From Biohackers to MAHA—Functional Health Is Having a Moment
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With healthy living in the spotlight and the "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement gaining traction, functional health should be leading the charge. Instead of meeting the moment, the topic of functional health has been pulled in opposite directions, losing touch with the everyday Americans it was designed to help.
What began in the 1990s as a natural, root-cause approach to more accessible health has been adopted by wealthy biohackers chasing immortality through full-body MRIs and cryotherapy.
While the advice around living a healthier lifestyle has merit, the messengers and price tags are turning people off. Functional health has become performative and polarizing. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are still searching for basic answers about their health.
An athletic young woman running across a bridge on the Great Miami Bike Trail.
An athletic young woman running across a bridge on the Great Miami Bike Trail.
Getty Images
The middle ground—the original promise of functional health as a science-backed, proactive approach to care—is getting drowned out. Functional health wasn't meant to be a trend. It was meant to help people live healthier, longer. It's time to bring it back to that.
Functional Health's Potential vs. Reality
Biohackers and wellness influencers may dominate the conversation, but here's the truth: most Americans don't want to reverse their biological age or spend thousands chasing optimal health. They just want answers.
As a health care founder, I've met countless patients stuck treating symptoms without ever finding the root cause. It's not necessarily about more years to their life, but life to their years. That's what drove me to Shark Tank nearly a decade ago. After my own frustrating health care experience left me with more questions than answers, I knew people deserved better, accessible tools to understand their health, not just manage decline.
But is functional health living up to its promise or has it left behind the very people it was meant to help? The data point to the latter, and it's not even close.
Pew Research Center surveys show that alternative medicine, closely tied to functional health, is used mostly by higher-income individuals. Meanwhile, those who need it most—people with limited access to preventive care, living in health care deserts, or unable to afford pricey wellness plans—are left behind. Instead of transforming public health, functional health has become a luxury, shutting out everyday Americans.
When Wellness Looks Like Wealth
Functional health services can cost up to $25,000 a year, and a BMJ Open study shows the average appointment runs over $1,600. For most Americans, that's out of reach. Meanwhile, the loudest voices in functional health are pushing expensive interventions like full-body scans, creating a space that looks more like an exclusive club than a health care revolution.
One way to make it more affordable? Insurance. Most plans cover only reactive care like prescriptions and procedures. Proactive items like diagnostics, nutritional counseling, and exercise plans are often considered "nonessential" despite their proven role in improving health and reducing long-term health care costs.
If we're serious about ending the chronic disease epidemic and tackling skyrocketing health care spending, insurance needs to evolve to support preventive, functional care—not just the downstream consequences of avoiding it.
A More Inclusive Path Forward
If we want functional health to work for everyday Americans, we need to bring it back down to Earth.
Here's how we do that:
—Remove barriers for providers: Functional medicine certifications can cost up to $17,000—pricing out diverse talent. We need affordable pathways to build a workforce that reflects the communities it serves.
—Cut the exclusivity: Sky-high fees, concierge perks, and long waitlists have turned functional health into a private club. It's time to open the doors.
—Get insurance on board: Root-cause diagnostics and prevention shouldn't be out-of-pocket luxuries—they should be covered care.
Let's be clear: biohackers have turned functional health into a spectacle—one that feels more like performance than health care. No wonder one of the top Google searches related to functional health is, "Is functional medicine legit?" Americans are skeptical, and they have every reason to be.
Reclaiming Functional Health for the People
A decade ago, I founded my digital health company because the traditional system was—and still is—failing millions. Most Americans aren't asking for flashy interventions. They just want real answers, affordable options, and a way to take control of their health.
Functional health still has the potential to be part of that solution. But only if we bring it back to center—not on the fringe of alternative medicine, and not in the exclusive world of elite biohackers and social media wellness gurus.
If we truly want to improve Americans' health, functional health must move beyond hype and into the hands of everyday people. Less spectacle, more access. It's time to bring functional health back to what it was meant to be: practical, inclusive, and rooted in science—for everyone.
Julia Cheek is the founder and CEO of Everlywell, a pioneering company in biomarker intelligence, delivering essential health insights to nearly 60 million individuals and enterprise partners.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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