I Spent 20 Years in Training & Practice. She Spent 20 Minutes on Canva.

I saw a graphic from Pew Research this week that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. They analyzed nearly 7,000 health and wellness influencers with over 100,000 followers who regularly post on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. The breakdown of who these people actually are stopped me cold.

Only 41% identified themselves as any kind of health professional. And within that 41%, only 17% specified conventional medicine. The rest were allied health, complementary and alternative practitioners, dietitians, or mental health professionals. Meanwhile, 31% called themselves coaches. 28% said entrepreneur. 16% listed no credentials at all. None. Not a certification, not a license, not a degree. Just a ring light and an opinion.

I want to be careful here because I don't think credentials are the only thing that matters in life. I've learned valuable things from people who never went to medical school. Lived experience is real. Perspective is real. But when we're talking about health advice, about what to put in your body, how to interpret your lab work, whether that supplement is safe with your medication, whether that symptom is normal or a red flag, we are talking about stakes that are genuinely life and death. And the person answering those questions for millions of women may have gotten their expertise from a weekend webinar and a PDF certificate.

This is where I get frustrated, and I want to be candid rather than dancing around it professionally.

I have three Ivy League degrees. I completed a four-year residency in obstetrics and gynecology. I am double board-certified in OB-GYN and obesity medicine. I have a master's degree in nutrition. I spent two decades in clinical training and practice at the same time as I spoke to millions of people on television about health. And I am not saying that to list my resume. I'm saying it because there is a difference between educating yourself and having a formal education and clinical experience, and that difference matters most precisely when the stakes are highest.

"Educating yourself" means reading, being curious, and staying informed. I'm all for that. I want every woman who follows me to feel more informed, not less. But there's a reason medical training takes a decade or more. It's not just about learning facts. It's about learning clinical judgment, having clinical experience with real humans, understanding risk stratification, knowing when a study applies to you and when it doesn't, and recognizing when something that sounds logical is actually dangerous. You cannot get that from a highlight reel. You cannot get that from a 60-second video with text overlays and trending audio. You can get confidence from those things. But confidence without competence is where people get hurt.

And the people most likely to get hurt? Women over 50. Us. We. Me. My audience. Your demographic is actively targeted by wellness influencers selling hormone protocols, supplement stacks, detox programs, and peptide regimens with zero clinical oversight. You're in a phase of life where hormonal shifts are real, where medication interactions are more complex, and where a missed diagnosis can accelerate a disease trajectory that might have been caught early by someone who actually knew what they were looking at. The margin for error is thinner, and the people offering you advice have never had to carry the weight of a wrong call.

I've carried that weight. Every physician has. We've had patients whose labs scared us, whose biopsies came back wrong, whose symptoms didn't fit the textbook. I’ve had patients die. I’ve been in an operating room where the 50-year-old patient with end-stage ovarian cancer asked for a fellow Catholic to say the ‘Our Father’ before she went under anesthesia. That experience, the weight of consequence, is part of what makes a clinician different from a content creator. Not better as a person. Different in the gravity of what we've been trained to hold.

I'm not asking you to distrust everyone who doesn't have an MD. I'm asking you to look at who's giving you advice and ask one simple question: what are they risking if they're wrong? If the answer is nothing, if the worst that happens to them is a deleted post, please weigh that advice accordingly.

Pew just showed us the data. Nearly 60% of the people shaping public health beliefs online are not health professionals. That's not an opinion. That's a number. And it should change how all of us consume what we scroll past every day.

Your health is not content. It's your life.

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