In an era of viral health advice, conflicting experts and endless optimization, the most important wellness skill may be knowing what is actually worth your attention.
We have never had more information about our health. Within minutes of opening your phone, you can learn about your hormones, microbiome, blood sugar, sleep, mitochondria, nervous system, peptides and five supplements you didn’t know existed yesterday. We track our sleep from our beds, glucose from our arms and recovery from our wrists, while world-renowned physicians and influencers compete for our attention. And somehow, with all of this access, people seem more confused than ever. Fast. Don’t fast. Eat more meat. Eat less meat. Cold plunge. Don’t cold plunge. Track your glucose. Stop obsessing over your glucose. Optimize everything. Or, for the sake of your nervous system, stop trying to optimize everything.
Welcome to Wellness in 2026.
When Information Stops Being the Problem
Access to information is no longer our problem. Discernment is. Which information deserves your attention? Which expert should you listen to? Which product is worth your money? And most importantly, does any of it actually apply to you?
I’ve spent much of my life asking these questions, first out of necessity and eventually as a career. My interest in wellness began more than 20 years ago, when wellness was anything but trendy. At 12 years old, I became very sick and eventually was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome with fibromyalgia. The diagnosis gave a name to what I already knew: I was sick, exhausted and in pain. It didn’t tell me why or what to do about it.
After years of searching for answers, my mother read a book by a holistic physician and drove me four hours to see a functional medicine doctor. That decision changed the trajectory of my life. Instead of looking only at my diagnosis, this doctor looked at me as a whole. She tested, asked questions and investigated my digestion, nutrition, absorption and microbiome. For the first time, the conversation shifted from “What do we call this?” to “Why might this be happening?” That distinction has shaped the way I think about health ever since.
Your Symptom Isn’t Your Identity
More than two decades working in wellness has reinforced something I learned very young: two people can walk into a room with the same complaint and have completely different reasons for being there. Fatigue is a symptom. Constipation is a symptom. Brain fog is a symptom. Yet today’s wellness culture often hears the symptom and immediately reaches for the solution. You’re tired? Take this. You’re bloated? Eliminate that.
We criticize conventional medicine for taking a symptom-and-prescription approach, but we can’t simply recreate the same model with different products. Swapping pharmaceuticals for supplements while keeping the same one-size-fits-all approach isn’t personalized wellness. Sometimes a supplement is incredibly useful. Sometimes medication is the right answer. Sometimes the newest technology is worth exploring. And sometimes the boring advice you’ve heard a thousand times is exactly what you need. The point isn’t to be anti-anything. It’s to get better at asking why, and listening to your own body. You’re the only one living in it.
Curiosity Without Blind Acceptance
I love wellness. I’ve built my career around it, and I will happily spend hours researching something most people have never heard of. But curiosity doesn’t require blind acceptance. We seem to have created a false choice where you have to be either a believer or a skeptic. I’m much more interested in the space between the two. Be curious enough to investigate something new and discerning enough not to accept or dismiss it simply because it’s new.
Popular doesn’t mean effective, and unconventional doesn’t mean ineffective. A physician saying something doesn’t eliminate the need for questions. An influencer saying it doesn’t automatically make it wrong. A testimonial isn’t a clinical trial, and a viral video certainly isn’t a personalized health plan. Individual biology matters, and sometimes the most accurate answer is simply, “We don’t know yet.” We need to become more comfortable saying that.
Wellness Should Improve Your Life, Not Consume It
There is a strange irony in modern wellness. In our attempt to become healthier, we’ve created an almost infinite number of things to worry about. At some point, the pursuit of health can become another source of stress. Health is supposed to give you more freedom, not become another full-time job.
Maybe We Need Better Questions
This is ultimately why I created The Well Known Podcast. I didn’t want to create another place telling people exactly what they should do. There are enough people doing that. I wanted to create a place for better conversations. I want to sit across from physicians, researchers, practitioners, founders, entrepreneurs and people with extraordinary personal experiences and ask the questions I genuinely want answered. I want you to hear what’s working for real people in real life, then make decisions for yourself. The goal isn’t to give everyone the same protocol. No speaking in absolutes here. It’s to give people enough information to think more intelligently about their own health.
What’s Actually Worth Knowing?
Wellness doesn’t need another guru, and no physician, podcast or philosophy is going to have every answer. What we need are better filters. We should be able to question conventional wisdom without rejecting conventional medicine and explore alternative approaches while recognizing that many aren’t alternative at all. They come from traditions that have existed for centuries. I believe the bridge between these worlds is exactly what we need.
Sometimes the newest intervention is extraordinary. Sometimes sleep, sunlight, movement, food, hydration, connection and consistency are still among the most powerful tools we have. Most importantly, we need to stop outsourcing every decision about our bodies. My goal is to help you understand your own body and how to feel well in it.
Ask questions. Stay curious. Change your mind when better information becomes available. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. You don’t need to know everything about wellness. In a world overflowing with information, the real advantage may be knowing what’s actually worth knowing. I’m the girl to bring you that info. I’m Shannon Conklin, Wellness Entrepreneur, Holistic Practitioner and endlessly curious about how to feel my best.
The Well Known Podcast: Wellness Worth Knowing.
Podcast available anywhere you listen to podcasts, Spotify, Apple, YouTube and iHeart.
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