IIN is fortunate to have a collection of the world’s leading health and wellness experts at its fingertips, and we’re always tapping them for their expertise and insights. There’s so much information out there, and it can be overwhelming and exhausting. What should we make of all of it? What’s noise, and what’s important? What does the future hold? That’s what inspired us to create the 10 Most Critical Health Questions series, featuring a who’s who of health and wellness visionaries. 

Below is our interview with Purist founder and CEO Cristina Cuomo. In addition to overseeing the leading luxury wellness media platform, Cristina is a wife, a mother of three, and an IIN Certified Health Coach.

Cristina Cuomo on Mental Health Advancements, Investing in Organic Farms, Ozempic, and More

IIN: What is the single biggest health threat we face as a society, and how can we combat it?   

Cristina Cuomo: I think the biggest health issue we face today is our inability to fully understand the body and its needs — navigating the changing nature of the environment around us. Not understanding our changing, aging bodies, our food sources, and the emotional impact on our physical health follow closely behind. Our relationship with this earth and our role as stewards would be a great place to start because it is in the giving and caring where we will find solutions to our own illnesses and what we need to sustain a homeostasis. Health and nutrition education is paramount to this goal, starting in the formative years at school. Once we receive the benefits of education, we can operate from a place of getting ahead of pain and disease, instead of just managing an illness. I would love to see IIN create an incentive-based children’s program that will help enable the generations to come to be more thoughtful, informed, and armed with tools for well-being.  

IIN: What is the single biggest advancement you’ve seen to support mental health 

Cristina Cuomo: Mental health support is as important as nutrition and physical fitness. Early detection is critical — treating it as soon as possible with efforts on par with “no smoking” and “wear a seatbelt.” The all-hands-on-deck approach is the best advancement I’ve seen thus far in this country. The Columbia Protocol started rollout efforts that have gone a long way in saving lives by creating simple methods for upstream detection, like asking important questions that identify who is at risk.  

Eighty percent of people who take their lives do it in their home, so the key is to get into every home, and smaller groups like The Columbia Protocol highlight this effort. Mental health innovations, like leveraging technology through public health distribution that The Columbia Protocol is doing, have proven to reduce the stigma of mental health, reduce suicide, and increase detection of mental health issues. Gun violence prevention advocates are talking about how vital this strategy has become.

Many people with depression and anxiety never get to a doctor, and it should be treated like any other disease — with medication and/or lifestyle changes— so it’s important to find those who need the help. Community leaders like coaches, teachers, and employers need the tools to make sure that their people are doing well. Policy across the country now includes The Columbia Protocol in schools, law enforcement, large corporations, and government agencies, because timely intervention is dependent upon this detection being available. It is a vehicle for cultural change.  

Read More: Cristina Cuomo’s 4 Pieces of Health Advice

IIN: How do you think AI and emerging technology will affect our collective health in the next decade? And sticking with the technology theme, is there anything we can do to curb screen time?  

Cristina Cuomo: I can best answer these questions with an abridged version of an editorial I wrote in Purist:   

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s important new book, The Anxious Generation, has everyone talking about the troubling consequences of the “phone-based childhood.” It got me thinking: Why do we wait to have the collective hard conversations until they’ve been voiced and validated by experts? If we’re really honest, don’t we know the dilemma intimately ourselves? After all, we adults live it too, every day. (Admit it, when was the last time you didn’t scroll through social media on the toilet?) 

Whether we like to admit it or not, we’ve all made an agreement with technology, one where we ignore the uneasy feeling inside saying, This is too much — too much information, too much distraction, too much of other peoples’ thoughts living inside our minds in exchange for stimulation, “all the latest ideas from everywhere,” and yes, dopamine. Do we dare ask ourselves, in a quiet, screen-free moment, Do the benefits actually outweigh the costs? It’s a good question to ask, and there’s no better time than now. Not only because our kids need us to engage with it, urgently, but because incessant information streams are only getting faster and more addictive as artificial intelligence-generated content hits the online space.   

In one of my issues of Purist, we spoke with Biomancy creator Dr. Azra Bertrand, who discussed whether we have reached “peak thinking” collectively; it certainly seems that way, and Bertrand describes it as feeding a desire to drop into deep time, to reconnect to our bodies, our senses, to nature, and each other. This does not (necessarily) mean abandoning all online engagement, but rather rejecting the ever-shorter, faster content hits for longer-form conversations — podcasts, articles, summits — that are filled with substance and nuance. 

Do we still want that agreement in place, or do we want to renegotiate it? Given what we are learning now, what do we want to do about it? For one thing, it starts by postponing the age that kids receive a smartphone, and laying a new boundary. 

When it comes to us older ones, let’s be curious and try new things — not be judgy! Here’s an idea: Install the Opal app on your phone to manage and reduce screen time. Do a phone or social media detox for a weekend. (I did it. It’s hard. I survived). And just notice: How does my mind feel now that I’m not checking Instagram all the time? Did I actually miss out on anything important … and what did I do in the time I freed up? 

Read More: 10 Critical Health Questions With Multidisciplinary Healer Devi Brown

IIN: If you had $1 billion to invest in health and wellness today, where would you put your money and why?  

Cristina Cuomo: I would invest in bettering the healthcare system and the availability of wellness to everyone in this country. This includes research and medicine where a lot of disease will be cured; testing RNA, DNA, and telomeres, and the effects that stem cell rejuvenation have on them; and advancing the quality and accessibility of stem cells.     

In the food industry, I would invest in organic farms across the country, and their accessibility to everyone. I’d help create grass-fed, wild-caught, organic, free-range, healthy eateries that educate diners on oils and foods through an immersive, gourmet experience. I’d also help create healthy water supplies that are available for free to everyone, everywhere.    

For women, menopause education seems to be well underway, but I would invest in furthering access to resources by creating health and wellness centers to help women of all ages going through varying life cycles. These wellness centers would provide them with testing and tools, all under one roof. Once the root cause of a problem is determined, it could be treated in the same location where it was detected.  

I would also invest in technology that creates an umbrella of healthcare information that is accessible in one location, from insurance to health records to reports and histories. Software would determine vital signs and other detectable issues through touch.  

So much money is invested in tech, yet nothing in the ways to combat its effects on our health, so partial investment would go toward developing a wellness aspect or solution to every technology concern from screens to content. We need legislature and lobbyists to create regulations for technology companies on content creation, and we need the required distribution of proven health and wellness modalities. For example, a breathwork session would be taught and completed before a non-violent video game could be accessed. 

IIN: If you had to choose three health and wellness trends that you think will explode in popularity and relevance in the coming years, what would you choose?  

Cristina Cuomo: I would like to see these trends furthered: stem cell therapy; epigenetic research and therapies, and a Michelin-star rating system for food —from sources to farms to restaurants. As we have learned with children and behavior, rewards encourage effort. I’m adding a fourth wellness pillar that I think will start exploding in popularity: spiritual understanding, and learning how to step into one’s grace through gratitude and acceptance of everyone, especially as we enter the age of the divine feminine. 

IIN: Why do you think coaching is booming right now?  

Cristina Cuomo: Humanity today is operating at a spiritual and emotional deficit, and it is taking a toll on everyone’s physical being. People are in a place of deep stress and need wellness tools more than ever for healing. I am glad to hear that coaching is booming, and who better to guide them than someone who is already on that path? If coaching brings people together to problem-solve, that is true progress toward a healthier human existence. As spiritualist Ram Dass wrote, “We’re all just walking each other home.” 

IIN: Let’s talk Ozempic. Do you think the medication — and others like it — will continue to be used at such a high rate?  

Cristina Cuomo: Indeed! Discoveries are just emerging about the benefits of semaglutides or tirzepatides, and we are only just beginning to see the research on them. We're learning about benefits for such health issues as diabetes, heart and brain inflammation, cancers, autoimmune conditions, addictions, and mental health issues.  

Read More: 10 Critical Health Questions With Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Maya Feller

IIN: Do you think virtual events (immersive mindfulness sessions, interactive cooking classes, virtual workouts) will make in-person activities relatively obsolete in the future? Can they make a comeback?   

Cristina Cuomo: I don’t think in-person activities will ever be obsolete, because people need people. Community and social interaction are significant wellness pillars, and one-on-one storytelling is how we discover similarities and solutions to health problems and beyond. While technology is advancing our access to information at an unfathomable rate, our need to find balance within our over-informed, less-focused psyche demands time spent with friends and family more than ever. The next decade will bring forth the efforts that individuals and organizations are making to advance research and innovations together through technology, which will impact the rate of detection and ultimately the advancement of cures. 

IIN: What do you think is the future of nutrition and metabolic health? 

Cristina Cuomo: Good nutrition is how we get ahead of our health. People don’t have to live with autoimmune issues and diseases, which are higher than ever post-pandemic for a multitude of reasons. At the root of everything is what we put in our bodies; it impacts our health and whether we create an environment for disease to thrive or not.  

More discoveries are being made every day. In Dr. William Li’s book, Eat to Beat Disease, he talks about how nutrition is the key to keeping the circulatory system in a great state of flow. The more we learn and understand our bio-individual needs, the better equipped we will be in creating optimal metabolic health. My hope is that the trend toward nutrition as a form of self-care will become the new normal for everyone.   

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