For years, approaches like functional medicine, integrative health, nutritional supplementation, chiropractic care, meditation, and other complementary health practices were often treated as being outside the healthcare mainstream.
The numbers tell a different story.
Americans aren’t simply becoming more interested in taking supplements. They’re increasingly looking for ways to become active participants in their health—through nutrition, movement, supplementation, stress management, personalized wellness strategies, and complementary approaches.
And that shift has created an enormous health and wellness ecosystem.
More Than One-Third of Americans Use Complementary Health Approaches
One of the clearest signs of this shift comes from the National Institutes of Health.
An NIH analysis of National Health Interview Survey data found that 36.7% of U.S. adults used at least one of seven measured complementary health approaches in 2022, compared with 19.2% in 2002.
That’s nearly a doubling over two decades.
The approaches examined included:
- Meditation
- Yoga
- Chiropractic care
- Massage therapy
- Acupuncture
- Naturopathy
- Guided imagery/progressive muscle relaxation
Meditation increased from 7.5% of adults in 2002 to 17.3% in 2022, while yoga increased from 5.0% to 15.8%. Researchers also found increasing use of complementary approaches for pain management.
Evidence strength: Strong. These figures come from nationally representative federal health-survey data analyzed by NIH researchers.
One important distinction: this 36.7% figure measures seven specific complementary health approaches. It should not be interpreted as the percentage of Americans participating in every form of complementary or integrative health behavior.
And that’s where the numbers become even more interesting.
About 3 Out of 4 Americans Use Dietary Supplements
The Council for Responsible Nutrition’s 2024 Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements found that approximately 75% of U.S. adults use dietary supplements.
Supplement use is no longer a behavior confined to a small wellness subculture.
It is mainstream consumer behavior.
People use supplements for many different reasons—from filling nutritional gaps to supporting fitness, healthy aging, digestive health, sleep, stress management, and other wellness goals.
CRN’s research also found particularly high confidence among supplement users, with 91% reporting that dietary supplements are essential to maintaining their health.
Evidence note: Unlike the NIH statistics above, this figure comes from an industry organization’s consumer survey conducted by Ipsos. It’s useful market research, but it should be distinguished from federal health-surveillance data.
Americans Spend Billions on Supplements
Consumer behavior is also visible in spending.
Nutrition Business Journal estimated that the U.S. dietary supplement market reached approximately $69.3 billion in 2024, representing about 5.2% growth for the year.
That number represents something much bigger than bottles of vitamins.
Behind it is an expanding ecosystem of healthcare professionals, supplement manufacturers, functional and integrative practitioners, nutrition professionals, fitness professionals, wellness educators, laboratories, technology platforms, content creators, and consumers.
And one particular part of this ecosystem deserves more attention:
The Rise of Practitioner-Guided Wellness
There is sometimes a perception that functional and integrative health practitioners represent a tiny niche.
The professional infrastructure that has developed around them suggests otherwise.
Fullscript, a supplement and whole-person-care platform, reports serving more than 125,000 healthcare providers and reaching more than 10 million patients. The company has also reported annual revenue exceeding $1 billion.
That doesn’t mean there are exactly 125,000 functional-medicine practitioners in the United States. Fullscript serves multiple types of healthcare professionals.
But it does demonstrate something important:
Practitioner-guided supplementation is a substantial commercial ecosystem.
Healthcare and wellness professionals are recommending supplements, developing protocols, educating patients, and increasingly incorporating nutrition and lifestyle interventions into their businesses and practices.
Functional Medicine Has Built Its Own Professional Ecosystem
Another indicator comes from the Institute for Functional Medicine.
IFM reported that in 2025 alone it trained 13,129 unique practitioners.
Since 1991, the organization says it has educated more than 103,800 clinicians, with 2,940 practitioners receiving IFM certification since 2013.
Those numbers shouldn’t be added to Fullscript’s provider numbers—there is undoubtedly overlap between these populations.
Instead, they should be viewed as separate indicators pointing in the same direction.
There is a substantial professional community interested in nutrition, functional medicine, supplementation, lifestyle interventions, and more personalized approaches to health.
This Isn’t Really About “Alternative” vs. “Conventional”
Perhaps the terminology itself is becoming outdated.
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health distinguishes between complementary, alternative, and integrative approaches.
Complementary approaches are used alongside conventional medicine.
Alternative approaches are used instead of conventional medicine.
Integrative health brings conventional and complementary approaches together in a coordinated way.
That distinction matters.
Someone who lifts weights, tracks sleep, takes creatine, uses a probiotic, works with a physician, pays attention to metabolic markers, and practices meditation isn’t necessarily rejecting conventional medicine.
They’re assembling multiple tools around a common objective:
Improving health and performance.
And that philosophy sits at the center of what I call Primal Hacking.
Where Biohacking Fits
Biohacking sometimes gets reduced to gadgets, cold plunges, and expensive technology.
I see it much more broadly.
At its best, biohacking is about becoming curious about your own biology and using evidence, measurement, and experimentation to make informed decisions about your health.
That can include remarkably basic things:
Nutrition.
Strength training.
Sleep.
Stress management.
Supplementation.
Digestive health.
Metabolic health.
Healthy aging.
Recovery.
And emerging research that may eventually give us new tools.
The important word is evidence.
Something being natural doesn’t automatically make it effective.
Something trending on social media doesn’t make it scientifically established.
And something showing promise in a laboratory doesn’t mean it has been proven to work in humans.
Part of Primal Hacking will be learning how to distinguish between those levels of evidence.
The Bigger Shift
Put the numbers together:
36.7% of U.S. adults used at least one of seven measured complementary health approaches in 2022.
Approximately 75% report using dietary supplements in CRN's 2024 consumer survey.
The U.S. supplement industry was estimated at approximately $69.3 billion in 2024.
One practitioner-focused platform reports working with 125,000+ healthcare providers.
And one major functional-medicine education organization has educated more than 100,000 clinicians.
These statistics measure different things and shouldn’t be combined into one giant “market size.”
But together they tell an important story:
People are increasingly interested in taking a more active role in their health.
And an enormous professional and commercial ecosystem is developing around that behavior.
That’s the world Primal Hacking is designed to explore.
Not rejecting conventional medicine.
Not chasing every wellness trend.
And not assuming that “natural” automatically means better.
Instead:
Learn the science. Understand the body. Question the hype. Use the evidence. Keep experimenting.
That’s Primal Hacking.
References
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NIH). NIH analysis reveals a significant rise in use of complementary health approaches, especially for pain management.
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Complementary, Alternative, or Integrative Health: What’s In a Name?
Council for Responsible Nutrition. 2024 CRN Consumer Survey on Dietary Supplements.
Nutrition Business Journal. 2024 U.S. dietary supplement market data.
Fullscript. Company information and 2026 corporate reporting.
Institute for Functional Medicine. 2025 Impact Report