When wellness turns toxic

Wellness no longer pertains just to what we eat and how we exercise, it's now a state of being, a prescription for living and an impossible health goal with sometimes dangerous results, writes Lucy E. Cousins

- By Lucy E. Cousins

Have you exercised today, eaten a protein-rich breakfast (while writing in your gratitude diary) and meditated for 20 minutes in your dedicated wellness space? Have you switched to crystal-infused water bottles, organic shampoo, silk sheets, menstrual cups, and alcohol-free perfume?

If you’re feeling a tad overwhelmed reading that, you should. The pressure we face, especially as women, to live up to the goop-level of wellness is growing daily. What started as a left-of-centre hippie health movement in the 1970s is now a $US4.4 trillion ($6.6 trillion) global wellness industry, and it is predicted to reach $US7 trillion by 2025. Wellness is big business.

On the face of it, that’s a good thing, right? The idea of wellness should be an ostensibly positive topic. After all, the Oxford Dictionary describes it as achieving “a level of health that minimises the chances of becoming ill”. Who doesn’t want that?

However, in the past few decades, the wellness ideation has pervaded every aspect of life. From the hypoallergenic mattresses we sleep on to the collagen-boosted creams we cover our skin in, it has infiltrated not only our physical state but also how we think and make decisions.

But when does an obsession with being healthy become unhealthy?

Traditionally, health has been the realm of doctors and nurses, a trust in higher education and scientific research. Without the ease of a Google search and a TikTok deep dive, our grandparents followed doctors’ orders both when they were ill and when they weren’t. Self-diagnosis and self-determinism were virtually unheard of.