Available
January 2027
Her Body, Her Cure
On the Personal & Political in Wellness Culture
Michelle Cohen explores the long history of women rejecting mainstream medicine to seek alternative health treatments.
Available
January 2027
Her Body, Her Cure
On the Personal & Political in Wellness Culture
Michelle Cohen explores the long history of women rejecting mainstream medicine to seek alternative health treatments.
Unconventional health treatments have long been part of women’s efforts to resist pervasive societal repression at the hands of misogyny and discrimination.
Her Body, Her Cure explores this history, from the unorthodox medical practices of the suffragists in the nineteenth century, to the holistic health philosophies of second-wave feminists in the 1970s, to the more modern examples of celebrities and online influencers selling supplements and diet regimens in the name of wellness. Michelle Cohen sifts through these trends while drawing on her personal experiences in wellness culture as well as her own observations and work as a physician and women’s health advocate. She seeks to determine how and why women have been drawn to alternative health treatments, linking the rejection of mainstream medicine to historically important ideas of personal autonomy, populist rebellion, and spiritual belief.
In recent years, wellness culture has taken a sharp turn towards far-right extremism, a jarring change due to the association of wellness with New Age spirituality and feminine-coded progressivism. The emphasis on anti-science ideology and extremist political affiliations is a volatile mix with far-reaching implications. Her Body, Her Cure untangles the dangerous evolution of this phenomenon and exposes its troubling consequences in modern times.
Praise for
Her Body, Her Cure
In Her Body, Her Cure, Michelle Cohen breaks down how the wellness industry preys on women and how science has let women down. Women are forced to not only advocate for getting the care they need, but they also have to become experts in navigating their health journeys. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Indeed, as she says in the book, ‘science must serve women better’. Cohen is one of the clearest communicators that I’ve ever interviewed. She is precise, doesn’t mince words and above all, she cares very deeply about the health and well-being of women. This book is a must read to understand the history of how we got here and the trailblazers and disruptors of women’s health, while also exposing the charlatans who stand to make a profit from a lack of information and misinformation echo chamber.
Nam Kiwanuka
• Host/Senior Producer, TVO’s (MIS)Treated
As women have long been underserved (and horrifically experimented on) by the medical industry, wellness gurus rushed in to provide a calmer, more ‘natural’ approach to healing. Sadly, as Michelle Cohen deftly investigates, many of their remedies and ideas are equally problematic. Read on to understand why women must reclaim science as a tool for their own liberation – and good health.
Derek Beres
• Emmy-nominated Journalist and Co-host of Conspirituality
A much-needed provocation for us to think deeply about biomedicine, alternative health industries, and trust. Cohen’s personal and historical reflections show us that we all have a role to play in combating anti-science attitudes and misinformation in the wellness industry and reclaiming the links between science, health, and feminism.
Karissa Robyn Patton
• Historian of Gender, Medicine, and Activism, University of Edinburgh
A wonderful quest to understand the origins of wellness culture and why it repudiates science to embrace commercialism, right-wing politics, and misogyny. From her upbringing steeped in counter-culture to her life as a family physician, wife, and mother, Cohen uses an original blend of autobiography and history to analyze how and why the wellness industry has always appealed to women and is now dominated by them. Engaging storytelling and witty criticism expose the contradictions and paradoxes in the long-running clash between medical science and feminism.
Jacalyn Duffin
• Hematologist, Historian, and Author of History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction
Michelle Cohen delivers a much-needed salve to help cope with our society’s rise of anti-science fascism. In a way that’s deeply personal yet informed by a wealth of clinical and scientific expertise as a family physician and science communicator, Cohen’s Her Body, Her Cure empowers women to see through the wellness scams that mercilessly target them and their vulnerabilities.
Jonathan N. Stea
• Clinical Psychologist and Author of Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry
Author
Author
Michelle Cohen is a family physician in southeastern Ontario. She holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University.
Dr. Cohen has written articles for CBC, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s, Healthy Debate, Chatelaine and other publications. She speaks on issues relating to primary care, rural health, women’s health, equity in medicine and wellness pseudoscience. Dr. Cohen is a contributing author for 2024’s Breaking Canadians: Healthcare, Advocacy and the Toll of COVID-19.
Michelle Cohen is a family physician in southeastern Ontario. She holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University.
Dr. Cohen has written articles for CBC, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s, Healthy Debate, Chatelaine and other publications. She speaks on issues relating to primary care, rural health, women’s health, equity in medicine and wellness pseudoscience. Dr. Cohen is a contributing author for 2024’s Breaking Canadians: Healthcare, Advocacy and the Toll of COVID-19.
Dr. Michelle Cohen is a family physician in southeastern Ontario. She holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Queen’s University.
Dr. Cohen has written articles for CBC, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s, Healthy Debate, Chatelaine and other publications. She speaks on issues relating to primary care, rural health, women’s health, equity in medicine and wellness pseudoscience. Dr. Cohen is a contributing author for 2024’s Breaking Canadians: Healthcare, Advocacy and the Toll of COVID-19.