10 Viral Health Trends in 2025! What Actually Works and What’s Total Hype?
In this solo, evidence‑oriented video, health coach JJ Virgin reviews ten viral health trends circulating on social media, offering a blend of personal anecdotes, practical usage tips, safety cautions, and references to scientific research and trusted experts. He starts with apple cider vinegar, endorsing it as an inexpensive metabolic aid when used modestly, then critiques dry fasting for its dehydration risks. He shares his journey overcoming a personal aversion to organ meats by using a chef‑created seasoning, and evaluates chlorophyll water as a mostly hydration‑driven habit with weak skin and detox claims. JJ discusses GLP‑1 drugs (Ozempic/Mounjaro) as metabolic healers when dosed minimally, warns against high‑dose weight‑loss use, and highlights the role of compounding pharmacists. He recounts positive anecdotal results from castor oil packs for constipation and inflammation, while noting limited clinical evidence. Face taping is dismissed as a temporary, potentially irritating wrinkle fix. Butter and MCT coffee is presented as a possible pre‑workout energy source, with a caution about hidden calories. Red light face masks are praised for modest collagen and inflammation benefits, provided high‑quality devices are used. Charcoal binders are described as useful for targeted detox (e.g., mold exposure) but require professional timing to avoid nutrient or medication interactions. Throughout, JJ urges viewers to verify claims using tools like the Consensus AI platform, consult reputable scientists (e.g., Rhonda Patrick, Andrew Huberman), and consider mechanisms of action over a strict demand for multiple RCTs. He closes by inviting the audience to join his Facebook community for ongoing support.
Chapters
What is up with all of these viral health trends on Instagram, TikTok, everywhere? How do you know which ones to do, which ones are hype, and which ones you should double down on? I'm gonna go through my top 10. First up, apple cider vinegar. Hype or not hype? Not hype. I think apple cider vinegar is one of the great things that we can easily add in. Doesn't cost much, pretty inexpensive. I like when you get one like Bragg's, so get an organic apple cider vinegar and be careful with this. You don't wanna be like chucking don't just chug and shots of it because it can be problematic for your tooth enamel. But what I like to do is take my Peak Life green tea, throw a little apple cider vinegar in that, drink it through a straw, have it before a meal. It can help lower the blood sugar response to meal. It can also soothe digestion. So 2 bonus points there. So apple cider vinegar, yes, it's worth the hype. All right, let's move on to dry fasting. What is dry fasting? First off, dry fasting means that you're not only not eating, you're also not drinking. So you are doing nothing. No fluid intake, no food intake. I don't know about you, but that sounds miserable. I am not a fan of dry fasting. I don't think it makes sense to do anything that can cause dehydration. We know that even mild dehydration— I learned this from Dr. Rick Johnson of Nature Wants Us to Be Fat— that mild dehydration causes you to release glycogen from your liver, convert it over to fructose, and store it as fat. So I'm sorry, Doing fasting to store more fat, yeah, that's a hard pass. I think if you are going to do some fasting or intermittent fasting, at least make sure that you're getting in some really good hydration. And I would say add some electrolytes in for the win. Next up, organ meats. All right, I know this, this kind of sparks fear in my heart with the organ meats. Like, is this something that could be great for our health? I still think back to when I was a kid, I was 16 years old, and I went to London with a friend's family. And we sat down to eat and one of the people was having steak and kidney pie and she asked me to have a bite of the steak. And what she'd done is tricked me and there was a kidney in there. And I have not eaten organ meat since. It was so icky, the texture of it, that like I, I have PTSD, organ meat PTSD. But here's the reality, they're amazing for you. So I've been looking for ways to eat them. Now the reality is, think about it, if you are eating liver, it's a filtering organ, so you wanna make sure that you're getting very clean organ meats, but I have a better way to do this. The deal with organ meats is they are so nutrient dense with micronutrients that it's amazing. So here's what I do. I use something called Pluck, and it is this cool chef, James Berry, who's on a mission to get people eating organ meats, but he doesn't like 'em either. And so he made this organ meat seasoning. It sounds absolutely disgusting, I know, and it is amazingly delicious. So I use this organ meat seasoning in my stir-fried vegetables. I use it on my roasted vegetables. I use it on my air fried chicken thighs. It's amazing. So we'll put a link for that in the show notes, but that's my big take on organ meats is I've been getting it in almost every day now because I've been getting in the seasoning, which is made from organs. So thank you, Chef James, on that one. What about chlorophyll water? So now they're having people drink chlorophyll water for a couple things. The claims are that it helps with skin, it helps with reducing your body odor. It helps with detoxification. Does it really do any of this stuff? The evidence is pretty weak on the skin stuff. I mean, it might be that you're just drinking more water. The evidence is kind of weak on the detox. The evidence is not there so much on the odor, although it used to be used historically to help with stinky wounds. Yep. But modern now day, no. So it's this is one I would say, eh. Now, that doesn't mean to say that there's not some benefits to chlorophyll. Eat a lot of green plants. If you wanna get a bigger dose of it, Katherine Arnston's created these chlorophyll algae bits. So that would be a way to do it. But I think just drinking chlorophyll water is probably the best part of doing that is that you're drinking more water, which is always a good thing. Next up, Ozempic, off-label, for weight loss. Okay, so first of all, when I think of using Ozempic, Mounjaro, tirzepatide, semaglutide, any of these GLP-1 agonists or dual agonists, what I really love about them is what they do to heal your metabolism, to rejuvenate and regenerate. When you look at what happens when you take these GLP-1s, they improve insulin sensitivity, they reduce inflammation. So they're— they've got a lot of benefits that can help heal a lot of the damage that you tend to see in people who have got obesity and poor metabolic health. So that's what I look at them for. I worry about using them for weight loss specifically, like focusing on that, because we can't focus just on weight. We need to focus on what the weight's made up of. I think that if we use GLP-1s to heal the metabolism, restore insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation, and take away a little of the food noise, but not give such high a dose that you just destroy someone's appetite, that it will allow people to start healing, moving, eating more protein, and doing resistance training so that they can restore their body composition and improve their metabolic health. That's how I like to see them done, which means we really gotta figure out a way to use them, which is where the compounding pharmacists come in, where you can dose it based on the minimal effective dose to create those things, not some standard high dose that shuts off your appetite, which causes you to lose muscle and create a lot of damage. Castor oil packs. All right, so I have a friend, Dr. Marisol, who is obsessed with castor oil, and that's how I got turned on to castor oil years ago. And I remember she's created these beautiful— she's called the Queen of Thrones, and she has this really cool pack that she's made for castor oil. And she's like, try this. And you know, what's castor oil known for? It's, it's known to help with detoxification, inflammation, constipation, and bloating. Those are the things they say it could help with. Does it really? All right. N of 1 and TMI. I'm gonna tell you, I tried this castor oil pack, totally helped solve some constipation issues. So I would say that yes, it could. We just had a female founders retreat and everybody ended up with their castor oil packs on late at night. This is the weird things that happen on these things. And you know, people notice that reduced inflammation, that better, you know, bowel movements. So those are anecdotal. There's no real clinical proof of like liver detox support. There's nothing showing that. There is some chance that it could help reduce some local inflammation and could help with some constipation and bloating. And, you know, maybe it helps with making it a little bit de-stressed. My advice is this is an inexpensive therapy that couldn't hurt. It's been around forever. If you've got bloaty pain, I used it after my hysterectomy. If you've got any of that stuff, I think it's worth giving a shot. But is there great science on it? Nah, I haven't seen great science on it. But shout out to my girlfriend, uh, Dr. Marisol. We'll link to her because, um, she's got some great information on it. And I think that maybe it can help with bloating and cramps and relaxation. So if you've got those issues, give it a shot and try hers because she's got a really nice pack that you can wear that makes it easy to distribute. She's also got stuff for your eyebrows and lashes and eyes as well so that you can use it there too. Now again, don't know if there's any science to support that, but it's not going to hurt, that's for sure. How about face taping at night? Now I'm not talking about mouth taping for sleeping, I'm talking about face taping to avoid wrinkles. Boy, I really wish, wish, wish this worked. I really do. It turns out that for the smoothing, getting rid of wrinkles, It works when you've got yourself taped up, but you take the tape off and probably not. And maybe you're just going to get, you know, your skin irritated by doing that. So could be, uh, could be working right before an event, but it's not going to give you— it's kind of a temporary, a temporary fix. So sadly, I think that Botox is still on the table for me. All right, what about butter and coffee? Shout out to my buddy and brother from another mother, Dave Asprey, who, you know, started the whole craze of MCT oil and butter and coffee. So what about that? Is it a metabolism hack? What is it? Or is it just a lot of calories? Now, full disclosure, I've had it made from by Dave himself. If he's making it for me, I like it really light, like a big dose of butter and MCT oil. And I, it does not land well with me. I think that it could have a great place for someone who is doing some fasting to get the MCT oils, because MCT is a very interesting fat. It's very easy to burn, so it's very great energy and creates ketones that go to your brain. So there is some, you know, is some potential help there. But the other thing I think we have to be careful about is, um, how much we're actually getting in, you know, how much we're getting in. Now, of course, those MCTs can help your brain, right? But like, are you like now overloading on all your fat by doing it? So that's what I think you need to check in on because you could easily throw in 500 calories of fat in your coffee and it all counts. We tend to not count the things we drink, but it could be an interesting little thing to add before you go to the gym in the morning. If you're working out fast and you want to HIIT, and we know caffeine's an amazing ergogenic aid, see how it works for you. And then what about red light face masks? Red light face masks are being touted to help with reducing inflammation, to help with collagen production. First of all, I love red lights in general. Years ago, Juve brought me over a big red light panel to the house. So I've been using a lot of red light to heal my old foot injury, to heal anytime we've had any kind of injuries or surgeries or anything else, we use red light to help reduce inflammation, help heal. And I have a red light mask that I use. So I think from what I can tell on the research so far, they do definitely seem to boost collagen and reduce inflammation. Now, is it gonna be like night and day amazing, like a facelift? No, but Every little bit helps. I can tell you, like, you know, you get to be 40+, every little bit helps. And this seems to make a bunch of difference in reducing fine lines, reducing inflammation, improving collagen production. So make sure you get a good one. All red lights are not created equal. You want to do them a couple times a week. So super important for a couple minutes. It doesn't take long. Couple minutes, couple times a week. I'm even using them right now. My amazing neuro-ophthalmologist, Dr. Ronnie Bonick, has me doing it for macular degeneration to avoid it, not having it. I have a red light that I do 3 minutes a week for my eyes. So I think there's a lot of application here, but just make sure you're getting a quality red light. Now, some of the ones that I have, I do have a Sunlighten red light handheld, and I have a little Juvea block. And I know there's a couple other companies that do professional-grade red lights. That's what I would be looking for. Don't think you can buy one for $50 online that's gonna do ya. Get the good high-quality ones, invest in it, 'cause you're gonna be using this for a long, long time. And the final one, charcoal detox drinks. I had some tests done with Vibrant a couple months ago. They're like, hey, you know, we're gonna send you some talks, some tests 'cause I'm speaking at their event. And I went, cool, I'll take a total tox test and a GI test. And so I did all these tests Thank God I did. It just turned out that our cold plunge had leaked and caused black mold in our recovery room, which is kind of, you know, a recovery room has black mold in it. The way we discovered it was through my Total Toxic Burden and seeing the mold. And I'm like, well, shoot. So we've been remediating the mold, but now I have mold in me. So what have I been doing? I've been getting in my sunlight and sauna, and I've been taking charcoal binders before I get into the sauna. What I would look at is charcoal has been something that people will use, say, after drinking to help pull out toxins. You know, medical settings, if someone's had toxins, they'll use activated charcoal there. I think that charcoal binders can be a useful thing done correctly. You need to be careful with these things. So I would like to see that you are working with healthcare practitioner for them and you know why you're doing them. For example, you don't take them when you're taking your supplements or taking your medications, cuz guess what they'll do? They'll bind to those too. So you have to be super careful about when you take them. And they can be helpful. They can be helpful if you need to detoxify something quickly. They can be helpful if you've got something like toxic mold you're working on getting rid of. But again, I'd love to see you working with a healthcare practitioner when you're doing that to guide you correctly and to retest you and reassess on that. So looking at these top 10, here's what I'd love to know from you. What stands out to you that you would love to try from all the different ones that I talked about? Or maybe there's one that you were gonna try and you're like, oh yeah, no. Or you've been doing it, you're like, yeah, I didn't see anything with that. Love to hear from you, see which ones that you love. And before you just jump on a trend, here's what I'd highly recommend. On ChatGPT, there is a couple different chats that you can look at, and one of them is Consensus, where you can find out what the research really says. Based on, you know, what's the consensus research on something. So it'll give you the take on it. The other thing you can do and is think about the experts that you really like to follow who are science-based. I'll give you a couple who I think are amazing. Um, I really love Dr. Rhonda Patrick, uh, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Andy Galpin, Dr. Bill Campbell, um, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, Dr. Sarah Gottfried. Thinking about some of my others, Cynthia Thurlow, John Stevenson, Alan Aragon. So think about some of the different experts that you like, and you can also just, you know, as you're doing your research out there, like, look on their sites and see what they have to say about these things as well. But I really love to go to chat, throw it into consensus, and say, all right, apple cider vinegar, is there research to support the use of this? What are the benefits are there any risks? I'd say before you just take someone's word for it, really look at what the evidence is. And I heard Dr. Andy Galpin talking about this the other day, and I thought that is a very intelligent way to explain this. And it was, you know, some people have to have all the research, all the double-blind placebo-controlled studies, randomized trials, blah blah blah. Some people have to go, oh, my friend took it and it worked. And then there's all the way in between, there's a spectrum. I tend to fall in the middle of that. I need to know what the mechanism of action would be, you know, have any studies been done on this? But I don't have to have 12 randomized, random control, double-blind placebo-controlled studies for it. I just need to understand how could this work. Like, I understand with apple cider vinegar how that could work to lower blood sugar. And then has there been any studies on it? That's where I like to see. So see where your comfort level is with it, your risk-reward ratio with it, and then give those a try. And again, I'd love to hear which one you're thinking of giving a try to. And, uh, make sure to, while you're here, cuz it helps a ton to subscribe to the channel so I can continue to bring you great information. And also, if you haven't jumped on over to my Facebook group yet, I've got JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community, and I like to go in there every week or so and answer your questions live. So be sure to jump on there as well, and I will see you in the next video or over in the Facebook group.
