Well?

Colin Moors takes 'wellness' to task.

You know my agenda, so let's crack on, shall we? 'Wellness' is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) "(orig. US): "As a positive rather than contrastive quality: the state or condition of being in good physical, mental, and spiritual health, esp. as an actively pursued goal". It's also a re-purposing of a Middle English word 'weleness' (or wealness or even welnes) meaning 'affluence'. This last bit makes sense when you think of the billions spent around the world on a concept that doesn't really even exist.

'Health' is a definitive and real concept - soundness of body and/or mind - we can all understand. Wellness is something that's used to sell you things that you'd normally reject as ridiculous. You know that hotel you used to go to in that holiday resort, you know, the one near the beach with the friendly waiters? Now it has a hastily installed sauna, a picture of a tree or a pebble in the lobby and rooms cost another 30€ per night because it's a "spa". People confuse being pampered and having mud, cucumbers or other unlikely organic matter applied to various parts of their body with internal and external well-being. Of course, this is nothing new and the Finns and Russians have been beating each other with sticks in +90° heat and then jumping in a frozen lake since anyone can remember. I can only imagine that this is like the 'always darkest before the dawn' philosophy in which feeling like you're going to die adds an extra frisson to staying alive a little while longer. Covering yourself in seaweed is a cowardly compromise.

Let's have a look at 'organic', shall we? Yes, organic food is grown to a certain standard and it has a proven pedigree that means you can fully trace the chemicals and nutrients used in your organic meat and veggies. Good eh? Possibly. While I would agree that pumping our meat full of hormones to make it huge and financially viable per kilo is a bad thing, many producers weren't doing that anyway but to sell their produce as 'organic' they have a whole set of hoops to jump through now. Taken literally, I could claim that anything I grew was organic, as all living matter is, by definition. Sharks are organic, cannabis is organic, mosquitos and bears? Organic. People who eat organic food are still dying every day but we have less to blame it on.

Genetically modified food? Oh no! We're all going to die. Well, that last part is true but it's probably not a GMO carrot that's going to do for you. Remember Gregor Mendel from your history books? He's the monk who messed around with peas to produce hybrids that would never have occurred in nature as a method of understanding hereditary traits in the plant kingdom. What he was doing was genetically modifying crops. Nobody died as a direct result, that I'm aware. My problem is the GMO producers who refuse to allow African farmers to keep seed, insisting they buy it new every year. This is out-and-out greed, something to which I am vehemently opposed. Want to make my carrots a different colour? Go ahead - they never used to be orange in the first place, yet everyone still eats them and very few die as a direct result. Perhaps if they got a whole one stuck in their windpipe, who knows?

With that out of the way, onwards and downwards to healing crystals and homeopathy. One simple word of advice: bullshit. There, I said it. Crystal, however expensive, will not "realign your natural energy balance" nor will they "harness the Earth's natural piezoelectricity" (that's a real word, folks). I'm not making this up - these are things I've seen claimed by - oddly enough - those selling crystals or crystal "therapy". Correctly organized, double-blind scientific trials have never proved that crystals do anything except look pretty in a certain light.

Homeopathy? Honestly, I'd laugh if it wasn't a pseudo-science that kills. To be specific, homeopathy is not the same as herbalism. Herbalism is equally stupid but involves administering what is effectively a cup of nasty tasting herbal tea in the place of real medicine. Medicine tastes bad and does you good, herbal 'remedies' taste bad and, well, that's about it really.

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Homeopathy (from the Greek words for 'like' and 'suffering') suggests that diseases can be cured on a 'like-for-like' basis. I shan't waste a lot of time on this, as it is snake oil at best and accessory to manslaughter at worst. Suffice to say that if you're stupid enough to believe that the dilution of your disease in the recommended 1 trillion (yep, you read that correctly) parts of water will cure your cancer, diabetes or lupus, contact me and I will recommend a course of slapping around the head until you come to your senses.

Feel free to contact me if you think I'm wrong about any of this. I look forward to laughing at your pseudo-science over my morning coffee.

My grandma's advice is probably best: Never buy a carpet from a German. Perhaps that wasn't the one I was thinking about but it's easily better advice than you'll get from any quack selling you nutrition, crystal therapy or Feng Shui.

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