Nothing Grimes Said About Eyeballs or Depression Makes Any Sense

I must be getting old because I don't know who some of these young whippersnappers are anymore. Apparently, a Canadian singer named Grimes (who happens to be dating Elon Musk) is somebody I need to pay attention to. As is often the case with celebrities, it's not for a good reason.

Grimes is doing a promotional campaign with Adidas, and she provided some -- let's call it unorthodox -- advice on how to handle seasonal depression:

"[I] eliminated all blue light from my vision through an experimental surgery that removes the top film of my eyeball and replaces it with an orange ultra-flex polymer that my friend and I made in the lab this past winter as a means to cure seasonal depression."

Uh-huh. It sounds like she's making this up, but let's take her statement at face value and assume that she had a wonderfully successful eyeball surgery. Is removing blue light a good way to help treat seasonal depression?

No. It's literally the exact opposite. For those who suffer from it, seasonal affective disorder generally occurs in winter because of lack of sunlight. According to Medscape, light therapy -- that is, providing oneself with supplemental light -- seems to work just as well as taking an antidepressant. Some evidence indicates that using blue light alone has a similar effect. (For what it's worth, a Cochrane review concluded that there is little evidence overall that light therapy is useful for treating seasonal affective disorder.)

In other words, if Grimes actually did this surgery, she has permanently altered her eyes with a treatment that, at best does nothing and at worst is the exact opposite of what she should have done.

Grimes's other health advice is also dubious:

"I maximize the function of my mitochondria with supplements such as NAD+, Acetyl L-Carnitine, Magnesium, Etc."

Some people claim NAD supplements help prevent aging, but there's very little evidence that this works. As Dr. Jeffrey Flier told Kaiser Health News, "There is financial incentive and inducement to overpromise before all the research is in." Besides, if we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times: Unless you are specifically directed by a doctor due to a nutritional deficiency, you do not need to take dietary supplements. Period.

Grimes goes on:

"I spend 2-4 hours in my deprivation tank, this allows me to "astro-glide" to other dimensions - past, present, and future."

I think she's been watching too many episodes of The Twilight Zone. Anyway, I guess that's better than telling women to steam-clean their vaginas like Gwyneth Paltrow.

Don't listen to celebrities. Ever. Okay, you can listen to Kristin Bell because she's pro-vaccine. But that's it.