From corporate wellness programs to biohacking and the rise of the wellness aesthetic, I’ve spent years questioning whether the industry is addressing the things that actually make us well.
I started my career in health and wellness, designing incentive programs for Fortune 500 companies and universities. This was during the rise of healthcare consumerism in the 2010s. Around this time, high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) were becoming increasingly common (good ole’ $8,500 deductibles, yay!). Employers were looking for ways to encourage their employees to adopt “healthier behaviors”— more on this in a moment.
At the time, many corporate wellness programs were tied to health insurance incentives. Employees could earn more favorable pricing or benefits by participating in wellness initiatives, completing health assessments, or demonstrating certain behaviors. The underlying premise (ok, let’s call it a ruse) was that healthier employees would ultimately lead to lower healthcare costs, reduced absenteeism, and greater productivity.
In theory, the logic made sense. So, I dutifully developed often complex programs for my clients. The programs incentivized employees to drink more water, walk, get checkups, and go to the gym. All of these are seemingly great things that you should do to live a healthier life. However, I often struggled with the subtext of why we were asking people to do these things. I often felt conflicted about employer-sponsored wellness programs in general.
In many cases, I suspected that the employees we were trying to help needed something far more fundamental than another wellness initiative. They needed a day off, more adequate staffing, manageable workloads, and an environment that gave them the time and space to take care of themselves. The angry responses in employee surveys said it all. “You want me to do a walking challenge when I’m working 80 hours a week?!”
I couldn’t help thinking that addressing those conditions might have done more for their overall well-being, absenteeism and productivity than many of the programs we were building.
That experience was eye-opening, but left me in a quandary (it’s one of the reasons why I left corporate wellness in the first place). I have always struggled with the industry’s tendency to introduce new solutions while overlooking the fundamental conditions contributing to poor health and well-being in the first place.
Today, almost two decades later, this tension feels even more pronounced than ever.
We have entered an era of extraordinary innovation in wellness, with everything from personalized supplements and wearable technology to longevity treatments, biohacking protocols and AI-powered health recommendations. I find much of it fascinating, and anyone who knows me knows that I genuinely enjoy experimenting with new wellness treatments and technologies.
Still, the longer I work in this space, the more I come back to one belief: You cannot out-biohack a life that is fundamentally stressful, unsustainable or out of alignment.
I often wonder whether our collective enthusiasm for optimizing health has distracted us from asking some fairly basic questions about how we live. Why are so many people experiencing chronic stress? Why has loneliness become such a significant public health concern? Why are we spending so much time and money trying to improve our well-being while many of the conditions shaping our daily lives remain unchanged?
These questions have been on my mind lately, particularly as I watch certain wellness trends become increasingly popular. There are three shifts in the industry that I find myself struggling with more and more.
1. The Atomization of Wellness
One of the biggest shifts I have noticed in modern wellness is how much of it has become centered on individual optimization.
As human beings, we are inherently communal creatures. For centuries, our lives have revolved around shared experiences, storytelling, cultural rituals and relationships with other people. Our communities have historically played an essential role in how we care for ourselves and one another.
Yet so much of contemporary wellness seems to operate on the assumption that achieving better health is primarily an individual responsibility.
We are encouraged to monitor our biomarkers, optimize our sleep, perfect our nutrition, experiment with supplements and invest in increasingly sophisticated treatments. We have turned personal wellness into something resembling a competitive sport, where there is always another behavior to improve or another metric to track.
I am fascinated by many of these advancements, particularly when they help people better understand their bodies and make informed decisions about their health. My concern is that our growing obsession with individual optimization has come at the expense of something equally important: human connection.
We are living in a time when loneliness and social isolation have become serious concerns, yet much of the wellness industry continues to develop products and experiences designed for people to pursue better health on their own.
I find that contradiction difficult to ignore.
Some of the most meaningful wellness experiences I have had involved being part of a community. I’ve often felt the most “well” when I’m sharing a meal with friends, participating in a cultural ritual, spending time in the woods, or simply enjoying a conversation that turned into an afternoon of laughter. I even look at WellZest’s Vitality Retreat; part of the magic was turning off our phones and being in community.
There is something incredibly restorative about actually being connected to others (I know I’m coming at this through an extrovert’s lens, so hear me out). I believe we need to pay much more attention to that aspect of well-being.
I would love to see the industry invest more energy in community-centered wellness experiences that encourage people to connect through movement, shared rituals, food, storytelling and time spent together.
Our relationships have always been central to the human experience, and I think any meaningful conversation about well-being needs to reflect that.
2. Our Increasingly Sedentary Lifestyles
Another issue I believe deserves far more attention is how dramatically our everyday patterns of movement have changed.
Consider how much time the average person spends sitting throughout the day. We sit at our desks for hours, commute in cars, attend virtual meetings, and spend much of our leisure time in front of screens. Even activities that once required us to leave our homes, like getting food, can now be accomplished through a few taps on a phone.
For most of human history, movement was woven into the fabric of daily life. Our ancestors walked considerable distances, gathered food, carried supplies and engaged in regular physical activity as part of their everyday existence.
Today, many of us live in environments where movement has become something we have to deliberately schedule.
We spend most of the day sitting and then attempt to compensate with a forty-five-minute workout, a Pilates class or a trip to the gym. While structured exercise has tremendous benefits, a single workout cannot fully compensate for the effects of prolonged sedentary behavior.
I find it interesting that we devote so much attention to new supplements, recovery technologies and sophisticated fitness protocols while often overlooking how little we move during the remaining hours of the day.
I would like to see us have a more serious conversation about how movement can become a natural part of everyday life again.
For employers, that could mean normalizing walking meetings, creating more opportunities for employees to move throughout the workday and reconsidering workplace cultures that associate sitting at a desk for eight consecutive hours with productivity.
For communities, it could mean investing in walkable neighborhoods, accessible public spaces and environments that make walking, cycling and outdoor recreation easier.
On an individual level, it might be as simple as incorporating more walks into our daily routines, standing and stretching throughout the day or finding opportunities to move that do not require a gym membership.
I believe one of the most important changes we can make is to stop treating physical activity as something that happens exclusively during a designated workout and start thinking about how to build more movement into the way we live.
3. The Wellness Aesthetic
The third trend I have been struggling with is the increasingly narrow aesthetic associated with wellness.
Somewhere along the way, wellness developed a fairly recognizable visual identity, complete with matching Alo or Lululemon sets, expensive matcha drinks, carefully curated Drunk Elephant skincare routines, and beautifully designed spaces filled with products promising to help us become healthier versions of ourselves.
I understand the appeal, and I certainly appreciate beautiful products and experiences. What concerns me is how easily the image of wellness has become confused with the actual experience of being well.
Having traveled to over 50 countries, I have encountered many different interpretations of health and well-being. Some of the most vibrant, active, and connected communities I have visited were in villages in Uganda, Kenya, and Indonesia. In these communities, daily life looks remarkably different from the version of wellness that dominates my social media feed.
People spent time outdoors, moved throughout the day, shared meals, maintained close relationships with their neighbors, and participated in cultural traditions that brought their communities together.
There was no particular wardrobe, supplement routine, or expensive fitness membership required to participate in those aspects of everyday life.
Those experiences have reminded me how culturally specific our contemporary image of wellness has become.
When we continually associate well-being with expensive products, exclusive studios and a particular lifestyle aesthetic, we risk making something fundamental to the human experience feel inaccessible to the very people who might benefit from it most.
We also risk overlooking the many ways people across different cultures, communities and socioeconomic backgrounds already practice wellness without necessarily identifying those behaviors as part of the wellness industry.
I would like to see a broader, more inclusive representation of what well-being can look like, one that reflects the realities of people’s lives and celebrates the everyday activities that contribute to feeling healthy and connected.
For some people, that might involve a Pilates class or a morning matcha. For others, it might mean dancing with friends, tending a garden, preparing a meal with family, walking through their neighborhood or simply having enough time to rest.
There is room for all of those experiences within wellness, and I think the industry would benefit from remembering that the way someone looks or what they can afford tells us very little about their actual well-being.
Where Do We Go From Here?
After years of working in health and wellness, I remain incredibly optimistic about the possibilities for improving how we care for ourselves.
I am excited by innovations in longevity, preventive health, personalized medicine and the growing number of tools helping people understand their bodies. I also believe that some of the most meaningful improvements in well-being will come from addressing the ordinary circumstances of our daily lives.
That means reconsidering how we work, how our communities are designed, how we spend our time and how we maintain relationships with one another.
It also means recognizing that individual behaviors exist within larger environments that can either support or undermine our health.
I think back to those early years designing corporate wellness programs and how often I wished we could address the working conditions affecting employees rather than asking them to take on yet another responsibility in the name of better health.
I find myself asking many of the same questions about the wellness industry’s direction, which feels a bit wild.
I want us to keep innovating, experimenting and learning more about what helps people live longer, healthier lives. At the same time, I hope we can devote just as much attention to the fundamental human needs that have been with us for centuries: meaningful relationships, regular movement, adequate rest, supportive communities and the ability to enjoy our lives.
Because for all the progress we have made in understanding health, I suspect we have made the simple act of living well considerably more complicated than it needs to be.