the daily depends on a few personal factors. Here’s a great, no-nonsense primer. Now go drink a glass of water!
🤸♂️ Exercise may be the single most potent medical intervention ever known. “Its benefits in prevention outstrip any known drugs: 50% reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease, 50% reduction in the risk of many cancers, positive effects on mental health, pulmonary health, GI health, bone health, muscle function. You name it. Exercise helps.”
💉Ozempic’s appeal to the youth is troubling. The Ozempic trend continues, cementing its place as today’s big diet fad not just among adults (who can presumably do their own research) but among teenagers, who spend a lot of time online. This is an interesting facet to add to our last post about Ozempic — what example does its use set for the younger generation, and to what effect?
🧫 Microbiome findings are getting interesting. There’s so much we’re still learning, and the study of the microbiome can be quite a challenge. Put on your nerd glasses, this is a very interesting, deep read on the current state of microbiome research.
🍎 Those probiotics, though? They may not be doing much for you. We can’t just assume they’re harmless, either. Taking a closer look at those bottles of $$ probiotics on every store shelf might be worth our while!
THE LATEST NEWS IN HEALTH…
The latest health information articles contain many opinions, but they also provide education and information. Do they empower through clarification, or do they confuse? Are they using scare tactics? You decide.
🩸 Maybe you’ve heard the news —your tampons are full of lead. Or are they? Womens products go through cycles of scare tactics. So, what do we really know about this study that’s going around claiming tampons are full of toxins?
⚔️ Not so fast, says Dr. Andrea Love on the same topic.
Wellness culture feels like it’s everywhere. So why don’t we feel better? “We might feel healthy in the present, but debility looms ahead in the form of creeping age, microbiome imbalances and hormonal dips and drops. We will be visited by decrements to our mobility, hair luster, muscle tone and libido – as well as the mirage that all can be regained.”
THINK LIKE A HEALTH HERO
Empowering and Educating topics.
💸 Follow the money. Have you ever heard that old, wise quip—“just follow the money?” That’s another way of saying, who’s to gain if you follow the premise of what they’re saying? This is very relevant to health information. Ask yourself if someone is trying to connect your wallet to their bank or if someone has something to gain in any way by supporting a health-related stance. One of Weight and Healthcare’s readers makes a great point on this. Do your homework and try to follow the paper trail, if you dare.
There you have it, folks — label your information, always. I’ll leave you with a question: Do you have criteria for vetting the health headlines?
See you next week!
— Dr. Alice
A little more about Dr. Alice Burron and The Health Navigator Group:
You can find more about The Health Navigator Group at our website: www.thehealthnavigator.org
On Instagram: @the.health.navigator
And learn more about Dr. Alice Burron at her website: draliceburron.com
Or via her personal Instagram: @dr_burron
You can even connect with her on LinkedIn, if you want to be professional about it. 👓
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