By her own reckoning, Dr Cerys Jones has pretty much “seen everything” as a primary care physician in her family practice – including plenty of wellness wins (and fails) with her patients.

The Melbourne GP is generally open to the idea of wellness when her patients bring it up. “People looking to be the best version of themselves should be encouraged,” she tells Broadsheet.

Still, there’s a lot of bad info and dodgy treatments out there. Here’s what she wants everyone to know about health and wellness culture.

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Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Doctors don’t have all the answers

In primary care, there’s not always a medical answer for what ails someone. We train in a system that looks for illness and treats illness, so there is a really different emphasis. And the way that Medicare is structured to turn through all the people that need healthcare, you don’t spend as long with every person. I think that’s a big issue.

So there are gaps in medical models of wellbeing, and sometimes the wellness industry might fill that gap for some people.

We want to know which wellness practices you’re pursuing

Doctors much prefer to be told everything that people are doing – most of it’s harmless, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes I’ll get people to bring in all the stuff their naturopath has given them. And it turns out they’re having 25 times the recommended dose of a particular vitamin, or lots of things that might interact with their prescribed medications.

So go and talk to your GP about whether or not this is actually the best thing for you, or is there a better option, or is there a potential harm that might come from this intervention? These are the sort of things you can talk about with your trusted doctor.

If it makes you feel good, and it’s not bankrupting you, then go for it

If there’s something that you can adapt into your daily life in a way that makes you feel better about the control that you take over your body and your wellbeing – and it’s not incredibly expensive, and it’s not going to interact with other areas of your healthcare, and it’s not obviously dangerous – if it makes you feel good, then you should do it. Even if you’re getting benefit from a placebo – provided you’re not taking out a bank loan to pay for it – then have at it.

What I try and talk to people about is getting the best bang for your buck. Like, are you better off joining a Pilates class and doing exercise five days a week or getting acupuncture once a week? Everyone’s got a certain amount of money they can spend. Where are you going to get the best value?

But extreme protocols are not the way

Anything where you drastically change your diet in a short space of time, or you drastically change your exercise routine in a short space of time can be a red flag. Sudden and drastic changes tend not to stick, because they make people feel a bit terrible. You feel better at first, and then run out of pep. Anything with very rigid rules is unlikely to be of long-term benefit.

Also, things like colonic irrigation can actually do you a significant disservice in the long term. We’re only starting to understand how important your gut flora is, and flushing it out is not a helpful thing to do for lots of reasons.

Watch out for random supplements

I’ve seen this in my practice a lot. People will be taking a powder for sleep and a supplement for hair and nails and an energy-boosting drink, and they’re all stabilised with a component of vitamin B6. You want to have a basic level of around 200mg and I’ve seen people with blood tests 10 to 15 times higher than the norm just from supplements. Eventually that can cause permanent nerve damage.

That’s why I try and get people to bring all their stuff with them so we can look at it together. It’s a tricky thing for people to do themselves because things can have more than one different chemical name. So you might not be able to see that you’re actually doubling up.

And most vitamins

There are some circumstances where vitamin supplements are helpful (like pregnancy and very specific medical conditions) but not many. For most people, you will get adequate nutrition from having a well-balanced diet without needing a supplement. You’re just making expensive wee.

And stuff off the internet

There are lots of internet-based skin cancer treatments that are hugely concerning, like black salve. Some people use it on their skin cancers at home, but it doesn’t treat them. It just burns the skin. In my previous practice I had a patient who died from metastatic melanoma after treating themselves with a black salve they got over the internet.

Also look out for compounded menopause treatments, and compounded hormones that you get over the internet. Some are fine, but some are dangerous.

Evidence is good, but lack of evidence doesn’t always mean something’s dodgy

The big, high-quality clinical trials don’t get done for conditions that aren’t especially life-threatening or life-limiting. That’s medicine, right? There are lots of gaps in the evidence base of how we manage illness, and especially how we manage wellbeing.

When I was a registrar, transcranial magnetic stimulation for treating depression was considered pretty out there. Now it’s Medicare-funded. So sometimes it takes a while to get an evidence base. Sometimes you never get one. The absence of evidence doesn’t mean absence of efficacy, and it doesn’t mean absence of efficacy for you, it just means absence of evidence.

We get it – basic health messaging is not as fun as wellness

Go and lift some weights twice a week and walk every day and eat five serves of vegetables and get enough fibre and enough protein and enough sleep – you can’t make any money out of that. It’s not sexy or fun or Instagram-worthy. And it’s not very appealing to people who are looking for immediate answers to their current troubles.

There’s a desire to have everything wrapped up in a neat bow and fix it now. But actually it’s just the small choices you make every single day forever that add up to living a healthy life.

Dr Cerys Jones has been a GP for more than 15 years. She currently treats between 80 and 100 people per week as a primary care physician at Eastbound Medical Clinic in Melbourne.

This story is part of Broadsheet’s special Wellness Issue, which explores what it means to feel good in 2025.