AIBU to think "Wellness gurus" are mostly spouting bollocks?

[WellnessWally]

I was referred to Nuffield Health for their joint pain programme and had my "Health MOT" with the lady I had assumed was a physio (she runs the twice-weekly exercise class). Retrospectively, I think she was more a salesperson, as I had to hear all about their ongoing fees, children's membership etc. but that's perhaps another issue.

During the health MOT, I'd had to disclose other medical conditions - for me, mainly migraines. She asked me how much liquid I drank a day, and I said about 5 cups of tea. She acted as though I said I regularly shot heroin into my eyeballs. She told me that tea was no good and caffeine was dehydrating, and I wasn't getting ANY water at all. I know a little bit about this, so I said that actually yes, if you have pure caffeine it's dehydrating, but the amount of water in tea more than makes up for that. (Many studies have shown this.) She was insistent that I needed water or would become very ill. I said that I'd managed to survive so far - and it had probably been about two weeks since I had an actual glass of water.

Then she really pissed me off by telling me that's why I get migraines. I said to her that they were hormonal, I can pin the day of the month I'm going to get them and they are (hard-won) well-managed with medication. My daughter and my dad also get them, so there's a strong genetic link and it has nothing to do with caffeine. She disagreed.

I'm just so sick of people with no GCSEs in science spouting quasi-medical bollocks in what was basically a medical setting (I was referred by my GP). I'm not looking forward to seeing this woman twice a week for the next twelve weeks - though open to her being a better exercise leader - perhaps that's her strength.

But Wellness people - please, please stop spouting bollocks about clean eating and protein and caffeine and ultra-processed foods, unless you have the science to back it up (and I don't mean "watched a video on TikTok").

Rant over.

Wellness gurus are just failed cult leaders of our age. It reminds me of the life of Brian and the tonnes of messiahs touting their messages in the bazaars.

But wellness gurus are so poor at it that usually they can’t even attract a full cult following when the internet makes it so vastly easier these days.

Being a failed narcissist is truly something.

Herbalism is a legitimate form of medicine and one of the most ancient. Many of the key figures in the development of modern medicine were herbalists - Hippocrates, Galen etc.

Around 25% even up to 40% of pharmaceutical drugs derive from plants, including cancer drugs.

In this case the individual was only peddling NHS advice www.nhs.uk/conditions/migraine/

Mmm I'm not sure exactly the phrasing they use

I know they are highly trained / published in the field and well regarded by their peers

Was simply using similar phrasing of the original post

Why don't folks here like the word "wellness"??!!

Feels like they are reading this one word and immediately dismissing everything else as fake

Wellness - "actively trying to achieve good health"

For me, dehydration is one of several migraine triggers, I usually need several to get a migraine, and I can avert one by eating carbs (like you) and drinking a couple of glasses of water.

I think I've drunk a lot of tea in a day, but it's often only about 3 smallish cups, and that isn't enough to prevent the migraines.

That's not my only migraine trigger (the lights in the local Sainsbury's are one for starters) but it's more like the icing on the cake.

I don't care if you ignore her, but drinking more water works for me in terms of being a tiny additive thing I can do to prevent them (alongside meds, avoiding stress, light that triggerse them).

My mum also pointed out to me I make cups of tea, have a few slurps, and then don't drink the rest.

If you do really drink lots of tea a day, then great, but I don't think she's setting herself up as a wellness guru to make a mild suggestion like drink water.

It may be your children's migraine triggers are also a bit different to your own, mine both get migraines and one gets nausea, the other light sensitivity and have similar (stress, hungry, dehydrated, time of the month) as well as different triggers (BP, lights).

People are not very good at identifying migraine triggers as they often have started the migraine up to 24 hours before they become aware of it (not everyone has a pronounced prodrome) and so they think the chocolate they just ate has triggered it, but often it's because you feel 'off' that you eat the chocolate to combat the energy loss.

https://www.migrainedisorders.org/caffeine/

this is a good summary and links to other studies- the evidence is 1-2 cups a day is ok, but more than that is associated with an increased risk of migraine per cup (!), so even if you think this personally doesn't apply to you, on average, her patients will benefit from the advice to cut down on caffeine and replace with water.

@WellnessWally I love your linguistic style and you've made me laugh.

There's a lot of assumed expertise out there now. I even call out my teenage children with asking the validity of their 'source' material. I think things are only going to get worse with the information overload we have now and the dwindling attention spans that people have. I speak as a very weary secondary teacher who indeed suffers migraines and has tried everything bar Botox injections and I'm on three different medications to help me control them. I do know for sure that any insomnia I have will come back and bite me in the coming days with a stomping migraine but it's not the only trigger.

She's clueless I drink no caffeine at all and am crippled with chronic migraine. If you do drink caffeine then sudden withdrawal can help to trigger a migraine (migraines rarely have just one trigger) but drinking caffeine in itself doesn't cause them. One trick I was told by my neurologist who is a specialist in Migraine was to avoid caffeine not to reduce migraines but so that when I did get a migraine a caffeine containing drink like a cola or coffee would help end the attack especially if used along side my rescue medication as caffeine is a known vasoconstrictor. In a pinch with no prescription medication handy you can sometimes see a migraine off with a can of full sugar cola, 3 aspirin and and a bag of ready salted crisps.

Having said all that while 5 cups of tea a day won't be dehydrating you it probably isn't enough fluid intake especially if you are suffering from Migraines and are likely especially sensitive to dehydration so adding in some glasses of water each day on top of your tea or some other beverage would likely help.

I dunno but it helps me if I have it as soon as I feel it coming on . Once it’s in place it doesn’t work or makes me fill sick

Yep a full sugar coke helps mine too if I catch it in time

That is a bit like proclaiming things are good for you because they are natural - like hemlock or arsenic.

Lots of things were tried in the past, some things worked, other things killed people. Mercury was considered a good treatment for syphallis, trepanning for mental health. Over time we have tested these treatments and identified which ones work - that is called pharmacology.

he evidence is 1-2 cups a day is ok,

Cup of what though? Depending on the tea or coffee and how it is brewed you could have the same dose of caffeine in a single cup or in six cups,

This is rather confused. Arsenic is a mineral thus not ‘herbal’ medicine, and hemlock is toxic - Socrates took it to commit suicide.

Mercury, a mineraloid not a plant, was the conventional medical treatment for syphilis for around 300 years. Trepanning was a form of early surgery.

If you think all the possible biochemical and medicinal drugs to be found in the global plant population have been identified - you’d be very much mistaken. That’s an area called bio-prospecting.

A few questions that I thought I’d addressed but perhaps not clearly.

1. My NHS GP referred me to an NHS physio. The Physio referred me to Nuffield Gym who do (free!) 12 weeks of a joint pain rehab program and you can use their gym. I’d have been mad not to take them up on it.
2. As part of the process Nuffield did a health screening by phone and then required me to come in for a health MOT before my sessions start. I could not start the sessions without doing this and I would have looked bizarre to insist on knowing the qualifications of the person.
3. If she had given me lifestyle advice about joint pain (which to be fair, she did: no more running) then fair enough, but to spout off about something that a) she clearly knew nothing about other than repeating oft-repeated myths and b) hadn’t been asked for her opinion on, then dug her heels in and insisted she was right… got my back up.

I get to go back in Feb and see her twice a week for joint pain classes so I’m trying to hope she’ll be good at that part of her job.

Also she told me I should never EVER eat cheese. Today I have been at an all-you-can eat cheese conveyor belt. Zero regrets.

Yes, and non sports therapist general massage therapists spouting on about flushing toxins. Noone has ever been able to tell me which toxins they are referring to or seem to have any awareness of the function of the liver, kidneys, lungs and colon.

Massage can help to stimulate the lymphatic system. HTH

Absolutely. But it still doesn't flush any toxins. There's an idea banded about that rubbing muscles somehow rids them of toxins. Deep tissue/sports massage can help to remove metabolites BUT again, these are completely normal and in no way toxins.

I see you have weaknesses with reading comprehension. Hemlock and arsenic were given as examples of things that are natural. Mercury and trepanning as examples of treatments that kill but were historically considered good. ’Bio-prospecting’ is part of pharmacology. Herbalism is pseudoscience.

I would have looked bizarre to insist on knowing the qualifications of the person.

You would be perfectly reasonable to ask. Private care isn’t like NHS care where you, in theory, can rely on the NHS to ensure you are seen by a correctly qualified person and possibly don’t have a choice anyway. In private care (which this is part of even if you weren’t paying) it is much more the patient’s responsibility to satisfy themselves of the qualifications of the person they are seeing. Having said that, with the use of physician assistants/associates by the NHS you would be wise to acquaint yourself with the health profession of people you see in the NHS too

I would not have been able to access the rehab if I had refused to do the health MOT. Knowing her qualifications is neither here nor there if it’s mandatory to do it.

It would have been cutting my nose off to spite my face to refuse to do it because I’m hoping to access 12 weeks’ rehab.

I’m not the one with the reading comprehension issue - I made a point about herbalism to which you responded with a confused non sequitur.

Herbalism exists at the intersection of tradition and science. Phytochemistry and botany are sciences; tradition is the history of plant usage over millenia.

Bioprospecting is the systemic study of biological resources, including plants, for compounds/biochemical information that can be developed into medicine. It utilises the principles of ethnopharmacology (ie study of the traditional use of natural products) to identify promising plants that have already been used effectively in herbal medicine throughout history.

Without herbalism we would not have some of our most basic and important drugs including - aspirin, artemisinin, digoxin, vinblastine & vincristine, taxol etc.

Tradition is not science. Tradition can be deadly. Indeed it was the fact that Yew trees are poisonous that attracted researchers to investigate their cytotoxic qualities. Herbalism is still pseudoscience.

Agree. And it’s not at all a trigger for other women. I got migraines just like clockwork every month tried avoiding coffee (for far too long) in my case it made the migraine worse. The only thing that stopped it was pregnancy- but that made me so nauseous that I’d almost prefer the migraine. 🤷‍♀️