Top 10 Worst Health Trends (That Everyone Thinks Are Healthy)

Not every health trend is actually helping your health. In this episode of The Dr. Josh Axe Show, Dr. Axe breaks down the Top 10 Worst Health Trends that have gained massive popularity in recent years—and explains why many of them are misunderstood, overhyped, or being used in ways that may do more harm than good. From cold plunges and melatonin to ultra-processed "health" foods, energy drinks, GLP-1 medications, extreme detoxes, and more, you'll learn what the science says, who these trends may benefit, and where people often go wrong. Topics Discussed:• Cold plunging• Melatonin supplementation• Vegan diets• Ultra-processed health foods• Energy drinks and stimulants• GLP-1 weight loss drugs• Extreme detoxes and cleanses• Social media health misinformation• Trend-based dieting• What actually creates lasting health CHAPTERS:0:00 — The 10 Most Dangerous Wellness Trends 4:15 — The Cold Plunge Warning: Hormones & Heart Risk 9:50 — Why Vegan & Raw Diets Destroy Your Bloodwork 14:35 — Melatonin Increases Heart Failure by 90% 20:10 — The "Healthy" Processed Foods Making You Sick 24:45 — Overtraining Syndrome & Energy Drink Arrhythmias30:20 — The Truth About Nightly THC Gummies 34:10 — Nicotine Pouches & The Extreme Detox Myth 40:55 — Orthorexia: The Deadly Obsession With Perfect Health 46:30 — How to Safely Evaluate Any Health Trend Whether you're focused on longevity, metabolism, hormones, gut health, or overall wellness, this episode will help you separate health facts from health fads. Pre-order Heal Your Cells: https://www.amazon.com/Heal-Your-Cells-Reversing-Irreversible/dp/B0G5WTFYDR Connect with Dr. Josh Axe: Website: https://draxe.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/?hl=en YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgtp61tf9tYF7nG_gIQ94LQ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drjoshaxeshow MB01FIJV5ERN5QC

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

• 0:00Josh Axe?

  Every single week on social media, I see a new health trend and some of them are good and some of them are deadly. Now, the most dangerous health trends of 2026, here's the thing, they don't always look dangerous. Sometimes they look like discipline or self-care. Sometimes they really look sleek. You know, you've got your favorite influencer endorsing as the greatest wellness trend ever. That's how they hook you. And a nicotine pouch for focus, an energy drink for performance, melatonin for better sleep, a daily ice bath for resilience. You know, in a lot of cases, it's like we didn't quit our vices with things like nicotine. We just rebranded them and called them health. And have you ever pushed

• 0:41Josh Axe?

  a healthy habit so hard, it started costing you? Have you ever felt guilty for skipping the cold plunge or the workout? Have you ever wondered if your wellness routine is actually stressing you out? Well, here's what we're going to do over the next 40 minutes. I'm going to dive into the 10 worst health trends of 2026. You'll learn what each of them gets right and where it goes completely wrong. And we'll talk about smarter, evidence-based ways to accomplish what each trend says it's accomplishing. Welcome to the Dr. Josh Yak Show.

• 1:32Josh Axe?

  So today, I'm going to dive into the truth about should you be cold plunging or not? Should you be using nicotine gum? What about CBD and THC? What about peptides? What about all of these current health trends? Should you jump on that train or not? I'll be answering all of those questions and more today on the Dr. Josh Yak Show. All right, before I dive into the countdown, consider subscribing to the channel if you find this information useful and share this video with someone you think needs to hear it. Also, stick around until the end of the video because I'm going to be giving you a free PDF of my top 25 blood work markers guide. This is a guy that's That's going to help walk you through the exact blood work markers you should get if you ever need to get them to help you heal, to promote longevity and so much more.

• 2:18Josh Axe?

  Now, almost every trend on this list started as something good or something honest about being bad, then marketing got a hold of it, wrapped it up in this word wellness and sold it back to you as something they said could help you heal. So I'm going to share with you what I think of these top 10 health trends. And listen, some of these could cause minor health issues. Some of these could land you in the hospital. Number one is excessive cold plunging. I'll dive into that. I'm also going to go through a vegan and raw diet. We'll talk about melatonin, using that as a supplement. I'll talk about health processed foods. So these are health foods that you're going to find in the health food store. Number six, we'll talk about overtraining. Also get into energy drinks, THC gummies, GLP-1 without guidance.

• 3:03Josh Axe?

  We'll talk about nicotine rebranded, extreme detoxes. And then, by the way, I have a, we have two more. So this is actually a total of 12. I'm not listing here that are incredibly surprising as well, that a lot of people are doing today, that if they're done the wrong way, it's going to make you sick. Now, before I go into the details for each trend, I'd be curious to know if you're engaged with one of these right now. Okay, so be honest, if you are, type the number of the trend right now. And as a bonus, I'd love to know how it's working for you right now. Has it been extremely positive? Have you not noticed a difference? Or is it negative? Let me know right now. Okay, number 10, excessive cold plunging.

• 3:47Josh Axe?

  All right, cold plunging every day. Here's the claim, cold plunging every day, the colder and the longer, the better. It's the ultimate hack for resilience, metabolism and fat loss. That's the claim I hear all the time. Here's the reality. Cold is a hormetic stressor. It's a form of stress. It can be powerful in the right doses, but harmful in the wrong doses, right? So, so here is a saying I've been saying for many years, and it's, this is critically important. The dose determines the medicine or the poison. All right? If you overdose, it's going to harm your body. All right, imagine going into the gym and you've never lifted weights before and you try bench pressing 500 pounds.

• 4:31Josh Axe?

  You're going to hurt yourself. And so here's what happens when you cold plunge. There is a short spike in adrenaline and cortisol. Okay? Now, here's what the evidence says. Cold is a hormetic stressor. It's powerful in the right doses, right? It's harmful in the wrong doses, right? The dose determines the medicine or the poison. A short spike, here's what happens. You, you get in your cold plunge and you feel this spike. You know what you're feeling? You're feeling adrenaline. You're feeling cortisol. And if you do it daily, you're putting your body in this fight or flight state every single day. You know what the medical research shows? 11 minutes of cold per week is ideal for the people that cold plunging is good for. 11 minutes. And it's not the colder, the better.

• 5:15Josh Axe?

  Okay, it's typically in the mid 40s to the 50s. Okay? Getting in the 30s is typically unwise. It's not the ideal temperature. And by the way, here's the other thing. It's not one size fits all, especially for women. Women who do repeated cold in their luteal phase of their cycle actually suppress progesterone and worsen PMS symptoms. So think about it. When your body gets cold, there's less movement. There's more stagnation. Now, you're reducing inflammation, which for some people is positive. And for some men in particular can raise testosterone. So there are some benefits. But think about this. If you have hypothyroidism and your body is already cold. Okay, you're, but think about it. Your body temperature should be in the 98s. You're already in the 97s.

• 5:57Josh Axe?

  And now you're continually exposing your body to more cold? You're getting your body more cold. You're doing the opposite of what you should be doing. If you've got cold extremities, if you have an issue where poor circulation, you should not be doing cold plunging. You should be doing infrared sauna. You should be taking warm baths with Epsom salts, right? You should be doing lots of ginger herbal tea and warming foods. Cold plunging is going to hurt you if you have an issue like a chronic infection. If you have an issue such as chronic fatigue syndrome, cold extremities, hypothyroidism, women that are trying to support fertility. All of those are going to be harmed by cold plunging. If you go to the extremes or even doing it a day a week too cold.

• 6:41Josh Axe?

  Now, there's a difference if you want to do it the right way. If you are just getting started, taking a cold shower for 60 seconds, a few days a week, that tends to be fine than warming your body back up. Okay, but cold plunging for a lot of you is not ideal. Now, now here who could, here's who can really benefit from cold plunging. If you tend to be, listen, it's some women, but it's far greater numbers of men can benefit from cold plunging. And doing it just two days a week for about three minutes. Okay, three to five minutes, two days a week for most men in the 50s, maybe the 40 degrees. You know, originally this was shown to support recovery for, you know, NFL players.

• 7:22Josh Axe?

  Or I remember watching the Tour de France and you'd hear Lance Armstrong and a lot of these cyclists, they would do ice baths for recovery, right? So a man that's producing major body heat, like a CrossFitter, all of this heat and we call it yang energy in Chinese medicine. All right, helping cool the body and get rid of a little bit of that heat. That can help the body heal for those people. But we're talking about elite athletes in their primes, in their mid 20s and early 30s.

• 7:52Josh Axe?

  That's who benefits the most typically from cold plunging. Most other people, it's actually harming your immune system, especially if you're overdoing it, which many people are today. So remember, if you're going to cold plunge, do it based on your own unique biology. And listen, for many of you, I would actually say for most of you, you're going to get much greater benefits from doing infrared heat, infrared sauna, those types of therapies than you actually are from a cold plunge. It's not to say that cryotherapy and cold plunging isn't good for a segment of the population. It is, okay? But for many people, it's not ideal and it's actually harming your body. I mean, this is one of the things we've gotten into in the whole natural medicine field

• 8:37Josh Axe?

  to where if you hear that it works for one person, everybody should do it. No, everybody needs something personalized for them. All right, here's the number nine trend that's destroying your health. Veganism and raw only diets, okay? Now, listen, I eat a lot of vegetables and I think most people should be getting a lot of vegetables. But overall, eating raw constantly for most people is damaging. Listen, I think there's probably 1% of the population, 1%, that can maybe get away with it. But generally, 99% of people going vegan or going raw is hurting their health. I mean, I can tell you from taking care of tens of thousands of patients over the years, some of my sickest patients have come in because they followed a raw diet or a vegan diet over a long period of time.

• 9:22Josh Axe?

  Now, listen, I am a huge fan of the Bible and Daniel following a specific diet for a period of time in the Bible. So the Daniel diet in the Bible was either you do the 10 day or the 21 day version and you're eating only pretty much vegetables and fruit and maybe nuts and seeds. You're eating plants, okay, for 10 to 21 days. And there are periods of time where you can go through and essentially do it as a cleanse. It's a form of fasting that I think can be beneficial. But long-term, doing a vegan or raw only diet.

• 9:58Josh Axe?

  Is not ideal. You know, in both my clinics, my local clinic in Nashville, the longevity clinic, and my national clinic, the Health Institute, I run a lot of very advanced blood work panels. Okay. And I take care of a lot of people that come in who were on or are on a vegan diet, a raw diet, and I see the same nutritional deficiencies on their blood work. Major vitamin B12 deficiencies. Vitamin B12 is critical for your nervous system. It's important for energy. It's important for mitochondrial function. It is critical for your health. That is the most common deficiency. I see amino acid deficiencies. I see deficiencies in zinc, omega-3 fatty acids like EPA. I see major deficiencies across the board with these diets.

• 10:41Josh Axe?

  From a Chinese medicine standpoint, it causes a digestive deficiency, which then weakens the immune system. So again, I see a lot of issues like bloating, loose stool, fatigue, feeling cold all the time. You know, vegetables tend to be more, they're good for adotaphagy, they're good for cleansing. But they'll leave you weak if you don't do meat. Meat helps with regeneration. It helps with building muscle, keeping muscle on, keeps your body from wasting away. It's important for healing and regeneration. So if you're not getting meat in your diet or eggs, it's very hard on your body. Now, if you still decide to do a vegan or raw diet, you want to make sure you supplement,

• 11:23Josh Axe?

  especially with a B complex, vitamin B12 being the most important. Also, taking a DHA and EPA supplement. You can take algae oil that has both typically higher doses, though you want to do of that. You want to track your iron levels. That's another mineral that I see in great depletion with anyone doing too much, you know, primarily a vegan or raw diet zinc deficiency. Vitamin D is also really important. So you absolutely want to get blood work done to see where your deficiencies are if you're a vegan or a raw diet. And listen, at the very least, for instance, I have friends who they realized it was harming their health and they switched over to becoming, you know, a vegetarian or even a pescatarian. For instance, I have a friend who's

• 12:07Josh Axe?

  Pescatarian and they do well. They eat a lot of fish. They do a lot of eggs. They do some raw culture dairy products. They supplement properly and they're doing just fine. But overall, if you're not getting any animal-based products, I've seen it time and time again harm your health. Now, I do want to say this as well. This isn't on this list, but I do want to mention this. I know I've got some carnivores out there. They're like, yeah, you know, you know, you know, veganism is not healthy. Let me, let me tell you this as well. Being on a carnivore diet long-term for many people. Listen, it's not as harmful as typically being a vegan, a vegan. But, you know, I had a, I had a PhD on here. His name is Dr. James Nicolantonio on not too long ago. And he told

• 12:51Josh Axe?

  me that some of the research he's seen is where if you are on a carnivore diet, your body starts to get too, too acidic. And so your body starts to start pulling minerals out of your bone, right? Because you have magnesium and calcium. These are all alkaline, alkaline minerals, that the body starts pulling out of the body to try and buffer its pH and to make up for the lack of plants in the diet. So listen, the ideal diet, it for most people for longevity, it's not vegan and it's not carnivore. It's, it's, we're omnivores. God created us to be omnivorous. And so most of the time you want to be balancing out and eating a good amount of organic meat and animal-based

• 13:32Josh Axe?

  products, combined with a good amount of plants, fruits, vegetables, things like that. And then, you know, one is, is, is in Chinese medicine, we'd say yin food and yang food, and they balance each other out. And they create optimal health in most people. The problem is that's not happening today. The problem is we have these trends and fads today where we get influencers talking about going vegan and or going carnivore. Now, again, I, for these diets, they should be done almost like a fast. Okay, you can do carnivore for three months for a period of time. Let's say you have SIBO, or you're having these major immune reactions. The reason why carnivore diet works is

• 14:09Josh Axe?

  Your gut does not have anything to ferment, okay? And so you're not getting those histamine reactions and those immune reactions when you're doing meat only. But for long-term health, you do typically want plants and polyphenols, which can actually support the growth of good bacteria in your gut. Because most people that go carnivore, the problem is that oftentimes then they're more susceptible to other types of microorganisms because their body tends to be very low in good bacteria in their gut microbiome, and it can cause some long-term health issues. Now, again, I think if somebody has mold toxicity or SIBO or certain other issues, getting on a carnivore diet for a period of time, it can be an amazing diet, it can feel like a miracle, and it is, it is good.

• 14:52Josh Axe?

  I've put people on carnivore diets for a period of time. And then though, after three months or after we balanced out their body, then we started adding in certain plants. Because again, the ideal diet long-term is omnivorous. But here's the moral of the story. Veganism and raw only diets are a terrible trend that can harm your health. Here's number eight, and this might surprise a lot of you. Consuming the hormone, melatonin's a hormone, okay? You think of it as a supplement or a vitamin. Melatonin's a hormone. Using melatonin every night can greatly harm your health. Most people think of it, here's the claim, melatonin is a harmless sleep aid.

• 15:33Josh Axe?

  It's a great natural alternative to Ambien and a lot of these other medications. Do I prefer it to Ambien? Yes, I do. But I want you to listen to this medical study and the evidence here. There was a study published last year, okay? And researchers tracked over 130,000 adults with insomnia. And those taking melatonin for over a year had a 90% higher risk of heart failure in five years. Hospitalizations were at 19% for those on melatonin versus only 6.6% for those that weren't. And a mortality rate, higher rate of death at 7.8% versus 4.3%.

• 16:17Josh Axe?

  So higher mortality, higher hospitalization, higher heart failure on those taking melatonin. Again, it's important to remember, melatonin is a hormone, it's not just a sedative, and it can have some long-term Negative health effects. Because here's what happens when you take any hormone, whether it be testosterone or hormone replacement therapy in women, like estrogen or melatonin, when you take them externally, your body produces less of them on its own. That's a problem. And so what you want to focus on doing is typically, rather than taking it from the outside in, the biggest thing you want to focus on is giving your body the building blocks it needs to create more of the hormones on its own. This is why in melatonin, for instance,

• 17:02Josh Axe?

  taking certain types of amino acids before bed, like tryptophan or glycine. In fact, this is why I'm a huge fan of magnesium glycinate, right? It's magnesium plus glycine. These are going to help your body create more melatonin on its own. Another one would be herbs like ashwagandha or reishi mushroom or tulsi tea. You know, these herbs lower cortisol. When you lower cortisol, now melatonin can go higher. And so taking melatonin every night actually increases your risk of death. Now, I want to say one of the problems is most people are taking too high of a dose, around five to 10 milligrams daily. If you're going to take it long term, the low dose you should be taking is typically 0.3

• 17:45Josh Axe?

  to a maximum of one milligram at a time. Now, let me tell you what, how I am a fan of melatonin use for jet lag. All right, let's say you're doing a flight from the United States to London or to Hawaii or somewhere internationally, okay? Melatonin, taking it for one night to two nights, it can help your body more quickly acclimate to the new time zone. Okay, so that's how melatonin should be used if you're taking it as a supplement. Typically, it should be taken for one or two nights with international travel to help regulate your body. Or let's say you're really sick with a cold or flu. You can't breathe out of your nose. You're not sleeping at night. Well, your body needs to recover, okay? Especially when you're sick. So you take it for one or two nights to just get some deeper sleep and help you sleep at night. That's how it should be used.

• 18:29Josh Axe?

  But it should not be used every night at these high doses. It's going to have negative side effects. You're much better off taking the right herbs, taking vitamins and minerals like magnesium. You're going to get much, much better long-term improvement in your sleep by doing that. Not to mention lifestyle, morning sunlight, you know, stopping the blue light before bed, at least two hours before bed, wearing the blue blocker sunglasses, having your room dark and cold, using a weighted blanket. These are much, much better natural alternatives to help you sleep. Number seven, health processed foods. Now, you know, one of the things I used to do over the years with my patients is I would do shopping tours at Whole Foods Market and Sprouts and Natural Health Food Stores.

• 19:14Josh Axe?

  And I would go up and down every single aisle and around. And typically, what I would first preach is, let's stay at the outside perimeter of the grocery store, right? That's where the meat is, it's where the fruits and vegetables are, let's stay out there. And I would actually label the inside of the store as a biblical reference, the valley of the shadow of death, because this is where the deadly foods are, okay? Even in the health food store. I remember at first walking down, you know, one of my first health food stores, I went in and I started looking at ingredients and looking at animal crackers. Hey, this is a healthy kid's food and seeing white bleached flour and, you know, loads and loads of processed cane sugar. So the reality is this, is you can be eating foods in a health food store, or even foods labeled as healthy, especially a lot of these snacks today, and they're not healthy.

• 19:58Josh Axe?

  You know, I see this with a lot of keto snacks, protein bars, meat sticks, cold pressed juices, right? And so it's important to understand that a lot of these foods are going to be harming your health. I think most of you know by now, highly industrialized, processed, you know, seed oils typically aren't healthy, excess sugar, you know, excess alcohol, gums, fillers. We should stay away from these things, but oftentimes you read on a label keto or clean and we think, hey, this is, this should be good, this should be fine. The reality is, you know, cold pressed juices is an example of this. You know, there are a lot of these juices today that you're buying have more sugar in them than a soda.

• 20:43Josh Axe?

  And there is a major difference between eating an apple or a whole orange because of the fiber, because of the nutrients, because everything that's in there, and a glass of orange juice or apple juice, it's basically sugar water. Now, a lot of you already know this, but that being said, you just have to be careful to read the labels because again, I see this today, keto or carnivore or vegan in these labels on the food, yet these meats are typically highly processed with nitrate. Even some of the grass fed meat sticks today, they're not necessarily healthy. Now there are some healthy brands out there, absolutely. But there are a lot that are acting as wolves in sheep's clothing. All right. So you just gotta be careful out there when you are buying this food. So here's

• 21:25Josh Axe?

  what you want to do. Shop on the perimeter where the real food lives. Okay. Meat, fruits, vegetables. I mean, if you know, if you want to reverse a disease, just stay on the outside of the grocery store, stay in the perimeter, meat, fruits and vegetables. You're getting protein, you're getting fiber, you're getting loads and loads of nutrients. Okay. That's where the probiotic rich foods are. Everything is living on the outside. Here's a challenge for you this week. Go to the grocery store and only buy things on the outside of the aisle. Try it for a week and see how healthy you get. You will feel amazing. If you only ate meat, fruits and vegetables every

• 22:05Josh Axe?

  meal for a week, for 90% of you, you're going to feel absolutely fantastic. Cause the reality is eating whole eggs is always going to be better for you than a protein bar. Eating a whole piece of fruit, a kiwi, an apple, a pear, blueberries, they're going to be out the fruit juice every single time. Even eating things like whole raw nuts, you know, macadamia nuts, that's going to be in any keto snack, any day of the week. Number six, here's a big one. Overtraining as discipline. Now, listen, here's the reality. Most people are under training. Okay. I want to get some of you out there and just walking, right? Get off your butts and just start walking on a daily basis,

• 22:48Josh Axe?

  moving. Any type of exercise is great. However, there's about 5% of you that are overtraining. I know some of you, you're the crossfitters, you're the triathletes, you don't miss a single day in the gym. And here's the claim I hear, taking days off, that's laziness. You need to get up and grind every morning. And if you're not sore and exhausted, you haven't worked out hard enough. You know, I have had a major shift in my mindset with this to where when I work out today, I'm not working out for vanity. I am working out for longevity. And the reality is your body needs recovery time. You will do better working out five days a week than you are seven

• 23:31Josh Axe?

  days a week. Especially when you get to be 40 years old and older, it becomes critical, recovery becomes more important than ever. You know, the other issue with overtraining, or what I call overtraining syndrome, is it keeps cortisol elevated. That disrupts your sleep and your hormones. It suppresses your immunity. And then it stalls your recovery. And that's this vicious loop where you are overtraining. Cortisol's high. So then you don't recover as fast. And so you get worse and worse and worse over time. And this is where you get injuries. You know, the number of people that especially are 40 plus with injuries is incredibly high. So you want to really plan and think about your exercise. Listen, you ideally should be doing lifting weights, doing a day a week of maybe some HIIT

• 24:16Josh Axe?

  training, some sort of interval training, and then, and then walking. You know, walking a lot, especially up and down hills. I mean, that's sort of the ideal rhythm for longevity for most people. So the new idea should be to train hard and recover hard, right? Recovery is part of the program. Sleep well. Get enough protein, right? Around 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of body weight. And take at least one to two true days of rest a week. Now, you can go on a short walk those days. That's fine. But you want to also track and monitor your progress. And I wear, I wear an Oura ring. A lot of people wear whoop bands. But being able to track and look at what's your resting heart rate in the morning? What's your HRV?

• 25:01Josh Axe?

  Having these apps and tools, along with your own wisdom of listening to your body and knowing when to push it and when to rest. That's what you want to do for long-term health. Overtraining is discipline is not attractive. All right. Number five. Energy drinks, right? Here's the claim. Sugar-free energy drinks are a clean pre-workout and focus tool. All right. Basically, it's just caffeine plus a few vitamins. So it's totally harmless. Okay. But the cardiac data shows otherwise. In a medical journal, here's what they found. That 57% of healthy people who drank 32 ounces of energy drinks.

• 25:38Josh Axe?

  Had a much, much higher risk of potentially fatal heart arrhythmias. And in Chinese medicine, if you are constantly stimulating yourself, you are actually depleting something called your kidney yang, and that's tied to longevity. It actually causes something called stem cell depletion. So you start using up all of your body's stem cells. So now your body can't heal and regenerate and recover as well. That's the Chinese medicine point of view. So if you're always on stimulants, you know, I look at some of these bottles and they've got, you know, Panex ginseng and loads, and the bigger issue is the caffeine. Really high levels of caffeine, and that's telling your body, you know, caffeine does not give you energy. Caffeine masks your tiredness.

• 26:21Josh Axe?

  It's, it basically tells your body, you're not tired even though you are, so you don't rest and recover like you should. And so later on, you have to pay the bill. This is like building up credit card debt, right? So you've used all of your energy reserves. You're using up all your body's ATP, all your cellular energy, but you don't even know it's happening. So it's like you haven't seen your bill in years. And finally, you get the bill back and it's tens of thousands of dollars. And you think, how can I pay for this? Well, the way most of you are paying for it is with hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, low energy. If you're tired all the time, oftentimes it's because of this. And so stopping the excess caffeine, stopping the energy drinks. Listen, it's fine to have a matcha green tea.

• 27:06Josh Axe?

  All right, it's fine to do, you know, some of these adaptogenic herbs that like ashwagandha and rhodiola and reishi mushroom that that sort of lightly build up. They actually build up your ATP energy over the, over time. They're actually the, the things you want to be doing. So green tea and rhodiola and ashwagandha, those are fantastic. But the excess caffeine, the research shows you're going to pay for it either with heart disease or according to Chinese medicine, by using up all your adrenal and cellular energy over time. Number four, THC gummies nightly. Now I saw this happen and I pushed back immediately. This is years ago. So back, you know, I believe this is around 2018, when, when, when CBD and some cannabis was more legalized.

• 27:51Josh Axe?

  You know, starting states like Colorado, and then each state had their own laws. And, and, and I started seeing some of these doctors, and actually they were medical doctors, come in on the fringe. And, and some of them, a lot in, in the Western states of the United States, come in and start to say, Okay, well CBD, not only CBD beneficial, but THC is beneficial as well. And I thought, well, that's not absolutely true. And then I heard them start to say, yeah, I mean, really, it's almost any dose that you can benefit from. Here's where this matters. Remember, the dose determines the medicine or the poison. THC, though it's natural and it comes from a plant, can have major, major side effects long term.

• 28:34Josh Axe?

  You know, and here's the thing I see some people saying in the natural health community. A nightly THC gummy, it's natural. It's not addictive. It's a way to unwind, you know, it helps me get better sleep at night. It's a way to, to get rid of the stress. It helps with chronic pain. It's way safer than drinking. Okay, so this is the narrative I'm hearing right now with THC and things like THC gummies. Now, what I want to share with you is what the medical evidence shows today. And I can tell you this as a practitioner, and I'm also going to share with you the ancient view of ancient Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. Okay, so here's the functional medicine reality. Nightly use builds tolerance and dependence and fragments your REM sleep and your deep sleep. So you actually get worse sleep at night.

• 29:19Josh Axe?

  The longer you do THC. Now here's the ancient TCM lens and view, okay? Cannabis depletes your Qi long term. Okay? So Qi is cellular energy. It's ATP, right? It's your mitochondria. Long-term use of THC depletes and damages your mitochondria. That's what Chinese medicine says. This is over 3,000 years old. It is absolutely accurate in this. By the way, this is why if somebody uses THC long term, that they think about the, the, the kind of old adage of, we'd see this on TV. I had a friend like this growing up in high school, started, you know, using THC. And then he became less motivated and less motivated and less motivated.

• 30:01Josh Axe?

  For a lot of people, then it leads to erectile dysfunction for a lot of men who use this, but it just depletes. It depletes your body. And so why do, why, why, why does somebody get lazy and lose motivation? Because their body is depleted. Think about when you're exhausted and tired. You don't feel like doing anything. You just want to chill and relax when you're exhausted. THC exhausts and uses up your body's cellular energy and ATP and wipes out your mitochondria. Now, listen, let's say you just had surgery, okay? And you need, you want to do something that's natural for pain. Doing a, you know, THC CBD combo for a few days rather than a more serious medication that's going to have further harm on your body or be even more, more, more severe in its side effects.

• 30:47Josh Axe?

  You know, to me, that's where it's medically approved and medically, it makes medical sense to me. But for long-term sleep in a very similar way as melatonin is not good nightly as a supplement.

• 31:00Josh Axe?

  THC is not good long-term for overall health. Now, it might have less side effects than conventional painkillers and sleep aids, but overall, it's not a vitamin, it's not harmless long-term. If you are having issues with sleep, as I talked about before, do everything you possibly can to get better sleep. Magnesium glycin, we talked about that. Also, if you've got chronic pain, turmeric and ginger, omega-3 fatty acids. If you're dealing with anxiety, start doing more breath work. Go to the Bible, read the Bible, meditate on God's word day and night. Right? Get outside more, get more vitamin D. This is the path you want to go down. Again, as a temporary, short-term, natural form of medication, it makes sense. It's not for long-term use.

• 31:45Josh Axe?

  Anyone else that tells you otherwise is lying to you. And here's where people get confused. They see studies and they say, you know, THC or CBD or again, CBD is a totally different category. That's typically fine for long-term use for more people. But THC for long-term use, they'll show you a study saying it had less side effects in this pain medication. Okay, that's great. It may have less side effects in the pain medication, but it still is going to have some side effects long-term. But here's the trend that is going to destroy your health. Using GLP-1s without the guidance of a functional medicine practitioner that's doing microdosing and helping you also change your lifestyle simultaneously. If you're not doing it that way, by the way, we don't even know the full studies. GLP-1s, we do not have true great long-term studies on all of the side effects it's going

• 32:30Josh Axe?

  to cause. All right, number two, nicotine rebranded as wellness. So here's the claim. Nicotine pouches and gum sharpen focus and boost performance. Listen, they're tobacco-free and they're basically a clean nootropic.

• 32:48Josh Axe?

  That's false. All right. Now, listen, I'm a big fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And all the amazing things he's doing as part of the Maha movement and part of the FDA and HHS. I really respect him and think he's doing a lot of great things. The nicotine gum pouches, there is going to be a side effect of those. And just because something is tobacco free, doesn't mean it's still not addictive. Listen to this. A study published in the Journal of Frontiers in Public Health. This is also from a Yale report. And what they found in the studies is teens are starting to use it. Also nicotine raises your heart rate, your blood pressure, and it creates dependency fast. Especially in developing brains in younger kids in their teens and twenties.

• 33:32Josh Axe?

  This is not biohacking. This is building a chemical dependency with a wellness label. Now, listen, here's the reality. Using a nicotine gum on occasion probably is not going to cause these major side effects. But for most people, they get addicted and they start using it on a daily basis. Here's the other thing I want to share with you, the Chinese medicine view, because we don't have a lot of long-term studies on nicotine gum pouches. The Chinese medicine view is when you're going to increase your heart rate, when you're going to increase your blood pressure, what happens is you dry up your fluids. What nicotine does is a side effect. Different herbs have different side effects. Nicotine dries up your body's fluids. It dehydrates you at the cellular level.

• 34:13Josh Axe?

  And what that does long-term is it leads to higher blood pressure, heart issues, dryness, ages, it ages your skin and body. And listen, you could go look this up for yourself. Use an AI tool. What would the side effects be according to TCM Chinese medicine of daily nicotine use? And you'll see it causes what we call a yen deficiency, which is a fluid deficiency. It also increases your risk of cardiovascular events over time. Here's what you want to do instead. If you want to focus, get a good night's sleep. Okay, that's where it starts. Okay, that will be any pouch, any day of the week. Get more time outside. Eat a protein-rich breakfast full of vitamins and minerals with things like berries and eggs.

• 34:58Josh Axe?

  And other brain boosting food, right? Do beetroot juice, do ashwagandha, some MCT oil and lion's mane mushroom. These are much, much better options for long-term performance without the side effects. And number one for trends that are harming our health, by the way, I have two bonuses after this. But number one is extreme detoxes. All right. So here is the claim. Flush the toxins out with a juice fast or a colon cleanse or a liver flush or a parasite cleanse, and just reset your whole system overnight. So here's the nuance, right? Again, the dose determines the medicine or the poison. You know, listen, I have a lot of friends in the wellness industry.

• 35:40Josh Axe?

  And so I have a friend and she always thinks that more is better. And so when she started hearing about coffee enemas, she started doing them every day, every day for months.

• 35:52Josh Axe?

  You know how depleting that is to your, the microbes in your colon? That's not healthy. Here's something to think about, okay?

• 36:01Josh Axe?

  This is a really important principle, one of the most important I've ever mentioned on the show here. Your body heals itself. What we're here to do is support your body. Okay, we're not trying to force it to do things. We want to support the body. That's what medication does. It forces your body to do something you don't want to do. A blood pressure medication is forcing your blood pressure one way. A statin drug is forcing your cholesterol to do something. You know what vitamins and minerals do? Vitamins and minerals support your organs in performing at their best. That's what a lot of herbs do. They help change your environment. They get your body in a position to where it can perform at its best. When you do higher doses or do a lot of these forced detoxes, you start putting things at such high doses, you're forcing your body to do it. Here's the reality.

• 36:47Josh Axe?

  No vitamin, no supplement, no detox heals you. Your body heals itself. If I get a cut on my hand right now, you know what? Vitamin doesn't necessarily heal that. My body heals itself. If you have a dead body, moments after somebody dies, the body stops healing. Why? Because the spirit within us, that's what heals us. Okay? Now herbs and vitamins and minerals, we need those building blocks your spirit does in order to put your body together, in order to heal. But they don't heal you. So a detox, it does not heal you. So the way you want to think about detoxing is think about what the Bible recommended for detoxing. Right? Proper sanitation, talked about doing some herbs here and there. And it talked about doing things like fasting. It's just supporting the body and doing what God already designed it to do.

• 37:30Josh Axe?

  So if you are doing a detox, often the times you don't want to do the highest dose possible, you will harm yourself. I want to share, I've done this to myself before. Before I knew what I was doing, okay, I started, this was, this was, uh, many years ago. This is like my first year in practice. I decided to do what I would call, it's just a very intensive, um, parasite cleanse, because I thought, oh, I have a parasite because I started having a few symptoms. Now, it turns out, I was just too stressed out. I was working too many hours and my cortisol was too high, so I started getting SIBO. But I didn't know that at the time, and so I did a really aggressive detox for a month, where I did every herb you can think of, black walnut, wormwood. I did diametaceous earth.

• 38:13Josh Axe?

  And then after that, I had loose stool for a year. Now, I finally got turned on to Chinese medicine, learned what I had done to myself, and completely healed my body within about, about a month. I mean, it took about 90 days, but really after one month, I was completely, almost completely healed. Once I learned what I had done to myself, but overall, I've harmed myself before, being too extreme in detoxes, and this is before I have the 20 years of experience that I now have and working with, you know, tens of thousands of patients. But here's the reality, more is not better, okay? More aggressive is not better. Think about just, think about how amazing God made your body, and just naturally supporting it and giving it what it needs. That's what most people need. Now, that's not to say if you have something like cancer,

• 38:57Josh Axe?

  or a major parasite or another issue, you don't need to go to, what some people would consider doing more extreme diets. Like I remember when, uh, you know, when, when my mom had cancer, or Jordan Rubin, a gross friend of mine, had cancer. You know, he was doing mostly green juices and salmon and avocado, almost every meal, right? And so that does seem extreme, but going at more extreme with food, or being very extreme with very healthy foods, is different than doing high dose herbs and colonics and a lot of these other treatments simultaneously. So listen, I am a fan of doing detoxification the right way. It's almost a daily detox. Like here's my, one of my favorite ways to detox, do a little bit of intermittent fasting. So listen, I'm a fan of detoxification periodically, right?

• 39:41Josh Axe?

  Your liver, your kidney, your gut, your skin, your lymphatic system, your colon, they all need support. Your job is to support them.

• 39:50Josh Axe?

  Not to force them. So drink more water, eat more fiber, get more steamed cruciferous vegetables. That's going to help detoxify a lot of things out of your body. Take a probiotic supplement, drink a little milk thistle tea, doing those things regularly, right? Sweat through exercise or using an infrared sauna, prioritize sleep. These things are naturally going to cleanse you and help you heal. Doing an aggressive detox oftentimes is not the best way to heal. So the reality is doing a short sensible, healthy eating plan and lifestyle plan is going to beat out the daily colonics and the juice only fasts and the mystery cleanse pills every day of the week.

• 40:33Josh Axe?

  All right, now I have two bonuses here when it comes to trends I want to hit on, and these are very important. Okay, here's the first one. Wellness, orthorexia. I had a roommate in post grad. This guy was, was at the time probably the most fit human I had ever met. And he was obsessive about it. Okay, it was an obsession. And later on, he was diagnosed with a condition called orthorexia. And it was a mental health disorder that crippled his life for a period of time. Now, I want to say this about him. One, I'm so proud of him, this person. I still know him. I'm still friends with him. And he overcame that in a really powerful way. And listen, he's still incredibly fit. He's still incredibly healthy. But it's not an obsession for him anymore. Okay? God's more important to him. His family's more important to him.

• 41:18Josh Axe?

  And it's not the greatest obsession of his life. But I know people, and especially, you know, I work out, I work out at home a lot, but also I go into the gym here in Nashville. Lifetime Fitness, and I do see some people in there, and I know, and you can see it in them, they have this orthorexia. And here's the claim that they'll make. Well, eating perfectly clean and optimizing every habit is just a form of discipline. Okay? And, and, and more control is always better. It's just not true. I can, can I tell you this? One of the single biggest things I see that causes disease today in people, and I'm talking about real serious disease, autoimmune disease, cancer. Is people obsessing over their health? Listen, you should be prioritizing your health.

• 42:00Josh Axe?

  You should not be obsessing over your health every minute of the day. It becomes negative. It creates medical conditions because what happens is when you're doing that, when you're obsessive, you're staying in a fight or flight state. You are driving cortisol high and that's making you ill. It's throwing off your hormones. It's damaging your recovery, not to mention taking away all the fun out of life and not living by God's design. And just so you know, by definition, orthorexia is an obsession with correct eating and being healthy. Okay, oftentimes these people can look at themselves in the mirror and there's a dysmorphia there and even how they look and appear, but they are absolutely obsessed and it drives chronic stress, social isolation.

• 42:43Josh Axe?

  So it's like you can't eat anywhere or yet you couldn't ever miss a workout for anything, nutrient gaps from over restriction and a constant low grade anxiety. And here's the irony, that chronic stress response elevates cortisol, disrupts sleep, strains relationships and can do more damage to your body than eating a piece of bread or missing a workout. So here's what you should aim for. Consistency, not perfection. Okay, it sort of follow the 80 20 or listen, if you want to go a little bit overboard, go 90 10, okay? But the 80 20 principle exists for a reason. Health is a tool for a bigger, fuller life. Health isn't the end goal.

• 43:28Josh Axe?

  Running to win the race and honoring God with your life, that is the end goal. Right now, we want to have great physical health to do it because you can do it longer. And we're called in the Bible to honor God with our bodies. It says in God's word, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We should honor God with it. But when you go and read the New Testament, even Paul says things like, listen, if somebody puts a food in front of you, eat it. The goal is to advance the kingdom of God. It's not to eat perfect every moment of the day. And I'll share, I'll share this with you. I was kind of borderline before I got married. And listen, I, I wasn't, I would say completely out of balance, but I was probably a little bit more of the, let's call it 98, 2%, right?

• 44:10Josh Axe?

  I did on occasion, a couple of times a year, I would, I would not eat perfectly, but I was very, very restrictive with my eating. And then I got married and Chelsea loosened me up a little bit. And now I follow probably more of the 90, 10 rule.

• 44:25Josh Axe?

  And so you know what? When we go to Italy, I have gelato and I have bread. And even now, even if we're not in Italy, you know, I, we have, you know, you call them cheat meals. I prefer vacation meals. We don't eat perfect. Our kids don't eat perfect. We eat really good. It's a big priority for us, but it's not absolutely perfect because we have more important things in our life. So listen, it's okay on occasion, eat birthday cake with your kids. Now, I know some of your kids may have severe food sensitivities. And so like my daughter, Arwin, you know, sometimes we, we've actually brought her own birthday cake, but sometimes she will eat the cake or cupcake at the kid's birthday party. Listen, here's what you want to be looking out for. Notice if eating clean has started to come with major guilt, anxiety and isolation.

• 45:09Josh Axe?

  Now here's the other thing I do want to say, don't go too far in the other direction though either. Right? We should be disciplined. We should be consistent. That's how you grow. That's how you get better. You should do the hard things. You don't want to do the easy thing. You just don't want to live on fast food and you don't, you don't want to just live on fast food and processed foods. So you are called to be disciplined. That's a virtue. That's a good thing. But again, what I would keep in mind is follow the 80, 20 rule or the 90, 10 rule. You know, here's how I did this in college. In college, I decided that I was going to eat great five days a week, follow a meal plan. And then on the weekends, or at least on Saturday, I was going to take the day off and sort of eat what I wanted. And sometimes still I would eat pretty good, but you know, if we were having pizza, I'd have pizza.

• 45:52Josh Axe?

  If we were having, you know, if we went out to a restaurant, I would just kind of get whatever I wanted. And so I would have kind of that six days a week. And let's call it maybe Sabbath. I took one day a week on Saturdays. And I said, I'm going to kind of eat what I want on Friday nights and Saturdays and do it that way. So listen, this works different for everybody. You might be a person right now and maybe you've got a recent cancer diagnosis and you need to be eating very clean right now. Okay. And, and, and not necessarily go off script too often. But long-term for most people, you want to follow that 80/20 rule and not fall into health being your God or your idol. Now, this last trend is maybe the most damaging trend of all. New age spirituality.

• 46:34Josh Axe?

  Manifesting tarot cards, you know, channeling spiritual guides. These are a huge trend today. And I've seen this trend growing now for a while where people don't want to plug into religion. They want to just tap into spirituality. Now, listen, there's a nugget of truth here in that we are spiritual beings. And we are created to connect with the divine. And we should be looking around with a spiritual sense, not just a physical sense. We should be walking around with a spiritual sense of what's going on in life. And a lot of people feel this emptiness in their life because they have not tapped into the spiritual or the divine, or specifically into God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. And so there's an emptiness there.

• 47:18Josh Axe?

  And so they're trying to find a way to fill that with spirituality. But the thing you're missing in your life is not any spirit. It's the Spirit of Jesus, it's the Holy Spirit. And when you find that, it changes everything. And the thing it does is, and here's why it's dangerous, it takes your eye off the truth. It promises peace, it promises healing, it promises power. But it points you inward, it's all about yourself as God. And that's just going to lead to more emptiness. It's like go and find yourself, right? That's part of that, that new age spirituality. It's find yourself, discover yourself. There are multiple truths happening at the same time. And I think it's absolute stupidity. If you think about this, people are opening themselves up to almost anything in any practice.

• 48:03Josh Axe?

  They don't even know what they're opening themselves up to, right? If you're opening yourself up to something in the Christian faith, for instance, you know, you're opening yourself up to Jesus. You're very clear about what that person is and what he's doing in your life.

• 48:17Josh Axe?

  If you're just practicing new age spirituality, what spirit are you opening yourself up to? Do they love you? Will they give their life for you? You know, think about it like this, I'm trying to think of who are all the world changers who are into new age spirituality right throughout history? I can't think of a single one, right? You look at the people that actually changed the world and did the most good in the world, you'll notice almost all of them were of the Christian faith. So here's the reality, you were made for real connection. Not with the universe, not with some other spirit, likely a demon, but with God who made it. And who knows you by your name? And if you are missing something in your life, you know, I love following Russell Brandon, looking at his conversion, what and how he has changed as a person for the good.

• 49:02Josh Axe?

  It's so powerful to watch and see in that very same way. That only happens with a very specific type of spirit and person in Jesus. And here's what the Bible says in 1 John 4:1, "Test the spirits to see whether they are from God." That's the first thing you should do. Next is 2 Corinthians 11:14, Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. There's a lot of people that are tapping into the spiritual realm as a trend right now. I think everybody from, you know, Taylor Swift to Chrissy Teigen, to a lot of people in Hollywood today, they are tapping into the spiritual realm. The question is, what spirit are they tapping into?

• 49:45Josh Axe?

  And this is important because your spiritual health will impact your physical health as much or more than anything else. So here's what you need to know about a lot of these trends. A lot of these trends, some of them hold a nugget of truth, some of them if done properly for the right people, they can be healthy. For some of them, they'll lead you down the wrong path and they're going to have major side effects. And so here are the patterns behind all 10, right? Oftentimes it starts with something real, right? Cold exposure, fasting, GLP-1s, even nicotine harm reduction. Most have a legit kernel that the marketing exploits. Okay, that's what happens. There's a little bit of it's true and GLP-1s can be, you know,

• 50:27Josh Axe?

  You know boosted in your body, it's a real peptide, but, but it's not used properly. Right. And then here's what happens. The dose makes the poison. A good tool used daily, when it's not supposed to be maxed out as people do it, or unsupervised, fails and causes harm rather than help. And here's the other problem with these trends. It ignores your unique biology, your sex, your age, your labs, your life, your stage in life. A protocol built for one body gets sold to millions. All right. This is why personalized medicine matters so much. And also, it oftentimes replaces the fundamentals, right? Every fix should come back to typically your spiritual health, your sleep,

• 51:09Josh Axe?

  getting enough protein and fiber, movement, sunlight, you know, recovery, your faith. The pattern is always the same. The real thing is taken too far and out of context and sold back to you as health. So here is the four question filter. Number one, who is selling it? Okay. Is there a product? Is there a code? Is there an affiliate link? By the way, that's not always bad. There's some great products out there. I take a lot of products, right? I take a lot of supplements. I, I use a lot of red light and, and infrared sauna and I do all kinds of things. But, but, but it's important to know. Okay. Number two, where's the evidence? Okay. Is there a real study, especially a human study that looked at it? Or thousands of years of evidence doing it this way?

• 51:53Josh Axe?

  Number three, does it fit my biology? My age, my sex, my labs, my condition? Is there a protocol for someone like you specifically? And number four, what are the downsides, right? Everyone's always talking about the upsides. What's the trade off, right? It's important to know what those are. So here's your assignment. Pick one trend you've been tempted by and run it through the four question filter before you spend another dollar or take another dose. Then double down on one thing that actually works for you. Tell me which one you're going to do in the comment section. And remember before you do a lot of these trends, it's important to build the foundation. Of a good diet, getting good sleep, reducing stress, spending more time outside,

• 52:36Josh Axe?

  build your foundation first. Now, listen, if you want the real evidence-based approach to healing your body at the cellular level, something I created for you is a blood work guide. Listen, I think one of the best things in order for you to know exactly what you should be doing, which diets will work, what bio hacks will work, what trends will actually work for you, is to actually get the right type of blood work done. And the problem is today, a lot of these companies, they're not running the right type of blood work markers. And so I put together a free PDF of the top 25 blood work markers that you need to know about in your own body. So you know exactly what's going on in your health. And also something I encourage you to do to help build the foundation for your cellular

• 53:20Josh Axe?

  health is I just wrote a book with Dr. Will Cole. It's called Heal Your Cells. And you can go on amazon.com and just search Heal Your Cells, Dr. Josh Axe. You can find the book there. And this book really is a deep dive in advanced nutrition, natural medicine, longevity, and goes through how to have radically great health the right way. And finally, I want to say this, I'm not trying to make you afraid of every health trend. I'm trying to protect you. What I want you to do is I want you to be able to focus on doing the things that matter most, the things that will really move the needle and help you experience your greatest level of health. And I want to encourage you to subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed yet, so you don't miss a thing. Also, we've been getting a lot of five-star

• 54:04Josh Axe?

  reviews lately. So thank you, all of you who are leaving those five-star reviews. If you haven't done that, we'd be grateful for that as well, along with sharing this with one person who really needs it. And finally, I want to encourage you to download the free top 25 blood markers guide. Just type blood work in the comments and we'll send you the link for free. I just want to say thanks so much for tuning into the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I want to encourage you, take care of your temple, and I'll see you on the next episode.