There was a time when I was as idealistic about wellness as the next green juice-drinking, organic-grocer-shopping yoga-devotee.

But while Beyonce was singing “Who run the world? (Girls)” a growing number of people were suggesting it was in fact big pharma and big food who had their hands on the wheel.

For anyone who wanted answers to their unresolved health questions, the wellness industry was there to fill the gap.

There was plenty to like: a focus on prevention instead of cure, the promise of thriving instead of surviving, and a sense of reclaiming control of your life and body. I went to classes, retreats and workshops, meditated morning and night, tried colonics and fasts, consumed medicinal mushrooms and learnt about breath-work techniques. I tried raw food veganism and Chinese herbal medicine, ice baths and saunas, psychedelics and Kundalini yoga.

I embraced it all. Until I didn’t.

Because there was an alarming side to it too, with potential to cause harm.

There were the fasts that often doubled as socially acceptable masks for disordered eating; the fads that came and went, leaving people confused and worse off than they were before; the extreme ideas about how to heal ourselves “naturally” (and the implied moral failing if you were unable to heal); the disdain for synthetic medicine alongside the spruiking of synthetic vitamins and supplements; and the haemorrhaging of money from desperate people.

The veil began to lift.

So it was with some ambivalence and curiosity that I visited the inaugural Wanderlust Wellspring biohacking and longevity summit on the Gold Coast recently – the biggest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.

Self-improvement is gospel

In its simplest form, biohacking is a form of self-improvement, an attempt at optimising body and mind through technology, drugs or other chemical substances. And I was one of 3000 visitors who had come to hear from biohacking OG Dave Asprey, Harvard longevity guru David Sinclair, Iceman Wim Hof and Gwyneth’s very own Doctor Goop, Dr Will Cole (a doctor of chiropractic with post-doctorate training in functional medicine and clinical nutrition), among others.

There was also Kayla Barnes-Lentz, an Ohioan in the business of wellness and “brain optimisation”.

After detailing the barrage of tests she takes to keep her body and environment “truly optimised”, Barnes-Lentz, who is in her mid-30s, offered her take on the future of menopause (an AI prediction model using blood biomarkers to “give you an idea of, potentially”, your rate of ovarian ageing).

She also listed the range of peptides and supplements she takes, expressed excitement about the future of custom-made vaginal probiotics, and shared how, after the Californian wildfires last year, she had 2½ litres of plasma removed from her body and replaced with albumin to “detoxify”.

Barnes-Lentz was a drawcard for some of the festivalgoers I spoke to as she represented one of the few female biohackers in a male-dominated space. They were keen to hear what those at the pointy end of wellness and biohacking are doing and how women are doing it differently to men.

Others, though, gave voice to the feeling of unease I had after leaving her talk.

The search for answers

Michelle, from Cairns, wanted to know more about combating the “shocking” effects of menopause. She hadn’t heard of Barnes-Lentz and was perplexed by the fixation on tests and metrics.

“I didn’t fully resonate with that,” she said. “I just don’t know if that’s the essence of wellbeing. So much of it is about our connection to nature and our connection to ourselves and our connection to others.”

Her partner, Rob, was there to hear Asprey’s talk. Biohacking, he said, was “another layer” to living a healthier life via organic whole foods, meditation and Qi Gong.

“The concept is to stay as young as you can for as long as you can,” he said. “We’re all going to die, but the aim is to do it as gracefully as possible.”

I wandered across the lawn of the Chemist Warehouse-sponsored event, where people munched on collagen ice-blocks, lounged on beanbags listening to different speakers, sat in a tent hooked up to vitamin infusions, or practiced yoga.

Colin, from Adelaide, told me he was dragged there “kicking and screaming” by his wife and son but had already taken 12 pages of notes about the benefits of brief exposure to intentional pain, red light and saunas.

A pair of friends who work in emergency medicine were there because “there’s so much” the current health and medical system doesn’t address.

Thrive or die

Cole sought to fill that void in his talk.

He had a slide listing the various factors that conventional medicine historically misses: poor nutrition, gut health issues, exposure to toxins, lack of exercise, chronic pain and poor sleep. There was also chronic stress, anxiety and depression, trauma and “shameflammation” – a term he coined – referring to emotional pain causing inflammation.

Most blood tests, he said, are based on average, not optimal. “The general population are not thriving. You’re here because you want to be thriving.”

Star of the show Asprey, a tech-entrepreneur and so-called “father of biohacking”, received a rock star welcome as he walked on stage wearing his trademark yellow glasses, which he claims “block toxic blue light” and sells for $US149.99 ($228).

A gifted speaker, the 51-year-old (who plans to live until he is 180) told how he was an overweight, unhealthy 26-year-old with arthritis in both knees, fibromyalgia and at high risk of stroke. Conventional medicine, he said, had failed him.

“I just wanted my body and brain to work … A lot of where biohacking came from was desperation.”

For a price, he promised to teach us biohacking, or how to operate the control panel of our minds so we can shift states seamlessly and heal, love, show up, have courage, focus, flow and be creative.

“We’re going to go from the old you with less energy to the new you with more energy ... Who wouldn’t want better energy?” he asks, putting up a QR code on screen with a link (and discount) to his $US16,000 five-day retreat.

“The normal state is boring and average.”

This is coming from a man who has injected himself with urine to treat his allergies.

But who wouldn’t want more energy? Who wants to be boring and average?

Optimisation or fearmongering?

It’s a compelling proposition that Big Wellness (and the big names in wellness) have all the answers. All we have to do is buy their book, retreat, supplement or product.

The underlying messages about optimising one’s overall health and feelings of wellness are often well meaning, says Dr Brooke Nickel, a senior research fellow in the school of public health at the University of Sydney.

“It is important to remember that there are major financial interests at play here, and most of what is being discussed or promoted is not based on any or robust evidence,” Nickel says.

And many of the people being marketed to are already relatively “healthy” but may have had negative experiences with the health system. So, she says: “It is really based on fearmongering – that if you don’t take this or do that, you won’t live your best and most optimally healthy life.”

What there is good evidence for is simple healthy lifestyle habits, Nickel points out – eating nutritious food, staying active, getting enough sleep, building meaningful relationships and having fair access to evidence-based healthcare.

I ponder our tendency towards binary thinking: the “us against them” mentality (the crowd cheers when Asprey jokes about his dream that the TGA and FDA fell into a wood chipper) makes us ripe picking for Big Wellness. And this is because if “they” are wrong, then “we” must be right.

Yet, all these industries are spectrums with legitimate people and products that can help as well as exploit people, and products that could harm.

I leave the festival relaxed from the yoga and meditation and even the vibro-acoustic-healing session. But my scepticism still sits alongside my curiosity.

And if the only way to feel better is to take 35 supplements in the morning and 15 at night (as per one of the speakers), remove all the plasma from your body, track yourself within an inch of your life and resort to the expensive extremes of biohacking, then I’d rather not live until 180.

The writer was a guest of Wanderlust.

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