The other day, a friend of mine felt tired and decided she could only be made whole again via a drip from a well-known ‘infusion therapy clinic’ located in a posh area of Karachi. For some reason, she was convinced that unless she marinated her insides with the ‘hydration boost’ from the aforementioned clinic, she would not be able to continue to exist as a contributing member of society. For the unapologetic price of Rs 22,000, she bought the ‘light therapy and infusion’ combo and after an hour in an armchair hooked up to a drip, she emerged from her chrysalis with her chakras rehydrated and her nerves soothed. Her self-inflicted needle-routed nirvana reminded me of the placebo experiment conducted by Dr Beecher when 35% of his patients showed actual improvement after taking sugar-coated pills with no medicinal value. I guess belief in the remedy is half the cure.

If you can’t have a nurse pump hydration directly into your veins, you can make wellness choices when selecting the water you want to drink – because today, our good old H2O comes with much higher ambitions than just being plain water. A well-known brand advertises zinc-infused water that promises to fulfil 15% of my daily zinc requirements in just one small bottle! As a person who has always believed in positive zinc-ing, I have grudgingly bought into this marketing trap. And not only that. At the peak of my wellness hysteria, I dished out a handful of my hard-earned cash for the vague mystical benefits of ‘pink salt’, ‘shilajit’ (black bitumen) and ‘quinoa’.

The wellness industry is booming, and the formula for its superlative success is simple. Create problems that people don’t even know they have and then offer them miraculous solutions. Vagus nerve dysregulation? Do a cold plunge. Clogged lymphatic drainage pathways? Buy a dry brush. Anxiety and insomnia? Try healing crystals and a sound bath. Wellness trends designed to make us feel more grounded and whole are ironically forcing us to re-evaluate all our life’s decisions and sending us spinning into spirals of anxiety.

My husband recently bought a watch that tracks his sleep. Until this infernal object entered our lives, our mornings were spent in quiet coexistence – both of us getting ready for work, exchanging ‘to dos’ and sometimes a snippet of gossip or news. It was the humdrum of harmony… a pitch-perfect predictability I had come to enjoy. Now this watch and its role as a sleep spy has wreaked havoc on his peace of mind, my morning calm and frankly the harmony of the entire household. Hubby obsesses about how much he has slept – and according to that villainous little gadget he NEVER.GETS. ENOUGH. SLEEP. Our mornings have turned into panic-infused strategy sessions about improving his sleep score. Our curtains have been swapped for expensive blackout blinds, our blanket has been tossed for a weighted version (that feels like a plush night terror) and we now sleep with a pedestal fan droning constantly to produce ‘white noise.’ I guess nothing says wellness better than the constant stress about your sleep performance scores.

Like the proverbial Pandora’s box, the sleep-tracking watch has unleashed a new range of anxieties in our happy harmony. Step count, heart rate, oxygen levels. My husband now would rather pace up and down like an expectant dad outside the labour room than sit and enjoy post-dinner family time. “Just 800 more steps!” he yells as he huffs and puffs up and down a humid hallway staring at the watch on his wrist. Why is 10,000 steps the promised land? Who decided this? Well, guess what? This too is a marketing gimmick decided by a Japanese company that sells pedometers. They decided that 10,000 was a nice round number that would resonate in their marketing campaigns. And although walking daily is undoubtedly beneficial to health, there is no science behind the 10,000 steps mantra. Don’t believe me? Google it!

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in staying healthy and fit. However, I still have faith in using one’s own sanity and logic to maintain a balance.

Sugary treats and junk foods seem to have jumped onto the wellness bandwagon (or should I say smokescreen?) by using buzzwords that somehow make them sound nutritious.

A popular children’s cake brand added prebiotics in an attempt to magically transform the perception of it being a chemical-laden sugar bomb to becoming a ‘healthy option.’ Biscuit brands have added zinc or Vitamin A to their formulas to seem ‘technically’ healthy. And guess what? Consumers are blindly buying into this ‘healthier option’ loophole. Adding a sprig of parsley to a gulab jamun doesn’t make it healthy but who can argue with the power of wellness buzzwords? We all seem to be wearing kombucha-coloured glasses. I will even venture to calling the process of adding traces of Vitamin D, B12 or iron into unhealthy products and then marketing them as healthy as ‘health washing.’

Today, junk food, from noodles to cookies, cereals to granola bars, are glowing with nutritional upgrades that don’t make them healthy at all. At best, they are slightly less unhealthy. Saying do roti ki taaqat in a biscuit ad does not mean we should start swapping rotis for a cookie or two. And if something is nutritionally unhealthy yet contains some fibre, it should not be eaten as a part of any sort of wellness regimen.

When Maslow wrote his hierarchy of needs, the most important one was physiological, and according to him, to survive our basic needs are food, water, sleep and air – and he certainly wasn’t thinking of bio-hacked circadian rhythm optimisation, electrolyte replenishment or gluten-free, PH balancing nutrition. Simple foods like bread, meat, veggies and water are all we need to be well and healthy. At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualisation – in other words, personal growth, fulfilment and the achievement of one’s potential.

It is admirable that the post-pandemic world has become more health-conscious, but we must find a balance between the sublime and the ridiculous. Today’s slick wellness influencers are espousing tricks and hacks to transcend mortality itself. Brian Johnson, the multi-millionaire biohacker, has given his body over to overpriced science experiments in a quest to achieve eternal youth. His regimen includes daily blood tests, a monitored sleep routine and a last meal of the day at 11 IN THE MORNING! Followers of his ‘Don’t Die’ mantra are strictly told when to eat, what to eat and when to sleep. Sounds almost like a cult.

In the end, true wellness is – or ought to be – about peace of mind, happiness and a healthy, active lifestyle. It should certainly not be about overpriced supplements, detox teas and expensive wearable technology. We cannot allow ourselves to spiral into an existential dread every time we miss our 10,000 steps or forget to take our ashwagandha supplement in the morning. The fact is that ironically we are sick with worry about how well we are. An all-consuming obsession that may well be the unhealthiest thing to happen to us.

Fatima Haider has been working as a creative in advertising for the last 15 years.