Could These 5 Popular Wellness Habits Be Backfiring?
Author: Eat Well · Feel Well · Live Well Editorial Team
Scroll through social media and you will find no shortage of advice promising to make you healthier, more beautiful and more balanced.
Most of these trends did not emerge from nowhere. Some may genuinely help certain people, and others are still being explored by researchers.
But a short video rarely leaves much room for nuance. Striking personal stories can make the benefits seem convincing, while the limitations, risks and all-important “it depends” quietly disappear from view.
Could a habit you adopted to feel healthier actually be adding more pressure—or even more anxiety—to your life?
Here, we take a closer look at five popular wellness trends from a slightly different angle.
1. Can Taping Your Mouth Shut Really Help You Sleep Better?
“Mouth taping” involves placing a specially designed strip of tape over the lips before bed to encourage breathing through the nose.
Promoted as a way to reduce snoring, prevent a dry mouth and improve sleep quality, the practice has spread rapidly through social media.
The idea is not entirely implausible. Breathing through the nose helps warm, humidify and filter the air before it reaches the lungs. It is easy to see, then, why keeping the mouth closed at night might sound like a simple route to better sleep.
The evidence, however, is far less straightforward.
A systematic review published in 2025 found that research supporting mouth taping during sleep remains limited. A small number of the studies reviewed reported improvements among people with mild obstructive sleep apnoea, but the findings do not show that the practice works—or is appropriate—for everyone.
There is another important question: why is someone breathing through their mouth in the first place?
Allergies, nasal congestion, a deviated septum, enlarged tonsils or sleep apnoea can all make it difficult to breathe freely through the nose. In such cases, physically sealing the mouth may restrict breathing rather than improve it.
Snoring and mouth breathing may not simply be habits to cover with tape. They could be signs that the underlying cause deserves attention.
Worth remembering: Mouth taping is not suitable for everyone. If you regularly experience nasal congestion, loud snoring or daytime sleepiness, speak to a healthcare professional before reaching for the tape.
2. Are More Supplements Really Better?
Vitamin D. Magnesium. Iron. Zinc. Omega-3. Probiotics.
The more closely we pay attention to our health, the easier it is for the number of bottles on the shelf to grow.
Each product may contain a familiar ingredient. But when several supplements include the same vitamins or minerals, doses can begin to overlap without us noticing.
And labels such as “natural” or “plant-based” are not guarantees of safety.
The US National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements notes that supplements can cause side effects and may interact with medicines or other products. The US Food and Drug Administration also warns that combining supplements with medication can make a drug’s effects stronger or weaker—and, in some cases, lead to serious consequences.
This does not mean supplements have no value.
They can serve a clear purpose for people with a diagnosed deficiency, those following a restricted diet or during pregnancy. But a growing collection of bottles is not necessarily a measure of how seriously we take our health.
Worth remembering: Supplements cannot always be freely combined simply because they are sold as food products. Check for overlapping ingredients—and if you take any medication, make sure your doctor or pharmacist knows about every supplement you use!
3. Does Cold Water Really Make You Stronger?
Cold-water swimming and cold plunges have attracted attention as ways to improve recovery, lift mood and reduce inflammation.
The rush that follows a dip in icy water can feel powerful. So can the sense of achievement. It is not difficult to understand why regular cold-water swimmers are often eager to share the experience.
A systematic review published in 2025 found that cold-water immersion may influence stress, sleep and quality of life. But the number of studies and participants was still limited, and the effects varied depending on when they were measured. In other words, not every benefit associated with cold plunging has been firmly established.
Then there is the body’s immediate response.
Sudden exposure to cold water can trigger a “cold-shock response”, causing breathing, heart rate and blood pressure to rise sharply. This can be particularly concerning for people with heart or circulatory conditions. In lakes and rivers, the temperature is only one part of the risk. Currents, depth, slippery ground and difficult exits can all turn an invigorating dip into a dangerous situation. A wellness practice is no longer supporting your health if it exposes you to hypothermia or drowning.
Worth remembering: The length of time you can endure the cold is not a measure of how healthy you are. Avoid plunging suddenly into extreme temperatures—and never do it alone.
4. Is “Clean Eating” Making Food More Stressful?
Choosing less heavily processed foods and eating more fruit and vegetables is not, in itself, a bad idea.
But once we describe food as “clean”, everything outside that category can begin to feel “dirty” or somehow wrong.Cut out sugar. Avoid wheat. Remove dairy. Eliminate additives. As each new rule is added, eating out can become stressful. Sharing a meal with other people may feel increasingly difficult, and checking every label can start to seem impossible to avoid.
When an interest in healthy eating becomes an intense preoccupation with the purity or “correctness” of food, it is sometimes described as orthorexia. Although orthorexia is not currently recognised as a separate clinical diagnosis, it has been associated with nutritional deficiencies, anxiety and social isolation.
A 2017 study of people who followed healthy-eating accounts on Instagram found that more frequent use of the platform was associated with stronger orthorexic tendencies. That does not prove Instagram directly caused them—but it does raise questions about how carefully curated images of “perfect” eating may shape our own rules around food.
Healthy eating should support your life. If it is making your world smaller, it may be worth reconsidering some of those rules.
Worth remembering: No single food or meal determines your overall health. Instead of focusing only on what you have managed to eliminate, look at the balance of your diet as a whole—and whether it is realistic enough to enjoy and sustain.
5. Does a Low Sleep Score Mean You Slept Badly?
You wake up and, before checking how you actually feel, reach for your smartwatch.
Hours slept. Deep sleep. REM sleep. Recovery score.
A high number brings relief. A low one can make you think: “I must be exhausted today.”
Sleep trackers can be useful tools for spotting patterns in our daily routines. But the stages and scores produced by consumer devices are not the same as the measurements taken during a clinical sleep study.
In 2017, sleep researchers introduced the term “orthosomnia” to describe an unhealthy preoccupation with achieving perfect sleep-tracker data—one that may actually increase anxiety around sleep.
The harder you try to sleep perfectly, the more alert you may become. The more determined you are to achieve an ideal score, the more elusive sleep can feel.
You may even wake feeling reasonably well, only to start feeling tired the moment your screen tells you that you did not sleep properly.
The data may be informative. But your watch does not get the final say on how you feel.
Worth remembering: A sleep score is not a diagnosis. If checking the numbers is making you more anxious, try taking a break from tracking for a few days and pay attention instead to your sleepiness, mood and ability to concentrate.
So, What Should We Do With All This “Healthy” Advice?
Mouth taping, supplements, cold-water immersion, food tracking and sleep trackers can all be useful tools—when they are used in ways that suit the individual.
What matters is not allowing a trend to become your personal truth simply because everyone seems to be talking about it.
Before adding a new wellness practice to your routine, ask yourself three questions:
Is there reliable evidence behind its claimed benefits?
Does following it make me feel more reassured?
Or is it quietly adding more anxiety?
Sometimes, before introducing one more habit into your life, it may be worth pausing to ask:
“Do I really need this right now?”
