A Pseudoscience Triple-Header Expose'

Consumer protection from life coaches found lacking

A report from ProPublica in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune notes Utah’s Division of Professional Licensing (DOPL) receives about one complaint per month about life coaches, but the staff can do little in response. Life coaching is unregulated across the U.S. which means no qualifications are required to be a life coach. Yet many of them claim to help with a broad range of issues including weight loss, parenting, improving sex, “emotional chaos,” anxiety, and running businesses. Utah licensers can cite life coaches who diagnose clients or develop plans to manage mental health conditions with unauthorized practice, but a records analysis shows citations and fines are seldom used and aren’t always effective. [Schreifels J. When therapists lose their licenses, some turn to the unregulated life coaching industry instead. ProPublica, June 17, 2024] The report notes:In Utah during the last decade, of the 25 people cited for unauthorized practice, four were life coaches.

One life coach in Utah was cited twice for unauthorized practice. He was fined $1,000 the second time he was cited for advertising himself as a psychotherapist after his license expired. He now runs a program training life coaches.

Another life coach was cited and fined $250 three months after he surrendered his therapy license for advertising that he performed “Lifespan Integration Therapy” and could treat trauma in his life-coaching business. DOPL cited him after it received reports he engaged in inappropriate conduct with female clients. A year later, he was cited again for continuing to advertise that he treated mental health issues.

Of at least 43 Utah mental health professionals who have surrendered their licenses, let them expire on suspension, or have had them revoked or denied since 2010, about one-third have continued to promote themselves as mental health “associates,” motivational speakers, or life coaches.

In 2022, active life coaches generated more than $4.5 billion in revenue worldwide, according to an estimate by the International Coaching Federation.

A woman sued her life coach in California in 2020, claiming the coach convinced her to sign over her home to the coach’s nonprofit organization. She got the title to her home back when the case settled.
A Connecticut life coach charged last year with stealing money from a client with a traumatic brain injury was given probation.

In January, a Nevada life coach was sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to pay back $282,980 after he admitted to spending money at casinos he was supposed to use for investments on behalf of his clients.

Therapist-turned-life-coach Jodi Hildebrandt was sentenced to prison for abusing two of her business partner’s children.

###

Wellness influencers commonly oppose COVID-19 vaccines

University of Michigan researchers identified 161 “wellness influencer” accounts of individuals on Twitter (now called X) in 2019 based on their use of wellness-related words and high counts of retweets of their wellness advice. The self-descriptions in their Twitter bios included such terms as spiritual guide, tech executive, food blogger, lifestyle medical consultant, alchemist and herbalist, metabolic health coach, psychic, motivational coach, writer, and pop-culture fan. The influencers’ 3,045 posts on COVID-19 vaccines from 2020 through 2022 were compared to the 7,584 posts of a control group consisting of X accounts addressing similar topics but that don’t personify individuals or dispense wellness advice. The control group accounts included medical professionals and scientists who refrain from giving health advice on X, public health campaign initiatives, various media organizations that feature wellness segments, advocates for mental health awareness, and commentators on public health. [O’Brien G, and others. Wellness influencer responses to COVID-19 vaccines on social media: A longitudinal observational study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, Nov 27, 2024] The researchers reported:“Among wellness influencer accounts for which we could estimate vaccine stance, roughly half (48%) were identified as opposing vaccines, compared with 16% of accounts in the control group.”
“Our topic modeling approach provides further evidence that anti-establishment messaging comprises a core part of many wellness influencers’ rhetoric. These accounts invoked themes like parental rights, government overreach, and distrust of corrupt pharmaceutical companies when opposing vaccination.”
“Pro vaccination influencers, on the other hand, encouraged followers to get vaccinated and shared scientifically framed information about vaccine safety, efficacy, and its relationship with immunity. Their use of scientific framing suggests these influencers recognize the cultural authority science holds.”

###

Almost all TikTok posts on weight-loss, muscle-building, and cleansing/detox found to mislead

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University analyzed the promotional features of the 233 most-viewed TikTok videos as of June 2022 in the U.S. with the hashtags #dietpills (78 videos), #preworkout (86 videos), and #detox (69 videos). [Raffoul A, and others. Diet pills and deception: A content analysis of weight-loss, muscle-building, and cleanse and detox supplements videos on TikTok. Eating Behaviors, Dec 2024] They found:93.6% of the videos did not disclose the credentials of the content providers

95.7% did not identify whether the promotion of the product was sponsored by the retailer

97% did not provide any scientific evidence to support health- and appearance-related claims

The researchers concluded:

The findings echo concerns from social media researchers and public health officials about widespread misinformation regarding nutrition, weight, and eating disorders on social media, and emphasizes the need for more research on the harms of social media posts and advertisements that promote weight-loss, muscle-building, and cleanse and detox products to vulnerable users.
###


==============
Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Consumer Advocate
7 Birchtree Circle
Chapel Hill, NC 27517


Telephone: (919) 533-6009

A Reminder: "Wellness" Is Bait Used By Pseudoscience

"The world of mental healthcare is very much caveat emptor: buyer beware. Today, people looking to care for their mental health face a market with at least 600 “brands” of psychotherapy—and counting. Most are ineffective, and many could be harmful. The $5.6 trillion dollar wellness industry includes countless unregulated providers of mental health services looking to exploit people’s financial and emotional vulnerabilities. 

"Jonathan Stea, a clinical psychologist who regularly deals with some of society’s most vulnerable people. Having seen so many of his patients hurt by pseudoscience, Stea is on a mission to expose its harm and protect the public from mental health misinformation. He’ll discuss and debunk the predatory pseudoscience and grift of the multi-trillion-dollar wellness industry and point us toward a better way to take care of our mental health."

Click on the link below for an expose of the poorly regulated mental health industry:

Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry

At Home Allergy Tests

"The at-home DIY health industry is booming. The global wellness product market was valued at $5.6 trillion in 2022 and is expected to grow to over $7 trillion by 2025. This includes dietary supplements, nutrition products, fitness equipment, health and wellness apps, and even unapproved consumer health tests.

"This market has exploded because of many factors, such as increased attention on overall health and well-being, lack of regulation on wellness products, aggressive marketing efforts by companies including paid promotion by celebrities and online influencers, and a coordinated effort to erode trust in evidence-based medicine.

"The immune system is a frequent target; everywhere you turn, there is a product advertising to “boost” your immune system, support immune health, diagnose foods you’re “sensitive” to, and more. Many legitimate scientific terms are co-opted by influencers in the wellness world to sell people on medical issues and products that are not based in reality, which only adds to the confusion among the public. Of course, the appeal is obvious: the immune system is the most complex organ system in the body and is involved in nearly every physiological process from infectious diseases, cancer, autoimmunity, allergies, and even things such as obesity and menstrual cycles. If you could control your immune system, you could truly hack your health.

"If only it were that simple. The reality is there is no evidence that these products are doing what they promise to do. Aside from the fact that these products are a waste of money, many can be seriously harmful. Supplements can be adulterated and contaminated, health tests can cause people to make serious changes to their lifestyle and habits, leading to malnutrition, disordered eating, and worse.

"There has also been an increased demand for at-home allergy testing. Before we get into it, I want to say unequivocally that at-home allergy tests should never be used for diagnosis. They are not FDA-approved or validated for use. Their methods and results are not accurate and trusting them can lead to harmful consequences."

Click on this link for more.

Bullibility And Wellness

"First off, you're asking what this word bullibility means. It is a portmanteau of two words, the first of which begins with bull and is often abbreviated BS, and gullibility. Coined by Petrocelli et. al. in a 2024 publication, bullibility refers to a person's predisposition to gullibly believe in any random BS that comes along. The TikTok generation, for example, has high bullibility. Today we're going to explore the role bullibility plays in converting so many people into members of what has become essentially a cult: wellness culture.

"The #1 absolutely critical thing to be clear about in this episode is the unambiguous distinction between healthcare and wellness. They are two unrelated industries, though both often borrow language from the other for marketing purposes — and it's important to be aware of that. Healthcare is the business of treating illness, but the wellness industry treats nothing. Its customers are already healthy — health being defined as the absence of disease — and instead it sells the promise of becoming healthier than healthy. There is always one more wellness fad you can buy into: the whole industry leverages the practices and precepts of New Age, eastern mysticism, and western esotericism to market and sell the commercial products of the organic food industry, alternative medicine, superfoods, and services like sound healing, yoga instruction, guided mindfulness, and countless others. It's so broad there is a product or service for anyone — a gateway to bring any new recruit into the cult. Whether you innocently buy a superfood fruit juice at the market or sign up for a Kambo workshop in Silicon Valley, congratulations, you've just taken your first step into the cult of wellness."

Click on the link below for more:

Bullibility and the Cult of Wellness

Mental Health Quackery

"Dr. Stea is a clinical psychologist and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Calgary. He’s also spent years fighting pseudoscience and mental health misinformation on social media. 

"In his book 'Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry', Dr. Stea helps readers make better decisions about their mental health."

Click on the link below for a one-hour video delving into the shady goings-on within the "Wellness" industry:

A clinical psychologist takes on mental health pseudoscience

Another "Wellness" Alternative To Medicine (That Might Be Deadly)

"Today we're going to have a look at an alternative wellness therapy, plagiarized from an indigenous Amazonian ritual practice, and today sold profitably to gullible westerners intent on blending the ever-popular ancient wisdom with the modern wellness fad. It's called kambô. Kambô is a paste made from the secretions of poison tree frogs, and when a very small dose is spread into a break in the skin, it causes severe vomiting, diarrhea, and other adverse (and potentially dangerous) reactions. Consequently, it has quickly become a favorite method of virtue signaling — a way to shout "Look at how enlightened I am, participating in an indigenous Amazonian ritual" among a very select demographic in the United States and other comfortable western nations. But regardless of the social implications, kambô is still pharmacologically active; and that means that it may indeed provide the benefits its devotees believe it does… and it also might mean that it's deadly."

Click on the link below for the details:

Kambo: Let It Go

Wellness: Another Word That Should Raise The Skeptical Antenna

"I read two books about the wellness industry this year: Rina Raphael’s The Gospel of Wellness and Colleen Derkatch’s Why Wellness Sells. These two tomes pull the façade off of this $4.4-trillion wellness economy to interrogate the self-empowerment it sells. Raphael’s book, meant for a lay audience of women, weaves her own adventures in wellness with quotes from experts, who shine a scientific light on the chemophobia of the beauty product business and the supplement recommendations of wellness influencers. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed for a tiny section of the book that deals with functional medicine and have two sentences quoted in there.) Derkatch’s volume, meanwhile, is aimed at an academic audience. It analyzes the language and arguments of wellness and how, for all of its posturing against pharmaceuticals, wellness often relies on the same sickness model and marketing style that medicine uses."

Click on the link below for more:

Why the Gospel of Wellness Sells

Wellness: Be A Skeptic

"From productivity hacks to primal screams, from magic crystals to manifestation, wellness has become a juggernaut industry promising to provide not just health and happiness, but meaning, purpose, and belonging. What happens when those promises aren’t met?

"Our guest is Rina Raphael, author of the new book The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. She’s been reporting on health, wellness, and women’s issues for outlets such as Fast Company, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and many others, and she’s brought all of her experience—both as a journalist and as a consumer—to this important investigation into the wellness industry, particularly its influence on women. In a conversation with Free Inquiry editor Paul Fidalgo, Raphael discusses how, for many people, wellness has become akin to a religious faith, complete with its prophets and heretics, as well as how the failures of the medical establishment to address the needs of women creates an opportunity for wellness marketers to fill the void with their own solutions, ranging from the medically dubious to outright quackery."

"Wellness" is a term that is like popcorn: there may be a kernel of truth, but most of it is hot air. Click on the link below for a podcast that presents the details:

The business of Wellness