Moving the kind of product that churns the wheels of the wellness-industrial complex requires a constant stream of fear and misinformation. Look closer at most wellness sites and at many of their physician partners, and you’ll find a plethora of medical conspiracy theories: Vaccines and autism. The dangers of water fluoridation. Bras and breast cancer. Cellphones and brain cancer. Heavy metal poisoning. AIDS as a construct of Big Pharma.

Most people think they will be immune to these fringe ideas, but science says otherwise. We all mistake repetition for accuracy, a phenomenon called the illusory truth effect, and knowledge about the subject matter doesn’t necessarily protect you. Even a single exposure to information that sounds like it could be quasi-plausible can increase the perception of accuracy.

Belief in medical conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the pharmaceutical industry is suppressing “natural” cures, increases the likelihood that a person will take dietary supplements. So to keep selling supplements and earthing mats and coffee enema kits and the other revenue generating merchandise, you can’t just spark fear. You must constantly stoke its flames.

There can be no modern wellness industry without medical conspiracy theories.

Even if you completely eschew these sites for the chicanery they are, people who come to believe this misinformation can affect public health by both their failure to vaccinate and by voting against evidence-based health policies.

Also, as a doctor I take it to heart when I hear about the latest measles outbreak or when a friend spends money on a therapy that can’t possibly help. When patients ask for an unsupported t est — such as urine chelation or salivary hormone levels, often promoted on wellness sites — I have to explain that I can’t in good faith order a useless test.

I also don’t want people to die.

So why do people turn to wellness?

There are symptoms that I believe have been with us since the beginning of time, so common that they are likely part of the human experience: fatigue, bloat, low libido, episodic pain, loss of vigor. When medicine can only offer a therapy, not a cure, or when doctors give undesired answers — suggesting attention to sleep hygiene, for instance — it isn’t hard to see how the intoxicating confidence and theater of wellness could beckon.