I was standing in the wellness aisle of Whole Foods – where it smells like earthy sage bundles – when I overheard it: “I don’t trust doctors, they just want to keep us sick. I only use natural remedies now.”

Cue my internal scream.

It was one of those moments when you want to whip around dramatically and say, “Natural remedies are lovely, but they can’t remove a tumor or monitor your heart rhythm.” Instead, I sipped my matcha latte and walked away – too grounded to argue, too experienced to agree.

Here’s the thing: I love wellness. I enjoy seasonal eating, I dry brush and gua sha (on good weeks), and I believe in the power of movement and meditation. But I’ve also spent years in clinical and research settings, where the magic is methodical – and healing had nothing to do with intuition and everything to do with evidence. And somewhere between breathwork and brain uptake, I realized: science and wellness can absolutely exist in the same space—but not if the wellness industry needs to discredit science to feel legitimate.

Let’s unpack this.

Once the underdog of health, the wellness world has ballooned into a $6.3 trillion industry—dwarfing Big Pharma’s $1.6 trillion—fueled by aspiration, anxiety, and an ever-expanding aisle of unregulated tinctures and tools. And while it’s done wonders to help us prioritize prevention and intentionality (hello, mindful consumption and digital detoxes), it’s also developed quite the anti-science edge. Somewhere along the line, the pendulum swung from “let’s support our bodies holistically” to “big pharma is evil and doctors and scientists are the enemy.”

But when did it become radical to believe in both herbal tea and healthcare?

It’s not either-or. It never was. In fact, we’re at our best when we hold space for both sides: when we take the probiotic and get the colonoscopy, when we track our cycles and listen to our OB-GYN, when we meditate in the morning and take the Zoloft if our serotonin’s on sabbatical.

Wellness doesn’t need to be a rebellion against science. It can be a dance with it.

So yes, I’ll keep sipping my lemon water and laying in the grass with my kids, watching bees pollinate our flower garden. But I’ll also keep an inhaler in my bag and stay up to date on my vaccines. Because true health—real, rooted, whole-body health—lives in the harmony, not the hierarchy.

And that’s what I wish I’d said in the Whole Foods aisle: You don’t need to pick a side. Just be honest about what’s actually working. What’s the truth?

Because in the quiet of this slower life, I’ve found that truth isn’t loud. It doesn’t beg for validation. It just is.

xoxo,

Jenn