Americans Spend How Much On Beauty?
Americans spend a staggering amount per year on "beauty" regimens and activities. The most is spent in the categories of weight loss, hair, and skin. According to a 2017 study, the lifetime spent on appearance is about $225,000 for women and $175,000 for men. Holy smokes!
According to the study done by Groupon, "True Cost of Beauty", women spend about $313 per month keeping up appearances or trying to improve them. Men are not that far behind, spending an average of $212 per month. For those that spend on a regular basis, that equals to between $3,756 and $2,928 per year for women and men, respectively.
When broken down by gender, women spend the most on services such as facials, haircuts, makeup, manicures, and pedicures, whereas men spend the most on products like facial moisturizers, gym memberships, hand cream, shaving products, and supplements.
But What About Health?
While more and more individuals are starting to focus on nutrition and healthier eating habits, the majority of individuals continue to focus and spend their money on the "health" of the exterior, better known as looks! But do looks really indicate health?
The answer is a resounding NO. Someone can be skinny or have washboard abs, have soft skin, take a bunch of supplements and still not be healthy or even feel good. The sad truth is, individuals are not often seen spending money to truly prevent disease. This is not referring to an annual check-up with the MD. This means taking a proactive approach to health and seeing where you are on a functional blood panel now before imbalances become disease. This means looking at how healthy your microbiome is now before imbalances become disease. This means looking at what type of toxic load your body has now before imbalances become disease. You see where I'm going with this. As seen with the statistics at the beginning of this post, people will spend a lot of money to have washboard abs, prevent wrinkles and dry skin, and have eyelashes that pop but there are no studies that even show how much Americans spend on true health care that aims at prevention of disease.
Health Versus Beauty: An Unnecessary Competition
Truth be told, health and beauty should not be in competition with each other. Functional medicine takes a holistic approach to health (and beauty). It takes into account nutrition, lifestyle, genetics, trauma, environment and belief systems in conjunction with science-based diagnostic testing to provide a whole picture of health. It is truly aimed at prevention, to find imbalances so the practitioner can offer guidance to bring those imbalances back into a place of balance. In all other aspects of life balance is harmony, and it is no different within the body. Functional medicine patients are seen on a regular basis, not just annually, to check-in and monitor progress. Labs are often re-done to monitor progress and tweak health improvement plans as needed. The goal of functional medicine is to bring the body back into an optimal place of health.
The philosophy of functional medicine is that weight, hair, and skin are all reflections of what is going on underneath - the interconnectivity of your body's systems. Beauty truly is an inside job. By the body returning to a place of balance, true healing and health will take place. These changes are not just felt, but they are seen.
