When did Good Health Become a Business?

Why We’re Losing Real Wellness

I’m 69, but I feel 30. I run three miles without breaking a sweat, I’m not overweight, I follow a strict fasting routine, and my diet is low-carb with mostly unprocessed foods. By all measures, I’m healthy. Yet every time I sit down with my doctor, it feels like a battle. They want me on medications to tweak lab numbers and a constant battery of tests to track things that have little to do with how I feel or function. I try to explain that my vitality, endurance, and well-being matter as much as the numbers on a chart, but my words are brushed aside. “It’s standard protocol,” they say. Or, “You should just follow the guidelines.” I leave frustrated, feeling like a patient in a system designed for metrics, not humans.

I get it—doctors save lives. We need them for infections, injuries, serious diseases, and surgeries that no diet or supplement could ever prevent. But the modern healthcare system is increasingly about intervention over prevention. Fee-for-service models, pharmaceutical marketing, and government metrics can nudge even the most well-meaning physicians toward prescribing drugs and ordering tests rather than addressing real wellness.

And the ripple effects are growing. Many doctors are leaving hospitals and traditional practices to start out-of-network functional medicine clinics, focusing on nutrition, lifestyle, and prevention. These clinics are booming—estimates put functional medicine practitioners in the U.S. at well over 40,000 today, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. But because these practices are largely out-of-network and paid for out-of-pocket, they’re available mostly to the wealthy. True preventive care is becoming a luxury, not a standard.

Meanwhile, online health influencers are dramatically reshaping public perception. From Instagram to TikTok, millions of people are turning to wellness creators for guidance—often more than they trust traditional doctors. These influencers champion diet, exercise, fasting, supplements, and lifestyle strategies, making preventive care feel accessible, exciting, and actionable. The impact is huge: patients are starting to question the status quo, seek alternatives, and demand care that prioritizes health over numbers.

Contrast this with veterinary medicine. Farm animal vets cannot rely solely on drugs—they must focus on nutrition, environment, and biomechanics. Illness is prevented before it starts because long-term treatment is costly or impractical. Humans have far more access to technology and medications, yet prevention is often an afterthought.

Medical education is part of the problem. Doctors receive only a few hours of training on nutrition and preventive care over four years of medical school, while pharmacology, diagnostics, and procedures dominate. Chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity are often treated primarily with medication, not root-cause solutions.

Add insurance into the mix, and the stakes get scary. Some insurers already offer incentives—or penalties—for following recommended care. Government programs like Medicare tie provider compensation to compliance metrics, which can subtly pressure doctors to prioritize tests and prescriptions over actual wellness. Imagine a world where coverage depends on taking every test or drug prescribed—refuse, and your access to care could be limited.

I don’t want to paint doctors as villains. Most enter the profession to help people. But the system itself can push even the best doctors toward interventions instead of prevention. We need a healthcare system that values prevention as much as intervention, trains doctors in nutrition and lifestyle medicine, and aligns incentives with the long-term health of patients, not the number of procedures performed.

Medicine should be about health first, not revenue. Until the system changes, patients must take responsibility for their own well-being—but we also owe it to our doctors to give them the tools, training, and freedom to truly heal, not just treat. The rise of out-of-network functional doctors and the explosion of online health influencers show that people want real wellness—but right now, it’s mostly a luxury for those who can afford it.