{"id":633443,"date":"2026-04-28T05:15:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/633443\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T05:15:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:15:26","slug":"how-the-internet-has-hijacked-our-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/633443\/","title":{"rendered":"How the internet has hijacked our health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ellie Matthews, a 20-something HR manager, had been struggling with bloating and digestive issues when she spoke to me for my book \u201cBad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked our Health.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her primary care physician had just 15 minutes to see her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019d ordered a battery of scans, stool samples and blood work that all came back normal. At the end of the appointment, he asked her if she was vegan \u2014 she was, but didn\u2019t see the relevance \u2014 and he told her there was nothing wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TikTok has become a big source of health info \u2014 accurate and not \u2014 as people seek diagnoses online. Maksymiv Iurii \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

So far, this is a familiar story \u2014 doctors are pressed for time and failing to alleviate patient concerns, leaving them feeling unheard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what happened next reflects a growing trend. Like a growing number of Americans, she didn\u2019t seek a second opinion from another doctor. Instead, she turned to TikTok, spending far more per day on the platform than the 15 minutes of physician time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Within minutes, her algorithm delivered a \u201cdiagnosis.\u201d Her symptoms, she was told, were a result of a food intolerance that mainstream medicine ignores. Within a week, Ellie had bought a bioresonance test, a product claiming it could diagnose intolerances by analyzing hair strands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the traditional health care system failed to give them answers, others like Ellie turn to parallel authorities that have found a home online.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When the traditional healthcare system yields no answers, people often seek them online. Stock 4 You \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

For decades, doctors held a near-monopoly on medical knowledge. That era is over. In its place is a fragmented marketplace of online authorities and even AI tools, all competing to advise and sell.<\/p>\n

Anywhere there is a gap in getting answers or even just a bit of reassurance, commercial players are jumping in to monetize our discomfort.<\/p>\n

People I spoke to spent hundreds, sometimes thousands, on consultations with \u201cepigenetic coaches\u201d promising to decode their genes, bought personalized gut-health kits, testosterone subscriptions, even CT scans marketed as shortcuts to an ADHD diagnosis. Many of these services were pushed by influencers who never disclosed their financial ties.<\/p>\n

Health influencers have products to sell under the guise of wellness, but much of it is snake oil. Valerii Apetroaiei \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

This wellness-industrial complex \u2014 this mashup of health tech, startups, and online clinics \u2014 isn\u2019t like the traveling medicine show of the 19th century with dubious cures in dusty brown bottles. Instead, today\u2019s \u201csnake oil\u201d comes in sleek packaging or via a polished app interface with a subscription fee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It speaks the language of Silicon Valley \u2014 \u201cprecision health,\u201d \u201cpersonalized nutrition,\u201d and \u201ccutting-edge diagnostics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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They\u2019ve turned our biology into a series of metrics. We\u2019re being nudged by technology to monitor everything \u2014 heart rate, glucose, gut microbes, genetic markers \u2014 whether or not tracking any of it actually helps us live longer or healthier lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Companies lean on scientific-sounding language providing references to journals hidden behind paywalls to project credibility, even when the evidence lags far behind the claims. It\u2019s a high-tech gloss on a very old idea: selling certainty where little exists. A kind of \u201cscienceploitation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Heavy caseloads mean that doctors often don\u2019t have that much time to spend with patients. Mark Adams \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Our symptoms and even the fuzzy line between being \u201cunwell\u201d and just having a bad day have been turned into memes, merch, and monthly recurring revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, ADHD influencers sell T-shirts stamped with slogans like \u201cDopamine Hunter.\u201d (We\u2019re obsessed with simple explanations for our conditions \u2014 an apparent deficit of hormones or neurotransmitters is the root cause of so many ills).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Others reshape how they describe their symptoms to mirror whatever is trending. And across the internet, a growing number of self-styled therapists push \u201cdiagnostic\u201d quizzes that funnel users toward supplements \u2014 conveniently the ones they\u2019re selling.<\/p>\n

Diagnostic tests have proliferated online. rh2010 \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

These changes are being amplified by platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where health advice sits alongside entertainment, all curated by opaque algorithms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What hits our screens is content curated by industries with unprecedented access to our personal data and wallets. They have a growing hand in whether we see ourselves as well or unwell, and may be reshaping expectations of what health care should look like and what it should deliver.<\/p>\n

This amounts to a vast, uncontrolled public-health experiment.<\/p>\n

Patients are swapping the family doctor for a digital dashboard of tests and wellness mumbo-jumbo. angellodeco \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to dismiss it as the domain of the \u201cworried well.\u201d But that misses the point. The wellness-industrial complex is thriving because it offers something the traditional system often doesn\u2019t, such as time and the sense of being heard.<\/p>\n

The danger for the medical establishment is a loss of moral authority \u2014 the right to define what \u201ccare\u201d should be. If doctors and hospitals can\u2019t remain grounded in evidence while also responding to how patients experience their own bodies, they\u2019ll keep losing ground to companies more interested in mining data than delivering care.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed is a model of care that values a patient\u2019s time and experience as much as their test results. Until the traditional system can offer the connection and validation people are currently buying from influencers and tech startups, patients will keep swapping the family doctor for a digital dashboard \u2014 and we\u2019re only beginning to understand the cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellie Matthews, a 20-something HR manager, had been struggling with bloating and digestive issues when she spoke to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,1056,84,26126,392,2352,927],"class_list":["post-633443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-doctors","tag-health","tag-health-and-wellness-products","tag-healthcare","tag-influencers","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}