Bygone health fads are easy to mock. Oxygen bars? Cabbage soup diets? Vibrating belt machines that jiggle away your fat? Puh-lease.

By now, most of us know that healthy eating and exercise are the best defence against chronic disease, along with moderate drinking and a smoke-free lifestyle. But sensible advice – “eat your greens” – gets old. We’re hardwired for novelty. We love shortcuts. And sometimes it’s tough to distinguish a new craze from an important breakthrough. What if gluten really is making us sick?

Early adopters get a psychological payoff, noted Caleb Lack, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Central Oklahoma and the author of Critical Thinking, Science, and Pseudoscience: Why We Can’t Trust Our Brains, to be published later this month. Products marketed as “groundbreaking science” or “ancient medicine” from the Amazon rain forest “make you feel like you’re part of something special, ahead of the curve,” he said.

Often, Lack added, people search for alternative cures after modern medicine has failed them. They may suffer from chronic pain or excess weight that they can’t seem to shed.

When lifestyle changes don’t work fast enough, some put blind faith in Gwyneth Paltrow, Dr. Oz and other high prophets of unproven remedies. “We as humans naturally like authority figures telling us what to believe,” Lack said. “Early education in critical thinking is the best inoculation against this.”

And so, with that in mind, here is The Globe and Mail’s take on the promise and pitfalls of the latest wacky health trends.