The United Kingdom’s top health official, Stephen Powis, the national medical director for NHS England, is warning Britons to take actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s coronavirus treatment advice with a hefty grain of salt.
On Wednesday, Powis told the BBC that he urges caution to anyone looking to the eccentric actress for advice on how to cure the coronavirus. “In the last few days, I see Gwyneth Paltrow is, unfortunately, suffering from the effects of Covid. We wish her well, but some of the solutions she’s recommending are really not the solutions we’d recommend in the NHS,” Powis said.
After noting that she had been suffering from the virus, Paltrow told fans that a “functional medicine practitioner” said to her that she should engage in an “intuitive fasting” program to help her get over the illness. Paltrow went on to tell fans that this program includes eating nothing before 11 a.m., taking infrared saunas, eliminating sugar and alcohol, and adopting a plant-based and ketogenic-based diet.
“Everything I’m doing feels good, like a gift to my body. I have energy, I’m working out in the mornings, and I’m doing an infrared sauna as often as I can, all in service of healing,” the Avengers: Endgame star wrote in the blog post.
But Powis pushed back on Paltrow’s suggestions and said that people should look to “serious science” instead of listening to the Hollywood actress. “Like the virus, misinformation carries across borders, and it mutates, and it evolves. So I think YouTube and other social media platforms have a real responsibility and opportunity here,” Powis said.
“We need to take long Covid seriously and apply serious science. All influencers who use social media have a duty of responsibility and a duty of care around that,” Powis added.
The UK health chief also scolded the media for not taking its “responsibility” seriously by even reporting Paltrow’s claims.
This is not the first time that a British health official has blasted health advice pushed by Paltrow and Goop, the actress’s controversial lifestyle and wellness company.
Last month, NHS chief executive Simon Stevens warned Britons that Paltrow’s Goop Lab was “spreading disinformation” and pose a “considerable health risk” to anyone influenced by her lifestyle company.
Stevens slammed the Paltrow’s Netflix series, The Goop Lab, while speaking at an event held by the Oxford Union, and said the series promoted “dubious wellness products and dodgy procedures.”
The health chief also lumped Paltrow’s wellness proclamation in with “Myths and misinformation [that] have been put on steroids by the availability of misleading claims online.”
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A few months ago, Samantha Bee, the left-wing host of TBS’s weekly late-night show Full Frontal, picked apart Paltrow’s Goop and accused the star of promoting “dangerous” pseudoscience.
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