Health and wellness for individuals, much like beauty, cosmetics, and even fashion, often operate on an inverse incentive system between suppliers and consumers. Marketers, media, and product companies don’t always benefit from making us truly informed. Instead, they thrive when we keep searching - prioritizing transactions over outcomes - and stay in a loop of trial and error. Essentially “just buy something — procedure, pill, or powder — and if that doesn’t work, come on back and buy something else.”

Take a walk through any GNC storefront to see this irl. The setup is designed to look quasi-professional—fitness-oriented branding, walls lined with glossy supplement bottles, vague claims of performance enhancement, each with a Sam’s Club-level bulk discount offer. Everything looks exactly the same. The experience can be as intimidating as going to indie movie rental stores used to be, not because your selections are being judged, actually because they aren’t. In the absence of any informed, engaged guidance, trust has eroded and left individuals adrift amongst indistinguishable, indecipherable aisles. This trust vacuum is hardly limited to preventative nutrition and wellness in healthcare industries. The systems are built to keep you patient (buyer), not necessarily to get you to a point where you may no longer need their products thanks to long-term effectiveness and healthier outcomes.

The real question many individuals may actually want help with in making these purchases isn’t just, “what should I take?” but rather, “how do I know what actually works for me?” This requires two critical capabilities: first, the ability to clearly express my own specific health, fitness, or performance needs, and second, the ability to assess—objectively and quantitatively—whether something I put into my body is delivering real, measurable benefits. Luckily, individuals are beginning to reclaim more self-determined agency in their healthcare journeys, via complimentary technological advancements from wearable health trackers to biopunk cybernetics. The user and so patient-centric nature of the open internet, its vast stockpiles of health and healthcare data, from clinical trials to group-text step counting, is now met with AI capable of transforming that data from unknown, inaccessible or obfuscated, to clear, relevant, and actionable on a individualized and personalized level in real-time and on demand.

For example, if I start taking a new supplement, how do I know if it’s working? Who else has tried this? How did it go for them? Are there noticeable changes in energy, sleep, recovery, or cognitive function? How long do I need to take it in order to experience and gauge its impact? And beyond subjective feeling, is there any data that can validate these effects? What markers should I be looking for? The same goes for diet—how can I track whether I’m actually getting the right nutrients, not just in theory, but based on how my body responds over time?

We’re starting to see companies emerge on the periphery of legacy healthcare and wellness that take a more data-driven, personalized approach. Ingredient.ai is a new company utilizing AI to analyze supplement ingredient experimental and clinical study and research data on supplement ingredients to deliver coherent, current and actionable insights for supplement R&D. Such AI-driven enabling layer development will allow providers to pass along that transparency, individualization to proactive patient individuals in the form of more effective and understood products. Such data platforms leave open the opportunity for new services and applications developed on top of them to further implement and facilitate patient-directed, personalized user interactions and experience. SuppCo is another recently launched startup that helps rebuilding trust in supplementation through community-building. Users can share their own supplement histories, experiences, and suggestions alongside clear and concise industry indicators and rating systems. Trust in shared community is extremely powerful in a social context. Fostering community around this data, where user-generated explanations, shared experiences, and real-world results can coexist alongside clear, accurate, and digestible information can transform the individual adrift at GNC into an empowered, informed, self-determined participant.

I’m curious about solutions that provide a similar level of AI-ML analysis and design-conscious accessibility for other personalized healthcare categories and in different forms and functions. For instance in diet and nutrition, something that doesn’t just count macros, but helps individuals understand nutrient intake over time in a meaningful, science-backed way. Genuine, active health communities could be especially powerful for individuals dealing with chronic conditions, autoimmune disease management or long-term, undiagnosed health issues. This mix of data-driven insights and community-driven wisdom could create a much stronger foundation for truly understanding our health and how we can feel better.