About five years ago, in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, Satish Kumar Srivastava came across a viral video with a tall promise — pouring citrus juice into his nostrils would kill the virus.
“Many people tried it. It was a difficult situation, and we didn’t know what to do. We saw it was a sign of hope,” said the 39-year-old general manager from Gurgaon. Fortunately, he escaped relatively unscathed, unlike more dangerous health trends that have people trading allopathy for whole foods, eating raw cinnamon by the spoonful, and following water diets to ‘detox’.
Today, Srivastava is more discerning while scrolling through reels and memes. Fact-check has become a part of his lexicon. He is aware of the traps of the internet and the rabbit holes that have real-world consequences.
“I check what advice is coming from which mouth,” he said.
Health content is now ubiquitous — spread across the digital wild west. Onions “pull toxins through your feet.” Cucumbers can “cure glaucoma.” And there’s a diet that will help you “beat cancer.” Videos and reels by health influencers rack up millions of views without any oversight or regulation.
Government guidelines for influencers and content creators are a gentle nudge with no bite. Health has become synonymous with wellness and anything goes. Many are also promoting active scepticism toward allopathy and modern medicine in the name of kitchen remedies, ancient knowledge, and cultural pride. For fact-checkers, this is the natural extension of the ‘WhatsApp University’ — an ecosystem that feeds on impressionable consumers and a culture of wilful ignorance.
“The intent of the government doesn’t lie in protecting health to the point where it will disturb commercial interests or cooperations,” said Dr Arun Gupta, who leads the Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPI). “The government needs to define what is misleading. Advertisements cannot be protected in the name of free speech.”
Regulations are sparse, and the DMs of health influencers are overflowing. So much so that even certified doctors and nutritionists are creating content as a necessary credibility-booster. But how do we pack complex health information in 15-second reels? According to nutritionists, there’s a growing club of Indians across the spectrum who’d rather receive treatment through content — professionals are passé.
The intent of the government doesn’t lie in protecting health to the point where it will disturb commercial interests or cooperations. The government needs to define what is misleading. Advertisements cannot be protected in the name of free speech
— Dr Arun Gupta, who leads the Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest
Srivastava recalled a number of health fads that people he knew had fallen into — friends, members of his family. One family member paid for a subscription to Hakki Pikki Adivasi hair oil, which promised to “regrow hair” and improve root follicles, which turned out to be false. He also repeatedly saw videos that claimed eating cut onions left overnight could lead to cancer.
As the tide of misinformation grows stronger, there’s also a simultaneous pushback. A small group of professionals, like Krish Ashok of Masala Lab, hepatologist Dr Cyriac Abby Philips or the Liver Doc, and Sudipta Sengupta who runs The Healthy Indian Project (THIP), are fact-checking myths and popular trends, and calling out influencers. But more often than not, they’re not as potent as the peddlers of health flogging everything from magnesium to protein.
“The challenge is that when it comes to health, people are still gullible,” said Sengupta. “Digital literacy has improved, but health literacy is still where it was.”
Growing demand for health content
When Sengupta founded THIP in 2019, he intended to share verified, doctor-backed content on a handful of diseases. He presumed it would be a more niche platform. Due to the overwhelming popularity of health content, he’s had to up the ante. THIP’s content is soon going to be available in seven languages, and they’re delving deeper into certain diseases, including 11 types of cancer.
Nutritionist Ashima Achantani finds that content creation is non-negotiable. From being limited to Delhi, her client base now spans continents. She delivers diet plans and tips to people from across the world, including Canada and Australia.
Through her reels, she shares primarily generic information — targeted at an Indian audience suffering from a motley of lifestyle diseases like fatty liver and PCOS. She also debunks trends and socially transmitted fads that are often packaged as gospel truth. One of her videos, which has over 4 million views, is about what she is told frequently by her clients — drinking water while standing up leads to it going straight to your knees.
With a trending Hindi song in the background, the caption refers to this as “the biggest lie.”
The challenge is to give coherent and accurate information in 15-30 second reels. Dimple Jangda, the founder of Prana Healthcare Centre, an Ayurvedic platform, whose list of clients includes Juhi Chawla and Aditi Rao Hydari, said she started creating content with a single aim: “To document the knowledge of ayurveda in short edible videos that even the youth can consume.”
In her videos, Jangda usually explains the benefits of certain foods. “For every health issue, nature has gifted us a vegetable that holds the key to healing — especially when it comes to gut-health,” reads one of her captions.
While Jangda already had a steady client base, having founded Prana Healthcare Centre in 2017, social media allowed her to expand — she was able to hold a mini workshop online.
For Achantani, despite her staunch nutrition background, she now finds herself resorting to hopping on Instagram trends and popular songs in order to make her work palatable to a mass audience.
“You have to work with trends, but also make sure that a layman doesn’t get confused,” she said. “There are a lot of people who are just trying to save money and get information.”
Achantani is extremely responsive, and spends a chunk of her time responding to direct messages. But it has reached the point where even those who need physiotherapy are attempting to seek treatment from her.
When it comes to the tide of misinformation that she encounters on a daily basis, she attributed it to a social factor — a distinct Indian-ness almost.
“Nobody really wants to listen to the whole story. Everybody wants to feel like they know everything,” she said.
The challenges aside, creating health content is also extremely lucrative. Achantani has about 150,000 followers on Instagram, and she receives offers from about 10 brands daily. Though, according to her, she is judicious in accepting deals: “I feel responsible [for my audience],” she said.
Health influencers vs fact-checkers
In his latest reel, Masala Lab’s Krish Ashok tackled the misleading claim about pumpkin seeds, which is being popularised as high protein food. Hepatologist Philips, a militant critic of Ayurveda and Homeopathy, isn’t afraid to take on big brands.
For instance, a number of influencers share impassioned speeches about the benefits of The Good Bug, a Mumbai-based gut health startup which just received Rs 100 crore in its latest funding round.
Dr Philips, now notorious for his digital footprint, said that the probiotic brand was “misleading consumers with unproven claims about weight loss, PCOD, IBS.” Responding to him, The Good Bug called the claims “baseless” and referred to their commitment to science. The incident serves as an example of how complex the health landscape has become with the arrival of the internet.
Consumers are inundated with contrary facts and narratives that hinge on belief systems, and what is often PR disguised as research.
According to Achantani, her clients seldom Google. They instead rely almost completely on Instagram reels for information.
“They often ask me: Ashima, look at this reel. Can I use the same supplement?”
One of her clients, a 38-year-old woman, watched her reels daily for a year. She enjoyed the way Achantani spoke and the content appeared to be rooted in fact. But due to existing health issues, Achantani’s tips didn’t necessarily work for her. It was only a month ago that she signed up for a diet plan, and now receives personal consultations from Achantani.
For Sengupta, Sengupta, who runs a fact-checking platform, this online universe is the natural extension of the “WhatsApp University”, coupled with damaging, potentially irreversible consequences. Creators are beholden to the whims of the algorithm.
According to him, instead of doctors, it’s now health influencers who are being invited to give lectures in schools and colleges. Revant Himatsingka, better known as ‘Food Pharmer’, gave a talk at RP Goenka International School in Kolkata to “empower students to make better food choices.”
At the school level, the Ayushman Bharat Yojana also relies on teachers and students turned “health and wellness ambassadors” to inculcate healthy eating habits and a health-centric lifestyle.
“There’s no moral obligation to make a certain kind of content. In India, you’ll find few institutional initiatives like Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins,” Sengupta said. “Even blogs written by content creators are mostly outsourced to ad agencies.”
For consumers like Srivastava, the ultimate issue which is now part and parcel of this rambling, unstructured ecosystem is the abundance of fake branding.
“That’s the level of sophistication. We see these visuals and lose confidence,” he said, referring to the laundry list of promises that certain diets and healthcare trends promise. “People get attracted to these advertisements. It’s a trap for consumers.”
Where’s the regulation?
Achantani recalled a client who ended up in a hospital after experimenting with Ozempic. Despite being officially unavailable in India, it was being sold over-the-counter. And across the world, people battling cancer believed Australian influencer Belle Gibson when she claimed she healed herself naturally without radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and life-saving drugs. She’s been immortalised on Netflix in the show Apple Cider Vinegar.
“For instance, Ranveer Singh is promoting SuperYou protein. Does he talk about what its salt content and fat content is?” asked Dr Gupta. “When an influencer starts commercially advertising, he should be considered as an advertiser. And selling industrial products as health influencers should be considered misleading.”
An RTI filed by him found that the government didn’t identify a single advertisement as misleading from September 2023 to early 2025 — a period of 1.5 years.
In 2023, the Department of Consumer Affairs released additional guidelines for “health and wellness celebrities, influencers, and virtual influencers”, which called for appropriate disclaimers to be given, qualifications to be specified, and the sharing of generic, non-specific information. According to the guidelines, “drink water to be hydrated”, “use sunscreen daily”, and “drink turmeric milk to stay healthy” are among tips that can be freely disseminated.
“It is important for these celebrities, influencers and virtual influencers presenting themselves as health experts or medical practitioners to clearly distinguish between their personal views and professional advice,” read the guidelines. “It is always recommended to encourage audiences to consult with healthcare professionals for seeking professional medical advice and complete information about the products or services.”
Upasana Vohra, another content creator, encourages her audience to eat black sesame seeds to get rid of split ends. For swollen tonsils, she recommends mixing tulsi leaves and salt in desi ghee and applying the mixture to the inflamed area. Most of her reels feature her speaking directly to the audience. Her most-watched reels have garnered millions of views, though on average, she receives around a hundred thousand.
Her comments are filled with hearts and people asking for more tips on specific areas, like skincare. They relay their individual problems, awaiting her response. Chowdhury’s DMs are also overwhelmingly positive.
Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, who, according to his website, has an “honorary” PhD in diabetes from the “Alliance University in Zambia”, had over a million subscribers on his YouTube channel. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he became known for sharing anti-vaccine videos, about the redundancy of the vaccine and the wave of side effects. His account was removed from the platform.
He is now known for popularising a diet that can “reverse” any disease within a week.
“Diseases can be reversed without any allopathic medicine. It’s all about having a routine and timing,” Vikram Singh Meena, a dietician who works as a consultant with Chowdhury, told ThePrint. “Only when it’s needed do we prescribe a minimum dose of Ayurvedic medicine.”
Chowdhury has 3,76,000 followers on Instagram. In one of his recent videos, he says that fever can be cured by placing your feet in a bucket of hot water for 30 minutes. Within an hour, your temperature will increase by half a degree. Wait for half an hour more — it will disappear completely, alongside symptoms, he claims.
He adds that taking medicine will only prolong the fever. “What would take five days will take 15 days.”
According to Sengupta, his team has fact-checked Chowdhury — who is known as ‘Dr. BRC’ and has authored 33 books — “multiple times.” Doctors also arrived at the same opinion — that Chowdhury’s claims were “unscientific” and went against evidence.
Chowdhury even referred a Japanese diet that allegedly claims to cure cancer.
“A 70-year-old member of my family asked me: ‘Should I get on it?’” Sengupta said.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)