Doctors vs. Influencers: Who's Shaping Our Health and at What Cost?

I haven't had a consistent primary care doctor since I turned 18 and moved on from the pediatrician I'd seen since birth. 

Though I get a yearly physical, it's typically with a new doctor every time, depending on my location, who's available, my insurance and which office picks up the phone, usually after several calls and endless hold music. Timely appointments are tough to come by, so if I need more immediate attention, I'll head to an urgent care.

When I finally do get to see a doctor, it's a cold, clinical experience in a white cube of a room, more often than not with a doctor who's a stranger. 

Compare that to videos from wellness influencers effortlessly floating across your phone screen, making longevity, happiness, less bloating, glowing skin, long hair and a strong immune system seem as easy as taking a supplement with your lemon water.

Answers to our pressing medical questions have never been so convenient and alluring.

I'm sure many people can relate to the struggle to find quality health care information and providers. According to a 2023 study by the National Association of Community Health Centers and HealthLandscape at the American Academy of Family Physicians, over 100 million Americans, about one-third of the US population, face barriers to accessing primary care. Even more alarming, this number has almost doubled since 2014.

Dr. Mike Varshavski, known as "Doctor Mike," is a board-certified family medicine physician with over 29 million social media followers. He says multiple factors have contributed to health care's inability to provide people the answers they seek. These include solo practice family medicine physician offices closing or being bought out, fallen reimbursement rates by insurance companies and the administrative burden facing family medicine physicians. Family medicine is one of the lowest-paying specialties, making students less inclined to pursue it. 

The obstacles to access primary care also loom larger for women and BIPOC communities, particularly Black women, who are more likely to experience medical gaslighting, making them less likely to trust a doctor in the future. 

Trust is a significant difficulty when accessing health care.

"Survey data indicates that trust in institutionalized expertise has been in decline in the US since the 1950s," says Stephanie Alice Baker, associate professor of sociology at City St George's, University of London. "Throughout the late 20th century, a series of scandals involving the pharmaceutical and food industries has sown distrust about the financial and political motives of scientific and medical institutions." 

This distrust was further cemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Pew Research Center, confidence in scientists acting in the public's best interests dipped by 14% between April 2020 and fall 2023. 

Yet right within our grasp, tens of millions of videos on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram feature people whose lives have allegedly been improved by a wellness ritual or product. Collectively, they promote all aspects of wellness, a multitrillion-dollar industry that encompasses mental wellness, healthy eating, physical activity, wellness tourism, weight loss, homeopathic and naturopathic alternative medicine, personal care, beauty and more. 

But these videos don't always have your best interests in mind. There's a wide spectrum of creators and motivations, ranging from medical professionals who may have corporate sponsorships or be promoting their own products, to those with dubious intentions: influencers with little or no medical training who accept gifts or run ads for the companies whose products they're promoting. They could also be pushing their own products first and actual wellness second.

The Federal Trade Commission requires that any relationship between an influencer and a brand be disclosed in a manner that viewers can see and understand, such as with #ad or #sponsored. Yet, regardless of the disclosures, these wellness videos give the impression that every aspect of your health is in your control.

"What wellness influencers do very well is make it seem like if you do X, you will be healthier," says Jessica B. Steier, who holds a doctorate in public health and is the founder and host of Unbiased Science and executive director of the Science Literacy Lab. "It makes people feel like they have a ton of control over their health, and that's empowering."

It's no wonder we get drawn in, lured down the rabbit hole into a trap of misinformation if the influencer doesn't have their facts straight — or worse, is intentionally misleading us. 

When misinformation spreads like a virus

As a journalist who's covered health, wellness and lifestyle for the past 11 years, I've reported on countless wellness trends. What I've learned from the doctors I've interviewed is that what's most important isn't the trend of the moment, but the basic tenets of a healthy lifestyle, such as a balanced diet, exercise, sleep, stress management and community. But these aren't the magic bullets that make wellness trends so marketable. 

Though overcoming the obstacles to accessing a primary care doctor can be frustrating, it's essential to have a medical expert you can trust, so you don't end up relying on uncredentialed influencers who may promote the latest wellness trends for their own benefit. Or misinformation that could actually put your health at risk.

I asked Brian Southwell, a distinguished fellow and lead scientist for public understanding of science at RTI International and an adjunct professor of internal medicine with Duke University, how he would define misinformation. He points me to a definition he worked on in a 2025 consensus study with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine: 

"Misinformation about science is information that asserts or implies claims that are inconsistent with the weight of accepted scientific evidence at the time (reflecting both quality and quantity of evidence)."

One infamous source of health care misinformation online was Belle Gibson, an Australian wellness influencer whose story inspired the Apple Cider Vinegar series on Netflix. In 2013, at age 22, she lied about having terminal brain and other cancers to her Instagram followers, claiming that instead of treating her supposed illnesses with chemotherapy and radiation, she was healing herself naturally with a healthy diet. From there she launched her wellness app, The Whole Pantry, and a cookbook, earning half a million dollars in less than two years.

Fitness influencer Brian Johnson is also known as Liver King on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. In 2021 he promoted that consuming raw animal organs, performing fitness challenges, getting back to an "ancestral" lifestyle and, naturally, consuming supplements from his brand with a $100 million annual turnover could give his followers a muscular body like his own. In 2022, leaked emails revealed that the then-43-year-old had been injecting himself with performance and image-enhancing drugs like steroids and human growth hormone.

The lifestyles that influencers encourage have even resulted in death. Paloma Shemirani died at age 23 from a heart attack caused by an untreated tumor after refusing chemotherapy in favor of an alternative cancer treatment called Gerson therapy — coffee enemas, supplements and a plant-based diet with raw juices — as recommended by her mother, Kate Shemirani, a conspiracy theorist and known anti-vaccine influencer. 

There have also been anti-vaccine influencers who died because of COVID-19. There was Dmitriy Stuzhuk in 2020, who told his followers that COVID-19 wasn't real, and Cirsten Weldon in 2022, who spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about the illness. 

Knowing who to trust in the world of wellness has become even more complicated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s appointment as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr. is not a medical doctor and has no background in medicine. He also surrounds himself with wellness influencers who promote the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Why might people trust wellness influencers more than their own doctor? When I asked Dr. Garth Graham, cardiologist, researcher, public health expert and director and global head of health care and public health partnerships at YouTube and Google Health, he referenced the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health. 

The report, which included over 16,000 participants across 16 countries, found that people consider someone a legitimate health expert not only when they have academic training, but also when they have personal experience with health issues. 

"People trust information from people who are similar to them or at least can empathize with their own cultural or personal experiences, so that opens the room for a diversity of voices to be able to contribute to that," says Graham.

Among the 73% of Edelman report participants who see a clinician regularly, 53% feel that their doctor is "slightly or not qualified" to care for all their health problems, including physical, mental, social and environmental issues. If their doctor can't address an issue, 65% of these people said they turn to non-institutional sources like friends and family, online searches and social media. 

Though it may seem like it, keep in mind that not everything on social media is misinformation. 

"Headlines might sometimes suggest that we're totally inundated with misinformation, and I'm not sure that's an accurate statement," Southwell says. "I think that there is a lot of information that we don't necessarily pay attention to, but that is accurate and useful."

Your likelihood of encountering misinformation becomes a problem when you consider that, according to a 2025 health information and trust tracking poll conducted by nonprofit information organization KFF, which included 1,283 US adults, 55% of adults say they use social media to access health information and advice, at least occasionally. This includes larger shares of young adults and Black and Latinx adults. 

Edelman reports that young people aged 18 to 34 were twice as likely to listen to uncredentialed advice as adults over 55. At least once, 58% of people in this age group said they regretted a health decision they made based on misinformation. 

The tricks and tech of the wellness trade

We all gravitate toward trusting people with shared experiences. But on social media, there are additional factors that lure us in. As many seek out health information that will heal us and reverse the clock on aging, ironically, what it often comes down to is time.

"People spend about 2 hours a day on their phones on social media … They see influencers. I'm a physician and I'm online, so they'll see me too, but they'll see these people who look approachable and relatable," says practicing pediatric allergist and clinical immunologist Dr. Zachary Rubin, a medical educator on social media with close to 4 million followers. "They start to develop this parasocial relationship where they think they actually know this person when, really, they don't."

After all, you might listen for hours to an influencer you follow online, compared with only 15 minutes with your own doctor.  

Wellness influencers speak with authority and confidence, provide easy solutions to complex problems and oversimplify nuanced information. Baker wrote about this in her 2019 book Lifestyle Gurus. 

"The three A's (the impression of authenticity, accessibility and autonomy) are central to how influencers establish trust and intimacy with their followers," Baker says.

Influencers also make it seem like they're on the same level as you, says Mariah L. Wellman, assistant professor in the College of Communication at Michigan State University, who is writing the book In Search of Wellness: Social Media Influencers and the Transformation of an Industry. The power dynamics in a patient-doctor relationship aren't there with wellness influencers.

This makes it much easier for wellness influencers to develop relationships with their followers. They have the time to do so compared to doctors who see patients all day for only short pockets of time. Posting a video that lacks research and evidence also doesn't take up as many hours as researching and providing evidence-based information. 

A network of credentialed health care influencers called Fides was created in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic by Andrew Pattison, team lead of digital channels in the Department of Digital Health and Innovation at the World Health Organization. 

Fides — which comes from the phrase "bona fide," meaning "in or with good faith" in Latin, and is also the name of the Roman goddess of trust, faithfulness and good faith — aims to create quality health content that counteracts health misinformation with evidence-based information.

"To create misinformation takes minutes. To debunk misinformation sometimes takes weeks," Pattison says. "To create good health content takes time, effort, knowledge and research, whereas to create health misinformation, you can do it in 5 minutes and all you need is a phone."

Wellness influencers also know how to use technology to their advantage. "These influencers that I follow are utilizing every part of the apps possible to push their narrative and sell their products," says Mallory DeMille, a correspondent for the Conspirituality podcast and a social media creator who uses her background in marketing, communications and social media to post videos that call out problematic wellness influencers. 

Consider the influencers you see using TikTok Shop to promote wellness products. According to Capital One Shopping's research, about 79% of US TikTok Shop products are in the health and beauty category. 

Those products are supposed to be bound by TikTok Shop rules that prohibit promoting content if it includes medical claims, exaggerated promises, weight management products, phrases or implications about treating or preventing any disease or claims that imply certain products have pharmacological, immunological or metabolic effects.

I put this to the test by searching for "weight supplements" on TikTok Shop. I came across Kourtney Kardashian's "Lemme Burn" (which I now receive constant ads for in my feed). When I click on the product, a video voiceover tells me that since the creator started taking the supplement, they no longer have a sweet tooth and have become a whole new person three months postpartum. Text over the video says "summer body coming right up." 

When I click on the account, @mbti.dose, it's obvious that it's not a real person. There are countless videos with hands holding various products and different voices encouraging you to buy them.

The TikTok Shop description says Lemme Burn is scientifically formulated to activate metabolism and support healthy body composition, with the disclaimer that it's best used alongside healthy eating and exercise. According to its website, the supplement helps "fight belly fat."

Is this not a weight management product claiming to have metabolic effects? 

When I asked TikTok about that, a spokesperson merely pointed to the company's community guidelines and TikTok Shop policies, saying that if prohibited content is found, it will be removed.

Meanwhile, the FDA lacks the authority to approve supplements before they're sold to the public.

Whether promoting products or sharing their opinions and experiences, influencers have the time to use the tech at their fingertips to create content that's as engaging as possible. They're running laps around health care professionals who are doing their research and exercising caution as they fight misinformation with their own videos. 

"[The person spreading misinformation], generally, is thinking, 'I'm going to use cool transitions. I'm going to use hooks. I understand what a hook is. I'm going to use emotions that will get people excited, scared or worried … and cool music and cool trends,'" says Pattison. "Anything that makes you excited is going to be engaged content, whether it's fear or excitement."

Ultimately, wellness influencers give their viewers a sense of control and create an emotional response. According to Steier, the COVID-19 pandemic compounded this. Along with epidemiologist and data scientist Kaitlyn Jetelina of Your Local Epidemiologist, Steier co-founded The Evidence Collective of science communicators to combat misinformation online.

"I think that the pandemic changed everything," Steier says. "I think it made a lot of us face our own mortality and think about our health and how we're living our lives."

Medicine meets media

Fides is using wellness influencers' tried-and-true tech tools to its own advantage. The network comprises over 1,200 health care professionals split into two groups: people who already have experience, good content and a large following, and those who Fides wants to help build capacity in the health care workforce. 

Fides offers creators the latest health information, content and assets to make their lives easier, as well as a space where they can share their videos with one another for feedback. The WHO team also plans campaigns so that its members are posting on the same topic, at the same time, thus increasing their reach and impact.

Training courses are offered regularly, some of which are facilitated by tech companies like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, and focus on topics such as safety tools, finding time to create content, trending topics and handling online trolls. 

Pattison emphasizes that these health care professionals are not ambassadors for WHO and that Fides' aim isn't to promote the organization. They simply want to advance public health and provide the Fides community with the information and tools needed to do so. Members can say they're part of Fides if they want, but they're not obligated to, and there's no publicly available list of members for data protection reasons. 

"The idea is to create a movement similar to the antivax movement, which is small but very powerful, well coordinated and well funded," says Pattison. "They have a targeted approach where they flood the market with one message and then by the time public health responds to that, the public has moved on and they're flooding it with another message."

In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 12 anti-vaxxers, also known as the "disinformation dozen," were responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter. This was after analyzing 812,000 posts on the platforms between February and March 2021. 

In other words, the misinformation spread by just a few people can have a substantial impact.

Fides isn't the only example of health care professionals saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," regarding the tech tactics wellness influencers use to tempt us. After noticing that his patients and loved ones were turning to the internet with their medical questions, Varshavski realized there were no great sources available to them. 

"[Doctors on social media] were very clinical and scientific, which is good because it was accurate, but it wasn't captivating," says Varshavski. "What was captivating was all the people trying to sell the miracle products, snake oil-type products, people who were trying to build a name for themselves by attacking the status quo."

Varshavski then took what he saw these snake oil salespeople doing, but instead of using those tactics to sell products, he applied them to spread high-quality health information. 

"I realized that they're great speakers, that they understood the platforms well," says Varshavski. "Titling, thumbnailing and being comedic, self-deprecating and entertaining needed to come first in order for the medical information to land."

Rubin has come to a similar conclusion since moving over to TikTok from Twitter in 2021. Social media algorithms are designed to keep people on their phones for as long as possible to drive advertising dollars, and Rubin found that content evoking an emotional response is more likely to get pushed to the top of people's feeds by algorithms, as opposed to more nuanced, scientifically sound information that could get written off as boring. 

"That's why I utilize certain tactics to try to get myself higher up on the algorithm, like having a hook, often a weird one. I often say 'holy cow, folks,' which is something that, when you hear it enough, you're like, 'Oh wait, I know that's Dr. Rubin. He's about to talk about something important,'" Rubin says. "Those are signals that I know will at least trip the algorithm enough when I think it's important." 

When followers pay the price — literally

Watching wellness influencers' videos online can spark the chain reaction leading to health anxiety, potentially unnecessary doctors' appointments, tests and overdiagnosis.

A February 2025 study led by the University of Sydney focused on about 1,000 Instagram and TikTok posts highlighting five popular medical tests: full-body MRIs (notably promoted by Kim Kardashian); the multicancer early detection genetic test; and tests for antimullerian hormone for women's egg counts, the gut microbiome and testosterone, respectively. These posts reached around 200 million followers. 

"We found that around 70% of the people talking about these medical tests that had no evidence of benefit, they had a direct financial interest, and we know that's probably an underestimation because we were only looking for explicit [cases of financial interest] and often they're hidden," says Brooke Nickel, one of the study's authors, a National Health and Medical Research Council emerging leader research fellow in the University of Sydney School of Public Health and part of the Sydney Health Literacy Lab.

Aside from overdiagnosis, these medical tests don't begin and end in the span of a social media video. They require resources, which Nickel says are getting taken away from people who actually need them. 

"It creates so many inequities in the health care system, and it really plays on this emotion of early detection and early screening in the hope of living your best life," Nickel says.

"That's what we saw in our study across those five tests was that underlying theme of living your best life … But there's no evidence to support those tests."

How far will people go in the name of controlling their health to be their best selves? 

DeMille signed up for Instagram while getting a diploma in fitness and health promotion in her mid-20s. She says she was affected by wellness influencer culture, but, as she doesn't have a chronic illness, the harm was only mild. Now, while on Instagram, she was more focused on how she looked, rather than how she felt. 

"A lot of it is these wellness and fitness influencers who are using their body as a business card basically," DeMille says. "I was buying supplements and powders that I didn't need, and that I didn't even like … I was restricting my diet in ways that I didn't need to."

DeMille began to question one influencer who claimed to have healed precancerous cells with food and supplements. Subsequently, the Australian Cancer Council said this influencer's claims lacked scientific evidence and were potentially dangerous. The influencer never responded. 

It's an all-too-common occurrence among influencers, DeMille says. "Can they really care about the health and wellness of the people following them if expert societies are calling them out and they're not saying anything?"

Since she started posting videos challenging wellness influencers, DeMille has heard stories from people who say that because their loved ones followed influencers who said they could heal their cancer naturally, they went against their doctor's wishes and declined chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. These stories typically end one of two ways: the wellness influencers' followers were finally convinced to get the treatment they needed, or they're no longer with us.

In November 2024, a study that Baker worked on found that 81% of "cancer cure" videos on TikTok featured false and misleading advice. This study is a preprint, meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. To determine exactly how these TikToks shape user behavior, Baker notes in the study that additional third-party analytics would be necessary.

"The best that can happen is you lose money, time and energy," DeMille says of following wellness influencers' advice on social media. "The real harm is that someone is influenced by these parasocial relationships they have online to forego evidence-based treatment or health care, should they need it."

This is also a concern among public health experts. Steier worries that people may think they can avoid an annual physical with a primary care doctor by participating in wellness trends.

"They think that they have a stomachache, so they're just going to do a parasite cleanse or a detox tea instead of actually going to a physician and getting clinically diagnosed."

Same snake, different oil

Misinformation around health and wellness isn't new. The term "snake oil" became popular during the late 1800s after entrepreneur Clark Stanley — also known as the "Rattlesnake King," which could easily be a screen name — began marketing rattlesnake oil as having healing powers. In 1917, federal investigators determined that Stanley's Snake Oil had nothing to do with snakes and was, in fact, just mineral oil. 

"There's a direct connection in some ways to some of the challenges we see now back to snake oil salespeople," Southwell says. "What's helpful about that to me is not to suggest that we're still terrible at dealing with this, but rather, there are probably good reasons why that's been with us for a while … There are certain aspects of human beings that we need to keep in mind." 

Humans will seek answers to the questions they have, especially if they can improve their lives.

People's attempts to take control of their own health aren't new either. The medical freedom movement of the 1980s, coinciding with the Reagan era, promoted "healthism," an individual's right to make decisions in health care, as opposed to the government or medical establishments. It heightened the notion that one's worth is tied to one's health. Wellman sees this as the foundation of the modern MAHA movement.

It became even easier to make this impact with the expansion of internet access in the 2000s. People could now share their own health and wellness stories — or medical misinformation — in just a few clicks.

Southwell stressed that this content gains traction because it answers questions that people in need have. "If you're especially in distress or you're looking for answers, you're emotional and frustrated, you're going to gravitate to the information that's clearly presented to you, that seems to be relevant and that finds you in your feed."

Tech's transparency about misinformation

TikTok, Meta and YouTube have policies to prohibit or respond to misleading or false content, some stronger than others. 

With the help of moderators and over 20 independent, accredited fact-checking organizations, TikTok says it "prohibits inaccurate, misleading or false content that may cause significant harm to individuals or society." 

Meta says it will remove misinformation when it's likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, but in March it launched a new feature called Community Notes — similar to what happens on X, which doesn't have a misinformation policy. 

Instead of using third-party fact-checking organizations, Meta's Community Notes let you submit a note on Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts you believe are potentially misleading or confusing. But for someone's note to be published on a post, people who have disagreed on note ratings in the past will need to agree that a note is worth posting. If there is no agreement, it won't be published. 

"Meta does not decide what gets rated or written — the community does," Meta says. 

On YouTube, Graham helped create YouTube Health, a platform featuring public health and clinical experts who populate it with high-quality health information. 

"We label information as coming from licensed doctors, nurses, therapists, government entities and accredited institutions like hospitals, so that people are able to differentiate whether the information is coming from a more qualified source," says Graham. When you search health topics such as "diabetes," YouTube has a carousel of videos at the top labelled as "from health sources," making this content easier to access.

The verification and whitelisting of medical experts is something Rubin would like to see more of across all platforms, as some of his content, and his colleagues', has been flagged as misinformation in the past. He emphasized the need to separate actual experts with accreditation from influencers, saying people who want to spread misinformation use bots to mass-report accounts in an attempt to get them banned. 

At the end of the day, people will continue to search online for helpful health information.

This echoes what Varshavski told me was one of his reasons for being on social media: "I was trained as a family medicine doctor. We go to where our patients are. If they're in the ER, we're there. If they're admitted to the hospital, we're there. Nursing homes, home visits — we go everywhere. That's the beauty of my specialty. And one place where I felt like we weren't there for our patients was on social media." 

The conversation surrounding what tech companies should do to regulate misinformation is nuanced. In April 2025, a Pew survey found that 60% of Americans believe tech companies should take steps to restrict false information online, which is down from 65% in 2023. 

The trick sometimes is in deciding where the boundaries lie — and in avoiding outright censorship. Science-based research evolves over time, and medical professionals aren't always perfect. 

"One of the challenges that you find is that any source, any one of us, is capable of sharing inaccurate information, of sometimes being wrong or there being errors," Southwell says. "The nature of our information environment makes it possible for inaccurate information to exist ... if it weren't a problem, we would have such a tightly sanitized, censored environment. I wouldn't want to live in that world either, so we have to live with the messiness of what we have."

During the pandemic, Southwell was part of a team, along with the WHO, the National Academy of Medicine and Council of Medical Specialty Societies, that worked on global principles for identifying credible sources of health information on social media. The objective was to provide tech companies with principles for boosting evidence-based information over misinformation. 

Experts also emphasize that with the funds and technology available to them, social media companies can create tools that protect users from misinformation while also benefiting their businesses. 

"Let's put technology, intelligence, large resources and common sense from the health industry together to find solutions," says Pattison. 

Pattison believes it's important to ensure that everyone has a seat at the table when discussing these issues, including the tech companies themselves. That's why the WHO has a Tech Task Force, which meets with over 30 companies monthly to present problems and discuss potential solutions. 

The treatment for medical misinformation

Social media platforms have a vital role to play, but much of the burden falls on us, as consumers of health information. We need to think critically about what we're encountering when we scroll through our social media feeds.

One action we can all take in the fight against misinformation is to never consume wellness content in a vacuum. As they say about diagnoses, it's best to get a second opinion. Talk to your doctor about it. Ask your friends and family what they've heard. Look to see if the influencer has any accreditation. Check if the video is a paid sponsorship or if there are disclosures in an influencer's bio or on their website. 

Digital literacy matters, too. That would make more people think twice before sharing questionable content or, simply, content that evokes an emotional reaction.

"Sharing posts is what's going to trip the algorithm to want to amplify it to more people, so it's a matter of taking a second to decide: Are you going to trigger yourself?" Rubin says. "Because as you share it, you also get fed more of that content, and that's what ends up creating these echo chambers and amplifies unproven, potentially dangerous therapies."

We also need to recognize why people are turning to social media for answers to their health questions in the first place — because they don't have access to a trusted health care provider. It seems this will only become more challenging. 

As of November 2024, the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis estimated that by 2037, there will be a shortage of 87,150 full-time equivalent primary care physicians. This shortage is expected to have a particularly significant impact on non-metro areas. 

There also needs to be more funding for accredited experts to communicate with the public, which can require significant time and effort, making it a full-time job. In response to federal scientific research funding cuts, initiatives are working toward reducing this disparity, such as the Scientist Network for Advancing Policy, a group of early-career scientists mobilizing to bring scientists and their communities together. You can fill out their interest form to get involved. To share your thoughts about these funding cuts, you can contact your elected officials.

To further bridge this gap, many doctors on social media accept corporate sponsorships that pay not only for their time and effort but also for disseminating their educational content to a wider audience. However, this often comes with pushback, especially involving concerns around conflicts of interest.

"If I accept any funding, I'm criticized. I'm called things like 'a shill,'" Steier says. "This is frustrating because it means that in the science space, we can't be compensated for our time and effort, whereas you have the wellness influencers, who don't have that same code of ethics or are not held to that same standard, and they're making a full-blown living. All of their efforts are compensated." 

Though funding is currently lacking, the importance of communication in health care is clear, whether a doctor is talking to a single patient in an exam room or aiming to educate the masses online. 

"One of the main things we can do to help is to show up for them," says Graham. "We have to recognize that patients are taking a journey with health information online, and the question is, how can we make it a better, more high-quality journey?"

Even if you don't have a trusted doctor you can turn to, you should be able to reach out to your community for help. After all, what are people really looking for online? A community that understands them. But finding a real-world community has become increasingly difficult. 

That's the role that online influencers have taken over, and too often, not for the better.

Between having to navigate the landscape of misinformation while trying to access our current health care system, it's natural to feel frustrated. However, we can't let that discourage us from thinking critically about the content we're consuming and, ultimately, pursuing the truth. 

Any one of us can be lured into the trap of misinformation when we're simply seeking help that isn't readily available. Because what does searching for answers about our health represent in the grand scheme of life? A desire for control. The fear of death. The will to live. And those are feelings we can all relate to.

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