Hypochondria has existed for centuries, but the growth of the health industry has Worrying and getting sick
Cecily*, 27, has suffered from a “debilitating” health obsession her whole life. “I feel like I constantly need reassurance that I’m not going to die,” she says. Cecily has struggled with these feelings since she was diagnosed with a chronic illness at age 15, but she feels that society’s growing obsession with “health” has only exacerbated her existing anxiety. In particular, she went through a period when she became obsessed with tracking all the health data she could get through her Apple Watch. “I was constantly checking my heart rate,” she recalls, explaining that she once ended up in the emergency room because her heart rate spiked due to anxiety. “In the end, they told me I was totally fine, I was just very anxious.”
From Cicero to Lord Byron to Charles Darwin, people have always worried about their health. Glass Bodies: A History of HypochondriaIn The 21st Century, author Caroline Crampton delves into the cultural history of health anxiety (or “hypochondria,” her preferred term), a mental illness characterised by a persistent, often unfounded fear that one is seriously ill. “The illness has undergone great transformations over the past 2,500 years,” she tells Dazed, explaining that physicians such as Hippocrates used the term “hypochondria” to refer to an illness that was thought to arise from a part of the abdomen called the “hypochondrium,” but that in the 17th and 18th centuries, scientific advances began to replace the predominant humoral theory. “By the early 19th century, hypochondria had become entirely a disorder of the mind, rather than of the body,” Crampton continues. “The sense that it was a mental illness has remained to this day.”
Hypochondria is not a “new” illness, but as Crampton points out, the rise of health culture has likely contributed to its prevalence. Research in 2020 The percentage of students reporting health concerns is on the rise at American universities. “Exponentially.” This grew from 8.67% in 1985 to 15.22% in 2017. “Wellness culture encourages people to see health as a perpetual improvement and to constantly monitor how they feel – two things that can increase anxiety and an obsession with illness,” she explains. “Instead of being grateful for the health and capabilities we have, we are encouraged to always strive for more, to constantly tweak and improve ourselves.”
This rings true for 23-year-old Helena. Like Cecily, she suffers from OCD, particularly obsessive thoughts about health. “I’ve always been prone to anxiety about my physical health,” she says. But she adds that viewing health content on social media made her anxiety worse. “I felt like I was helping myself, but in reality I was just pouring more money into the health industry and wasting my time online instead of doing things that would actually make me feel better.”
Broadly speaking, wellness encourages us to prioritize our health, which sounds good in theory. But as the industry continues to boom, it’s becoming increasingly clear that our obsession with being “healthy” may actually be making us anxious. We’re constantly encouraged to self-monitor, with new technologies allowing us to track our steps, calories burned, hours of sleep, and heart rate. At the same time, the definition of “health” is changing. Today, health no longer simply means “the absence of disease,” and with the rise of wellness, health is now commonly viewed as an ongoing project that should be worked on continuously.
“I There are many similarities between the supplements, diets and treatments recommended today and the quack medicines of the past.” – Caroline Crampton
“At one point, I was taking a bunch of supplements every morning, listening to nutrition podcasts and watching a bunch of ‘a day in a day’ videos by a model and personal trainer,” Helena recalled. [herself] She believed that not adhering to the strict routines and diets recommended by wellness influencers would “only make me feel worse, which in turn would make me more anxious.” “It was a vicious cycle,” she says. “The wellness industry is selling you this magic cure, but I think it’s just going to make you more sick.”
It’s not unreasonable to worry about your health – especially in the UK, where budget cuts to the National Health Service (NHS) mean the public healthcare system is less trustworthy and robust than it should be – but it’s important to note that the health industry is increasingly bent on stoking fear in order to sell “solutions” like quack medicine. “One doctor I interviewed described a lot of health information and treatments as ‘1750s medicine’ – there are a lot of similarities between the supplements, diets and treatments recommended today and the quack medicine of the past,” says Crampton.
It is also worth noting that many of the products and services marketed by the wellness industry are expensive and therefore only accessible to the wealthy. We have now reached a stage where private clinics are charging exorbitant fees. £400 for a ‘Comprehensive Health Profile’; companies like ZOE and Lingo advertise Continuous glucose monitor Apart from diabetes, in a recent episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, the elder member of the family, Kris, underwent a full-body “preventative” MRI scan to screen for potential health issues. The procedure cost an estimated $2,499“Today, there are certainly companies whose business models are predicated on the health anxieties of people with a lot of disposable income,” Crampton said, emphasizing that this is consistent with the historical view that hypochondriasis is primarily a disease of the wealthy.
“The type of disease you suffered from identified you as a member of a particular class as clearly as the type of clothing you wore,” Crumpton writes. A body made of glass“Inner symptoms, such as hypochondria and nervous disorders, were associated with refinement, imagination, and intellectual activity.” However, despite the long-standing association between social class and hypochondria, she emphasizes that the condition does not discriminate.Recent Research In fact, it has been suggested that lower socioeconomic status is associated with a higher risk of health anxiety, with the idea that a lack of regular access to quality healthcare options and health education leads to increased levels of uncertainty and anxiety,” she says.
Crampton, who suffers from hypochondria herself, stresses that there are affordable treatments available for those who suffer from it, as well as steps to stop it getting worse. “Personally, I know I have to be really careful about the accounts and publications I follow, as watching too much health content can easily lead to the same anxious thought patterns that I’ve worked so hard to avoid,” she says. “There’s so much health information out there, much of it unfounded, that it keeps us thinking about aspects of our bodies that we might not normally think about.”
Cecily says she’s also re-evaluated her relationship with the extreme side of wellness. “I know my limitations,” she says, adding that she’s stopped wearing her Apple Watch. Similarly, Helena has tried to put less pressure on herself and stop trying to “optimize” her life. “I try to see wellness as something different, as being happy with your life on your own terms.” […] “It involves sleeping in, going out at night, and eating ice cream rather than, or in addition to, hitting the gym or eating healthy, because those are the things that make me feel energized, grounded, and satisfied,” she says, “because can you really call it ‘wellness’ if it’s something that makes so many of us feel fundamentally unwell?”
*Name has been changed
Glass Bodies: A History of Hypochondria is available here.
