Reclaiming Holistic Health from the Wellness Grift: Part One

The years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have been challenging for holistic health practitioners who are deeply committed to public health—those who recognize COVID-19 as a serious threat and support a multifaceted, collective response to contain its spread. Like everyone, we faced the hardships of illness, loss, and long-term debility, along with the disruptions to daily life and the difficulties of collective action in the face of lukewarm government support. But alongside these struggles, another reality became painfully clear: within the broad tent of herbalism and “alternative medicine,” an interest in holistic health is often intertwined with an intensely individualistic view of wellbeing—one that frequently overlaps with conspiratorial thinking about mainstream medicine. As the pandemic swept across the globe, these internal divisions carried high stakes, especially when some holistic health advocates publicly downplayed COVID-19 and worked to undermine public health measures.

For many of my colleagues in herbalism, this was a “mask off” moment—when the friend you made at the party suddenly felt like a stranger again, or even a threat. Worse still, these underlying tendencies in alternative health were quickly stoked and amplified by an army of online influencers who seized the moment to build their brands through conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, and false cures. Suddenly, the currents of pseudoscience, conspiracism, and wishful thinking that had long existed within holistic health circles became national news.

My colleagues and I used whatever platforms and influence we had to counteract the messaging of those whose fears and rationalizations prevented them from joining the collective effort to slow the virus’s spread. At its core, our work was fueled by a commitment to public welfare, a belief in collective action and solidarity to reduce harm, and an understanding of the emerging science. But as holistic health practitioners, we also recognized that we were uniquely positioned to challenge these narratives from within. And on some level, we knew that the loudest voices peddling dangerous misinformation under the banner of “holistic” or “wellness” weren’t just misleading the public—they were also distorting and threatening the credibility of our entire field.

It is this experience of mischaracterization and damaged credibility that brings me back to write this series. I want to push back against the wellness influencers who distort the principles of holistic medicine, reshaping them to fit individualist, capitalist, even eugenic impulses. But just as importantly, I want to push back against their critics—those who, in opposing them, suggest that holistic medicine is inherently doomed to be unscientific, deluded, or irredeemably individualist. One consequence of these battles is that, for many public commentators, the necessary pushback against harmful wellness narratives has led to an overcorrection—doubling down on a narrow rendering of "scientific consensus" in order to fend off misinformation. Along the way, practices like yoga, breathwork, gut healing, herbal medicine, and even vitamin D have become collateral damage in the broader fight over public health.

It’s time to step in. I’m done ceding ground to those in holistic health and herbalism who, through unexamined biases and a lack of critical thinking, tarnish the integrity of our field. Many of my true colleagues have withdrawn from herbal communities, both online and in real life, as conspiracism has taken hold. And the longer this continues, the more holistic and herbal medicine risks being defined by delusional thinking and antisocial behavior. We need more voices speaking up—before these distortions become the face of our practice.

Truth be told, I’m writing these words as much for myself as for anyone else. The world has become so disorienting at times that I find myself needing to reaffirm the ground I stand on. I’m also naturally self-critical, so when people I respect level fair critiques at wellness influencers or alternative medicine practitioners, I’m compelled to ask whether those criticisms apply to me as well. This series is my attempt to work through the anger, the self-examination, the defense of what I value, and the refinements and clarifications that have taken shape in me over these past few years.

I’m going to start with something I’ve needed to get off my chest—so that the rest of this can move forward unburdened.

Fighting Back Against Wellness Misinformation

Of course, my colleagues and I weren’t the only ones pushing back against the wave of misinformation that surged through the alt-health and wellness worlds with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside the usual public health counter-messaging and journalistic fact-checks, a new wave of commentators emerged, dedicated to scrutinizing the biases, motivations, and lack of critical thinking within these spaces. One that stood out to me was Conspirituality, a podcast that launched in the early days of the pandemic and has since grown into a full-fledged media platform, complete with social media accounts and a co-authored book. Hosted by three yoga teachers with deep experience in the subcultures they analyze, Conspirituality has been an invaluable resource for understanding how communities with superficially liberal or progressive tendencies have, under the political realignments of the past decade—and accelerated by the social and political upheaval of the pandemic—drifted sharply to the right.

The podcast illuminated how, despite their progressive trappings, wellness communities often align more closely with libertarian values of individual autonomy—where wellness is framed as personal self-improvement, and the response to broken institutions is to reject them outright rather than work toward collective transformation. Add to this a deep-rooted skepticism of modernity, a naturalistic bias, and a fascination with “secret knowledge,” and you have the perfect conditions for a movement willing to ally with Donald Trump and QAnon in order to develop and defend their own special brand of nonconformity.

Though I had crossed paths with many of the currents Conspirituality critiques—through my experiences in herbalism, permaculture, and various fringe subcultures—I followed the podcast with a sense of anthropological curiosity, knowing their main targets were not me or those close to me. My commitment to holistic and vitalist healing has always been rooted in a far-left political orientation—dedicated to anti-capitalism, collective liberation, and mutual aid. I practice herbal medicine because I see it as a way for communities to build greater autonomy and resilience, and because forming relationships with plants is itself healing. Herbs lend themselves naturally to holistic approaches to health, and when these approaches succeed, people often find them deeply transformative—healing, empowering, even life-changing.

Like many conspiritualists, I critique the ways capitalism drives ill health and shapes modern medicine, limiting its capacity to meet our healthcare needs. But where they see dramatic conspiracies, I see structural forces—failures baked into the logic of capitalist accumulation. Actual conspiracies do exist, but they themselves are only symptoms. And even with its flaws, conventional biomedicine has much to offer. Rejecting it outright gets us nowhere. I believe in a root-cause approach—reshaping society and the economy to make possible the transformation of healthcare while, in the meantime, doing whatever it takes to survive. Thrive, if we’re lucky.

More to the immediate point, I took the coronavirus seriously and was vocal in my support for efforts to curb its spread—including masking, extending public assistance, and freezing rent collection so people could safely stay home.

So for the most part, I enjoyed Conspirituality’s takedowns of wellness grifters and incorporated many of their insights into my own understanding and advocacy. But it wasn’t long before I myself was stung by the barbs they were throwing. They mocked the idea that herbs or vitamin D could have legitimate medical value. They dismissed “supplements” with the broadest possible brush. And in what seemed like an attempt to go beyond exposing online grifters and thoroughly put “alt-health” in its place, they brazenly went after acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine as a whole—leaning on a handful of limited studies to argue that any healing from this millenia-old system of empirical medicine must be nothing more than a placebo effect.

Conspirituality’s Motte-and-Bailey

A rhetorical strategy known as the Motte-and-Bailey fallacy exists when a speaker—intentionally or not—conflates two very different propositions. One proposition is more desirable but harder to defend, while the other is more defensible but less satisfying. The name comes from a medieval European settlement style in which people lived in lush, open, fertile land (the bailey) but retreated to a fortified tower (the motte) when under attack. Once the threat passed, they would return to the bailey—just as a speaker might retreat to a safer argument when challenged, only to reoccupy their more extreme position when the pressure subsides.

In Conspirituality’s rhetoric, the motte consists of evidence that legitimately calls into question the grandiose claims of wellness influencers—but has limited implications. Some examples:

• Studies on Vitamin D supplementation have yielded mixed results in the context of infectious disease.

• Herbs often perform poorly in randomized trials designed to assess their efficacy in treating diagnosed pathologies.

• Many dietary supplements are aggressively and deceptively marketed based on speculative hypotheses rather than solid clinical evidence.

But sticking to these measured claims is not ideal for rhetorical flourish or the brevity required for social media communication. So it’s tempting to step into the open air of the bailey, where one can

• Dismiss the importance of Vitamin D outright

• Deny any meaningful role for herbal medicine in health care

• Lump all supplements together as a “scam”

When pressed on the bailey, they can always retreat to the safer ground of the motte, or shift attention away from the remedies themselves to the unethical actors who overhype them.

This rhetorical style doesn’t just misrepresent reality—it also causes unnecessary social damage. At the very least, it exposes the hosts as untrustworthy, uninformed, and unqualified to interpret the healthcare modalities they critique—making them less credible to the very communities for whom their reporting is most relevant. Worse, their approach ends up counterproductive: those genuinely committed to holistic health find themselves increasingly unwelcome in left-leaning, socially conscious, public-health-oriented, science-friendly spaces. Alienated, they may instead seek community on the right.

To be fair, Motte-and-Bailey maneuvers exist on all sides of this conflict. I’ve singled out Conspirituality here because they were central to my experience of watching these dynamics play out across the culture, but they’re really just a distilled version of the broader reaction to wellness grifts, anti-vax conspiracies, and COVID denialism within the alternative health scene. The loudest bad actors in the wellness world have taken up so much space with their antisocial, pseudo-holistic (more on that in Part Two) propaganda and self-promotion that any other approach to holistic health has been rendered invisible. As a result, anything these bad actors have touched becomes fair game for attack—regardless of the collateral damage those indiscriminate attacks cause.

A troubling consequence is that the left ends up ceding crucial aspects of health justice to right-wing politics. Take, for example, the failure to articulate how the commodification of food directly fuels metabolic syndromes, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease—simply because acknowledging this reality sounds uncomfortably similar to talking points from RFK Jr.

But we can’t allow our tools, our analysis, and our wisdom to be co-opted by those who ultimately seek to accelerate capitalism. Nor can we afford to retreat and hope this all blows over. We need to make it clear that we are not them—and that holistic medicine belongs within a vision of health justice beyond capitalism.

The apothecary of a Benedictine monastery (18th century Germany)

The Tools of the Trade

If I’m so certain that I’m not them—not complicit in pseudoscience, individualism, or conspiracism—then why do these attacks on wellness grifters and COVID denialists still sting? I’m not selling herbs or supplements as a substitute for masking or vaccination. I don’t believe the coronavirus is here to upgrade my DNA. I don’t imply that illness is a moral failing. I don’t even suggest that we should avoid doctors or pharmaceuticals.

As seen in my examples from Conspirituality above, my most significant overlap with bad actors in the wellness world is in materia medica—the actual tools of the trade. And even that overlap is limited. There are plenty of remedies promoted in alt-health, naturopathy, and functional medicine that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot wand. But the nature of the wellness grift, especially online, demands a constant churn of new “game-changing” cures—each positioned as the must-have remedy of the moment. Inevitably, something I use in my practice—whether it’s vitamin D or magnesium, morning sun or breathing exercises, Ashwagandha or Echinacea—will cycle through as the latest overhyped trend, only to be dismissed or “debunked” by critics of the wellness space.

The thing is, more often than not the online claims about the materia medica I employ bear little resemblance to how these remedies function in my practice. They strip away context, reducing complex tools to simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions rather than integrating them into broader strategies for supporting health. And that brings us back to the realities of holistic care—a concept that still needs explaining and defending, because my enemies and my enemies’ enemies alike are giving it a bad name.

That is the topic of the next installment:

The Web of Care: A Holistic Health Worth Fighting For

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Dave Meesters is an herbalist at River Island Community Herb Clinic and the Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine