Society is demanding a change to healthcare, but healthcare is not listening; in fact, it’s doing nearly the opposite. For decades, patients have asked clinicians to stop with the drugs and propose other solutions: record drug sales last year. Patients ask that providers treat them as people: you are now given a wrist band and scanned like a grocery item. People used to demand affordable care, but now it’s just any care at all as wait times climb and needed specialists are nowhere to be found.

All of these requests have a commonality: they are all asking for help to be healthy.

Mainstream healthcare, or as it shall be called from here on in this paper – sick care – is not listening. Nor will they, as they have shown over the years. It’s only natural for people to look elsewhere to meet their healthcare needs, and the wellness industry stands ready to answer. But will the unregulated wellness industry, full of snake oil salesmen and self-proclaimed prophets, get its act together and answer the call of the people? There are early signs that the wellness industry may be answering, and if it continues on this course, it may discover that it replaces many aspects of what the Sick-Care industry claims to do.

By following the following steps, the wellness industry can continue to move into the space that sick care has left unfilled. They must recognize they are the chosen ones; they must adopt higher standards based on outcomes and clinical findings; they must answer the call by doing that which healthcare isn’t: affordable, accessible, and available.

Wellness industry must decide that they are the chosen ones, in marketing the Wellness Industry state that they are the chosen ones by making incredible and often unbacked claims. They must follow through. Individual players must also be an actor in the larger picture; for example, the gym operator currently views themselves as just a gym operator. Should the wellness industry answer the calling, they would view themselves as the facilitator of a patient’s dream of quitting blood pressure pills. The spa front desk manager sees themselves as a guard of the spa ambiance and not the lieutenant in the ongoing mental health war; the supplement salesman needs to recognize that their supplement is the same as the others, and they are lying about what it does. It’s not only recognizing the important role they play in this new world where healthcare is broken, but it is also adopting the standards that consumers can trust and rely upon.

The wellness industry must adopt higher standards based on outcomes and clinical findings and not cherry-pick the desired papers, create sham papers, or rely on the blind eye that the FDA currently gives them as a crutch. Further, it’s not just what the science says but what actually works and doesn’t work: bleach kills bacteria in a petri dish, but that doesn’t mean it should be consumed to kill an infection. The harshest truth while doing this is that the thing that works is rarely what the entrepreneur or operator (or patient) want. Health is not fair. Just because someone works out daily does not mean they will lose weight, their blood pressure will go down, or that they will gain muscle mass - they may need another intervention. The wellness industry, should they desire to make a difference, must recognize that they must go where the outcomes go. Listen to the outcomes. Adapt as needed, even though it’s inconvenient. This is where relationships between doctors and patients are difficult to navigate, but with centuries of being slaves to outcomes, doctors have gained a trust that is nearly bulletproof. Let’s face it, it’s not the lack of outcomes that is making healthcare fail, it’s a failed system. It’s a miracle that doctors are still trusted at all, but it speaks to their individual commitments to follow outcomes. But now, the sick care system is changing its ability to do that, so the wellness industry must.

Lastly, Wellness needs to stop serving the top 1% of the 1%. Coca-Cola and Nestle Foods are not the criminals behind the processed foods pandemic in the United States; it’s Whole Foods, Siggi’s Yogurt, Purely Elizabeth, and anything that says “Organic” costs more money than conventional. Coca-Cola, General Mills, and the other huge food companies are doing the impossible: feeding billions of people by any means necessary and creating options for the poorest of the poor to keep them alive. Meanwhile, wellness food brands thrive on markups, exclusivity, and being expensive. The same goes for nearly anything “wellness”. The market thrives on the rich and neglects the poor as if they do not deserve to be healthy. This is where sick care helps the most – these poor people must have some access, and sick care is it. For the wellness industry to meet its calling, it must be available, accessible, and affordable to all. To do so does not mean a bad business model; look at Planet Fitness, Chipotle (aside from their portions), and the emerging affordable wearables.

The unregulated wellness industry is the best positioned to go after the market that sick care is leaving behind. Its unregulated nature gives it the ability to do so, but in order to do so, the industry must shed its past. It must self-regulate, focus on clinical outcomes, and welcome the masses instead of just the rich. At that point, the US wellness system will have a path to go from the sickest nation in the world to a leader in health. All with a broken sick care industry.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans say health and wellness is a top priority. That collective intention has helped fuel a nearly $480 billion wellness market in the United States alone. And yet, despite the explosion of products, apps, devices, and therapies, roughly 60 percent of people report being dissatisfied with their current wellness solutions.

This gap is not a motivation problem. It’s an implementation problem.

Most people are trying. They’re meditating, wearing trackers, buying supplements, downloading programs, and investing in tools that promise better energy, focus, sleep, or resilience. The frustration comes when those solutions don’t consistently deliver. Over time, that disconnect creates skepticism, confusion, and fatigue in a market that was supposed to simplify well-being

At the core of the issue is a misunderstanding of how science-backed solutions actually work in real life.

Research continues to show that many non-pharmaceutical interventions can meaningfully improve cognitive performance, stress regulation, circulation, and recovery. But the presence of evidence does not guarantee effectiveness on its own. For a solution to work, it must be applied to the right person, at the right dose, with the right delivery mechanism.When any of those variables are off, the intervention fails quietly.

Take sensory-based therapies as an example. Visual therapy research shows that exposure to natural patterns and low-stimulus environments can reduce cognitive fatigue and improve task persistence. Yet scrolling past a photo of nature on a phone while multitasking is not the same as intentionally designing visual input in a workspace. The science holds, but the delivery breaks down.

The same pattern appears in sound-based interventions. Studies on sound frequencies and vibroacoustic therapy demonstrate improvements in relaxation, focus, and nervous system regulation when specific frequencies are delivered at controlled amplitudes for defined durations. In practice, however, many people rely on generic playlists or uncalibrated devices, assuming all sound exposure works the same way. It doesn’t.

Aromatherapy provides another clear example. Essential oils like peppermint and rosemary have been shown in controlled studies to enhance alertness and memory under specific conditions. But potency, exposure time, and individual sensitivity matter. Diffusing an oil continuously throughout the day can blunt its effect or even become counterproductive, despite the underlying science being sound.

Even mechanical interventions like vibration plate therapy illustrate the same issue. Research supports short, low-frequency vibration sessions to improve circulation and reduce stiffness during prolonged sitting. Yet without proper frequency settings, session length, and posture, the same device can deliver little benefit at all.

This is where much of the wellness market falters. Products are often marketed as universally effective, when in reality they require calibration. Human biology is not one-size-fits-all, and neither are evidence-based interventions.The path forward isn’t abandoning wellness tools. It’s demanding better alignment between research, personalization, and delivery. Science-backed solutions need to be matched to people who can benefit from them, integrated into daily life in realistic ways, and delivered through devices designed to produce specific, measurable effects.When those pieces come together, wellness stops feeling like guesswork and starts functioning like applied science.

That gap between intention and outcome is where the next generation of health and wellness solutions will be built. And it’s where companies focused on precision, calibration, and evidence, like the emerging offerings from Vital Element, have the opportunity to bring clarity to a very noisy market.
At the core of the issue is a misunderstanding of how science-backed solutions actually work in real life.Research continues to show that many non-pharmaceutical interventions can meaningfully improve cognitive performance, stress regulation, circulation, and recovery. But the presence of evidence does not guarantee effectiveness on its own. For a solution to work, it must beapplied to the right person, at the right dose, with the right delivery mechanism.When any of those variables are off, the intervention fails quietly.

Take sensory-based therapies as an example. Visual therapy research shows that exposure to natural patterns and low-stimulus environments can reduce cognitive fatigue and improve task persistence. Yet scrolling past a photo of nature on a phone while multitasking is not the same as intentionally designing visual input in a workspace. The science holds, but the delivery breaks down.

The same pattern appears in sound-based interventions. Studies on sound frequencies and vibroacoustic therapy demonstrate improvements in relaxation, focus, and nervous system regulation when specific frequencies are delivered at controlled amplitudes for defined durations. In practice, however, many people rely on generic playlists or uncalibrated devices, assuming all sound exposure works the same way. It doesn’t.

Aromatherapy provides another clear example. Essential oils like peppermint and rosemary have been shown in controlled studies to enhance alertness and memory under specific conditions. But potency, exposure time, and individual sensitivity matter. Diffusing an oil continuously throughout the day can blunt its effect or even become counterproductive, despite the underlying science being sound.Even mechanical interventions like vibration plate therapy illustrate the same issue. Research supports short, low-frequency vibration sessions to improve circulation and reduce stiffness during prolonged sitting. Yet without proper frequency settings, session length, and posture, the same device can deliver little benefit at all.This is where much of the wellness market falters. Products are often marketed as universally effective, when in reality they require calibration. Human biology is not one-size-fits-all, and neither are evidence-based interventions.

The path forward isn’t abandoning wellness tools. It’s demanding better alignment between research, personalization, and delivery. Science-backed solutions need to be matched to people who can benefit from them, integrated into daily life in realistic ways, and delivered through devices designed to produce specific, measurable effects.

When those pieces come together, wellness stops feeling like guesswork and starts functioning like applied science.That gap between intention and outcome is where the next generation of health and wellness solutions will be built. And it’s where companies focused on precision, calibration, and evidence, like the emerging offerings from Vital Element, have the opportunity to bring clarity to a very noisy market.