Welcome to the Era of Do-It-Yourself Health

13 min readFOR 18 MONTHS, Kate Hinkens’s mornings began with the same ritual. Every other day, the now 32-year-old would use a mirror to carefully position up to 10 bees on her back with tweezers, then let them sting her, one by one. After that, she would pull the stingers out of her body, bury the bees in her backyard among the flowers, and thank them with a prayer.The practice, known as bee venom therapy (which falls under the larger practice of apitherapy), was not recommended by a doctor but something Hinkens discovered online to treat the brain fog and fatigue that had bothered her for years. She would sleep for 18 hours a day, couldn’t walk more than 10 or 15 feet at a time, and had trouble completing sentences. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2019, and though this is the kind of illness that is usually knocked out with a round of antibiotics, she says her symptoms persisted.Hinkens never planned to self-administer bee venom to treat her illness, which she refers to as “chronic Lyme,” but over time, she got desperate—and then she got creative. “When you are dealing with chronic illness, especially chronic illness that isn’t widely understood by the Western medical community, you start to dig,” she says. “And you end up on weird corners of the Internet.”Finding those corners involved searching Instagram hashtags, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and PubMed, where Hinkens says she read about bee venom’s potential in treating conditions such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and even Alzheimer’s. And, to be fair, Hinkens’s diagnosis is considered controversial by both the Western medical community and the general public. In fact, most doctors wouldn’t call her condition “chronic Lyme”—they prefer the term “post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.”“That’s one of the frustrating things for patients, and frankly, for many health care providers.”In the U.S., Lyme disease is an infectious illness generally caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. The bacterium is found in ticks and transmitted via tick bites. When Lyme is diagnosed early, it is treated with a multiweek course of oral antibiotics. Late-stage Lyme is often treated with IV antibiotics. One round of antibiotics should be enough to wipe out the pathogen, says Stephen J. Gluckman, MD, an infectious disease physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. But for some, like Hinkens, the symptoms persist after treatment.Dr. Gluckman says the symptoms are real and should be taken seriously—but they’re not caused by the original bacteria (because those bacteria are wiped out by a round of antibiotics). And they don’t present in a standard way. Where Hinkens had brain fog and fatigue, someone else may have body aches and dizziness. The abnormalities won’t show up in testing. “Tests are routinely normal,” Dr. Gluckman says. “That’s one of the frustrating things for patients, and frankly, for many health care providers.”Without a clear-cut diagnosis, treatment turns into symptom management, which can be disheartening for patients who just want answers—and relief. This was the case for Hinkens, who found bee venom therapy after years of pursuing both traditional and naturopathic advice.Hinkens is convinced that bee venom therapy rid her of her symptoms. Because as she underwent it, her migraines, joint pain, and nerve pain started to go away. Today she considers herself cured. She no longer stings herself with bees—except to treat occasional acute illnesses.Dr. Gluckman, for his part, says he would never tell a patient not to pursue a reasonable treatment they felt strongly about, but that bee venom therapy is “far from established.” There isn’t solid scientific evidence for it or an established treatment dosage, which is especially important for something that’s going to cost thousands of dollars out of pocket. (Hinkens estimates that the setup cost for bee venom therapy is about $200. The bees cost around $1 per insect, plus shipping. For an advanced user like Hinkens, who stung herself 10 times per session, at three sessions a week for a year, the treatment could cost upwards of $2,000.)Dan Saelinger/Trunk ArchiveThe research on this therapy is also limited. Several in vitro studies (as in, done in a test tube and not in humans or animals) suggest that bee venom has effects on Borrelia burgdorferi, though again, that bacterium shouldn’t be present anymore following antibiotic treatment. And aside from the pain of bees attacking you (Hinkens says it absolutely hurts and doesn’t stop hurting, no matter how long you’ve been stinging), there’s also the safety factor. The most significant risk, says Dr. Gluckman, is the obvious one: an allergic reaction.In 2018, a 55-year-old woman in Spain who was using bee venom therapy to treat muscle issues experienced anaphylaxis before slipping into a coma and dying. It wasn’t her first time getting stung. She had been going to apitherapy sessions every four weeks for two years, according to a study in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology. “Previous tolerance to beestings does not prevent hypersensitivity; however, repeated exposure favors a higher risk of sensitization.… Practitioners should be trained in managing severe reactions,” the authors wrote.But turning to bee venom therapy is only one example of people—particularly women—starting to DIY their health care. We’re increasingly getting health information from influencers and deep corners of the Internet rather than doctors. And we’re not just reading about these approaches; we’re actually doing them at home. This is happening at the same time that physician appointments have gotten shorter, meaning that more people are seeing their health as something in their own hands (and something perhaps they alone can fix). This vacuum allows alternative treatments to thrive, even in the most extreme situations.Will the DIY way finally lead to something better for patients, or are we driving ourselves back to the Dark Ages?Trend Drivers Hinkens is one of the many voices online encouraging the pursuit of alternative treatments. It’s partly a story about being let down by the traditional medical system and partly one about seeking health at any cost. “It became this real obsession for me because of how deeply I wanted to get better and how disappointed and disillusioned I was by what was available to me from the credible professionals in this space,” she says.At-home treatments promoted online often exist in the world of chronic illness, says Navya Mysore, MD, a primary care physician and Women’s Health advisory board member. Issues such as migraines, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS (formerly known as PCOS), endometriosis, fibromyalgia, and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome don’t have standard treatment protocols, which results in varied care and outcomes. And, ultimately, exasperation for patients. “It can definitely lead to frustration,” Dr. Mysore says.Unfortunately, doctors sometimes don’t have the tools—or time—to adequately guide patients through complex symptoms. As a result, patients sometimes turn to less regulated means. Hinkens says her experience with bee venom therapy taught her that she is the driver of her own health. (She now teaches others how to do bee venom therapy full-time, selling a $950 course.)“[Influencers] have become authority figures.”Alternative health and wellness culture isn’t new, but it’s become much more mainstream, thanks to the Internet. “The influencer and wellness industries have been co-collaborative in their growth over the last decade,” says Mariah L. Wellman, PhD, a researcher and the author of In Search of Wellness: How Social Media Influencers Transformed an Industry. In 2025, wellness was a $500 billion industry in the United States, per McKinsey & Company, a management and consulting firm. Globally, it was worth $2 trillion.Lifestyle and wellness influencers are disseminating the bulk of their information online, fact-checked or not. “They have become authority figures for [certain groups of people],” Wellman says. She attributes this partly to the growing distrust of academic, scientific, and cultural experts after the COVID-19 pandemic and to the rise of the Make America Healthy Again movement. But also because medical doctors don’t always lend themselves to good content.Online, black-and-white, hard-line stances tend to make for grabbier videos. “The Internet and social media don’t like nuance,” Wellman says. Doctors, on the other hand, are trained to live in the gray areas. Where an influencer may tell you about the new supplement or treatment that changed their life, a doctor might refer you to studies—or the lack thereof—and tell you it may help but there’s no evidence. It’s not satisfying, but it’s accurate…and a lot less compelling.Levi Brown/Trunk ArchiveInstead of expertise, influencers tend to rely solely on personal narrative. Through these hyperindividual experiences, followers can glean new techniques, protocols, and regimens to try. And in a country where three-quarters of adults are living with a chronic condition, narratives about finally finding relief can feel hopeful—and helpful.“If we have these stories of people who have taken their health into their own hands, have done one very particular thing that has changed their life, that feels like something that is desirable for the people who are still floating and grasping and trying to find something,” Wellman says. Pursuing self-healing is also a version of a story that Americans are comfortable and familiar with. “Wellness is positioned as a personal process—rather than a public good—requiring constant pursuit of self-improvement, with the idea that every individual has the opportunity to improve themselves, and at the end of the day, their health is their responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the government.”At the same time, this type of self-improvement comes at a cost. There’s the price of the supplement or online course linked in the influencer’s bio. There’s the time it takes to manage an alternative treatment. And in extreme cases, there’s the risk of delaying necessary, vetted help. Influencers are able to thrive because they can sell options that will purportedly improve (or optimize) a person’s health without their ever needing to check in at the doctor’s office. Instead, they can just “do their own research.”“This rhetoric of doing your own research puts individuals in control of their own life, and for some people, that’s all they’re looking for,” Wellman says. “They think they’re looking for answers. They think they’re looking for their problems to be solved, but they also want to be able to do it themselves because they have grown distrustful of different systems.”Healing at Home Another aspect of online DIY persuasion is the food factor—as in, instead of going to the doctor for meds, just change what you eat, and maybe add some supplements. But while whole foods and supplements have garnered a health halo among many for being safer and more “natural” than something you’d need a prescription for, that’s a misconception.Adjusting your diet and taking supplements have a time and place, but they shouldn’t be conflated with treatment. “It’s scientifically incorrect to say that dietary changes can completely manage health and wellness and risks of disease, because it’s just untrue,” says Jennifer Reich, PhD, a sociologist who studies health and health care.The fix-it-with-food-and-supplements idea has actually been around for a long time, but the Internet has given it new platforms on which to proliferate. Around 1928, a German doctor named Max Gerson began treating cancer patients with a “therapy” he named after himself. Gerson therapy involves following a strict plant-based diet, juicing, and having multiple daily enemas meant to address the “toxins” and sodium and potassium imbalances that followers believe cause cancer. It posits that people can cure cancer on their own, mostly through their diet. But cancer and most other serious health conditions don’t work that way, experts say.“This rhetoric of doing your own research puts individuals in control of their own life, and for some people, that’s all they’re looking for.” —Mariah L. Wellman, PhDThere is no credible evidence supporting Gerson therapy as a treatment for cancer, says Madhur K. Garg, MD, clinical director of the department of radiation oncology with Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center. There are, however, many risks, including malnutrition, colon inflammation, infections, and electrolyte imbalances. Besides those, there’s also the fact that Gerson therapy is presented as something people should choose instead of traditional cancer care. “Patients might miss out on getting a proven treatment in a timely manner, resulting in progression of cancer,” Dr. Garg says.In 2024, a Cambridge University graduate named Paloma Shemirani was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer that her doctors told her has an 80 percent survival rate when treated with chemotherapy. Instead, over the course of seven months, she opted to treat her cancer with Gerson therapy. Shemirani’s mother, Kate, is an anti-medicine conspiracy theorist who lost her nursing license in 2021. Online, Kate calls herself a “natural nurse in a toxic world.” Months into undergoing Gerson therapy, Paloma died at 23 of cardiac arrest caused by a tumor in her chest and neck. Her brothers told the BBC that they believe she died as a result of their mother encouraging alternative treatments instead of the recommended course of chemotherapy.And when it comes to supplements, they are only partly regulated by the FDA, unlike the medicines they often replace, so there’s no consistent testing of their safety, ingredients, or efficacy. In this instance, “at-home” doesn’t necessarily mean better; really, it means having less oversight. “Supplements are not natural,” Dr. Mysore adds. “They’re not fully derived from our body. They’re made in a lab or a facility.”“Why Wouldn’t I Do This at Home?”When Tiffany Paltauf, then 26, was 12 weeks pregnant with her first child, she switched from a traditional ob-gyn to a midwife. Paltauf felt that her ob-gyn showed no human connection, and she couldn’t ask any questions. “As a first-time mom, I wanted to talk about my feelings, giving birth, and what my options are.”Paltauf describes herself as “crunchy.” When she had a headache, she’d reach for water or a green juice first instead of over-the-counter meds. Paltauf says that prior to giving birth, she took comfort in the fact that her body was made for this and “knew” what to do. “I started to do a little bit more research on my own, reading books and listening to podcasts,” she says. “I listened to these beautiful home birth stories, and I was like, ‘Wow, this sounds really nice.’ ”Paltauf lives on a farm, and the idea of giving birth at home, 45 minutes from the nearest hospital, and not needing to line up care for her 70-plus animals seemed like a “luxury,” she says. Her prenatal visits to the midwife felt like going to the spa and made her idea of home birth seem more appealing. You’re in the comfort of your own house, and your midwife is more hands-on and available.“I remember asking, ‘How do you know everything’s going to go okay? What if something is wrong?’ ” Paltauf says. “I’ll never forget—I remember them saying there are things that [would] happen before something goes wrong, or we can take proper precautions, whether that be transferring to the hospital, calling an ambulance, doing this or that.”Unfortunately, her home birth experience didn’t match what she found online. When Paltauf was trying to deliver at home, her midwives periodically checked her baby’s heartbeat until, suddenly, it wasn’t there. She and the midwives initially thought the Doppler machine was faulty, before deciding to go to a hospital.There, Paltauf learned that her daughter, Bella, had a hypercoiled cord, leading to eight more hours of labor before she delivered her baby stillborn.While home births account for less than 2 percent of births in the United States, the proportion is rising, according to CDC data. A two-year study covering all Oregon births found that for every 1,000 home births, 3.9 perinatal deaths occurred—twice the rate of hospital births. But there are challenges with hospital births in the United States, too. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality compared to other high-income nations, with even worse outcomes for Black women.Yet despite all the content she absorbed, Paltauf feels she wasn’t properly educated about what could go wrong with a home birth. Now she’s on the other side of the screen, posting videos about her experience and living with grief.When she was the one scrolling, she felt confident and wasn’t very worried about the risks. “I was so in tune with my body, and young and healthy, that I was just like, ‘Yeah, I’m a great candidate. Why wouldn’t I want to do this at home?’ ” she says.Finding Our Way Back People like Hinkens and Paltauf are increasingly influenced by what they see online. And in this messy, no-rules wild west of do-it-yourself health care, one thing is clear: Patients want to play a more active role in their health. They want solutions and a doctor who will listen, and they’re not afraid to think outside the box.The problem? Many doctors simply don’t have the time—or the training—to meet patients where they are. Much of their day is spent doing paperwork for insurance companies—time they could be spending with patients, says Reich. The system we have clearly isn’t working optimally for providers or patients.Still, experts say the answer isn’t to abandon the system, but to rebuild the relationship at the center of it. One way patients can try to take more ownership of their health is to find a doctor they actually trust, even if that requires trial and error, says Heather D. Rogers, MD, a dermatologist. Look for someone who validates your symptoms and feelings, and don’t be afraid to keep shopping around until you feel heard. (With chronic conditions in particular, patients may have the experience of a doctor not believing them, so it’s critical for doctors to listen and understand that a patient’s suffering is real, whether or not it shows up on a test.)Providers agree that there are additional things they can do to step up too. It comes down to spending more time—talking with patients, thinking about what’s causing their symptoms, and explaining why they think a particular plan is the best course of action. (And being open to alternative treatments, especially if there’s no harm involved.)The VorheesOverall, it’s no surprise that many patients are fed up and feeling hopeless—but the answer isn’t to get more isolated; it’s to work together better. “Western medicine is not fundamentally flawed, and you have to find the way that you can work with it,” Dr. Rogers says.Hinkens says she still values doctors—they’re “a super important part” of her health team—but they’re not the only voices she listens to. She lists an osteopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, and an Ayurvedic practitioner among the specialists she consults, depending on the problem.Paltauf decided to give birth to her second daughter, Zoey, in a hospital. She understands why people are drawn to home birth, but because it can be so variable, she says she believes that first-time moms should try delivering in a hospital first. “Birth is so out of your control,” she says.Zoey also had complications coming into the world. Her cord was short, and she spent a few days in the NICU. She is now 19 months old.Paltauf is pregnant again, this time with a boy. She plans on giving birth to him in the hospital as well.Women turn to DIY options because the traditional medical system isn’t meeting them where they are or solving their pressing health problems. Fixing that requires real change: more time with providers, stronger safeguards against misinformation and disinformation, and better access to affordable, evidence-based care.No matter what, people are going to continue getting ideas about their health care from the Internet and social media. Plus, there’s something about DIY health that feels so much more enticing—the agency, the social support, the apparent simplicity—which is particularly resonant in the United States in 2026.Until the system can address all of these things, DIY health will keep filling the gap—and patients may keep paying the price.