05/06/2026
1. “Listen to your body” without teaching women what to listen for This one sounds empowering but is often used as a cop-out. Women are told to listen to their bodies but given no framework for interpreting what they’re hearing. Bloating, fatigue, and cravings are data but decoding them requires education.
2. Elimination diets as first-line gut healing Removing gluten, dairy, legumes, and FODMAPs simultaneously isn’t healing your gut - it’s starving your microbiome of diversity. Long-term restriction often worsens dysbiosis. The research is clear: diversity of plant foods supports gut health, not the opposite. (FODMAP elimination can have clinical benefits but only when done for a short and controlled period of time.)
3. Alkaline diets balancing your pH Your body tightly regulates blood pH within a narrow range regardless of what you eat. The premise is physiologically incorrect. What alkaline diet advocates are often accidentally recommending is more vegetables and less processed food which is fine advice, wrong mechanism.
4. High-dose vitamin D supplementation without testing Vitamin D deficiency is real and common. But the wellness world has normalized megadosing without baseline testing or co-factor consideration. Fat-soluble vitamins accumulate. Taking 5,000–10,000 IU daily without monitoring magnesium, vitamin K2, and calcium is irresponsible.
5. Tracking everything for optimal health CGMs, HRV monitors, sleep trackers, food logging apps - none of these are inherently bad, but for many women they become a vehicle for anxiety and disordered eating dressed up as optimization. More data without better interpretation is just noise.
6. Magnesium glycinate fixing everything Magnesium is genuinely underconsumed and worth addressing. But the wellness algorithm has turned it into a cure-all for sleep, anxiety, constipation, cramps, and fatigue simultaneously. Form, dose, timing, and cofactors matter, and no single supplement resolves what’s often a broader nourishment or absorption problem.
