Snake Oil & Placebos: The Business of Belief in Health & Fitness
There’s rarely a minute in the day when we’re not getting bombarded by messages from people who want your money.
The irony here is that even this innocent little newsletter—about to warn you about the menace of marketing—is laced with strategies designed to get your hard-earned cash.
That’s right. My grubby little hands want it.
It’s natural to feel an aversion to that kind of attack. But if you peel back the outer layer, effective marketing has intrinsic value.
At its core, sales is the art of connection—linking people with genuine concerns to potential solutions.
Imagine dealing with a specific nuisance, and then a well-crafted message points you in the right direction.
For example, I like to listen to podcasts in bed, but I would always fall asleep and wake up with irritated ears and tangled headphones. I dealt with this for years until an ad for a Bluetooth headband found me. Now I happily slip it on every night for a bedtime story.
The Darker Side of Marketing
However, there’s a darker side—where strategies are used to mislead. Nowhere is that more evident than in the world of health and fitness.
To be clear, not all marketing is unethical. Good marketing connects people to tools, services, and information that legitimately improve their lives. The issue arises when messaging exaggerates risk, distorts science, or fabricates pathology to manufacture urgency.
1. Selling a “Cure” That Isn’t
The first deception comes from those peddling something that doesn’t provide a legitimate cure.
You can read about the fascinating history of snake oil. The term began with a traditional Chinese medicine made from water snakes that contained high levels of omega fatty acids and may have offered some therapeutic benefit.
But as it became known for reducing pain, artificial mixtures hit the market and were pushed onto desperate individuals looking for relief.
Here’s where things get interesting.
Even fake treatments can sometimes produce real improvements. The placebo effect is not imaginary—it’s measurable. Research consistently shows placebo responses can reduce pain, alter fatigue perception, and even increase strength or endurance performance when individuals believe they are receiving something beneficial.
That doesn’t justify deception. But it does explain why some products seem to “work,” and why well-meaning people can become convinced of their effectiveness.
And it’s not usually a shady charlatan. The people selling these products are often genuinely convinced they’re helping.
2. Convincing You That You Have a Problem
What gets me most fired up is the second tactic—the art of convincing people they have concerns that don’t actually exist.
These strategies make us fear normal human experiences and create unnecessary anxiety. The approach has become so common that we can discover a new “issue” every time we scroll.
Your posture is wrong.
Your hormones are broken.
Your metabolism is damaged.
Your recovery is suboptimal.
Your inflammation is out of control.
Most of the time, these are exaggerated, oversimplified, or manufactured concerns designed to create urgency.
A real problem in health and performance typically has objective markers, consistent symptoms, or measurable functional limitations. It interferes with your ability to train, compete, recover, or live normally. It’s not just a mildly imperfect data point or a normal fluctuation in energy.
When every normal variation is framed as pathology, we start chasing fixes we never needed.
And here’s the irony: this constant barrage of worry fuels stress—which may erode your health faster than most of the things you’re being warned about.
Chronic psychological stress is strongly associated with elevated cortisol, disrupted sleep, impaired recovery, and increased cardiovascular risk. In other words, fear-based messaging can quietly undermine the very performance it claims to protect.
A Better Standard
Keep that in mind anytime someone tries to sell you certainty.
As for us, we’ll point you toward what other people have to say to support the concerns we aim to address.
That means leaning on peer-reviewed research, acknowledging nuance, and admitting when something doesn’t work for everyone.
Overall, good marketing connects, whereas bad marketing manipulates.
