People are aching for wellness. According to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. the alternative health industry’s market size is expected to reach $196.9 billion by 2025. A number this large points to the nature of the emergency.
The rising costs of conventional medicine, increased health consciousness, and the opioid epidemic are only part of the reason that a host of emerging therapies are being sought by people who want to manage their well-being.
Who, or what, will fill the need? Will it be a quiet room floodlit with candlelight and the smell of burning incense? Will it be Phytomedicine, Unani medicine, Siddha medicine, or Pharmacognosy? Or maybe it will it be Gwyneth Paltrow’s jade eggs between your legs, coupled with crystal healing?
Even as the benefits and ethics of unconventional healing therapies come under attack, they continue to gain momentum. That’s because there is a huge void in the wellness space.
Enter a new delivery system: The wellness podcast.
We’ve transplanted the following podcasts from our friends at Stitcher and turned them into living tissue with links. From diet to depression, all are illuminating, nourishing, encouraging, fine as light, alchemical, soul- and self-searching. These podcasts breathe words into lives in progress and heal aches that traditional medicine seems to have missed.
The New York Times has called Paul Gilmartin’s Happy Hour podcast “a perversely safe place in which [Paul] and his guests talk about their fears, addictions and traumatic childhoods.” This podcast is a space where gnarly traumas, mental illness, and addiction are openly discussed. The connective tissue in all episodes is comedian Paul Gilmartin, joined by artists, friends and the occasional doctor. Gilmartin readily admits he’s not a therapist. “This isn’t a doctor’s office,” he says. “It’s more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck.”
The Well Now podcast features conversations with doctors, wellness experts, and healers. “Empowered personal wellness that is never prescriptive and always empathetic,” is the brand’s promise. On each episode, health, wellness practitioners and integrative medicine experts explore root causes, treatment options, and alternative perspectives on a variety of health-related topics from anxiety to antibiotics.
After suffering a panic attack on live TV, ABC news anchor Dan Harris turned to meditation. His experience was transformative. It led him to write a book, create the 10% Happier podcast, and develop an app. All are called 10% Happier. Determined to bring meditation to the mainstream, Harris’ conversations with guests from the Dalai Lama to RuPaul offer advice and tools for how to tap into the benefits of mindfulness —even if it’s just one minute a day.
This podcast bills itself as an audio blog. The Optimal Health Daily podcast’s creators search the internet for the best and latest on fitness and health and then deliver the content right to your earbuds. Host Dr. Neal Malik narrates everything from the consequences of drinking cow milk, to your brain on a sugar fix, to the foodie’s guide to getting fit. You get to decide what is and isn’t good for you.
Do you long to be a bullet-proof superhuman? Then Dave Asprey’s podcast, Bulletproof Radio is for you. Every week, Asprey chats with guests ranging from world-class doctors, Olympic nutritionists, meditation experts, and biochemists to make good on the podcast’s promise: It is possible to make changes at the sub-cellular level to transform how you look and feel. It is possible to get healthier and disease-proofed with every decade, and dramatically extend your lifespan. Asprey claims to have tried all health hacks himself in order to find the simplest things you can do to be better at everything.
It’s only natural that leaders in the non-traditional wellness space have become early adopters of podcasting — itself an alternative medium — to tell their stories and to engage the exponentially growing community of alternative wellness seekers.
While traditional medicine may be late to the podcasting game, no doubt that somewhere inside the Mayo Clinic, at MD Anderson and elsewhere, doctors and researchers are hard at work investigating medical mysteries and translating their discoveries into therapies. In time, we’ll get to hear their stories as well.
In the meantime, people are listening to nutritionists, wellness practitioners, gurus, and comedians because . . . well, they want to feel better.
As BurstMarketing’s Chief Content Manager, Marisol guides the content strategy for your podcasts and develops engaging narratives that lead to audience growth. With more than twelve years of experience as a writer and producer, Marisol has created award-winning content for e-zines, magazines, videos and podcasts. As a former news reporter, she’s skilled in using storytelling to engage audiences.
