Front Burner - One doctor’s fight against the ‘Wellness Industrial Complex’

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

Wellness is a multi-trillion-dollar industry. Vague assertions about detoxification and restoring balance can be used to sell everything from juice cleanses to coffee enemas. But obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter says a lot of these products are snake oil, and their claims are pseudoscientific. Today, Dr. Gunter on misinformation in the "wellness" industry, how it persists, and why she insists on debunking it wherever she can.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Soap made with activated charcoal, juice cleanses, jade eggs. All this stuff is marketed to women as if it's somehow good for us. But Dr. Jen Gunter is here to tell you it's really just a bunch of snake oil.

You may have heard of the obstetrician-gynecologist from her public scraps with Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, Goop. She's on a mission to debunk junk science around women's health. Dr. Jen Gunter is with me today to talk about what she calls the wellness industrial complex and why this kind of misinformation sells. I'm Jamie Poisson, and this is FrontBurner. Dr. Jen Gunter, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I actually follow you on Twitter, so it's really nice to put a face to a handle. Yes, I know. I hope I'm the same as on my Twitter feed. I like to think I am.

Yes, I know. I hope I'm the same as on my Twitter feed. I like to think I am. I want to start by talking to you about Goops, infamous jade egg. Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle company has agreed to pay a six-figure settlement for false advertising, a lawsuit filed by prosecutors from 10 California counties focused on three products. Two are vaginal eggs that were promoted as a way to regulate menstrual cycles and increase bladder control. So what was this egg purported to do for those who used it? Right. So, you know, I think it was like two years ago, they had this post on this jade egg, which they claimed, so it's a tiny, small thing, like maybe three centimeters oval shape, like an egg made out of supposedly jade, but you never know. And so this was offered as something that was a secret of concubines and empresses

from ancient China, how they toned their pelvic floor to keep them in shape for men, because, you know, nothing says feminism more than keeping yourself in shape for a man. Where women insert the jade egg in their lady parts. Right. And to help tone the pelvic floor. How does it help do that? I don't know. I need to start my jade egg practice. And while it's really important to keep your pelvic floor healthy and to tone your pelvic floor, there are evidence-based ways to do that.

Just Kegel exercises or using graduated weights, which the JDAG was none of those things. And it was basically, you know, offered as something that was going to balance your hormones. Not possible. Going to center your feminine energy because apparently your feminine energy comes from your vagina. And so, yeah, so I called them out for that. And $92 too, I should say. I know $92, right? So yeah, so I called them out for that. And that kind of went crazy viral. And then, you know, to follow it up, because I'm me, I partnered with with Dr. Sarah Parsec, who's an archaeologist. And of course, we found no evidence that these things existed in ancient

China. So that in and of itself was also probably misinformation. Well, and you kind of have to wonder how something could be known to a celebrity in Southern California, but unknown to scholars of Chinese history. What about the argument that, you know, maybe things like this jade egg just make people or women feel better, make them feel more empowered, even if it doesn't really do anything? Like, is it really hurting? Well, it could. And if you haven't studied anything, you wouldn't be able to answer that. But that's not how they sold it, right? They didn't say, buy this to bring you joy, right?

Like we all buy things like, you know, knickknacks for around the house, right? It wasn't sold like that. It was sold as a health aid. And so I think that's really important because people aren't going to buy it just to bring them joy, right? So yeah, so I think it's all about, you know, my whole mission is really honesty and facts and informed consent. And it's not informed consent to be told lies about a product. In agreeing to the $145,000 settlement, Goop called the dispute an honest disagreement. It says it provides a forum for users to present their views on the products, but the law sometimes views statements like this as advertising claims, which are subject to legal requirements. And of course, you know, this, Jada, does sound particularly silly, but

in general, what's your beef with the wellness industry? So wellness uses the words that the patriarchy has used since the beginning of time. So pure, clean, and natural. I mean, I could be talking about the qualifications for a television show, America's Next Virgin Bride, or I could be talking about an organic tampon, right? So this purity language is very bothersome. But wellness also traffics in misinformation. And nobody is served by learning less about their bodies. The other thing about wellness that's really predatory is it's trendy. Health can't be trendy.

It takes us years to study things, years to understand, you know, how to understand a disease, how to treat it. So this idea that this season you could do this, the next season you could do that, that's just like not compatible with how we study health. You know, and then there's the miraculous claims. I wish I could make the kind of claims that wellness makes. What's the argument for the coffee enema? What are they saying that that will get you? Well, it's going to remove toxins. We don't know what those are. And toxins are kind of, that's something that wellness uses a lot. It's kind of like the Emanuel Goldstein character in 1984, popping up, popping up causing this mayhem and that mayhem.

So whenever you want to scare people, you mention toxins. They've got to get rid of the toxins. What toxins? That's why you go to the bathroom. Like, you have a poop. The stuff comes out. And then there's a psychiatrist in the United States that promotes daily coffee enemas for treatment of depression. And Goop actually featured that psychiatrist at one of their conferences. Could it be dangerous to do a daily coffee enema? Sure. I mean, daily enemas,

nevermind what you're putting in there, can certainly be irritating for the colon and would only be recommended in very rare sort of gastrointestinal conditions. But yeah, there are many reports of people getting burned from coffee enemas, having rectal injuries, perforations, which are very bad. And then there's this idea that you are telling people less about their bodies. If people really believe they can remove toxins that way, then they have a complete misunderstanding of how their body works. And I don't think that's right. How do you make sure that things in the area of medicine,

claiming to have health benefits do what they say. Well we have a whole regulatory team in place now and a science and research team and that's really what they're dedicated to doing so a lot of times we'll find that third-party product that we sell people make claims about products and so it's very important for us now as we grow and as we learn to make sure that the claims that we make on the site are efficacious and good so i have to be honest with you here um i feel like this is going to be a bit embarrassing for me to admit. People tell me all kinds of things. Like the stuff that they've bought into.

Yeah, yeah. So I have done these juice cleanses, right? Like, you know, you wake up, you drink activated charcoal, and then for a snack in the morning you have cucumber juice. And then for lunch you have almond milk. And then, you know, for dinner you have cucumber juice. And then for lunch, you have almond milk. And then, you know, for dinner, I have spinach juice. And for me, I was very grouchy. I'm not really sure what it accomplished. But are these juice cleanses part of what we're talking about here? Yeah, I mean, those are all total scams. You know, first of all, which is so funny, because wellness is talking about being natural. Okay, pureeing fruit is not natural. It's natural to pick it off a tree and eat it. Like,

like, if you're gonna say, oh, let's have the orchard diet, where you go walk around orchards, and you pick your own fruit and vegetables, you know, maybe I might be more behind that. But the other thing too, is, is that, you know, people get sucked in by these trends that are not sustainable, right? So you have to be able to live whatever food change you make has to be sustainable. So I always say to people, so what was bothering you that you felt you needed to do that? Like, what were you trying to treat? What was your bother factor? So I think for me, you know, you talk about these sort of toxins, you hear a lot of information circulating about what we're putting into our

bodies. And I think I like the idea of this clean slate. You know, I'm coming off Christmas, I drank a lot of alcohol, I ate a lot of cheese and, you know, treats and cookies. And I like the idea of being able to reset. Yeah, it doesn't reset anything. There's nothing to reset in your body. There's no button, there's no chemical, there's nothing that needs to reset in your body. There's no button. There's no chemical. There's nothing that needs to reset. I mean, I tell people, if you want to reset yourself, go to sleep. You wake up in the morning and then you know you've got a clean slate.

So it's this sort of abuse of science-ish, you know, using science-ish things like reset your body. That doesn't actually mean anything to doctors, but it's very effective language because it really draws people in. You know, I think what we're saying is many of us sometimes want a mental reset. And, you know, that's, that can be achieved, I think, in a lot of different ways. But yeah, the... I can tell you a mental reset does not occur when you're just grouchy for five days because you're so hungry. And you're not actually doing anything. And, you know, the thing is, is that

when you go on these cleanses, you know, one, you might be hungry, two, you're not actually doing anything. And you know, the thing is, is that when you go on these cleanses, you know, one, you might be hungry, two, you're not doing anything, three, you're probably spending a lot of money, right? A lot of money. And that leads me to another question I have for you. You know, we're talking about this $92 egg, these juice cleanses, hundreds of dollars a week. How much money are we talking about in this industry in general? Well, wellness is a $4 trillion a year industry. $4 trillion. Wow. And they don't prove any of their stuff works, right?

So people are always ragging on big pharma. And I'm not a friend of big pharma at all. I don't take any money from any pharmaceutical industry. But at least they submit some studies. And if you walked into any factory that's producing a pharmaceutical, you would be able to take the pill off the end of the line and test it, and it would have what it claims. You can't do any of that.

You're paying all this money, and you don't even know what's in it. Since 2015, Health Canada has licensed more than 34,000 natural health products for sale. The products are tested to make sure they don't contain any surprises or harmful ingredients. And while the rules for storefronts are strict... There's a loophole. Canadians can order any unlicensed natural health product online, so long as it's for personal use. So there's all that. There's that real potential for harm, and yet spending a lot of money. Wellness is invested in making you feel afraid and bad about yourself. And you know what? When

we spend money, we feel better. That's been well tested, right? Like when I buy a new pair of shoes, I'm like, I feel good about a new pair of shoes. But the other thing that's really predatory about the spending of wellness, for women especially, I think women feel they need an excuse to do something nice for themselves. And so spending money does bring a little bit of joy. But when I buy my nice pair of shoes, I have a bit of a flu-vog habit. So when I buy my shoes, I don't kid myself that they do anything but bring me joy, right? I don't tell myself that they're helping my feet, that they're taking toxins out. So I think that's what wellness is, capitalizing on the fact that women, because of how we've been shaped by society, feel we need excuses for doing nice things for ourselves.

Like it has to accomplish something. Exactly. We don't just deserve it for the joy. Make your skin better or your hair shinier. Right. Make you like a better, more balanced person. Right. Yeah, I can see that.

I do want to ask you about something, though, that you said on your show, to explaining. And when you were writing off all these wellness products, like the crystals, the activated charcoal, the wearable healing stickers, we haven't even talked about the coffee enemas. You know, you said, ditch the wellness stuff. If these things worked, doctors would offer them. Wellness is not filling in any gaps left by medicine. It's quite the opposite.

It's exploiting them. But is that true? Because, you know, I do have to say we have seen time and time again examples of doctors not understanding women's health or not taking women's health seriously. Women's College Hospital says the health gap is evident throughout the medical field. Some facts they cite include women are more likely to report severe and long-lasting pain but typically get treated less aggressively than men, and they're more likely to get referred to a therapist instead of a pain clinic. We were researching diseases, diagnostic techniques and treatments in men and not in women. And that's even if you get in front of a doctor, which can be difficult in some parts of Canada,

prohibitively expensive in the United States. So I wonder if you can empathize with people who are looking for alternatives because they feel like maybe let down. Absolutely. So I've been very vocal that medicine has gaps. And the way you fill those gaps is by educating people about their bodies and by insisting that medicine does better by doctors listening to women, by us studying these things. But none of these things that wellness offers are filling those gaps. They're exploiting those gaps, right? So when women say, I'm not hurt, I went in with pelvic pain, you know, I had symptoms of ovarian cancer and I was ignored. How does wellness answer that?

It doesn't. It doesn't answer any of those questions. What it does is a bit of a smoke and mirrors to make you think it's looking after you. And I love Ben Goldacre, who is a British physician, and he writes a lot about the pharmaceutical industry. He has a wonderful quote. And I'm going to paraphrase it. But basically, if there's a problem with the airline industry, the answer isn't to invest in magic carpets. Right. Sums everything up. Yeah. And so yeah, so wellness is moving in and exploiting the gaps. The gaps are there.

Absolutely. I mean, that's the reason why I wrote the book. So women will know when they're getting bad information from their doctor, they'll know how to advocate for themselves. Women will know when they're getting bad information from their doctor. They'll know how to advocate for themselves. You know, I had this moment a few years ago. I'd written a post on IUDs and why you can get them whether you've been pregnant or not. It doesn't matter. But I still hear women are turned down.

Like 20% of doctors still believe you can't have an IUD if you've never been pregnant. It's ridiculous. So this woman wrote a comment on my blog and she said, I was going for my IUD and I was worried my doctor was going to be one of those 20% you said won't put it in. But I printed out your blog and when I went in and said, I wanted to have an IUD and he said, you can't have one because you've never been pregnant. She said, I slammed the printout of your blog on the table and said, Jen Gunter said I can have one and she got her IUD. We'll see you next time. We're talking about women today and women's health. And this is a subject that does get a lot of attention.

But I do wonder, you know, men are also marketed all kinds of silly things. So I'm looking at these magazines, these like muscle magazines or whatever, these men's magazines. And there are all of these advertisements for like cognitive enhancements or like pills to make their hair look better. Right. Or erectile pills. I guess so too. But why are we so quick to single out women's snake oil over men's, right? Well, I mean, I think obviously that's my beat, right? You know, I don't care for men in the office. So, you know, I don't hear the concerns of men. So I hear women come in and I know what their fears are. And, you know, there's basically the same 20 questions I get asked. But I think that as the patriarchal tropes are also used in wellness and it's more rebranded as kind of more toxic masculinity.

Right. So that's what they're selling. And what's really fascinating is if you look at Goop and all the supplements that they sell and you look at the right-wing shock jock Alec Jones, you know, Alex Jones, he sells a lot of products. You know, many revolutionaries rob banks and things and kidnap people for funds. We promote in the free market the products we use that are about preparedness. That's how we fund this revolution against the New World Order. They sell the same stuff. Right.

They're just ones in pink and ones in blue. And so it's equally there. I think that the New World Order. They sell the same stuff. They're just ones in pink and ones in blue. And so it's equally there. I think that the marketing is different. And I think that there's probably different ways that men are preyed upon. And I'm just not as familiar with it. Some of what we're talking about, it feels like it's important. But you know, if I do a juice cleanse for five days, it's going to be expensive, and's a scam, but, you know, I'm going to be fine probably, right? But I do wonder if this industrial complex is almost like a gateway for other things, right? So is the philosophy behind using these kinds of products, does that naturally flow into other sort of alternatives to science-based medicine? So I'm thinking about like the anti-vax movement here. bet. So big wellness over the Venn diagram with medical

conspiracy theories is very high. So you see a lot of doctors that promote wellness, naturopaths, chiropractors, those type of people also end up being anti-vaccine. And so you see a lot of that. You also see a lot of really like wrong advice., there's a naturopath who was recently featured on Goop who, you know, under some keto-curious headline, right? And, you know, it was just about his ketogenic diet recipes. But if you went to his website, you'd see that he recommends that you could use garlic and echinacea to treat chlamydia, which you can't. So there's sort of treating these symptoms that you're just sort of like, well, I feel a little bit tired or a bit this, or I want to do something nice for myself. And yeah, three days of a juice cleanse is probably not going to do anything bad for someone who's otherwise healthy, except you've learned less about your body, which is not a good thing.

But if reading about that cleanse, then you got exposed to this idea that maybe your doctor is lying to you about antibiotics. Or instead of taking antibiotics for chlamydia, you try garlic, right? You can see how this slope starts to move. But there's actually these real medical conspiracy theories, right? Like anti-vaccine is medical conspiracy theory, anti-fluoride. And they have a huge overlap, interestingly enough, with buying supplements. The more medical conspiracy theories you believe, the more likely you are to buy into, the more you're likely to buy supplements. That's really interesting. Yeah. Is this part of the reason why you spend so much of your time trying to debunk this? So I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that I follow you on Twitter. You are on a mission.

I don't even know how you have time to do all of this. Yeah, I'm going to bring big wellness down. And you know what? I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job, actually. But yeah, I think it's preying on people. And I just think we all complain about the health care system, doctors included. And imagine if we had $4 trillion to invest in health care. What could we do? How many diseases could we cure?

Because many, many, many medical advances are hampered by the fact we just don't have the money to study them. Right. So or in the States, like people are dying because they can't afford insulin. About a dozen people took a bus 817 miles. Think about that. From Minneapolis to London, Ontario, to buy insulin. Here in the United States, people are having to choose between do I I pay my rent? Or do I? Do I buy my insulin? But but we're spending money on, like, you know, the master cleanse or coffee enemas like that to me is like, why that I just don't understand that. But it's preying on people. And it's not informed consent. But you know, I've also seen women who have been too afraid to get

mammograms. And then they get thermography, which is not proven. And then they show up with breast cancer, right? Or there's these Instagram influencers, oh my gosh, so many of them are like, trust your body, trust your body. You know, if you could trust your body, we wouldn't need any screening for cancer. No one would ever die for cancer if we could all trust our bodies. And here's this Instagram influencer with over 100,000 followers telling women that they don't need to get pap smears or cervical cancer screening because your body will tell you if you're getting cancer. This also brings me to this other question I have. So, you know, you mentioned before that you thought you were doing a good job. I find you incredibly informative. But, you know, I wonder if you're sort of preaching to the converted here, because, you know, you did say at the beginning of this

conversation that this is a $4 trillion industry. It doesn't seem to be, and I'm only saying this anecdotally, but it doesn't seem to be in decline. Right. I think people have only really started to challenge the wellness very recently. And I'm very realistic that, you know, this doesn't happen overnight. But I think it's, people have to point out what the problems are. It is true that I'm not going to reach the 10% that are deep into the conspiracy theories. That's not going to happen. Nothing I'm going to say to them is going to make a difference. But what happens is because of this phenomenon of the illusory truth effect is we all mistake repetition for accuracy. And so as these stories percolate and percolate, this other 90% who then become anti-vaccine, they're not hardcore skeptics. They're not hardcore anti-vaxxers.

They've been contaminated by the talk that's out there. So I am hopeful that if we challenge those headlines, hold the news accountable, if we start having these conversations in a respectful way, that maybe that 90% isn't going to, it's going to be harder to recruit them. The other thing is, everybody's got a family member who is down a rabbit hole, like, you know, whether it's fluoride or vaccine or whatever. And the way you reach those people is by having one-on-one conversations at the dinner table. So if I can arm someone who's going to go have dinner with Uncle Joe at Thanksgiving, you know, and he's not going to win that argument with Uncle Joe outright. But if he just drops one little piece of truth each time and starts building bridges, maybe he might actually turn that person around. So, you know, I'm hoping to give that kind of information out there.

Dr. Jen Gunter, thank you so much. I promise. No more juice cleanses for me. Okay, no more juice cleanses. Go for walks. That's what, you know, everybody asks me what my wellness is. I'm like, well, I try to eat healthy. I have coffee every day. I disbelieve all coffee studies that tell you it's bad. That's confirmation. Go to the gym, go for a run. I go for a run. I try to have fellowship. I try to hang out with my kids and I try to have sex. All right. That's my wellness.

I think that's a good place for us to end this podcast. Thank you so much. Thanks. All right. So you can catch Dr. Jen Gunter's new show, Jen-splaining, on the CBC streaming app, Jem. And before we go today, just a few updates from the election campaign trail. Over the weekend, the Liberals announced $250 million over five years to fight gun violence. This money would flow directly to cities for community programs. And this follows up on an

earlier promise made by the Liberals to ban assault-style firearms and work with cities to allow them to ban handguns. For their part, the NDP also announced a plan to tackle gun violence on Sunday. $100 million over five years to fund after-school programs and sports and drop-in centres for youth across the country. The Conservatives, they also have a plan for tackling gun violence. It's a bit more of a law and order approach. So holding arrested gang members without bail, denying parole to gang members, tougher sentences for the leaders of gangs. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner and see you all tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.