“DO YOUR RESEARCH!!” and Other Dangerous Conspiracy Wellness Tropes are Destroying our Mental Health with Dr. Jonathan Stea

In today’s episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, I will be chatting with clinical psychologist, Dr. Jonathan Stea, author of the book “Mind the Science: Saving your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry”. We will be discussing the damage of mental health medication stigma (aka “pill shaming”) including my own experience being pill shamed online. We will chat about the risks of rejecting psychiatry in favor of grifty holistic wellness alternatives, especially when they feed into conspiracy theories. We will be debunking common anti science tropes and phrases “do your own research” or “find the root cause”. And I'm going to close off with some discussion on healthism and how it causes harm to all people, but especially those in less privileged positions. References: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317611181_The_effect_of_self-compassion_on_the_selfCheck in with today’s amazing guest: Dr. Jonathan Stea, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary and author of Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry. Follow @dr_jonathan_stea www.jonathanstea.com https://jonathanstea.substack.com Book: https://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Science-Saving-Wellness-Industry/dp/1039008232 Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  But the phrase, or the adage, or the trope that food is medicine, it's become hijacked by the wellness industry, and that all the medicine in mainstream mental health care is not medicine, and it's wrong. That's really what it's become.

• 0:49Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good.

• 1:03Abbey Sharp?

  We're officially in the armpit of the calendar, AKA February. At least for us Canadians, because it is brutally cold, and I just do not want to leave my house. But if you're in hibernation mode as well, today's episode definitely offers a lot of amazing entertainment and education. My guest today is Dr. Jonathan Stea, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary. He's also the author of the new book, Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health From the Wellness Industry, which promises to provide a science-backed takedown of pseudoscience and to expose the mental health misinformation

• 1:45Abbey Sharp?

  that pervades healthcare, pop culture, social media, and, you guessed it, the wellness industry. Today, Jonathan and I are going to be talking about medication stigma, including my own experience being pill-shamed online. We're going to be talking about holistic wellness alternatives and their risks, especially when it feeds into conspiracy against evidence-based care. We're also going to be debunking common Anti-science tropes and phrases like do your own research or find the root cause. And I'm going to be closing off with some discussion on healthism and how it causes harm. This is such a fascinating discussion you do not want to miss. A quick reminder that the information in this episode is for entertainment and

• 2:30Abbey Sharp?

  educational purposes only, and is never a replacement for personalized healthcare. Also, I would love if you would follow or subscribe to the podcast and leave me a review. As a new podcast, it really, really does help me out.

• 2:49Abbey Sharp?

  All right. Thank you so much for joining me, Jonathan.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Hey, it's my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited.

• 2:56Abbey Sharp?

  So you know, you work in mental health, I'm a dietitian, I work in nutrition. We're obviously both committed to evidence-based practice and debunking misinformation online. And I feel like one of the areas that I see our professions overlap is in wellness culture's false narrative that health is a moral value. So can you speak to what this like means and how it's like baked into so much of the pseudoscience and quackery that has just become so pervasive online?

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think that that moralization of health or treating health as a moral virtue is is very detrimental. It's detrimental to people's health and to their mental health. It actually has a long history, too. It's been around in the wellness industry for over a century. It's this idea that if we just eat right and exercise well, and just kind of take care of our body, then we are somehow morally virtuous in doing that. And the converse, or the opposite of that, is that people that don't do that for a variety of reasons, it's it's it's a moral vice, so to speak, it's wrong. And that those people are to blame for their health conditions and and their mental health conditions. And I think that's a very

• 4:11Speaker 01

  dangerous route because it's a dangerous route and it's a dangerous rhetoric, because people can internalize those beliefs when they hear those ideas. Baked in the wellness culture and that can result in a lot of internalized shame for people. And then that just perpetuates an even worse cycle of worsening mental health and health conditions. And the, the, the scientific reality is that obviously self-care behaviors like eating well and exercising are foundational to evidence-based practice. The problem is that in the wellness industry, we're hearing it pitched as a cure-all for all health conditions at the neglect of other treatments and at the neglect of other reasons that people have health conditions.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  So they, they downplay the role of genetics, they downplay the role of social factors and just plain old bad luck in a lot of cases.

• 5:03Abbey Sharp?

  Access to healthcare, environmental influences, yeah, totally oversimplifies the complexity of health, which we know was like, doesn't really help anyone. Beyond, you know, those who have, you know, so to speak, individual control over what their health outcomes may be. And even still, we know that that's, that you know, that's just a falsehood. That's just this, this, this belief that we have control by eating clean, quote unquote, clean or exercising every day. You know, it, it gives people this, this sense of control of something that may be very much uncontrollable. Especially when we kind of factor in all of those, those kind of factors there.

• 5:44Abbey Sharp?

  But you're right. I think, you know, you know, I always often on my platform, I talk a lot about the dangers of very specific misinformed wellness advice. Like saying that celery juice is gonna, you know, cure psoriasis or the carnivore diet is gonna cure IBS or whatever. But you're right, the, the danger is more in just that, like one little lie. It's, it's the compounding of all of those lies and all the falsehoods that, that build this conspiracy around evidence-based care. And that's, that's where the real danger lies. So I think that's, you know, it's, it's a hard fight that we're fighting here.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  It really is. My, uh, there's a fellow science communicator, she's a family physician in Canada. Her name is Michelle Cohen and I just love how she. Puts it and she's written about kind of the history of the wellness industry. She basically said, there's a huge difference between lifestyle counseling and pitching lifestyle counseling as a cure all. So the former makes you a healthcare professional, the latter makes you a grifter. And that's what we see in the wellness industry and that's, that's what has the rich history. It's pitching eating well, exercise, et cetera, as the cure all. And it's more than that, as you said, because it's situated in a narrative or an ideology that basically pitches wellness against mainstream medicine.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  And that's where a lot of the harm derives.

• 7:06Abbey Sharp?

  Of course, yeah, no, and you know, I, I, on the topic of kind of health being a moral virtue and something that we are fully in control of. You know, I had this experience firsthand myself on my own mental health journey. Um, you know, I have been, folks who've been watching my channel know I've been very open about my mental health struggles and my diagnosis. I have ADHD and an anxiety disorder. I've had insomnia. I had an eating disorder in my, my younger years. And I've been very open about how medication has literally saved my life. Um, and in response, there was a very big creator who was promoting an animal based diet. Who came out in a video essentially pill shaming me.

• 7:48Abbey Sharp?

  Um, and insinuating that I'm clearly not a very good dietitian because if I had just like quote, quote, done the work and cured my disorders, quote, quote, naturally. Then I wouldn't have to take the quote, quote, easy way out with drugs. So where did this whole pill shaming anti psychiatry movement even start?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  First, I'm sorry to hear that because you know, your experience is not unique either, unfortunately. And that's the, that's the reality is that these, these pill shaming ideas. And this sort of hostility to psychiatry and the mental health professions is again, sort of, it's baked into the wellness industry. And it does have this kind of long history in the wellness industry and then also in the anti psychiatry movement. Um, and yeah, for people that are less familiar with the anti psychiatry movement, I'll get the, maybe a little brief background on it. I mean, it basically. Has its origins in the nineteen sixties or so. It was pioneered by disgruntled psychologists and psychiatrists at the time. Thomas Sasse was one of its pioneers.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  R.G. Lang was an intellectual pillar. David Cooper coined the term anti-psychiatry in nineteen sixty seven, which is after the the movement already began. And initially, the movement was actually warranted. It was it was a pushback against psychiatry's various missteps because psychiatry has a dark past and we need to be transparent and acknowledge that. There is the inhumane treatment in asylum care with patients. There is inappropriate pathologizing of minority groups. And there was this sort of perceived arbitrariness of mental disorders. So what does a mental illness mean, et cetera? And so essentially, the anti-psychiatry movement was a pushback against that stuff.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  The good news is that it worked because by the time the nineteen eighties rolled around, psychiatry got its act together, so to speak, and it became a more scientific discipline and a more humane discipline. It closed a lot of those asylum cares. It shifted patient care from those asylums to the community and at regular hospitals. And the science of psychopathology or mental disorders and mental illness became a much more broader focus on the psychological contributions to mental illness, the social contributions and the biology, which is what we call now our bio-psychosocial model. So that's a really great, a great thing.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  The problem, though, is that the while the anti-psychiatry movement diminished by the nineteen eighties, it didn't die. It just kind of transformed and outlived its cause, so to speak. And now, the way that we see it is kind of like, you know, like the the story that you kind of shared, we see its tropes, which are repeated themes and ideas baked into our culture. We see it online in social media. We see it with guys like Andrew Tate, who are parroting some of these tropes by saying to hundreds and millions of followers that something like depression Doesn't exist and that only lazy people experience depression. We see it with people like Elon Musk tweeting to hundreds and millions of people.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  That SSRIs, which are antidepressant medications, are more harmful than helpful. And the problem with that is that when you're tweeting such misinformation to so many people and it's amplified and recycled, it capitalizes on one of the psychological phenomenons that are that kind of speaks to how our brains work, which is called the illusory truth effect, which just means the more times that we hear and we see false information, the more likely we are to believe that information because our brains aren't very good at differentiating the truth from familiarity. And so, um, yeah, there's a long history to this anti psychiatry stuff and super,

• 11:40Speaker 01

  super unfortunate that it shows up uh in in pill shaming because the ultimate result is that it can deter treatment seeking and compromise patient care. And that's what we're trying to rally against.

• 11:52Abbey Sharp?

  Absolutely. I mean, it it definitely held me back for many years from from getting the care and and that I actually needed. And now, of course, looking back, I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, my life could have been so much better had I just, you know, not listened to those charlatans and listened to the the grifters who were pushing this nature's fallacy. And that's actually that's something that's come up a lot in the podcast, which is clearly so central to a lot of the lies told by wellness culture. And it and it seems to be, you know, central to this kind of pill shaming situation as well where, you know, people are saying medication is synthetic, must be bad, food is natural. And so, you know, the former is bad, the latter is good. You're lazier, lacking willpower if you just pop pills and take the easy way out.

• 12:37Abbey Sharp?

  Um, but like doing things the quote unquote natural way is just so morally charged. And we see it literally everywhere. Like I, you know, we just have to think about like how natural birth advocates talk about epidurals or inductions. And the message is always that you're a morally, you know, inferior mom if you, you know, i- i- if you take the epidural, but you're superior as a mom if you go through a thirty hour labor without any drugs. But, you know, these pressures do real harms for for a lot of people, especially women.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and that that appeal to nature fallacy is, you're right, it's sort of, it's baked into the wellness industry and it's, and that's why we see alternative medicine kind of grifters parrot anti psychiatry tropes and then kind of pitch alternative medicine ideology because that's how they're able to sell their pseudoscientific treatments or their diet detoxes, et cetera. The fact of the matter is, is that argument, the appeal to nature fallacy is a fallacy. It basically argues what is natural is good, which is when you take just three seconds to think about that, it's absurd because, you know, arsenic is natural, like, there's lots of bad things, poison ivy, right? Like, so the, the problem is the way in which

• 13:52Speaker 01

  those messages are marketed and sold to us and it does capitalize on, again, sort of a heuristic, you know, it, it, it's appealing to us. We think that things are natural or therefore better, but it's quite literally a fallacy. It just doesn't work.

• 14:06Abbey Sharp?

  Totally. And actually, this reminds me of the very popular adage, food is medicine, which I'm sure you hear and I hear it so much. And I often will push back and I, I, I will tell people, I don't like that phrase. And I, and I get a lot of like hate for that because people are saying, what kind of dietitian doesn't believe in the power of food to heal? But I would love to hear why you think that phrase can be so problematic.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  I agree with you and most of the, the vast majority of the registered dietitians that I speak to also hate that phrase, the ones who are actually practicing evidence-based care. The reason for that is that it's not the words themselves that are inherently wrong because obviously, as we've talked about, eating well, sleeping well, exercising, those basic self-care behaviors are foundational to evidence-based practice.

• 14:58Abbey Sharp?

  Right.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  But the phrase or the adage or the trope that of food is medicine is more than just its words. It's a, it's a symbol. It's become hijacked by the wellness industry to signal not only is food medicine, but that our food is medicine and that all the medicine in mainstream mental health care Is not medicine and it's wrong. That's really what it's become to symbolize because that's where you're going to hear it. You're going to hear it parodied on the Instagram reels of wellness influencers or alternative medicine practitioners that are essentially selling you some sort of diet that is likely unsupported for the treatment of a health condition.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  And so it's really just a shorthand phrase to to package an ideology and a message. And in short, it's propaganda.

• 15:48Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, from my perspective as a dietitian, I also see that this can create a lot of shame and a lot of guilt around food, which will in turn increase the risk of eating disorders like orthorexia, right? When, you know, this obsession with clean eating, righteous eating. If you're thinking about food in medicinal terms, that every single bite has to have some kind of healing property, it really does set you up for a disordered relationship with food.

• 16:31Abbey Sharp?

  But there's another one that really irks me that I hear a lot, which is do your own research. What's the deal on that?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Good God. So that that phrase we've really seen, you know, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's essentially the same thing with the food as medicine. It's it's a propaganda piece or it's a it's a trope, which is it's a repeated idea or theme or a meme. So basically, there's nothing wrong with the words do your own research because we want people to actually obviously do their own research. The problem is that the phrase has come to symbolize much more than do your own research. The problem is that it implies that. That someone needs to do their own research because mainstream medicine doesn't know what they're doing and that mainstream public health doesn't know what they're doing.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  And that if you do your own research on what is quite often fringe websites or fringe sources that are dodging scientific critique, then you will find the the truth that they don't want you to know. And so it's sort of a gateway into kind of conspiracy theory thinking and just pseudo scientific ideas. So that's what it's really come to symbolize.

• 17:47Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, no. And you know, one thing I often point out when I hear, you know, content creators use that phrase is that like, the layperson is not equipped to understand or break down research, not to mention if you want to find quote unquote evidence that say like, I don't know, like dairy causes depression or whatever, I'm sure you could find it on a fringe blog making that clean. Like you could find quote unquote evidence of anything as as outlandish as it may be. So I think oftentimes when I see that, you know, response in the comment section or in some of these videos, I I think it's a cop out on their part for, you know, creators posting misinformation. But and it's a very

• 18:27Abbey Sharp?

  dangerous cop out at that. But also, you're right, it is, it's a signaling, it it it really is that kind of gateway into that conspiracy rabbit hole that it it really kind of leads people down the wrong path.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  It is. It's that. And I agree with you totally. It's sort of an invitation to confirmation bias. It basically starts with a conclusion and wants us to reason backwards from that just to confirm whatever preconceived notions we already have.

• 18:54Abbey Sharp?

  Right, totally. Okay, one more science anti-science trope, because this one's never gonna die to me. But talk to me about this pervasive idea that, quote, mainstream healthcare doesn't get to the root cause, or, you know, we don't treat the whole person, whole system, etc.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  That one probably drives me the most bonkers. And if all of these, because it's the one that I happen to see the most. I think that if anyone Googles sort of a local alternative medicine clinic website, they will see that. Or that idea, repeat it or on your, you know, your wellness grifters website or Instagram page. The reason, and that's just one of many alternative medicine tropes that are used to kind of cajole or dupe audiences. And as part of that narrative, the reason that it's so infuriating, so to speak, is that, again, there's nothing wrong with the idea that we want to treat root causes to help health conditions. Mainstream medicine and evidence-based care does that all the time. That's what scientists are trying to figure out. And that's what we're trying to do.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  The implication in that trope is that mainstream medicine doesn't do that. We only mask the symptoms. And that your alternative medicine practitioner actually addresses the root cause. But when you dig deeper, what you see is that the root cause that they're purporting to treat is often a false root cause, or it's a pseudoscientific root cause. For example, you need to unblock your energy blockages to treat depression because the root cause is that your energy is blocked. Or you need to address the root cause of a particular diet deficiency that you didn't know that you had and that is unsupported in the literature. So buy our, our diet protocol and that will actually treat the root cause. Again, a pseudoscientific approach.

• 20:39Abbey Sharp?

  Right. And usually they're selling, uh, you know, some kind of intolerance test, which we have ample evidence is bullshit. And it doesn't actually tell you what you are intolerant to. So it's kind of, it all feeds into the same issue. And at the end of the day, people are not actually getting evidence-based care. They're typically, they're actually getting pushed farther away from getting, you know, evidence-based care. So it's definitely toxic.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  It's scary.

• 21:05Abbey Sharp?

  It's very scary, you know, and I see it all the time. And what's so scary is when I get messages from young, you know, 13, 14 year old girls who are buying into these kinds of, this kind of rhetoric and pseudoscience. And I think, oh my God, and this is what social media has done. Like, you know, without social media, of course, young people wouldn't be exposed to this kind of problematic content so early, but because. It is so easy to like through virality, through content virality, to make a sensationalized extreme statement, get it to go viral, and everybody just kind of accepts it as truth. It's like an echo chamber. And the more you see it, like you said, like the more you see it, the more you believe that it can be nothing but the truth. It's dangerous.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. It it it so is. And I can speak to that a bit because there's there's a small research literature on that. There was a relatively recent study that came out that looked at the most viral videos about ADHD on TikTok. And what this study did is it analyzed the content of those viral videos. And it basically found that about half of the content of these videos that offered advice or information was misleading. That's half. But worrisome is that these videos were viewed over a million times. So it has a lot of reach. Similarly, I'm I'm really grateful to a fantastic research team who invited me onto one of their studies.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  And we did a similar study where we looked at the top viral videos or the top one thousand videos on TikTok with the hashtag mental health. So if you just had a hashtag mental health, top one thousand in a specific timeframe, it was October twenty twenty one. And we analyzed the content of those videos. And we found that about a third of those videos were misleading. But what blows my mind about that is that these videos were viewed over a billion times. A billion, like I can't even wrap my head around that number. So that's just shows again how pervasive and rampant this misinformation can spread. And again, when you go back to this illusory truth effect idea, where if we see and hear repeated false information,

• 23:14Speaker 01

  we're more likely to believe it, that's very concerning.

• 23:17Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, yeah. And you know, that whole kind of mainstream healthcare doesn't get to the root cause thing. I feel like that, you know, like we've mentioned, very easily teeters into conspiracy theory territory. And, you know, I often see in comment sections in my videos, things like, oh, dieticians and doctors just want to keep you sick and fat by suppressing the real research and evidence that they can keep their job and make more money off prescriptions. And these drugs give you side effects so that they can give you more drugs and you can make more money. What is your response to this growing, you know, pervasive narrative that like, we're all just trying to game everybody to make more money by making them more sick?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  It's terrible. It's another one of those tropes or ideas that have become part of the alternative medicine or wellness narrative. And the concerning part is that it needs that narrative. It needs to be polarizing and divisive because that's how it sells its products and services. It needs to say, it needs to create an us versus them narrative. Mainstream medicine is bad, we're good, and we have the solutions. And it's very dangerous. And of course, again, when anyone actually tries to critically think about these tropes, you can dismantle them easily. I mean, you know, yeah, the idea that mainstream medicine is all about profit. Obviously, Big Pharma is a problem that we, you know, that has

• 24:38Speaker 01

  a history of conflicts of interest and corrupt research, et cetera. But they take that kernel of truth and again, blow it up to say that they somehow have the solution. The solution to Big Pharma is more transparency, more competent science, and just kind of holding people accountable. But if you actually want to follow the money, so to speak, which is another one of the tropes that they have, no one follows their money, which is the wellness industry, which is a $5.6 trillion industry. And so, in the same breath, when someone is saying, "Don't trust doctors and dieticians who are selling you products," they're selling you a product, but their product has no evidence behind it. And it's often pseudoscientific.

• 25:15Abbey Sharp?

  For sure, for sure. Yeah, no, it is the wild, wild west. And you know, like, I also try to like, hold some empathy for folks who feel like so strongly against traditional healthcare that they can get themselves to buy into these conspiracy theories for whatever reason. But, you know, it is very, very hard to try to convince folks out of that. I don't know if you've had much success when they've gotten to that point, but it's hard.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  It's really hard. And again, there's a small literature on misinformation and how to correct it. We know that debunking misinformation, which is what you and I try to do and other wonderful science communicators try to do, we know that it can work on a population level. So when the general, the audience of a science communicator is the general public. It's not the ideologically So to speak, which is which are the people that unfortunately fall down the rabbit holes and really, really buy into the conspiracies and and at some point even start to incorporate those pseudo scientific beliefs or conspiracy theories into their identities. So they become active participants in the anti vaccine movement or the anti psychiatry movement or the wellness industry,

• 26:23Speaker 01

  et cetera. Those people can be much harder to reach. It's not impossible, but certainly much more difficult. And and yeah, it's it's sad when those people are unfortunately given a mic and they have the skills and the charisma to amplify their messaging and influence a lot of people, because that's also what inevitably perpetuates these narratives.

• 26:45Abbey Sharp?

  Totally. Yeah, and I want to quickly talk about, you know, your book for a second, Mind the Science, which I love, love, love. I've learned so much. It's fascinating. And you've got like, great information in the back, just to really kind of like, give some people some helpful tools for navigating this wild world of misinformation. But in the book, you talk about how even smart people can easily be duped into these tropes and quackery, because the default setting of our brain is to like, think in cognitive biases. And I've had to catch myself going down rabbit holes, especially at more vulnerable times in my life, like pregnancy, or like when I was really struggling with insomnia. Can you talk a little bit about that and those cognitive biases that we operate in, which is, you know, what makes it so easy for people to fall victim?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate your kind words, by the way, on the book. But you're right. I mean, and they're like, like we mentioned, we all have our brains that are kind of wired to fall for misinformation. And quite honestly, it's a bit worse than that. And I don't want to be pessimistic about it. But there's good reasons why lots of people, smart people, myself, my family, you, people in your family, everyone is susceptible to misinformation. And there's lots of different factors that are interacting. Cognitive biases are certainly part of it. But there's more than that. There's personality traits that kind of lead people to fall for misinformation. There's relying on different thinking styles, like when people think more intuitively or

• 28:14Speaker 01

  effortlessly, and just kind of go with their gut and use their intuition while evaluating information. We know that that's more likely to result in people falling for misinformation. So there's lots of factors that are going on and it's not any one factor that does it. It's sort of the interaction of these things. That's just on the individual level where all of us are more or less likely to fall for misinformation due to internal reasons. Then there's also the social reasons, which we've talked about. The algorithms of social media are biased, meaning our feeds just kind of target us with misinformation by going for sexy headlines and emotion laden videos and things that are devoid of nuance

• 28:58Speaker 01

  and scientific complexity. So there's that's operating. And then, of course, we have the, what I call the bad actors, so to speak, which are the grifters that are actually targeting people. So you're, whether it's your individual Instagram influencer or larger body of organizations like the Children's Health Defense, which is RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine vehicle. So all of these things are kind of contributing. And yeah, our cognitive biases are certainly one aspect that play a role. And then, and then we can imagine that that's situated in this social context and our personality context and our history of experiences, like you mentioned with the healthcare system. So all of these things are kind of interacting.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  And I think that, as you kind of mentioned, an important message that I try to make in the book, and I think that you and I agree on, is that we don't want to fault or blame people for falling for misinformation and for turning to alternative medicine because everyone experiences health problems and mental health problems at some point in their life, or they're at least touched by it. And so it's absurd to blame people because, well, because we're all human on one level. And the other reason is that mainstream medicine is imperfect. We don't fully understand the nature of psychopathology and mental disorders. We don't fully understand, you know, nutrition and mental illness. And there are gaps in our healthcare systems and not everyone has access to evidence-based care.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Some people are mistreated in mainstream medicine and that is all very valid. Those are gaps in our healthcare system. And the gaps in our knowledge and the gaps in our healthcare system signal a call to get our act together, so to speak, to have more competent care, quality care, ethical care. And at the same time, those gaps don't signal exploitation and emotional exploitation and financial exploitation by pitching wellness and pseudoscience as the solution to the gaps in our healthcare system. And that's, I think, what we are rallying against. And that's what I try to do in my book, is to just try to help people be more skeptical so that they can protect themselves from that wellness grift, so to speak.

• 31:05Abbey Sharp?

  Totally. Yeah, no. And I think your book does an amazing job at setting people up for success on, you know, being skeptical, being critical, asking questions. It's really great.

• 31:29Abbey Sharp?

  How do we, as evidence-based healthcare providers, steer people away from misinformation without losing them to that trope that we are just suppressing the real evidence, or worse, that we can't be trusted because we're puppets for big food, or big pharma, or government, et cetera? I mean, I think what you just said about like acknowledging that the current healthcare system is flawed. And, you know, we hold empathy for folks who have been burned by their healthcare providers, who have not gotten adequate care, who have not gotten timely care. Is there anything else that you recommend to kind of steer people away from that misinformation?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a super complex topic. I mean, in part, that was the impetus, the reason I tried to write my book, is because it was hard to do that in the role of clinician, which is my day job. And so I did try to, you know, do it in another avenue by trying to teach people the language of pseudoscientific grift, so to speak. But at the level of the individual healthcare practitioner, I think what you said kind of nails it. It's the solution to gaps in our healthcare system is to offer quality care, and to be transparent, and to be honest during informed consent procedures, and to give good quality care, and to hear people, and to validate their experiences, and to, and to co-explore people's treatment plans.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Together. That's that's our best bet because that in part is why people turn to alternative medicine. Because part of our gaps in our healthcare systems is that um they they don't get enough time and they don't feel seen and heard by mainstream healthcare professionals. And that that is that is a flaw of our system and we can all do better in that. And so it's no wonder someone would, you know, turn away. They don't feel heard at a five to 10 minute family physician appointment. Instead, you can go see a, you know, an energy healer and spend an hour talking about your problems. And it doesn't really matter whether the energy healing treatment works or not. Those people are actually feeling seen and heard. And so we can do a better job at doing that.

• 33:29Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely true and absolutely should be a greater emphasis in, you know, education and training for healthcare providers as well across the board. And, you know, one thing I do, I try to do as a science communicator is not just to immediately dis- dis- you know, dismiss a claim that we see online as bullshit and just move on because it's- and trust me, it's very, very hard not to just do that sometimes when I see something so outlandish. I'm just like, fuck, no, that's that's BS. Like, you don't need to, don't even think about that again. But rather, I try to understand the kernel of truth. Uh, and kind of, you know, that I'm acknowledging why it may make sense

• 34:11Abbey Sharp?

  that there is some kind of belief system around this. But the evidence says A, B, and C, or the dose makes the poison or the actual clinical effect would be insignificant, et cetera. And I do think that kind of acknowledging the kernel of truth rather than just dismissing it, it does help communicate that, you know, we're on the same, we're on the same truth-seeking team here. And I'm just kind of adding to that conversation rather than just like shutting it down.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  I think that's brilliant. I mean, that's an excellent strategy. It's it's in part the opposite of what the wellness industry does. Because what the wellness industry does is it sets up what we call straw man fallacies, which basically is the weakest form of an argument that you can make for something and then so that it becomes easily defeated. So for example, big pharma is corrupt. Yes, there's a kernel of truth in that. But then they create a straw man fallacy and say, all of mainstream medicine is corrupt and bad and every healthcare practitioner is bad. We have the solutions. That is a very powerful strategy because it gets people to buy into their products and services, but it's not the honest one. And so the approach that you're offering is the opposite, which is the steel man approach,

• 35:20Speaker 01

  which is to present the other side, so to speak, in its most, um, in its strongest way to acknowledge that sliver or that kernel of truth and then to provide the evidence of why their argument fails.

• 35:33Abbey Sharp?

  I love that steel man. I'm gonna just start using that. I'm a steel man. My kids will think that's really cool, like a robot. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Jonathan. This was so enlightening. Um, and the book Mind the Science is phenomenal. So congratulations, I thoroughly enjoyed it, learned so much. And obviously I'm going to be linking to it in the show notes below. So thank you again for joining me.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  That means so much to me. This is so much fun. Thank you.

• 36:07Abbey Sharp?

  I loved this conversation and I saw so many overlaps in the discussions that Dr. Staya and I seem to be consistently having online. Now, I mean, him defending the existence of a legitimate condition like ADHD or depression is arguably even more critical than me debunking the use of like celery juice for a healthy metal detox. But a lot of these arguments center on this pervasive belief that our health outcomes are 100% within our control. We are solely responsible for our health.

• 36:45Abbey Sharp?

  This is what we call healthism, or a belief system that places an overemphasis on individual health and lifestyle choices as markers of moral worth, success, or value. It assumes that poor health is entirely the result of poor choices, completely dismissing the role of other important factors like genetics, poverty, stress, access to healthcare, trauma, discrimination, and so much more.

• 37:16Abbey Sharp?

  If we fall sick, it is because something that we have done wrong. And now, not only is our body bad, but we as people are bad. Sick and fat people are often seen as lazy, undisciplined, or irresponsible. And that's in juxtaposition with "healthy" people, who are seen as virtuous, disciplined, or morally superior. Healthism also disproportionately harms and excludes marginalized groups. So yes, of course, it is not financially accessible for folks with lower socioeconomic status, who don't have the time or money to go to a Berry's Boot Camp or hop on that clean carnivore diet.

• 38:00Abbey Sharp?

  But in my experience as a dietitian, I actually hear and see it most aggressively directed at larger-bodied folks. You just have to look at the comment section of any larger-bodied person who's eating something as banal as like a sandwich to see the vitriol this narrative spreads. Comments like "you're killing yourself" or "do you want to die?" are unfortunately all too common. Now, I want to be clear that I'm not saying that obese people are helpless or lack free will to buy a head of kale instead of a cheeseburger. But the "choices" that healthism often promotes cost money.

• 38:42Abbey Sharp?

  They require health literacy, time off work, or physical access in close proximity to nutritious food. And it's these barriers that can potentially contribute to what is often called an obesogenic environment that makes gaining weight easy and losing weight hard, especially when we bake in the 40% to 70% genetic component of obesity. Even if you're not operating in the extremes of the healthist movement, like making TikToks shaming and blaming women for their mental health disorders, you probably do, or at least have, participated in its spread. Healthism is so pervasive that we likely don't

• 39:25Abbey Sharp?

  Even notice all of the teeny tiny inconspicuous ways that we perpetuate it. But when we know better, we can help to shift the narrative. And I want to give you guys some ways that it might be sneaking into your vernacular and some ideas to start that shift. Number one, instead of saying quote, quote, "I'm so bad" when you order an ice cream or skip a workout, offer yourself some kindness and compassion and acknowledge the self-care inherent in your choice. Maybe your body needed a rest day to recover from yesterday's workout. Or maybe you ordered the ice cream because it brought you joy. Eating ice cream just makes you human, like not morally inept.

• 40:08Abbey Sharp?

  Number two, instead of demonizing specific foods or groups of foods as bad or junk or toxins, consider that unless you're eating something that you're like legit allergic to or is rotten or is actual poison, food is just food. And foods might not be nutritionally equal, but we can make them morally equal. At the end of the day, all foods possess some kind of perk, even if it's just sparking joy. Three, instead of dichotomizing meals or foods as quote cheats versus quote clean, where both of these words carry heavy, heavy moralizing weight, think about them as foods that you choose to nourish your body

• 40:52Abbey Sharp?

  and foods that you choose to nourish your soul and bring you pleasure. Stop comparing like having pizza with infidelity. Like it is literally just a little dough, sauce and cheese. Finally, stop talking about having to quote earn a meal or forbidden food by restricting exercise or doing something that you otherwise see as punishing. This is obviously a very disordered way of thinking about how you nourish yourself. I mean, at the end of the day, food is a human right. So treating your body like a slave or prisoner is never going to be an act of self-care. Bottom line, if you wouldn't chastise yourself as lazy or incompetent

• 41:36Abbey Sharp?

  or unmotivated for being born in a specific town or to specific parents, try to be a bit more compassionate with yourself about the health hurdles that you might face, whether that is depression or diabetes.

• 41:51Abbey Sharp?

  Exercising body kindness and self compassion doesn't mean not making efforts to change or improve your circumstances. In fact, according to a review at the literature, self compassion interventions can have a profound effect on changing physical health behaviors like physical activity, smoking, and overeating, while also supporting emotional and psychological well being. Sure, you might be able to like bully yourself into reaching a goal with punitive tactics, but at what cost? And for how long could you possibly keep that up? We as humans don't like to be punished, so I cannot imagine that that would last very long.

• 42:33Abbey Sharp?

  Approaching your goals with a kind mindset is really the win win. And that is all for today's episode. A big thank you again to Dr. Jonathan Stea for joining me to fight back against anti-science rhetoric online. And again, I highly recommend his book, Mind the Science, which again, I will leave a link to in the show notes below. If you enjoyed the show, I would love, love, love, love, love if you would leave me a review and share it with your friends. It really, really helps to get the word out. But signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thank you so much for listening.

• 43:19Speaker 03

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