The small back room of the InterContinental hotel in downtown L.A. was bursting at the seams. Roughly a dozen chairs were set up for a lecture. Instead, almost a hundred people showed up. Most of the casually dressed millennials at the 2017 ideas conference Summit L.A. either sat on the floor or stood shoulder to shoulder. Those in the back stood on their toes, struggling to catch a glimpse of the speaker, the biohacking leader Dave Asprey.
Other than Gwyneth Paltrow or Lacy Phillips, Asprey was the closest I’ve witnessed to guru status. The participants bombarded the founder with health questions: What should I eat for breakfast? Can I have a glass of wine at dinner? Should I be taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca? What sleep tracker do you use? Fans shot their hands in the air, each competing for a morsel of his wisdom.
Asprey, a tall, elegant man dressed in leather alligator boots and a chambray shirt, handled their questions with ease. He answered all inquiries with the air of a “cool” college professor, at times readjusting his orange-tinted glasses while applauding their curiosity. Equal parts peer and educator, Asprey peppered his answers with personal anecdotes and preferred products. The crowd’s iPhones lit up as they googled his advice.1
Popularity wasn’t new to Asprey. He first catapulted to fame through his high-performance coffee brand called Bulletproof. The caffeinated drink was infused with two tablespoons of grass-fed unsalted butter and MCT oil (a supplement sourced from coconuts and made of fatty acids). Clocking in anywhere from 250 to 450 calories (based on butter added), the beverage is claimed to boost energy, increase cognitive function, and help shed pounds. Asprey came up with the unorthodox recipe after traveling to Tibet and tasting traditional yak-butter tea drinks that locals consumed to keep warm. In 2011, he sold his own version as a self-optimization tool.
Over the next few years, Asprey’s fatty cup of joe received coverage in everything from top-tier business publications to morning news programs. “It’s a gateway drug for taking control of your own biology,” Asprey told the New York Times. On The Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon shared a warm mug of Bulletproof coffee with actress Shailene Woodley and declared, “It’s good for your brain.”2 Bulletproof became a curious cultural phenomenon, hailed as a “miracle drink” and drawing fans ranging from Halle Berry to Tim Tebow. Today, the creamy concoction is sold at Whole Foods, among other retailers, including Bulletproof’s own brick-and-mortar Santa Monica coffee shop. Bulletproof has now evolved into a lifestyle concept, expanding to books, a podcast, conferences, and a whole suite of self-enhancement products like memory strengthening supplements and “amplified energy” bottled water.
But Asprey’s biggest success was popularizing the term “biohacking.” It’s a concept borrowing research from bodybuilding, biotech, anti-aging science, and nutrition to make you look, perform, and feel way better than the average bear. Asprey describes biohacking as “the desire to be the absolute best version of ourselves,” but it’s more like an attempt to use cutting-edge science to overcome physical limitations. His company’s mission? To tap into the unlimited power of being human. And according to recent industry reports, biohackers will become “the new wellness pioneers,” heralding a new era where we can shortcut our way to optimal health.3
Asprey was once a mere mortal, a cog in the American lifestyle wheel. The former cloud computing executive was unhappy with his weight, sluggish, foggy, and moody and dealt with a host of issues, including ADD, OCD, and chronic fatigue syndrome (among other diagnosed and self-diagnosed disorders). He adopted one fad diet after another. He exercised every day. But still, the scale barely budged, and he didn’t feel any better. Asprey’s doctors were not helpful. They assumed he was secretly munching on candy bars. The entrepreneur recalled thinking, “I’m going to troubleshoot this myself, because I am not getting help from the medical establishment.”4
So Asprey became his own guinea pig. He imported European “smart drugs” (cognitive enhancers). He tested brain-boosting contraptions. He committed to intermittent fasting routines.
Asprey spent fifteen years and over a million dollars to reportedly lower his biological age. In the process, he lost a hundred pounds and, by his account, increased his IQ by more than 20 points.
Today, Asprey lives like a health-obsessed Iron Man. He swallows fifty supplements every morning, recovers in a cryotherapy chamber he built in his house, and plans to get an injection of stem cells every six months. He says he no longer needs the eight hours of recommended sleep, making do with precisely six hours and ten minutes.5 Every day he does some sort of biohacking exercise: “I could do red light therapy. I could do neurofeedback. I could just do some squats on a vibrating platform. I could do a resistance band workout with blood flow restriction,” he told GQ.6
At this rate, says Asprey, he’ll live to be 180. He thinks you can too. “I can tell you firsthand that you’re not condemned to live with the body and brain you were born with,” Asprey proclaims on his website. The Bulletproof website reads like a rundown of things people can regulate: stress, energy, mitochondrial clocks, risk of cancer, biochemistry, collagen production, sexual performance, and clarity of thought. (My favorite promise-filled headline is the one on daveasprey.com: WANT TO LIVE LONGER? BREW YOUR COFFEE THIS WAY.) DIY augmentation takes the form of neurofeedback devices as well as cold showers and fasting regimens.
In some ways, Asprey sees his work as a humanitarian effort: “We’re helping people—we’re empowering them by giving them control of their biology so that maybe they might see their doctor less.” The entrepreneur envisions a future in which individuals become their own body experts and less dependent on medical professionals.
With help from Asprey, biohacking became synonymous with Silicon Valley, a sector that welcomes disruptive experimentation in the name of productivity. This is how Asprey became a star attraction at Summit, a conference heavy with tech founders, entrepreneurs, and ambitious creatives. But I was rather surprised to see that nearly half the room were women, if only because the biohacking scene skews male. Asprey said his Bulletproof conferences boast 50 percent female attendance, a significant uptick since he started. “My experience is that women are, on average, better biohackers than men because they have far more body awareness,” Asprey told me. “Women are under tremendous pressure from a career perspective, and they are often even more constrained for time than men are.”
Biohacking resonates because we’re all frustrated, says Asprey, noting that complaints extend beyond the scale. Its appeal is motivated by exasperation at not having enough time, and therefore not enough energy, for work, relationships, or personal pursuits. Asprey gives one such example: “You’re frustrated that every day after you’ve finished your commute home, you just need to lie down and put your feet up, that you don’t want to play with your kids … It all comes down to what I want my body to be—to support me and be my servant.”
At the conference, I approached a few women, curious about what they were looking to take charge of. Most of the answers included ordinary grievances such as fatigue or weight loss. One petite thirtysomething told me she was intrigued by Asprey’s fertility research. This was news to me. Does biohacking cover reproduction?
“It covers everything,” she replied. Indeed, Asprey’s books explain how to safeguard one’s fertility in addition to sharing how he personally cured his wife, who was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and declared infertile. He says he did so with biohacking techniques—not through medical interventions like IVF.7 They now have two children.
“Whether or not you choose to have kids, to become Super Human you want your body to be as fertile as possible because our bodies are designed to get out of the way as soon as we can’t reproduce,” Asprey writes in his New York Times bestseller Super Human. “No matter how old you are, you don’t want your hormones telling your body that you’re past the age of reproduction. A much better signal from your hormones is that you are young enough to have kids and therefore worth taking up room on this planet.”8
To that end, we need to reboot our bodies, hike up our supplement intake (Bulletproof’s supplements, that is; “First things first, throw away your multivitamin,” reads the website), and detoxify our surroundings.
I was captivated by all of these biohacking ideas. It was as if they’d come from a wizard’s spellbook to magically force the body into submission. I too wanted to know how to manufacture more energy at the office (or heck, even at dinner with friends). I too am frustrated by having to work super-long days and feeling like I can’t get ahead. I too wanted to extend my fertility as my biological clock thumped ever louder. I wanted it all: stamina, youth, and focus. I was just as tired and over it as everyone else in that room.
But it also made me wonder: To what extent can scientific advancement bend nature to our will?
In 1976, two researchers set out to understand an age-old human question: How important is our sense of control?
Ellen Langer (Harvard) and Judith Rodin (Yale) conducted an experiment on older adults. They separated a nursing home into two floors. The residents on the “agency” floor were told they’d have free rein to do what they wished with their room furniture, go where they pleased, do what they wanted during their free time, and independently care for a plant given to them. The patients on the “no agency” floor were notified that the staff would take care of every last detail and decision for them, including watering their new plant.
In reality, both groups had the freedom to do as they pleased. No one would stop an individual on the “no agency” floor from seeing a friend or watering the plant. The perception of what was permissible was all that differed. After eighteen months, the researchers discovered that those in the group that was granted more individual control and personal responsibility were happier. They also showed improved health. The “no agency” group had more deaths.9
Langer eventually made groundbreaking research progress in what she called the illusion of control, which is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control or impact events over which they actually have no influence. This impression makes us feel more confident and at ease. We hit elevator buttons that are already lit and wear “lucky” jerseys to a baseball game for the same reason: we want to feel that we contributed to the solution, that we matter. “Our biology is set up so that we are driven to be causal agents; we are internally rewarded with a feeling of satisfaction when we are in control, and internally punished with anxiety when we are not,” writes the neuroscientist Tali Sharot in her book The Influential Mind.10
Most of us know and appreciate the comfort of taking action instead of waiting around and just hoping things will pan out. In the face of chaos, you can exert some influence. Plenty of people benefit from a similar placebo effect, by which the perception that something is working provides a certain amount of relief.
When it comes to health intentions, most people would probably seek effective benefits, not just a placebo. But in making decisions, we can overestimate our odds at achieving the desired outcome. Part of this stems from what’s called a positivity bias or “the Pollyanna principle”: a tendency for the mind to focus on positivity more than negativity. When we think we have more influence than we do, the obvious danger is that we might fall for a solution that is easy and simple versus taking the time and effort to analyze the situation, which is likely more complex than we assumed at first glance. Pollyannas might not anticipate potential problems.11
The wellness industry capitalizes on this bias, similar to how casinos enhance players’ perception of control over the risk of gambling. Brands know this bias is psychologically beneficial: a sense of control reduces anxiety, fear, and stress levels, all things that contribute to overall mental health. When we believe we might be more in control, we’re much more likely to buy something.
It’s an open industry secret. The guidebook Marketing to the New Natural Consumer reads, “Note that the use of natural products as a way of regaining control over one’s physical and emotional self is not contingent upon efficacy … It is not necessary that a treatment (such as reflexology) or a regular maintenance plan (taking Vitamin C) necessarily works. Simply engaging in these behaviors brings a regained sense of control to the individual.” The co-authors go on to deem it a coping strategy—an antidote—to the stress of modern life, similar to partaking in body-modification rituals (like tattooing) as an “attempt to reclaim part of their self from the larger institutional structure.”12 So brands may not sell you an actual solution, but rather the illusion of a solution. A psychological exercise with a sticker price.
The biohacking movement is perhaps the most brazen example of harnessing our physiology to grasp this illusion of control. Not long after hearing Asprey speak, I visited the physical embodiment of his movement: Bulletproof Labs (now called Upgrade Labs), a futuristic “human upgrade center” in Santa Monica filled with space-age pods and curious contraptions better suited to NASA astronauts than SoCal residents. Somewhere between a gym and a science lab, its mission is “to help you achieve the highest state of physical and cognitive performance.”
Inside, young and fit people seated in plush leather lounge chairs quietly flipped through magazines while receiving IV nutrient infusion drips. An “atmospheric cell trainer” resembling Superman’s pod reportedly “massages cells from the inside out” to balance out stressors. An “oxygen trainer,” which looked more like a gas mask hooked up to a stationary bike, supposedly increases circulation. Then there was a tanning bed–like contraption that exposes your entire body to red and infrared LED light to “boost mitochondrial function.” It was a dystopian Disneyland—or an Equinox designed by Christopher Nolan.13
“When you apply technology to your body there are so many things you can do that have a higher return on your investment of time and energy,” Asprey told me. One of his favorite machines reportedly lets him get two and a half hours’ worth of cardio in just twenty-one minutes. Asprey has all these toys at his own home, but he wanted to share them with busy professionals looking to sneak in a brain tune-up or ultra-quick workout.
In much the same way, supplements claim you can quickly master your fate. Companies like Elysium Health sell “revolutionary” at-home kits that test your biological age, then suggest their line of pills to reduce it. Their tagline? “Get ready to take control of your future.” This simplistic marketing works. Goop promoted the kit on Instagram, writing, “A DNA test that can determine your rate of aging? Sign us up.”
The trendiest supplement label in wellness circles remains Moon Juice, which sells powdered adaptogen (that is, herb and mushroom) blends claiming to fix your brain, sleep, stress, energy, and love life. These pills and concoctions, aptly named Power Dust and Sex Dust, harness the “power of plants” to “deliver beauty, balance, and vitality as a daily practice.” The majority of the herbs—touted to improve immune functions or reduce stress—are backed up by little or contradictory evidence. But that doesn’t stop Moon Juice from claiming on the Nordstrom website that their “elite” powder fuels “your physical and entrepreneurial feats.”
Here’s one overall distinction worth thinking about: health versus self-improvement. Over the decades, we’ve dialed up self-enhancement in various sectors like beauty (plastic surgery) or fitness (steroids). We’ve always sought individual interventions, though not always to heal as to boost, and now that optimization creed has come for wellness. You could argue there’s a big difference between contact lenses and Botox: one solves a medical problem, the other perhaps less so (depending on your beauty philosophy). And so a chunk of late-stage wellness, for all its talk of health, seems more like Botox—a nice-to-have—than anything resembling a must-have.
This is likely what Fran Lebowitz meant when she made headlines by declaring “wellness is greed” in the Netflix documentary series Pretend It’s a City. “Extra health,” is how she described it, lamenting, “It’s not enough for me that I’m not sick. I have to be ‘well.’ This is something you can buy.” She has a point: it’s how we’ve been sold on sleep trackers and overpriced magic pills, not to mention $118 Lululemon leggings. These were all hardly necessary until they were introduced to us, then marketed ad nauseam.
It’s all subjective though, no? Botox (or acne treatment, for that matter) can be part of someone’s mental well-being; it can make someone feel less insecure about their appearance. Maybe it helps them leave the house with confidence. That’s why so much of wellness is debatable: what you might call “improvement” might be another person’s “necessity.” On one hand, there’s an instinct to shun anything that’s overly consumerist and lacking scientific evidence. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for helping people feel better, or more “like themselves.”14
We can’t solely blame marketers for offering up new modes of self-improvement. They simply respond to a consumer demand that has its origins in the (far more regulated and science-backed) healthcare industry. There is an expectation—a sense of near entitlement—that if we have the technology to elevate our well-being, why don’t we?15 Why aren’t companies doing more to enable that? Why can’t they solve all of life’s problems?
People are demanding more health solutions, and that’s something the pharmaceutical and medical industry hasn’t fully been able to address. So they turn to the wellness industry.
It should be noted that healthcare branding, which is not to be confused with wellness marketing, helped bring awareness and legitimize ailments that long affected women. Complaints ranging from pain to mood swings might have once been discounted before the industry named and publicized them as perimenopause, anxiety, and other recognized conditions. That helped ease the stigma. But wellness doesn’t function like healthcare branding—it’s not beholden to the same standards of efficacy or regulations on what you can and cannot promise the consumer.16 That’s how you end up with a bunch of fantastical-sounding supplements and optimization gizmos.
But still, why do we fall for the quick and simple solutions, or as the clinical exercise physiologist and nutritionist Bill Sukala calls it, “chasing golden unicorns”?
Research shows that stressful environments and highly competitive situations spur a desire for control. This makes sense: when you need to achieve something, you spring into action mode (without necessarily thinking through all the potential outcomes). This natural reaction is precisely why biohacking gained a loyal audience in Silicon Valley. Overwhelmed tech bros were desperate for a leg up. This is a work culture where workhorses survive and leaders look up to Steve Jobs, a man who once fired 25 percent of a team with parting words such as “You guys failed. You’re a B team. B players.”17 Being number one reigns supreme in this industry, so anything that offers even the slightest competitive edge can mean rising to the top or snagging that promotion. A pill or drink that promises you can work longer, harder, and with less sleep? Contraptions that will cut workout time in half? Catnip to the overworked and under-supported.
Over time, seeing how biohacking resonated with men, those same companies started coming for women, who, to be fair, are just as overwhelmed.
Asprey’s female fans have the same frustrations as men, just perhaps with different origins. They were compelled by his assessment: society mandates that people either have superhuman stamina or work like a dog to keep up. In contrast, he was suggesting, Hey, it’s okay, I know a way for you to keep up with what the world demands. Biohacking isn’t necessarily about becoming Superman, I learned; it’s focused on spending “more time enjoying the fruits of [one’s] labor and less time sweating it out in the field.”18 So if a buttery, textured coffee promises sustained energy, women are all for it. They’ve undoubtedly internalized the idea that their current skills aren’t enough for them to succeed in our competitive society.
If only it were guaranteed. A portion of Bulletproof’s peddled lifestyle advice and product lines relies on studies conducted on animals or studies with such small test groups that it would be hard-pressed to find definitive takeaways. According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, these claims aren’t as strong as you’d believe:
Another paper—“Switching from refined grains to whole grains causes zinc deficiency”—is a report of a 1976 research project featuring a study group of just two people. A third study—“Diets high in grain fibre deplete vitamin D stores”—is a 30-year-old study of 13 people.
A fourth—“Phytic acid from whole grains block zinc and other minerals”—is based on a 1971 study of people in rural Iran eating unleavened flatbread. Another is about insulin sensitivity in domestic pigs.
In other words, the research upon which the Bulletproof Diet stands is not exactly cutting-edge.19
As for buttered coffee, it promises to give you energy. It’s supposed to banish hunger pangs, jump-start fat burning, and sharpen mental focus. Bulletproof suggests having it in place of breakfast—a meal in itself—thereby competing with our treasured avocado toast.
Much of the drink’s fanfare stems from the butter, which is high in omega-3s, and also in MCTs (basically coconut oil), which some studies suggest improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients—a promising start. But MCTs don’t necessarily have an impact on the healthy, and the studies supporting MCT benefits are mixed. As critics have pointed out, there’s no evidence to presume this is a superior breakfast or that its ingredients induce fat burning. In fact, critics say it’s a low-nutrient replacement—yet clocking in at 450 calories and 50 grams of fat—for what could be a better-balanced meal. Nutrition experts warn that it decreases your nutrient intake by about one-third,20 whereas you could get healthy fats from foods like avocados or salmon.
Bulletproof offers big, vague claims without always the evidence to back them up. Also, as far as I’m concerned—though clearly this isn’t a study either!—their fatty coffee doesn’t suppress hunger. I tried it, and by 11:00 a.m. I was aching for a bagel. By noon, I was eyeing my dog’s food bowl.
Another potential downside of biohacking is that it makes people feel more proactive about their health than they actually are. It’s a psychological effect that researchers refer to as “illusory invulnerability.” If you believe you’re already taking action, you may be less compelled to pursue actual healthy habits. Or you may even engage in unhealthy behavior. In one study, those who took supplements were more likely to neglect activities such as exercise or eating balanced meals than those who didn’t. Consuming supplements also spurred unhealthy indulgences, like choosing an all-you-can-eat buffet over a healthy meal. Taking that magic pill gave them “license” to slack off.21
Sometimes individuals do see a positive effect after taking a supplement. But can they prove it’s causal versus coincidental? If someone decides to commit to a healthier lifestyle and couples it with a vitamin regimen, then yes, they will likely experience physical changes and start feeling better. But who’s to say the pills are doing anything?
Maybe every industry sells control, whether that’s beauty, automobiles, or tech. Sure, but you can’t quite equate nutrition to cosmetics. The stakes are higher. When it comes to our health, there is no place for deceptive marketing tactics or faulty science. But the promises are just so alluring: Who doesn’t want to believe they can live longer, better, and stronger?
Flashback: “I’m Gonna Live to Be a Hundred”
In June 1971, health guru Jerome Irving (J. I.) Rodale appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. Dubbed Mr. Organic, he was a pioneer of the natural health movement, having founded Prevention magazine and authored books such as Happy People Rarely Get Cancer. Semiretired at age seventy-two, Rodale felt fit as a fiddle and ready to divulge his secret to longevity: a nutritious diet. “I never felt better in my life,” exclaimed Rodale with a smile. “I’m gonna live to be a hundred.”
Following a commercial break, Rodale moved over on the couch to let the next guest take center stage. Suddenly, the audience heard Rodale let out a sound that resembled a loud snore. Assuming it was a prank, the audience erupted into laughter. But this was no gag. Cavett took one look at his guest—mouth agape, head thrown back—and knew something was wrong.
Rodale was pronounced dead on the spot. He had suffered a fatal heart attack.
Years later, while recounting the incident, Cavett joked, “Who would be the logical person to drop dead on a television show? A health expert.”
Jokes aside, Rodale remains an important figure in the modern wellness movement. Like his predecessors and successors, he was quick to promise an Eden of health. Rodale penned columns full of practical lifestyle advice. He sat at the forefront of healthy and organic food. Rodale also harbored a mistrust of government, medicine, and industrial powers. His dogma centered on questioning accepted health tenets both big and small.
While skepticism is warranted (and necessary), reformers can sometimes get it wrong. Rodale pushed a slew of unconventional ideas, some far more experimental than scientific. He believed in exposing the body to shortwave radio waves to boost the body’s supply of electricity.22 Sugar, in his mind, was so toxic it could severely impair judgment and even lead to crime. (Rodale even supposedly suggested that Hitler was a sugar fiend addicted to whipped-cream-topped cakes, implying that a sweet tooth turned him into a genocidal maniac.)23 Rodale was also an anti-vaxxer, advocating a dietary cure for polio. “Isn’t there a better way of conquering polio than jabbing all the children in the country with a needle?” the publisher wrote in a 1955 issue of Prevention.24
At one point, the Federal Trade Commission targeted Rodale’s book The Health Finder, which claimed to help people add years to their lives and free themselves from colds, among other promises. The agency deemed the book not only inconsistent with modern science but engaging in deceptive advertising. The FTC took Rodale to court, and he defended himself on First Amendment grounds throughout the 1960s.
Rodale, Inc., grew to become one of the world’s largest health and wellness publishers, printing popular magazines such as Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and Runner’s World, before being acquired by Hearst. In addition to the empire Rodale established, he endures as the pinnacle of dissent both from centuries past and the wellness gurus yet to come.
In 2018, I started receiving invitations to check out a mobile clinic offering on-the-spot ovarian egg reserve testing, which measures the anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH)—just one marker of a woman’s remaining egg supply. The traveling clinic was run by the femtech start-up Kindbody, dubbed “the SoulCycle of fertility” by The Verge. Here, I and other women could learn for free about what might convince us to buy their core service: oocyte cryopreservation, also known as egg freezing.
So one spring day, I visited an egg-yolk-yellow bus parked in a busy mid-city intersection across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It held court among other transportation vehicles, namely food trucks, UPS trucks, and Uber pickups. This bus, however, saw a steady stream of women jumping in, then exiting fifteen minutes later to pick up free lip balm and water bottles from a nearby table. A line formed in front of the splashy vehicle—a revolving door of fashionable parishioners in high-heeled sandals and work-appropriate attire.
Unlike stuffy OB-GYN clinics, Kindbody had confidence-boosting “girl boss” mottoes like “Own your future” lining the bus’s walls. In addition to free testing, the fertility buses offered a “wellness lounge” where women could indulge themselves with spa-like skin care consultations. This was no drab affair. It was all smiles, catchy hashtags, and swag—like a midday Sephora dash.
What would generally be regarded as a hard sell was rebranded as wellness. The company compared their services to other areas of proactive health care, such as nutrition or exercise. “Egg freezing is absolutely a form of self-care,” declared Gina Bartasi, the founder and CEO of Kindbody.25 In an interview with The Verge, she said, “What we want to do is help women live a life of no regrets, and have children when they want them, on their own timeframe.” Kindbody’s website read, “Freezing eggs is like freezing time.”
Kindbody is one of many fertility start-ups that emerged in the last decade to counteract new societal shifts: in 2019, following a four-year downward trend, U.S. fertility rates hit a thirty-five-year low. In addition, more women in their thirties and forties are having babies, which inevitably increases the need for medical intervention for those impacted by age-related infertility. In 2009, 475 women chose to freeze their eggs. By 2017, there were 9,042 women.26
Egg freezing start-ups sell peace of mind from knowing that you can store your eggs this winter, then gather them when a future spring arrives. And why not learn about it with a little bit of levity? The appeal is obvious, if not seductive: Who doesn’t want more time? Time to travel, time to solidify a career, time to buy a house, time to pursue Timothée Chalamet. The more time the better.
Kindbody’s roaming reproductive tour hit major U.S. cities, with an emphasis on women in their midtwenties. When deciding where to go next, Bartasi asked: Where is SoulCycle opening up? What is Drybar doing? They ended up rolling through the Hamptons.27 Throughout the tour, the brand kept it light, upbeat. By using trendy terms like “self-care,” Kindbody transformed a medical procedure into something more empowering. They destigmatized fertility treatment.
The Kindbody tour proved a bona fide success, drawing new clients to their upscale brick-and-mortar boutique clinics that looked more like Instagrammable coworking spaces than sterile medical clinics. Women froze their eggs and believed: They could have it all.
But missing throughout all that optimistic talk might have been a reality check. It’s posted in FAQ sections and perhaps quickly addressed during an introductory session, but if you look at the overall marketing messaging, you might take away more promise than medical realism.
“It was more painful than I was ready for.” “It’s a serious thing.” “Be sure to buy truckloads of ibuprofen.” I received these and other cautions from my friends and online strangers when I first looked into the procedure.
Egg retrieval is an intrusive process of daily hormone injections, multiple ultrasound appointments, and blood tests as well as an invasive procedure usually performed under general anesthesia.* On rare occasions, it can result in painful complications. I know: I’ve done it.
Not to mention that it’s wildly expensive. Egg freezing starts between $6,000 and $10,000, though some of my friends spent closer to $15,000 following the number of tests and drugs required. And costs don’t end at gathering the eggs.† The eggs need to be stored (usually $600 plus a year), then survive being unthawed, fertilized, and implanted back into the uterus via IVF. How much, on average, does it cost for the whole soup-to-nuts menu for having a baby? Clients often need more than one IVF cycle, hiking the average cost of successful egg freezing and IVF to somewhere between $40,000 to $60,000.
With little state and insurance aid, it’s one of the largest out-of-pocket health expenses millennials face. A 2015 survey found that more than one-quarter of women aged twenty-five to thirty-four accrued an average of $30,000 of debt after undergoing fertility treatment. Some raid their 401(k)s, take out loans, borrow money from relatives, or start GoFundMe campaigns. I once reported on how cash-strapped millennials were forced to turn to their parents for IVF treatment costs. But as you can imagine, mixing family, money, and reproductive health has its own complications—for example, grandparents who believe they wield certain rights over a child they personally paid for.28
The procedure is worth it if it means a little bundle of joy at the end though, right?
Well, that’s where it gets tricky. Success highly depends on an individual’s age when they freeze their eggs and on the freezing technique. While egg freezing boasts its share of success stories, it also involves numerous eggs that don’t survive the thawing period, fertilization, embryo progression, implantation, etc. The chances of a single frozen egg resulting in a live birth for women under the age of thirty-eight is between 2 and 12 percent, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.29 One stat you won’t see on a peppy social media post: of the approximately 2.5 million IVF cycles performed annually, a staggering 2 million do not succeed, which puts the global IVF cycle failure rate at nearly 80 percent.30
A lot of confusion exists as to what constitutes “success” in this sector. Are we discussing the success of retrieving and storing eggs, of getting pregnant, or of actually having a baby at the end of the process? A lot of accurate but misleading numbers are floating around. Rates are hard to analyze because egg freezing is still so new—many who put their eggs on ice haven’t retrieved them yet. But there’s no confusion about the fact that fertility takes a nosedive as we age, something we might prefer to ignore.
In 2014, a marketing executive named Brigitte Adams graced the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek with the headline FREEZE YOUR EGGS, FREE YOUR CAREER. Wearing a black dress and heels, and with her hand defiantly positioned on her hip, the blond professional became the “poster child for egg freezing.” At age thirty-nine, Adams spent $19,000 icing her future plans as she continued searching for Mr. Right. She later started an egg freezing educational website and digital community called Eggsurance.
Six years later, at forty-five, Adams picked a sperm donor and cashed in her coupon—to disappointing results. Some of her eleven eggs didn’t survive the thawing process, while others failed to fertilize or turned out to be genetically abnormal. Only one egg produced a normal embryo. That one resulted in a chemical pregnancy, which is a very early pregnancy loss shortly after implantation. By then, there were no more eggs to retrieve.
“I never imagined that my egg freezing gamble would end this way,” she wrote on her website, lamenting how long she’d waited to start the defrosting process. In an interview with the Washington Post, Adams noted that there wasn’t enough discourse about “part two”—what happens when women try to use their thawed eggs—and that the “huge marketing hype” crumbles in the face of biological reality.31
Egg freezing technology is certainly improving, and doctors I interviewed note that many traditional clinics’ messaging and approach differs from that of startups. Still, women are starting to take a harder look at what’s a more complicated medical process than they might have initially assumed, but usually only after having invested considerable financial and emotional effort.
Grace Clarke, a marketing and content consultant in New York, spent four years saving up enough money to freeze her eggs with Kindbody at the age of thirty-two. But the experience proved less than optimal. Clarke says there wasn’t nearly enough emphasis on educating her on probable outcomes—that is, how many harvested eggs might result in a live birth. In the end, she felt she did nothing more than buy uncertainty. “The biggest issue is that Instagram and social media have trained us to not dig deep and explore the truth, to take marketing slogans at face value,” Clarke holds. “I would do anything, anything, anything, to help other people understand what it took me four years, nine thousand dollars, ten pounds, tons of shots, and a breakup to learn: Egg freezing is not a calendar date. It is an expensive marginal increase on your odds.”‡
Now, I am not invalidating the miracle of modern reproductive assistance, which I myself have sought. No one can deny that reproductive technologies help couples start families. For women diagnosed with infertility, endometriosis, or undergoing chemotherapy, these new technologies have been a lifeline.
But we need more acknowledgement that many individuals put their faith in the process only to meet heartbreaking losses. There is concern that young women are not sufficiently informed about the odds they might not get a baby in the end. Success is dependent on an individual’s biology; there’s a lot of variability in outcomes. No one should consider it an “insurance policy”—insurance policies offer guarantees, while egg freezing does not. This misconception is also a testament to how uninformed some American women are about their own bodies, or how they’re advised to brush off fertility until it’s too late—or both.
Not all women are educated enough about fertility, which means they are also not armed to make the right decisions during pivotal years. So, at the very least, egg freezing start-ups are inspiring individuals to learn more about their bodies. But some might question: Should they be the ones doing this?
But also, what in our culture has led us to a point where egg-freezing clinics are rolling through cities? We’ve revered cultural milestones—homeownership, career success, and paying off student debt—without always aligning them with childbearing years. Our society doesn’t always make it easy for many women to have kids at a biologically preferable time. America inadvertently incentivizes the delay of motherhood: women who reproduce before age thirty-five never see their pay recover relative to their partners’ pay.32 Paltry work-life support structures, as evidenced by the lack of subsidized childcare, limited parental leave, or more flexible opportunities for working moms, are designed to make women wait. But fertility won’t.
There are other reasons too. Hopeful grandparents might accuse women of being workaholic careerists who won’t supply them with a grandchild until they’ve reached the C-suite (a charge never directed at men). Obsessed with work, they complain about their ambitious daughters. But according to one Yale research study, the chief reason women wait is that they’re still looking for a committed partner.33 Many women report that potential mates are unwilling to settle down or are uninterested in parenthood anytime soon. Of course, they can forgo a partner and seek a family on their own, but that’s not easy; raising and affording a child is hard even with two parents in the picture these days.
The reason behind the interest in egg freezing is that people feel they don’t have very good options, says Josephine Johnston, a bioethicist at the Hastings Center. “They’re trying to gain some modicum of control, even if it’s imperfect and even if it’s not a guarantee,” she explains. When they don’t feel they’re in a position to have a child during their childbearing years, then at least they can do something to try to preserve their fertility.34
But—echoing the clean beauty issue—the impetus is on women to preplan a solution for a culture they feel isn’t looking out for them. With so little support, it’s up to them to empty their pockets to fix the problem, and the problem is women’s bodies. When Kindbody’s website includes “facts” such as “You’ll never be more fertile than you are today,” the company sends a rather alarmist message: a responsible woman needs to take medical action now before her fertility further declines.35 Our biology is therefore something that must be managed.
Egg freezing is generally available only to those who either pay for it on their own or receive financial assistance via a top-tier workplace benefit. Companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google offer egg freezing at the request of female employees (thereby setting industry standards), but Johnston believes we need to identify the root causes of involuntary childlessness. “People say this [workplace benefit] is what women want. Well, why do they want that? Because everything else is against them. ‘This is the only choice because I don’t have the options I want.’”
Younger generations hear horror stories from women who waited too long and simply want to avoid any heartbreak. Their motivation is better described as future damage control. One egg freezing hopeful told the New York Times, “I wear sunscreen to protect myself from future sun damage. I work out to keep off my weight. Why would I not do something to prevent future emotional pain and suffering?”36
Others worry about how casually some marketing treats egg freezing. They’re concerned that it propels younger women to believe they don’t have to worry about fertility until later in life—a luxury usually afforded only to men. Come flex your feminist muscles, flex your workplace independence is the potential takeaway, according to Miriam Zoll, the author of Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies.
Liberation—from conformity, authority, biology, or “the patriarchy”—has become a mainstay thread for the advertising and marketing industries, infusing consumerism with cherished American ideals. Carl Elliott opines in his fantastic book Better than Well, “Americans have a hard time resisting anything that can be phrased in terms of self-determination. Autonomy, liberty, freedom: these are among our most powerful words.”37
Egg freezing companies by no means promise women anything, but there is legitimate concern that the nuance gets lost in translation.
This is not an argument against egg freezing or IVF. We’re so very lucky to live in a time in which women have options and the ability to seek reproductive assistance. Instead, the concern is that commercialization promotes a still nascent, complex technology to women. One study published in the journal the New Bioethics found that many fertility clinics engaged in deceptive advertising by selling the procedure persuasively, not informatively, all while minimizing risks and the low birth rate.38
As most any doctor will tell you, for every success story, there are many disappointed women. Even the most promising breakthroughs can have their limits.
Hidden beneath layers of clever marketing, the wellness industry beckons with a far stronger, more seductive message than relief or escape. The carrot it dangles in front of women is the one thing they desperately desire: control. Women are promised they can manage the chaos ruling their life by following a laid-out plan: eat right, exercise, meditate, then buy or do all this stuff. This mass consumerism is a vehicle for harnessing everything that feels turbulent in their lives.
The allure of control is communicated throughout wellness. Fitfluencers transform the sluggish to the masterful. Spiritual influencers hawk crystals to help followers snag a coveted job promotion. “Clean” snacks dangle a disease-free future. Woven throughout lies the message that you can manipulate what is unruly, subpar, or standing in the way of progress. Buy it, use it, think it—and you’re back in the driver’s seat. All noteworthy goals. We should try to take control of our health. We should take responsibility, as much as possible, for what we eat, how we sleep, and how much movement we engage in. But there’s a significant distinction between what we can actually manage and what is out of our hands. When it comes to new scientific advancements, at what point do we admit we’re denying real limitations? Or relinquishing control to brands and leaders as a costly crutch?
We start to think anything is possible, partially because wellness ads tell us health can be attained, maintained, and elevated. “But every time you reach a milestone, the goalpost moves farther away,” says Sarah Greenidge, the founder of WellSpoken, an organization committed to regulating wellness brands to ensure that they provide credible information. “It keeps you chasing wellness, which makes sense—it keeps you always consuming. You can always be more well, more in control.” As the market grows bigger and ever more encompassing in all areas of life, organizations like WellSpoken attempt to course correct an industry showing signs of growing pseudoscience.
“The wellness industry has thrived on a very low-health-literate, high-disposable-income consumer,” says Greenidge, who hopes to rein in brands and educate consumers. WellSpoken consultants partner with companies, content creators, and influencers to offer guidelines on how to communicate their messaging. Their goal is to crack down on false claims and exaggerated solutions to the very many issues we’re now told we can manage.
Most physicians, in contrast, will rarely promise full control or guaranteed results. They won’t definitively say they’ll cure patients of serious cancer or that you’ll live to be 180, which is why they’re not the leaders of this movement. Gurus gather the masses with assurance, not probability. Or as the author and biochemist Isaac Asimov once said: “Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.”
It’s comforting. When we feel overwhelmed, these rituals—like popping a morning supplement—make us feel safer. But the truth is, life is wild. You cannot control everything. Longevity, least of all from a glass bottle, is never guaranteed. Even Dave Asprey cannot control everything, despite his claims of stalling aging and plans to live past what’s humanly possible. On Twitter, biohacking fans observe that the forty-seven-year-old founder is graying. His thick mane reveals him to be a biological normie. They ask: What’s up with the “perennially haggard” look? Why wasn’t he able to fully reverse his hair color? Why does he already “look 135 years old”?
While real scientific breakthroughs and advancements occur, we also need to recognize the limits of science. The way that wellness has been commodified by gurus drawing from science and then exaggerating results spreads the toxic positivity message that you can fully accomplish what is an impossible goal. But bodies, even the best bodies, eventually betray us. No one will ever be completely healthy forever. We can’t stop the aging process. At a certain point, our biology breaks down. That’s nature.