Sound Baths for Dogs — has the wellness industry gone too far?
Hi everyone,
We are, by most measures, the most wellness-obsessed generation in history. So why do we seem to be ageing faster, not slower?
A study published in Nature Medicine last month tracked biological ageing across generations using PhenoAge, a measure based on 9 blood biomarkers. In the UK, people born between 1965 and 1974 showed 23% more accelerated biological ageing than those born in the early 1950s. But it's the US data that shocked me — people born in the 1990s showed a 92% higher age gap (whether someone appears biologically older or younger than expected) than those born just one generation before them, in the late 1960s. It's observational, no cause and effect confirmed.
This week's issue digs into that problem — how the wellness industry is very good at selling us fixes for symptoms, but has very little to offer the actual environment creating those symptoms in the first place.
Emily x
📺 Watching a lot of TV in midlife may be linked to brain shrinkage decades later
A USC-led study tracked around 1,700 adults over roughly 20 years. Those who reported watching television "very often" during midlife later showed smaller volumes in brain regions tied to memory, decision-making and visual processing, along with more white matter damage — the kind associated with ageing, stroke risk and dementia. The interesting twist: sitting itself wasn't the problem. People with mentally engaging jobs that involved long hours seated often showed healthier brain patterns, and other sedentary activities didn't carry the same association.
🌿 A gentler weight-loss drug could be coming
One of the biggest complaints about Ozempic-style jabs is the side effects: nausea, constipation, and muscle loss. Early-stage research from Stanford Medicine suggests a naturally occurring molecule called BRP might deliver similar appetite suppression without those downsides. In mice and minipigs, BRP cut food intake by up to 50% after a single injection and, in obese mice, stripped away fat rather than muscle over a fortnight. This is animal research only; human trials haven't started yet.
💊 Ozempic and Mounjaro linked to a surprising hair loss risk
A large study published in The BMJ analysed electronic health records from tens of thousands of adults with type 2 diabetes and found that those taking GLP-1 drugs had a 37% higher risk of hair loss compared with people taking DPP-4 inhibitor diabetes medications. The absolute risk remains low, at roughly 7 cases per 1,000 users per year, and most cases were non-scarring — meaning hair follicles stay intact and regrowth is possible. The FDA has confirmed it's now formally evaluating the finding as a safety signal, while the UK's MHRA has already received over 1,200 reports linking the drugs to hair loss since last year.
🥑 One avocado a day might genuinely keep the cardiologist away.
A Penn State study found that adults with abdominal obesity who ate one avocado daily for six months saw a 4% reduction in heart disease risk — driven by a drop in small, dense LDL particles, the kind most likely to penetrate artery walls and build up as plaque. The effect held with no change in weight or waist size, and was consistent across sex, age, ethnicity and BMI.
☕ Coffee may protect your heart — but energy drinks could harm it
A comprehensive scientific statement from the American Heart Association concludes that up to 400mg of caffeine a day — roughly three to five cups of regular black coffee — is generally safe for most healthy adults and may even be linked to lower risks of heart disease, stroke and heart failure. But the same doesn't hold for energy drinks. Despite often containing similar caffeine levels, the AHA found evidence of more concerning cardiovascular effects — including higher blood pressure and irregular heart rhythms — with the group noting that evidence from studies on coffee "should not be extrapolated to caffeinated energy drinks."
Today's issue is supported by Totally Derma
Today's newsletter is supported by Totally Derma, the evidence-based collagen drink supplement recommended by dermatologists and cosmetic clinics across the UK. Last year I had founder Anita Eyles on the podcast to talk about the whole-body benefits of collagen — from skin and joints to gut health and menopausal symptoms — and it's a conversation that's genuinely shaped how I think about supplementation. The formulation is built around Arthred, a hydrolysed collagen that goes through a six-hour enzymatic process most brands skip, resulting in smaller, more uniform peptides with a 95% absorption rate — meaning your body actually uses what you're taking in. The Health Review readers get 15% off their first subscription with code HEALTHREVIEW15 at checkout.
Sound Baths for Dogs — has the wellness industry gone too far?
At an event in London last week, a woman told me she'd recently moved to the North London area and was loving all the wellness cafés and Pilates studios in her neighbourhood. Then, almost as an aside, she mentioned she'd seen sound healing on offer for dogs, and asked, laughing, whether we'd all gone slightly mad.
I've been collecting evidence for her theory ever since. There's the matcha latte sold as a "clean" alternative to coffee that turns out to contain more sugar than a can of Coke, once the syrup pumps get involved. There's the "rage retreat" where you pay to smash things for your nervous system. There's the greens powder with eighty ingredients and 16,600% of your daily B12, alongside the electrolyte sachets that toxicologists have now had to publicly warn people against overdoing, because apparently we've reached the point where you can give yourself a sodium imbalance trying to be well. None of it's wrong exactly. It's just a bit unhinged, and I think that's what happens when an industry gets this big and needs this much of your attention.
An industry bigger than tourism
Here's the bit that doesn't quite add up. The global wellness economy just hit a record $6.8 trillion, up 35% since 2019 — larger than tourism ($5T), the green economy ($5.1T), and almost four times the size of the pharmaceutical industry. Spending on wellness now equals 60% of all global health and medical expenditure. Yet the fundamentals of our health seem to be going in the wrong direction.
The fundamentals are getting worse
Here's what experts on The Health Review podcast keep coming back to. Bowel cancer is the UK's second biggest cancer killer, and rates are climbing in younger adults specifically. Meanwhile 96% of people in the UK still fail to hit recommended fibre intake. A recent Nature Medicine study from Washington University found younger generations are biologically ageing faster than the one before them, which the authors suggest may partly explain rising early-onset cancer rates. They're careful to say the mechanisms aren't confirmed, and I'd echo that caution. But the broader picture is consistent: UK depressive symptoms have nearly doubled since before the pandemic, IBS now affects up to a fifth of adults, and sedentary work, ultra-processed food and rising carcinogen exposure all appear to be outpacing whatever the wellness market is selling us.
No amount of smoothies fixes a broken environment
This is the bit I think gets missed. We have more health information, more supplements and more soundbaths on offer than ever — but the environment we're actually living in has got worse for us. Ultra-processed food now makes up more than half the average UK diet. Microplastics are turning up in blood, lungs, even the placenta. We're more sedentary and more indoors than any generation before us, and loneliness is now talked about as a health risk on the same level as smoking. None of that is really an individual problem. It's built into how our food is made, how our cities are designed, how we work. A green juice and yoga class isn't going to undo a diet built on UPFs. A sound bath isn't going to undo eight hours a day sat at a desk. The wellness industry is genuinely good at selling us fixes for symptoms, but it has very little to offer the actual environment creating them.
The wellness industry is selling you the myth that a healthy life is expensive
The wellness industry is a business, and businesses need you to keep buying. £20 jars of adaptogenic mushrooms, £7 matchas, bougie classes, organic meal delivery, the latest wearable. None of that is a crime, and I don't think charging for a service is wrong, but the industry has built its own mythology around something that used to be fairly straightforward. Don't drink too much, dont smoke, move your body in ways you actually enjoy, eat a wide variety of real food with plenty of vegetables, see people you like to spend time with, do things that matter to you. Instead we've been sold the idea that wellbeing is complicated, easy to get wrong, and best accessed through a supplement or trend. What should be a fairly straightforward lifestyle has become a consumerist maze. And in the process, the people who can afford to participate are often the ones who needed it least, while people managing a chronic illness or with no real access to healthcare are left out of the conversation. Wellness was supposed to be the empowering, holistic option. Somewhere along the way it became something you can be priced out of.
Back to the basics
None of this makes wellness spending pointless — I use plenty of it myself. The question is proportion. On the evidence in front of us, fibre intake and early bowel cancer awareness are the unglamorous fundamentals that most clearly move the needle, and both are going backwards in the UK despite a genuine boom in gut-health content. The industry's growth reflects a real hunger for agency over our own health, and I think that's worth taking seriously, but the question is whether we're pointing all that energy and money at the things that actually work. A sound bath for the dog is a lovely image. But it doesn't fix a broken health system, and it doesn't change the fact that most of us are trying to master the basics inside an environment stacked against us — one built on convenience, endless temptation, doom-scrolling and very little time or energy left over at the end of the day.
Emily x
This feature is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your own doctor before making changes to your health.
How Many Eggs Do You Actually Need to Freeze? The Complete Guide to Egg Freezing & IVF
About this episode:
More babies than ever are being born through assisted reproduction. Women are having children later, environmental factors are increasingly affecting fertility, and the world of egg freezing, IVF and embryology is changing faster than most of us realise. But what actually happens inside the lab — and what does every woman need to know before she makes any decisions about her fertility?
In this episode of The Health Review I sit down with Emma Whitney — Director of Embryology and Genetics at The Evewell, one of the UK's leading fertility clinics, and winner of the Claire Gillot Prize, the most prestigious award a UK embryologist can receive. Emma spends her days doing something most of us will never see — working with eggs, sperm and embryos in the lab to help people build the families they want.