Hey 5HTers After a week in Palm Springs post-Hawaii with family, I’m finally back in Austin. So glad to be back home so I can get back to my regular rhythm again. 🙏
Is wellness losing the plot?
To be clear, I’m aggressive pro health. I love a wearable. I love a biomarker lol. I love protein, sleep, zone 2 cardio, strength training, prevention, early detection, protocols, and basically anything that helps us not fall apart earlier than necessary.
But lately, wellness feels like it’s drifting from “how do I feel better” into “how do I remove every ounce of friction, risk, and messiness from being alive?”
Perfect sleep, perfect macros, perfect recovery, perfect skin, perfect fertility, perfect parenting, perfect everything. 🙄
And two very dumb/silly stories this week made the bigger problem hard to unsee.
First, Steven Bartlett told Chris Williamson three glasses of wine ruined three days of his life.
Not his evening and not his sleep that night. Three. Whole. Days.
He said he slept worse that night, ate worse the next day, his cortisol and dopamine were all messed up, his podcast suffered, and he skipped the gym.
Look, he’s not wrong that alcohol has downsides, is bad for you, and hurts sleep and recovery. That’s true.
Buuut also if three glasses of wine create a 72-hour systems failure because your WHOOP, dopamine, cortisol, gym streak, macros, and podcast flow state all collapse at once, maybe the issue is not just the wine. 🙃
Then, Gwyneth Paltrow went on TODAY and suggested diced arugula as a dairy-free substitute for parmesan in turkey meatballs.
Yes, arugula 🥬.
Food Network’s Sunny Anderson later responded by putting arugula in coffee on camera, which was an arugulably amazing response.
To be fair, Gwyneth obviously didn’t mean arugula can replace parmesan everywhere. She meant in this specific recipe. And goop, to its credit, posted a cookie 🍪 being dunked in a cup of arugula, so they’re clearly self-aware.
But still.
Together, these stories feel like part of the same bigger pattern: wellness taking a totally reasonable instinct and turning the dial up to 11 until it becomes a full-time job.
Want to sleep better? Great.
But now your sleep score gets to decide how you feel before you even ask your actual body.
Want to look better? Fine.
But now we’ve got men smashing their faces with hammers 🔨 and doctors begging people to stop vagina-maxxing.
This is the problem with maxxing everything.
It starts at self-improvement and then becomes self-policing.
It starts with “I want to feel better” and ends with “I can’t be trusted without a dashboard.” 🫠
And that is not actually the elite, “optimal” version of being healthy.
It’s a different, sadder game where the finish line keeps moving and normal human joys become threats. The last thing we want to do is destroy the fun.
There’s already a name for when “healthy eating” becomes an obsession—orthorexia (yes, it’s rising in prevalence)—but even short of that, extreme wellness can make your life worse rather than better.
And that worries me because healthier living is finally, genuinely going mainstream. More people care about protein, lifting, sleep, labs, metabolic health, hormones, fertility, longevity, mental health, brain health, prevention, etc.
This is good and a long time coming!
But if the public face of wellness becomes joyless, rigid, expensive, and completely divorced from how normal people live, we’re going to blow the opportunity.
I feel like I have to remind myself a lot that most people are not trying to become Bryan Johnson (just my friend William).
They’re trying to have more energy, feel less terrible, age better, be there for their kids, maybe lose a little weight, maybe sleep through the night, maybe not have their body betray them at 52.
That’s very different than turning your life into a spreadsheet you’re terrified to disappoint. 📊 And as the tools get better (Reta is coming in hot!), this philosophy matters even more—not less.
The question shouldn’t just be “can we optimize this?”
It has to be “what are we optimizing for?”
That’s why I keep coming back to healthyish.
Because that “ish” is load-bearing!
It’s the difference between having standards and living inside a prison made of them. Between using data and being used by it. Between doing the work and making health your entire personality.
Because health is supposed to give you more life, not less of it.
My friend Robin Berzin, CEO and founder of Parsley Health, said something on this topic in her latest newsletter that really resonated with me:
“I'm learning to inject slowness, sensuality, and fun-for-fun's-sake into the mix. The longevity I want — and the example I want to set for my kids — is about fullness of life, not deprivation.”
That’s the version of longevity I want, too.
Not the most optimized life, but the fullest one.
So yes, do healthy things please—lift weights, eat protein, wear the wearable, get your labs done, take sleep seriously, drink less, you name it.
Buuut also go to dinner, eat the parmesan lol, enjoy the glass of wine 🍷, put parmesan in your turkey meatballs 🧀 if you want to, miss the workout sometimes, experience the joy of missing out, and let your sleep core be a data point (not a verdict).
Maybe the next frontier of wellness isn’t more optimization.
Maybe it’s knowing when to stop.
And may you never lose the plot of your one wild and precious life (because I sure won’t).
🛒 Serotonin shelf
Here are three things I’m currently into this week:
Goodr sunglasses (I always buy the cheapest 3-set because I always lose ‘em!)
Beekeeper’s Naturals Propolis Liposomal Vitamin C (to combat any potential bugs caught while traveling back from Hawaii)
Eight Sleep Pod (there’s nothing like getting in your own bed after a vacation—and this link gets 5HTers up to $600 off)
🍿 Brain snacks
There are milk slices now.
Friend’s co Helaina partners with Nestle to fix their baby formula.
Hasan Minhaj asks Dr. Sanjay Gupta if longevity is a "grift."
Birth rate isn't just dropping, it's cratering! My other fave Derek (Derek Thompson) on this.
By the end of 2026, nearly 20% of all Americans will have used GLP-1s.
And 57% of the US owns at least one wearable, way more than I thought.
Smart take on how consumers are perceiving peptides as "wellness," not healthcare—and how providers need to adapt to this new world or they'll fail us.
Wealthy seniors in NYC are buying homes near their specialists of choice in a concept the WSJ (geniusly) calls “med-à-terres."
The WSJ also shares how NYC luxury condos are incorporating longevity offerings as selling points for buyers.
Stanford discovered a PAM gene variant that blunts GLP-1 response. Precision medicine, baby!
Melinda French Gates donates $215M to women's health.
Forage raises $40M to help more restaurants accepts SNAP benefits, which is sorely needed.
Peloton moves into pilates.
WaterOuai aims to disrupt bottled water with a microplastic-free can. I like it!
There’s a new "functional" cookie brand from the daughter of Mrs. Fields Cookie's founder.
Lots of launches…including these pretty cool next-gen earbuds for sleep.
Momentous updated its pricing, and I thought the messaging on the increase was well handled.
Could the Apple Loop fitness band be coming? This rumor says maybe (probably AI, though).
Remember when we talked about peptide stacks? The newest trending stack is supposedly called the “TRINITY STACK.” Yes, in all caps. 😂
Neko reportedly got a couple FDA clearances and is about to open its first location in NYC.
And Magic Spoon expands into protein oatmeal.
👋 Who are you again? I’m Derek Flanzraich—founder of two venture-backed startups in Greatist (👍) and Ness (👎). I’ve worked with brands like GoodRx, Parsley, Midi, Ro, NOCD, and Peloton. I now run Healthyish Content, a premium health content & SEO agency (among other things).
Every Thursday (and now Sunday!), I share healthyish things I feel strongly about. (Disclaimer: I’m more your friend with health benefits. None of this is medical advice.) Also some links are affiliate links, but they influence my decisions zero.
Oh, you also feel strongly about some health things? Hit reply—I’d love to hear it.