¿Qué es la cultura del bienestar o "wellness"?

0:01 The day to day is full of urgent news, controversial noise from fans. But for the quietness, the analysis and what we like to call slow- cooking journalism are my questions, an average rush program made by KFAM inspiring. Smiles avoid the effects of old age, be healthy, physically and mentally. They are the objectives of the barns or well- being. However, it seems to have become, like almost everything else, a business and an obligation.

0:41 What we are willing to do for our well- being, how much talk and truth there is in this lifestyle. For this chapter we spoke with the doctor and teacher Santiago Rojas, with the writer and philosopher Laura Quintana, with the journalist and co- founder of the magazine Volcánicas Matilde de los Milagros and with the science and health journalist Carlos dagger I am Roberto Pombo. And this is chapter seventy- seven of my questions. Welcome to imagine for a moment that, instead of being in Colombia in the second decade of the 21st century, you are actually in India between the hundred and two hundred BC and have a headache. It is many years and centuries before aspirin or lasciataminofen are created and the most recommended remedy for your ailment is to put leeches in your temples. This treatment seems to come from a holistic system born in India that aimed to create harmony between the body, mind and spirit and sought to maintain a balance that would prevent disease, even if it appeared to be an unorthodox technique or seen only in medicines known as alternatives. Leeches have continued to be used for millennia, for example, in n in s or one hundred twenty - eight, only the French hospital system prescribed tens of millions of leeches for conditions ranging from insomnia to smallpox and in recent decades, that animal, similar

2:12 to a slug, returned in much smaller amounts to hospitals. Carl Peters Bond of the Biofarm leeche farm in Hendy told the New York Times that creatures are now used globally in hundreds of thousands of hospitals, mostly those with units specializing in burning and plastic surgery. And even if some of this still sounds weird. Since its inception, the human has experimented with many practices in order to combat the ailments and problems brought by the inexorable fact that we are carbon- based beings, whose destiny is to age and decompose, as well as those roses that we give away on the anniversary or that lettuce that has been in their refrigerator for a while. We' re destined to grow up, grow old and die. Then we have spent much of our history as a species, pushing the sisyphic stone to avoid physical and mental suffering through treatments, creams, diets and different techniques of all kinds. Because, paraphrasing the famous boxer, Antonio Cervantes, Ban Belt kit, it' s better to be right than to be wrong. However, I cannot help noticing that this being well has climbed to levels that I did not imagine if until a while ago not suffering any disease, eating balanced and exercising was enough. It seems that the requirements are now many more. He went into a naturist shop. I recently

3:44 had to do it and I didn' t know I needed so many objects in my life and that there were so many components that should be free, shampoo, toothpaste or deodorant. I felt like I' d been living badly all my life. I reinforced that idea I saw videos of entrepreneurs who started studying at four o' clock in the morning, exercising, meditating on reading, writing, working, doing yoga and, if they have time, eating. That is what is known as smellness or the culture of well- being, a horistic integration of physical, mental and spiritual well- being that feeds the body, involves the mind and nourishes the spirit, the wuelness or.

4:25 The culture of well- being seems to take over the world. You have to try gluten- free bread, you have to switch to organic eggs, you have to take kefir. These are the recommendations we hear the most. But this culture came with hundreds of new and ancestral forms to be in an optimal state. Stone masks crystals, diets free of components that we didn' t know were harmful or micronitling and clear treatment with leeches. The options are multiple and for all tastes, but that is, for those who are more high places According to several analysts, the culture of well- being is the product of overstimulation, of the excess of work and obligations of today' s world. Sophi gill Verdi reflects on this in her article how it became so exhausting to heal ourselves in Atlantic when they tell Brucomillas, the more overwhelmed and exhausted we feel. We owe it to ourselves to seek well- being.

5:28 The more burdens we accumulate children, parents, elderly, loans, students, mortgages, anxiety disorders, back problems. Here others are urged to be well through an even greater effort. Discard our plastic containers, remove lectines, practice full attention, learn about environmental toxins, investigate closing quotes. Rina Rafael is a journalist who has covered issues such as health, well- being and women ' s lives for much of her career, but she is also the author of the book The Gospel of Well- being Gimnasius guruce Goop and the false promise of self- care, which addresses this issue very well. The book is an investigation based on the author' s experience, with false promises made by welfare brands, but it is also a memory. Rafael freely admits that for years he organized his life around the observation of strict doctrines of well- being. He spent hundreds of dollars a month on bath salts, yoga raives and individual consultations with a shaman dejue the sugar. She survived with squeezed tubes of organic food to the contrary and regularly paid the Tarin Tun celebrity welfare bureau to make her scream at her yoga classes. In an interview, with a magazine on well- being, ironically, the author said that she had realized that the framework and language used around some of these welfare practices, from exercise to green supplements and juices, were so impregnated with productivity pressures that she began

7:00 to become obsessed. This language, to which Rafael refers, is a good part of the clean problem as opposed to organic countersynthetic toxic, and is that this type of thought is characterized by being elitist and exclusive. The idea that the natural is always better than if you value it takes time, for self - care it is better person, even if for some people it is impossible because they have no time or access. In the words of the author of the book Aurocomillas, it is really about making value judgments about what people dedicate to their lifestyle or their routine. It is a bit of salutism that certain people invest in their health and are better than others. And that' s just not true. And secondly, I think we' re putting aside whole groups of people who don' t have access to this Cierro Comillas. Why is this kind of obsession with being well behind the question to doctor Santiago Rojas and this he told me, I think the obsession is due to not wanting to be wrong. If we want to be okay. It' s natural.

8:15 The human being will always want to be well, feel good. But when we don' t want to feel bad. We do not want, for example, physically to have defects, to have emotional discomforts, to have economic deficiencies, to be insured. We became obsessed with having everything under control that we did then, restricting diet, obsessing to physical behavior, changing many patterns of life that are unnatural. I even think that' s where the mistake lies. If we want to be okay, we first try to adapt to what is happening, get the best out of it and learn at every moment. Instead, if we don' t want to be well, let ' s fall into obsession, which can become totally destructive of our interpersonal relationships of the way we live a daily life and that' s where the error of the theory of people lies. We can always be okay. Whatever happens, if we take advantage of it, if we learn and if we do something fundamental. Happiness is at the end of the road. Happiness is at every step of the way. It depends on each other. Social networks and the Internet in general are full of coaches, advisors, shamans and gurus, all kinds of nutrition, spiritual exercises, work and even happiness. However, in recent years there is a public figure who reached international levels by his welfare company. I' m talking about actress Winet Partrow and her company Good.

9:37 It all goes back to the year of two thousand thirteen, when the actress appeared on the famous program of Dr Os, a program on health on open television in the United States, in which Paltro promotes agrocomillas, totally natural tricks to revitalize the body from inside out, close quotes and for that purpose recommends four things Rabano. Daicon wants a very high content of enzymes, oregano oil for colds, magnesium supplements is in that it really calms the nervous system and colloidal silver, a tincture of small silver particles that, according to her, really keeps the viruses away. It' s a real virus repellent. Then, in two thousand fourteen, Paltrow Goot' s website evolved from a site of peculiar and health- oriented recommendations to a provider that defined a generation of tremendously expensive garments as coffee enemas and semiprecious sexual aids this shop, at the time, sold a true psychic vampire repellent manufactured by a company called Paper Craine Appotecary for about thirty dollars. Already in two thousand fifteen, paltrou recommended on his page a treatment that they offer in a beauty salon in Los Angeles, in which women can make a engraving of vagina with steam and in which, it says, the number of ulcers and tumors is protected by regulating the periods and fighting against infections. Clearly professionals in gynaecology quickly came out to disprove it.

11:11 Ronne Lamount of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology of London told the BBC that she does not believe that this type of cleaning is recommended to urocomillas, because with it she cleans everything inside the vagina, including healthy bacteria I close quotes. But one of the products that has caused the most controversy was the candle smells like my vagina. Yeah, I didn' t hear wrong. There was a candle that was supposed to smell like the actress' s vagina, but the over- existence of the product was not what caused a stir. It was because in two thousand twenty- one, Colby Watson, a Texas resident, sued the company and sought compensation of$ 5 million after an incident in which he claims that one of the candles exploded at his night table. And as if all this doesn' t look like a comedy sketch anymore, it' s not the first time vagina- related goop products get into trouble. In two thousand eighteen, the company received a fine of$ 1475, 000 for its misleading and baseless claims on its vagina jade eggs that, according to the company, Aurocomillas, balances hormones, regulates menstrual cycles, prevents prolapse and increases bladder control close quotes. If you, like me, feel confused when listening to jade eggs for pods, I tell you that it is, according to the same page of the company of jade stones with oval shape that to gold quotes take advantage of the power of energetic work healing with crystals of a physical practice without looking at those of kejel closing quotes. After

12:46 that court decision, gub is forbidden to make claims about the effectiveness of his products that are not backed by reliable science and sell medical devices to brucomillas, mislabelled, untested or falsely advertised I close quotation marks. However, the product is still on sale. It' s sixty- six dollars. But despite all this, in two thousand twenty, Netflix premiered The goog Lab, a six- episode miniseries in which it promotes the alternative lifestyle that it promotes with its company and in which it talks about topics such as skin rejuvenation, energy cures up to a guide for a good orgasm and contacts with beings from beyond.

13:30 The series has as guests so- called doctors, PhDs and experts. However, as expected, criticism has rained on him from all sides. For example, the BBC Slice Brett podcast, which investigates so- called wonderful products. He invited several professionals and experts to analyze the series, and one of the conclusions is that the way the Group blab uses language, using words such as stem cells, growth factors, scientific protocols and citing his posts ss expert doctors give him a barnis of authenticity. In one of his episodes he talks about energy overload, in which the presenter assures that we are surrounded by energy fields. It speaks of quantum physics and how our consciousness alters physical reality.

14:16 However, according to the podcast edzard Erns, professor emeritus of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, nothing the presenter says can be verified and there is no scientific evidence to support the principles of energy healing. That same year, UK Health Service director Simond Stevens said the series misinforms and said at an event I open quotes, while the fake news used to travel with word of mouth and then with some press. Now we know that lies and misinformation can reach everyone by pressing a button to close quotes. I know or to anyone that the Internet is an ocean of information, but in that ocean also nothing a lot of false or misleading information. Especially social networks like Tiktok have become a free and unsupervised space. For this last type of information.

15:16 The foods that have been most associated with some type of cancer. One is salt stops eating eggs, because no one talks about how harmful eggs are to our health. The bread problem is two servers together, very complicated to digest and it will cause us all kinds of intestinal problems. Coffee contains five venents, caffeine, theophylline, theobromine, tannic acid and trigoneline. This is where a word appears that recently discovered infodemia, which the American Health Organization defines as Eurocomillas, fast and wide dissemination of health information, sometimes erroneous, through various media and channels of information. I close quotes. The 19- year - old pandemic was the breeding ground for this type of circular information in greater quantity and faster. Let us remember, for example, when it was the peak of the pandemic and when there were no vaccines, many people, including politicians, recommended using hydroxychloriquin to treat this virus. Coronavirus cure is found in the middle of the Bible. You' re going to find a movie and that movie you' re going to boil and people who have coronaviruses are going to be cured and people who don' t have it won' t get it. The infodemías study a new challenge for health published in two thousand twenty - one, warned about the danger of this disinformation when it concluded that the intersection between infodemias and epidemics represents one of the most critical areas for future studies

16:51 to improve the preparation and health of the population worldwide. And it is that, according to a publication of two thousand twenty- one by the Institute of Strategic Dialoc that investigates disinformation and online extremism, wrong information is widespread on major social networks, but Tiktok' s audio capabilities can give false claims a particular longevity. Fragments of misinformation can be trimmed and saved like the ones Tiktok calls, sounds and operate as messages in viral chains. Faced with this panorama, I am restless and wonder how we can verify that the information about health and personal care that people consume on the Internet is reliable And I asked the question to Carlos Dagger, a renowned science and health journalist. One can follow a four- step process to verify the information he consumes on the Internet. The easiest step is to consult the sources cited by the website or the influencer you are sharing. Information, for example, says that it is a study from the University of Los Andes, at Johns Hopkins Averian University, Monte Sinai Hospital.

18:00 Well, one goes to the pages of these institutions and checks whether those institutions have already published that information. They rarely do. A scientific study usually comes out and they publish it in their news. But if one remains skeptical about information, he also checks whether that medical or scientific information was published in a scientific journal in the scientific journal. They are the space where such information is supported and the information is still doubted if it is already more rigorous, check whether that scientific publication, if that scientific journal has a high impact index, the Internet offers the tools to follow all those steps. This boom in wellness or welfare culture has not spontaneously occurred and persists because it has turned out to be a multimillion dollar business. According to the newspaper, the country, the Global Institute of Wellness GW and a non- profit American organ itself, charged with promoting this industry, is five percent the weight of the wells in the economy of Spain. Its growth was six comma six percent between two thousand seventeen and two thousand nineteen worldwide and is expected to grow nearly ten percent annually In the coming years and according to the latest report made by this institute, the world welfare economy grew to five comma six trillion dollars. Returning to the

19:30 already mentioned company of the actress, unet part gob is worth about two hundred fifty million dollars according to Celebrity net World, and is that the followers of the brand are not few, but also committed. In June of two thousand seventeen, the company organized the conference in gob Health, a play of English words that means something as well as in good health. Hundreds of followers who call themselves gupies attended and paid between five hundred and three thousand five hundred dollars for the entrance and according to a company of analysis. This month alone, the company gained a comma of eight million unique American visitors on its website, an increase of sixty- two percent over the previous June. But beyond the money produced by this type of business, it is a matter of concern that in some cases, this type of welfare culture seems to be related to vaccine conspiracy and denialists. Journalist Naomi Cline reflects on this in her latest book dopple Ganger, in which she observed that people working in the field of body care seemed particularly attracted by anti- vaccine, anti- capcapacian, and plannedemic beliefs.

20:45 For Claine, that cultual self to the individualism of the culture of well - being, has its first peak in the eighties, when humanity was among the rubble of failures, of these enormous social movements of the sixties and seventies, Comillas there was a glimpse of collective power that many people really thought was going to change the world. And all of a sudden they' re living the cacherism and the regalism and there' s this turn towards the self, towards the body as a place of control I close Comillas, Claine said in the interview. I think of these reflections and I have the doubt as to how much individualism has to do with the culture of well- being. I looked for the philosopher and writer Laura Quintana to help me solve it. And this was clear to me. I agree with what Ami Cline says. It goes along the lines of what has also been said by other actors, authors, and is that, therefore, neoliberalism as a form of government that radicalizes certain budgets of political liberalism, entrenching the idea, therefore, of me as an individual subject at such a point that, therefore, the practice of government requires that individual subject, because when you are regulated by the economy and when public frameworks are dismantled, it is assumed that it is now the individuals who have to take control of their destiny. And then they have to be in charge of what was once social rights. Pays to answer for themselves, for their health, education, housing, And there are no longer public supports or

22:17 collective networks, since they allow to live life in that way more in common and more public. And then the subjects are also invited to compete with each other, because it is thought, then, that to function properly in the market, because free competition has to work, and that moves to the logic of the company that begins to take all the social relations. And it is in that context that self- overcoming techniques become very important. What is now called well- being has to do with those self- surveillance techniques. Their name was changed, because the notion of self- surveillance had already gained a bad reputation. But what remains at stake there is to supply individuals who are exhausted from taking charge of their life in reality. There are by themselves forms of emotional support to be able to know, to deal with exhaustion, with the uncertainty that also leaves the maintenance of public servants with the burden of debt, because to pay for all those services, you have to go into debt.

23:11 And so, then, well- being to supply like that despair, that despair, those affections linked to loneliness, because they develop, unfold in a few ideas centered on individual self- responsibility. Women, as in many cases of inequality, are the most affected by this culture of well- being. The above- mentioned author Rina Rafael reflects on this issue, about the specific injustices faced by certain women. For example, the writer thinks of the GOOOP welfare brand and explains its popularity and relationship to the historic lack of funding for public health and gynaecology in the United States. A particularly detailed passage.

23:56 It focuses on the six million women in the United States who suffer from dometriasis, who receive only$ 26 million a year of government funding for research, a figure that Rafael puts in perspective when he points out that it represents about half of the value of Kim Kardashan' s house. Female diseases are not effectively treated in the United States and, according to Rafael, this makes it possible for welfare brands to earn money. With this. In her book, this journalist shows three murky ways in which welfare brands attract women to buy expensive and useless products. The first is marketing aimed at women who feel rejected by their doctors. The second way is to promote natural products that can cause more damage than synthetic products. And finally, organic food companies take advantage of mothers concerned about the health of their children. I looked for the journalist and co - founder of the magazine Volcanicas matilde the miracles for questions why the culture of well- being affects women the most. I think we are wrong to talk about a culture of well- being, because what I think we have is a business and a welfare industry, and that business is very easily profited from women, to whom patriarchy has always told us that we have to be improving, that what we have is not enough, that we are not healthy enough, that there is always a better ideal, to which we must aspire.

25:29 And that ideal, of course, costs and is like that between meals well - being culture. They are a quantity of products and diets and fashions that have a cost and it is an industry that profites from the insecurity of women much more than men, who are not inculcated as many complexes as we are inculcated to women. Patriarchy is constantly telling us that we can always be more beautiful, that we can be healthier, and we are also told that health is seen in a single way. And then that welfare industry has stereotypes that are seen in a very specific way that usually coincides with the classic Eurocentric beauty stereotypes of white, thin blonde women and then we are sold beauty stereotypes that we have to pay to achieve and are stereotypes that we never actually achieve, because we can always be more and better according to this welfare industry. So I think it' s an industry that also makes women sick and is very detonating for women who have thesea eating behavior disorders and which is very counterproductive to women' s mental health. I don' t want to end up throwing all the alternative treatments into one sack to cure diseases, relieve ailments and prevent discomfort. There are practices that have proven to have great benefits, such as soaking, meditation, zilochubin microdose, or stopping eating ultraprocessed edibles. Not all

27:00 solutions are the traditional American medicine we know in pills and geringas. I think looking for well- being is a praiseworthy end that many of us should be betting on. However, it should not become a burden more than we have to be good parents, good children, good friends, good workers, good citizens, etcetera. Exercising, practicing yoga, eating well, or meditating should help us to have a life and a dignified old age, rather than becoming an obsession or a pestilence. Self- well- being should not be detrimental to well- being as a society and be critical and rigorous with the information on physical and mental health that we consume and share is part of our responsibility to the world. It is not possible for us to be better individuals if we continue to replicate unhealthy habits as a society. I am Roberto Pombo and this was chapter seventy- seven of my questions. See you in the next chapter from now on. This chapter of my questions is available on all podcast platforms. This episode was made possible by Kafam inspiring smiles. Dirección Roberto Pombo, Producción General, Juan Abel Gutiérrez, editorial advisor Daniel San Pero Espina scripts Juana Abel Gutiérrez and Johnny Rodríguez. Field production Marcela Salazar and Lucía Beltrán audio postproduction Carlos Bernal