What We’ve Learned: Reflections from Our First 9 Episodes
The themes that came up in every single episode (and what it says about all of us)
Prefer to listen to a human conversation?
We started this project with a question we couldn’t quite articulate: why does so much health content on social media feel wrong, even when parts of it are technically true?
In our 10th episode, we have some answers. And some of them surprised us.
This episode is different. Rather than examining one viral health claim, we wanted to step back and look at the patterns — the themes that surfaced again and again across full-body MRIs, perimenopause, thyroid health, clean eating, clean beauty, and all the rest. Because once we started seeing them, we couldn’t unsee them.
We also wanted to be honest about something: we are not outside this. We are in it with you. We are also millennial women who have doomscrolled, who have felt that gut-level pull toward a clean solution, who have wondered whether our doctors were telling us everything. Having medical training helps — but it doesn’t make us immune. It just gives us slightly better tools for talking ourselves down.
So here’s what we’ve learned.
We Are Part of the Problem
This is the theme that came up in literally every single episode, and we think it has to be the starting point for any honest conversation about health misinformation online.
When people turn to social media for answers about their thyroid, their hormones, their anxiety, their fatigue — they are not being gullible. They are responding to a real unmet need. The traditional healthcare system has left enormous gaps: in information, in time, in validation, in the kind of deep, contextual conversations that actually help people make sense of their health. Social media didn’t create those gaps. It just moved in to fill them.
This doesn’t mean the answers people find online are good ones. Often they’re not. But if we as clinicians want to be part of the solution, we have to start by owning our part of the problem. The rushed visit, the jargon-heavy portal message, the referral that takes six weeks — all of it contributes to the conditions in which misleading wellness content thrives.
At the same time, we don’t want to make this a critique of individual doctors. Most physicians working within large healthcare systems have very little control over their schedules, their appointment lengths, or the time they can spend on nuanced conversations. The structure itself is the problem. And that structure is also notably absent from most social media health content, which tends to locate all solutions in individual behavior and personal purchasing decisions rather than in the systems that shape our health in the first place.
Health is biopsychosocial. Socioeconomic factors, structural discrimination, psychosocial stress, access to resources, the built environment — these are some of the most powerful drivers of health outcomes, and they are almost never addressed in either the exam room or the wellness feed.
Why It’s Going Viral
Every episode of this podcast has, at its core, the same underlying question: why does this resonate so much? And almost every time, the answer comes back to a few things.
People are seeking control in genuinely uncertain times. And social media is extraordinarily good at offering the illusion of control: a simple explanation, a buyable solution, a clear villain, a clear fix. Afraid of cancer? Avoid these toxins. Exhausted and inflamed? Here’s the supplement protocol. Feeling off in ways no one can explain? This one diagnosis — perimenopause, thyroid dysfunction, mold exposure — explains all of it. And then, almost immediately: here’s what you can do about it. Click here. Add to cart.
There’s also a deep cultural hunger for a one-stop explanation. We saw this with thyroid content and perimenopause content especially — the way a single diagnosis can feel like a revelation when you’ve been walking around with a constellation of vague, non-specific symptoms and no one has been able to make sense of them. That experience of finally having a framework, even an imperfect one, is genuinely meaningful. We don’t want to dismiss it. We want to help people find frameworks that are also accurate.
What the Science Shows (About Social Media Itself)
There are a few things we’ve come to understand more clearly after spending months in this space.
Fear-based content is algorithmically favored. It gets more clicks, more shares, more time-on-screen. “Go get your mammogram” is not going to outperform “Mammograms are secretly harmful.” This isn’t a conspiracy — it’s just how engagement-optimized systems work. And it means that our feeds are structurally biased toward health content that activates anxiety rather than reducing it.
The line between informative and fear-mongering is thinner than most people realize. A post describing a medication side effect, or a test your doctor might not be ordering, or an ingredient in your skincare routine can feel like education — and sometimes it is. But when context is stripped away, when risk and benefit aren’t discussed, when the information is accurate but the framing is designed to alarm, the net effect is often more anxiety, more distrust, and less confidence in the boring-but-effective basics of evidence-based preventive care.
We’ve also become more attuned to what we’d call the moralization of health and wellness. Words like “clean” — in clean eating, clean beauty, clean living — carry moral weight that has nothing to do with the science. They bypass the need for evidence and appeal instead to values of purity, naturalness, and virtue. As clinicians, we’re paying much more attention to the language we use around health, because that language shapes how patients relate to their own bodies and choices, often in ways we don’t intend.
Clinical Nuance
One of the hardest things about this project has been sitting with how much is genuinely uncertain — and how poorly that uncertainty translates to social media formats.
Risk-benefit calculations are not universal. Something that makes sense for a person with unlimited resources, full access to primary care, and a complete picture of their health history may be actively harmful for someone with limited income, no insurance, and a healthcare system that has repeatedly failed them. When optional, luxury interventions are presented online as necessary for safety, that framing causes real harm — it misallocates scarce resources, it displaces evidence-based care, and it shifts responsibility from systems to individuals in a way that ultimately protects the status quo.
We’ve also become more aware of how wellness content can function as a pipeline to more alarming places. The journey from “let me find a non-toxic sunscreen” to “can I really trust my doctor’s recommendation about this vaccine” is shorter than most people expect. The algorithm is very good at finding the next, slightly more extreme version of whatever you were just looking at. Radicalization is not a word we expected to use in the context of wellness. We use it now.
The Antidote
For Patients
It makes sense that I want answers about my health. Wanting more information is not a character flaw.
The healthcare system has real gaps, and my frustration with it is legitimate.
Social media can offer connection and information — and it can also amplify fear in ways that don’t serve me.
When I feel pulled toward a simple solution, I can ask: who benefits from this? What does the full picture look like?
I am allowed to ask questions, take my time, and hold uncertainty without immediately needing to buy something.
My health is shaped by far more than my personal choices — and that is not my fault.
For Clinicians
“I understand why you’re looking for answers in other places. A lot of people feel like the system hasn’t fully met their needs — and honestly, that makes sense.”
“Let’s talk about what drew you to this. I want to understand what you’re hoping to find out.”
“I can’t give you certainty about everything — but I can help you figure out what questions are worth asking and what next steps would actually help.”
“The goal isn’t just more information. It’s information that’s relevant to your situation, your values, and your actual risk.”
“You’re not gullible for finding this appealing. A lot of this content is designed to feel compelling. Let’s think through it together.”