Wellness is big business. Everybody wants it and there are many providers ready to offer a route to the panacea. In addition, disinformation and lax regulations have allowed health and wellness products to flourish and prosper without the rigor and evidence requirements of prescription medicines. While some vendors are prosecuted for their misleading claims, very few of the punitive damages are large enough to stop the promulgation of these products.  Worse still, quite a lot of the products reappear again and again, in different guises. 

The same range of products will get marketed as cures for long COVID.

Ingestible health products are the most pervasive culprits. Everything from vitamins to plain old water. For example, there are many multivitamin supplements on the market today similar to the ones Greenlife Wellness/Naturecare Wellness promoted in 1994 with the same false claims. 

Humble water has now been elevated to a therapeutic intervention for wellness beyond its important role as a hydrator and facilitator for taking tablets. This case can be made only if some waters are purported to be better than others . That’s just what Coca-Cola did. Without any scientific evidence, Coca-Cola claimed its Vitamin Water promoted healthy joints and reduced the risk of eye disease. They were fined $2.7+ million in a class-action lawsuit for misleading claims, which was probably a drop in the profits of the bottled water ocean.

The epidemic of unsubstantiated health benefits goes beyond ingestibles. The market  for health-promoting wearables is just as infected with false claims. Take the large and lucrative  sneaker market. Players big and small have to find an edge to gain market share. Both New Balance and Sketchers were fined millions for asserting that their sneaker “increases calorie expenditure; increases muscle activation; tones muscles of the lower limbs” (New Balance) and “promotes weight loss; strengthens and tones muscles” Sketchers). A quick scan of the e-market shows that new competitors in the sneaker market are coming up with similar outrageous claims.

Seemingly incurable diseases also attract snake oil merchants, as desperation increases with increasing disability. Take dementia. Lumos labs, the creators of the Luminosity Brain Training program were fined $2 million for purporting that the program “prevents Dementia/Alzheimer’s; improves work/school performance”.  

It is only a matter of time before the same range of products get marketed as cures for long COVID.

Regulation is only as good as the education and enforcement activities that accompany it. In an increasingly consumer-driven healthcare environment, there will always be insufficient funding and will by regulators to do so.