Today is a very special episode, because Christy’s back from maternity leave!
To return to the show, she’s joined by our producer Amelia Hruby for a conversation about the wellness trends she noticed while she was away, the personal health issues she navigated postpartum, and the parenting shifts she’s made with two kids at home.
They also discuss why Christy’s found herself turning to Reddit more than PubMed recently, how to find reliable information amidst so much AI slop, and topics for upcoming episodes — including GLP-1s, peptides, allergens, and more.
Behind the paywall, Christy also shares why she ended up in the hospital multiple times after giving birth, the moment she realized she might be getting an AI diagnosis, and how she’s handling new parenting challenges.
The first half of this episode is available to everyone. To hear the whole thing, become a paid subscriber here.
Resources and References
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Amelia Hruby: I am very excited to say, hi, Christy, welcome back from maternity leave.
Christy Harrison: Hi Amelia. Thank you so much. Is it weird that I’m nervous to be back on my own podcast?
Amelia Hruby: I think it’s very normal. I think everyone feels nervous to go back to work and also it’s just a weird experience to be hosted on your own show.
Christy Harrison: It is. That’s true. But yeah, when I was setting up for this, I was like, oh God, where’s my computer? How do I plug this in? It’s all so foreign.
Amelia Hruby: Of course. Even when I just take a one week vacation, I feel like I don’t understand how my computer works anymore, let alone going through the portal of birth and everything else that comes on the other side of it. So we’re happy to have you back and happy to provide time to settle in.
Christy Harrison: Thank you. Thank you. It’s good to be back.
Amelia Hruby: I’m so curious, how did you engage with the Internet or with social media during your leave?
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that’s a great question. I was on the Internet a lot, like constantly. I breastfed almost exclusively, but with some combo feeding and stuff in there too. And if anyone has ever breastfed or formula fed, they know it’s a much more active situation. When you’re formula feeding, you have to hold the baby in a certain way and hold the bottle and there’s no free hand versus when you’re breastfeeding, I had a special feeding pillow. It’s basically two free hands so I can just scroll to my heart’s content.
And at first especially the baby takes like an hour to do a feed or something and then you’re right back to it. And so it’s like, the whole day could be spent online or watching TV as I did in the beginning before she got too distracted. But yeah, so I’ve been definitely online a lot. Mostly I’m off social media now pretty much entirely, except if you count Substack Notes, which I didn’t really spend any time on during my leave. And then Reddit, which is like, is it social media? Is it not? It’s more of an early Internet forum type of thing and has some social media elements to it. But I did spend some time there just lurking, looking up different things and there’s a lot of forums about pregnancy and breastfeeding and all the new baby things and stuff.
And I having had another child already, I wasn’t quite down the rabbit holes I was going down with my first where it would be three am and I was panic Googling like, will this baby ever sleep? What is happening? Very normal. The learning curve is always steep with the first one and then with the second I was kind of like, will I just know what to do and will it all come back to me or not? And it didn’t right away. I had to refresh my memory on like, what are we doing here again? How long does this take? What should I be expecting at this age?
So for the first month or two, there was a fair amount of Googling about that stuff and sort of trying to answer questions about baby feeding and baby sleep and stuff like that. And I also had my own health challenges. I had a real go of it with this delivery and postpartum period. Had a lot of stuff come up that didn’t happen the first time around that I wasn’t expecting. And so I was definitely Googling around about my own health a little bit too.
But I noticed that I didn’t feel like going to PubMed the way that I usually do and doing my deep dives on the science at first. Especially when I was in the hospital for some extra time and that whole time my brain felt completely fried and I wasn’t sleeping and stuff too. So I just had no desire to look at PubMed or do any sort of scientific critical thinking. I was just looking at these consumer friendly public facing sites that I know have a lot of problematic information or I mean, they’re generally pretty decent. But then there’s things that I’m like, oh, well, if you’re really thinking critically, this is actually not true or this needs to be updated or whatever. I was kind of taking it at face value in those early days and also taking everything my doctor said at face value because I had no bandwidth to do those deep dives, which really gave me a lot of empathy for the people listening and people who might not want to do that stuff because they’re going through chronic illness and things of their own.
I have multiple chronic illnesses that I live with, but they’re not so severe at this point that I feel like I can have the bandwidth on sort of a regular basis to do those deep dives. But when I was in that acute stage and had no extra brain power to give, I was like, yep, I’m just gonna kind of do the same things that I was doing back in the day that so many other people do sort of because of lack of time, lack of desire, lack of bandwidth to really dig into the science.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing all of that. And I often think about how our bodies can really humble our minds. We have all the critical thinking capabilities, we’re smart, we’re focused, we know where to go to get the answers. But then that moment when your body is like, I have no energy, I feel awful. It’s like we don’t want to turn to the abstract that we have to read 25 times to understand what it really says. We want to be able to turn to a medical professional who can guide us or if we’re not sure about their advice, then where do we go? And I think that’s a really vulnerable place to be.
And of course, I wish you hadn’t landed there in this most recent experience, but I think that having that empathy for people and remembering that is really humbling and grounding and I hope renews your commitment to doing this work. Did it feel like that?
Christy Harrison: Totally. I was like, when I get out of here, when I have my brain capacity back, I want to really look into what the doctors were telling me, what the scientific research says at a granular level versus what the sort of broad strokes consumer facing websites say. And moreover, just use this skill that I have, I guess, that I’ve developed over 23 years or whatever of writing about health and science use that in some way to help other people to the extent that I can within the limitations of my own body and my own brain and everything that’s going on in my life. But if I have the capacity to sort of synthesize research and to help people think critically about stuff and people who are in the position that I was myself just a few months ago, I want to pay that forward.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that your work lives in the lineage of so many of the great science communicators that you’ve had on the show. Because without talented science communicators, so many of us are just kind of left to this really challenging trifecta of medical professionals who dismiss us, Google searches that give us weird AI results that don’t make any sense, or Reddit, like you said, where we try to go to get the truth from other people who have experienced exactly what we’re going through, but which is also mired in conspiracy and misinformation and caught between those three options. That’s just three bad options, right?
Christy Harrison: Yeah, completely. It’s also hard to know who to trust even among science communicators, because there’s influencers out there who sort of pose as science communicators. I think about these bro science podcasters and biohacking types and whatever that have three hour episodes deep diving into some obscure thing. But it’s actually really animal research. It’s early stage. It’s so hard to really figure out who is delivering sound information.
And of course, for myself, I know I can do this in a way that I trust, but how do other people know to trust me? I have to prove myself. I have to continue to deliver good information and just be rigorous in my analysis so that people can find me useful too. But it’s a really interesting place to be where I was in that position of like, I want to do this research and figure it out for myself. And I know that I have the capacity to do that in another time and place but right now I’m just completely at a loss.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, absolutely. I think this sort of leads into the next thing I wanted to ask you about, which we’ve already begun covering here. But you speak a lot on the podcast about the way that people with chronic illnesses as well as people who are pregnant or postpartum, they’re very vulnerable to misinformation. Because as you’ve shared, you’re in sort of an acute health moment. But also I just find that early stage parents are targeted by misinformation and disinformation online. They have very clear problems. The marketing engines are out there to get them to buy stuff. And also, when it’s three am and your kid won’t sleep for the 20th night in a row, you’re kind of willing to spend the $85 on a gidget that may get them to sleep.
It’s just a really vulnerable time. And so I’m curious if there were any particular things where you noticed, oh, this trend is coming up a lot, or this false information seems to really be flagging. What was your experience this time around?
Christy Harrison: Yeah, it was so interesting because the first time I was postpartum, AI wasn’t really a thing, it was being developed by people in Silicon Valley or whatever, but it wasn’t rolled out to the average user. It wasn’t the huge thing that it is now. I was trying to be off social media the first time around too but kind of still getting sucked back in and social media was more sort of targeting me and had a dossier on me and stuff and I had things that I felt like I was being targeted from my social media behavior. Now I’ve been off it for so long, they don’t have that file on me anymore.
And I try to use, as much as I can, ad blockers, a VPN, stuff like that. Although my VPN has stopped playing well with my software and so I mostly have it off and it’s been interesting to see how targeted ads come through and a lot is known about me from my searches. Even though I do private browsing and use DuckDuckGo, a privacy focused search engine and stuff, they’re still getting me, they still know that I just gave birth, they still know some of my health challenges. It’s been interesting in that regard to be more targeted with products and weight loss content and GLP-1 stuff now as well.
And just the AI slop that’s out there is so prevalent. I’ll switch between DuckDuckGo and Google depending on what my needs are. DuckDuckGo doesn’t always surface things in the way that I would like and there’s a lot of AI slop there. But then there’s so much AI slop on Google as well. It takes so much sort of extra critical thinking and extra investigating I think to sift through what’s going on with some of these websites. I would see on the first page of results these sites popping up again and again and I won’t name it but it’s this company name surfacing again and again and seem to provide very targeted information to what I was looking for.
The little search summary would come up and it would seem to be addressing my exact question when nothing else really was or the, the little summaries that the search page was pulling up didn’t seem to be really super relevant. And the AI summary would often reference this website and I spent like 10 minutes down this little mini rabbit hole just trying to figure out who are these people? What is this website? And to the best of my knowledge, it’s just AI slop. It’s just somebody churning out websites specific to particular needs and times of life, early parenthood, pregnancy, postpartum, that kind of stuff, super targeted to what people are searching about in those times and seeming to answer these really hyper specific questions with no actual good evidence behind it.
And it doesn’t even pretend to have evidence. I think sometimes AI will “cite” studies, right? And oftentimes you dig in and the studies don’t exist or it’s a totally different study that has nothing to do with what it’s talking about. But this family of websites don’t really pretend to do that. They’re just claiming things very assertively. But it’s seductive, it’s appealing. I want to believe that that is the truth. I want to feel like I have the answer to my question and not just more questions or I’m required to dig further or whatever. So I think AI slop is really problematic in that way because we don’t have unlimited time.
I used to sort of like try to look away from the AI summary and just scroll down to the search results and see what was really there for myself. Now that I have so limited time, I do find myself being like, what does the search summary say? And then I’ll try to click into where this information comes from. Can I verify it with the sources? But sometimes I’ll get caught up and I won’t read further and then that information, whatever the search summary said is sort of lodged in my brain. Even if it might come with a red flag or caveat, like, oh, I really still need to investigate this, but I don’t have time to do that. That’s sort of where my knowledge on something might begin and end. So I find that really problematic. And it’s targeting me in this postpartum period. I’m sure it’s targeting people in other phases of life, other health challenges. It feels like AI slop is sort of very tailored to what we want to hear and not necessarily what is true.
Amelia Hruby: I definitely just as a sort of tech podcaster in the room, always want to encourage people to use the minus AI in their Google searches or for myself, I have moved to a new search engine. It’s called Kagi and it will only show AI results if you put a question mark at the end of your searches, which I actually really appreciate. Those are just two quick tips from my own podcast that I pull in when people are struggling with search.
And I think a real difference here as well though is just that, especially in the context of our health where everything is incredibly personal, it’s incredibly idiosyncratic, and it’s often high stakes, of course we want a blog post that speaks exactly to what we’re experiencing. Of course we want that. And when we find it, it feels like a relief.
And even if we have the filter in our mind that turns on, that’s like, I can’t trust this, the information is still there. And how often do we repeat that to somebody? Even with a disclaimer. I read a blog post and I’m like, well, I think this is just AI, but I read that such and such, or I only saw this on TikTok, but somebody said that such and such, and then we start repeating this information and then it spreads. And I just think that dynamic is so rampant, even for those of us who are trying to be on guard against it.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I feel myself doing that too, repeating things to people and giving all the disclaimers. But it’s really toxic, it’s really insidious. It’s gotten its hooks in me at a time when I was incredibly vulnerable and I have some amount of self flagellation about it, I guess. And I’m trying to work on self compassion because I have done a lot of work around this. I’ve really tried to understand how to vet information and only use high quality information and go straight to the source. And all the things that I’ve been doing for years, but it still got me, it’s still there and how seductive is that? How just sticky is it if it can pull in people who have that kind of background and skill set and how many of us is it pulling in every single day, you know?
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, it’s definitely changing the information landscape and the Internet landscape yet again.
Christy Harrison: And very quickly. I’m shocked at how quickly that’s happening. Although it is nice and heartening to see so many think pieces and hear so many people talking about AI, including you in your podcast. I want to give a shout out to your AI series. I’m going to include that in a little link roundup that I’m going to do in a little bit. It’s very helpful to see and hear so many people critically thinking about AI and pushing back on this rampant use of AI that’s happening.
It’s interesting to see the sort of divide in my own life of my real life friends and neighbors, some of whom are full-on AI acolytes. One person who was like, yeah, I call it Chatty. It’s my BFF and then, people who are like, I try not to use it ever, or I think about all the energy and water that it’s taking away and I get disgusted and walk away or whatever. It’s sort of this broad spectrum of use, but I definitely see a lot of people using it a lot more in my life.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah. I mean, I’m really seeing the same thing. I have a lot of friends who are kind of more in the radical political spaces I inhabit, who are like, no AI, no data centers. We have to think about the labor rights of all of this. And then I have other friends who are more in the tech world who are building companies around a vibe coded app. And I feel like I’m definitely existing somewhere between those two very polarized positions on AI. And I’ve just noticed how much stress and shame it brings up for a lot of people as they try to think through how do I want to engage with these tools, and then also, for some people, how it doesn’t bring that up at all. And they’re just really happy to chat with Chatty all the time.
Christy Harrison: Right.
Amelia Hruby: But all of that said, I would just completely agree with you that this conversation has become so much more prominent even in the time that you’ve been away from maternity leave and that I think it’s something we’re gonna continue talking about probably here a bit on Rethinking Wellness, but definitely in other spaces. And so bringing us back to Rethinking Wellness and things that happened while you were on leave, I’m so curious, were there any wellness trends that you spotted that you’re excited to research for fall episodes? Can you give us a peek at what I’m sure is a list in your notes app of stuff that you need to talk about soon.
Christy Harrison: Oh my God, yes. So many things. Well, AI is definitely one of them. I want to have these conversations here too because I’ve really noticed people going to AI for everything related to health and wellness. And it makes me wonder how this is affecting people’s health and well being actually. And wanting to talk to people who have had those experiences or see if there’s any scientific research coming out about the effects of AI on people’s well being and also the effects of using AI for health reasons, how that actually affects people’s health outcomes. And I think that’ll probably be forthcoming research because people are thinking about that stuff. And actually I have my own experience with AI and health misinformation that I’ll share in a little bit.
Another thing that I’ve been noticing is just rampant GLP-1 use for thinness, but also like all kinds of off label stuff. I feel like the off label uses have just mushroomed and general longevity and all these different things. It makes me want to look at the state of the science on GLP-1s and really see where are we at in 2026 versus the last time I did a deep dive on this in like mid-2025. I think a lot has shifted and I’m just curious, has the science really kept up? Because the hype is continuing to just explode and talking about people sort of parroting things that they’ve just heard or things that are secondhand and not really super vetted.
I’ve been hearing very high profile intellectuals talk about their own GLP-1 use and anecdotal evidence about how it helped them or hurt them or whatever without really digging deep or referencing the science and without looking at who’s conducting this science, what is the quality of it, all of that stuff. So I think that will be another project for the fall. And then peptides, so many peptides. Peptides are on everybody’s lips now in a way that six months ago that was still there, but I wasn’t getting questions about it every day. Now I feel people in real life are like, what do you think about peptides, and I’m just like, my God, what is with all these peptides? So I definitely want to look into that.
And then this is sort of esoteric, but it’s a piece with some of the research I’ve done about food allergies and food allergy testing and stuff. I’m thinking about introducing allergens to kids. And I actually just gave my baby peanuts for the first time today. It’s that time, she’s starting solids, and pretty early on we’re doing peanuts, and she’s fine, and she doesn’t seem to be allergic, which is awesome. But I’m struck by how much more anxiety I had about it this time than last time and just how much more anxiety there is in the ether about it.
We have the same pediatrician as since my first daughter was born. This time, she said we could introduce peanuts in their parking lot if we wanted. And she never said that before when we introduced them with our first. And we don’t have any food allergies in the family. Our first daughter doesn’t have a peanut allergy. There’s no reason to think that this second baby would. She doesn’t have severe eczema. We have no egg allergies or any risk factors. Nothing like that is present. And so it’s just wild to me that the pediatrician would be like, yeah, you can do it in our parking lot.
I’ve talked to fellow parents who introduced peanuts to their kids and were so anxious about it and unsure if they were seeing a reaction or if it was just the anxiety that they had. It wasn’t anaphylactic, but it seemed they were a little fussier or whatever. I feel like the anxiety about this has ramped up so much. And I should say of course peanut allergies are real. They’re terrifying and life threatening. And so, of course, people are justifiably anxious about it. There are certain risk factors that make it more likely and it’s a very small percentage of kids who actually have peanut allergies. Food allergies affect less than one percent of kids under three, as I found in a 2025 study.
I just did some very quick research on this before talking to you today beause I was like, what is the reality of food allergies? And it is such a small percentage, right? I mean, of course, if you’re in that one percent, it’s life changing and requires a lot of thought and planning and all of that stuff. But a very small percentage of the total population that is going to deal with this. And actually the percentage of kids with food allergies has declined sharply from previous years, which researchers think is mostly driven by early introduction of peanut containing foods because when I was in school for dietetics a million years ago, they were telling people not to introduce peanuts right away, to delay introduction. And now we know that’s the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
And the early introduction actually seems to reduce the incidence of allergies. And so it does seem like now that that advice has changed and early introduction is being promoted, that overall incidence of food allergies is decreasing, driven largely by a decrease in peanut allergies. So why does it feel like the anxiety about food allergies and peanut allergies in particular has ramped up and there’s this expectation that kids will react to certain foods. I don’t know if there’s any real data on that, but it’s just kind of a feeling I get and I’m curious to do some research around that and some reporting and see kind of what other parents have experienced in that regard too.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, it’s so interesting. As you know, not being a parent myself, I have definitely just heard to go to the doctor’s office and sit in the parking lot and give your kid peanut butter. So I feel like that has taken up some more space in the cultural imagination. I’d be very intrigued in your research and perspective on how that influences anxiety in general around allergies and our behaviors around introduction to different foods and things. I think just in general, I’m so intrigued by how any outlier case becomes a cultural norm. Like you said, it’s such a small percentage of children who have severe peanut allergies. And so how does that become the norm that we all do things by, I guess, somehow relative to the amount of fear we have at the negative outcome that could happen? Which, of course, is very high when you’re thinking of children and their health.
And then I also heard you say an episode on peptides, which I have to say feels right on time because our not so favorite podcaster, Andrew Huberman just did an episode on peptides yesterday.
Christy Harrison: Yes, that’s right. I saw that in my feed.
Amelia Hruby: I need the Rethinking Wellness rebuttal, please, and then also an update on where we’re at with GLP-1 research. I have definitely been waiting for you to come back so you can explain to me all these headlines about how going on GLP-1s makes people live longer, which I personally just don’t believe. But they are quoting science and I am quoting skepticism, so I would love your compassionate skeptic take on that. And then, of course, digging into the new research, hopefully, or what’s coming through on AI health advice and what is happening.
I would also personally be very intrigued to hear any research you find or interviews you do on how AI is being used by medical professionals and doctors because I have started asking when I go to a doctor’s office, is this being recorded? Do you use AI in your note taking or in your charting, or is it integrated into the system that you store my health records in? And of course, I know that those are protected by HIPAA policies and otherwise, but I had a very interesting experience in a different lane with AI being used by our veterinarian that made me start to wonder if it was being used in my human health like it was in my animal health experience. I’d be very interested if you find anything on that as well.
Christy Harrison: Totally. Well, I mean, that segues into my personal health experience because I definitely had, I think, I’m pretty sure, a couple of doctors seemingly using AI to treat me to come up with a diagnosis that ended up not being correct.
