Wellness Products That Are a Waste of Money

As I have gone through these last few years of science classes and have learned more about how the human body works, I have become increasingly amazed at some of the unnecessary products marketed to otherwise healthy people.

So…let’s run through some of them today! 

Note: I do actually have some newbie credentials to speak on this type of topic now (oh hey, look at me with an R.N. degree!) but I’ll also do my best to link to other resources that back up what I’m talking about. However, I’m not functioning in a healthcare role here in this post! I’m just explaining why I think these products are a waste of money.

If you disagree with me, no problem, but you’d better come at me with a biology-based explanation for why you think I’m wrong. 😉 

Canned Oxygen

I have seen these products marketed as an energy booster or for athletic recovery (for about $10/can!), and this always makes me raise my eyebrows.

Here’s why: imagine that your red blood cells (which are traveling to your lungs for oxygenation) are like a bus with four seats. Each cell can carry four oxygen molecules. 

When the blood cell has four oxygen riders, it’s full. It’s 100% saturated. No matter how much more oxygen that cell is exposed to, it cannot accept any more riders. 

On normal room air, which is about 21% oxygen, your blood cells are typically 95%-100% saturated with oxygen. 

Regular air provides plenty of oxygen riders for your red blood cell buses, and if you breathe in more oxygen than you need, it will get exhaled.

So, for an otherwise healthy person, there is really no reason to buy 100% oxygen in a bottle. 

Just breathe. It’s free.

(Obviously, there are legit medical uses for oxygen. I’m just saying that healthy people, at normal altitudes, are not likely to benefit from it. Save your money! Also of note: in the hospital, we are constantly trying to wean people off of oxygen. Evidence-based practice shows that breathing on your own, with room air, is ideal if possible, so we persistently try to get people to that state.)

One more thing: at least some percentage of people who say they feel better from using this product are probably experiencing both a placebo effect and also the benefits of taking deep breaths while using the product.

I’m just saying…you can pause and take deep breaths of room air for $0. 

• University of Colorado article on canned oxygen
• Missouri Poison Center article touching on the risks

Products meant to make you alkalinic

(like…alkaline water.)

You can’t really change your body to an acidic or alkalinic state. Human bodies are always working to maintain a state of homeostasis, and that includes maintaining a pretty tight control over our ph levels (7.35-7.45, baby!).

If your system pH starts to get lower (acidic) or higher (alkalinic), your body has systems to adjust and adapt to bring your pH back into the normal range. 

So, if you are an otherwise healthy person, any efforts on your part to change your body’s pH will be pointless because your body will just go to work counteracting those. It’s like putting ice on a heating pad; the heating pad is just gonna keep winning out over the ice. 

And if your body systems fail and can’t do these corrections for some reason, you are in big trouble! Lots of things go haywire when your body is out of that 7.35-7.45 range; it’s not a path to health.

About alkaline water specifically: water goes straight down into our stomachs, which are super-duper acidic; I can’t imagine that alkaline water stands a chance against the acidic nature of the stomach!

Also, once the stomach empties, the pancreas dumps bicarbonate on the contents to neutralize them so that they don’t eat away the lining of our intestines. 

• Harvard article on alkaline water
• Healthline article on alkaline water
• University of Texas Article on an alkaline diet, explaining why our diet doesn’t change our blood ph

Wellness IVs

For a healthy person who is able to eat and drink and has a properly functioning digestive system, I think wellness IVs are an unnecessary waste of money. 

And here is why: in the hospital, we sometimes put people on IV fluids, or sometimes we feed them straight through their veins (it’s called TPN).

However, we do this as a last resort, when oral eating and drinking is just not working. I haven’t met a single healthcare professional who thinks it is ideal for patients to have their food and fluids go smack-dab into their veins. 

If it were so great to bypass the digestive system, wouldn’t all the performance athletes skip eating and just go on TPN and IV fluids?

We have a digestive system for a reason! And unless you have an underlying problem, it actually works super well and has some pretty nice features. 🙂

For example, a lot of what you take in by mouth gets sent to the liver, which works as a detoxifier. And fluids are continually getting sent through the kidneys, which decide whether to keep or get rid of water to maintain the appropriate balance for you.

For hydration: you could just, I dunno, drink something. Tap water. Bottled water.

Heck, for the price of a wellness IV, you could buy Very Fancy Spring Water and still save money. 

Unless you have some other health problem going on, you can just hydrate through your mouth and your body will put the water where it needs to go. 

For amino acids and vitamins and electrolytes…you can also just get those orally by eating food. And if you’re thinking, “Oooh, but I want a mega dose!”….if you get a mega dose of those, your body is generally just gonna adjust by getting rid of the extras. 

(Unless they’re fat-soluble vitamins, which hopefully they are not giving through those IVs!)

I know people go to these places and say, “Oh, I felt so much better afterward!” But that fails to take into account the placebo effect and also the effect of sitting quietly in a pleasant environment in a massage chair for a half hour. 😉

Anecdotes do not equal data.

(Also worth noting: putting stuff directly into people’s veins is serious business. Doing so bypasses all the safety guards of the digestive system. So, we have lots of outward safeguards in healthcare to make sure we don’t hurt people when we use their veins, and to make sure we don’t overload them with fluids.)

• University of Colorado article about wellness IVs
• Mayo Clinic article about IV therapy

I’m not saying these will hurt you

While there are some small risks to some of these treatments, most of them seem pretty harmless to your body.

But they are not harmless to your wallet, and that’s my point. 

You can save a whole lot of money by breathing room air, drinking (regular) water, and eating nutritious foods that provide vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, peptides and more.

Fewer “wellness” gimmicks, more groceries (and more deep breaths).

The end. 

P.S. My gut tells me this post may be a little controversial. And I’m at hospital unit boot camp all day today, which means I can’t closely monitor comments. So…whatever level you feel like coming in at, maybe tone it down a step or two to help keep things in order until I get off of work. 😉