4 in 10 Instagram #womenshealth posts are selling something

You are searching for something. Maybe it is perimenopause, or why you are tired, or whether your hormones are normal. You type a hashtag into Instagram. Within a few scrolls you have seen: a video explaining your exhaustion, a post promising to balance your hormones, and a product recommendation from a woman who looks energetic and healthy and seems to understand exactly what you are feeling.

All three feel personal. All three feel relevant. But a new study from University of Sydney researchers — both NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellows in public health and reproductive health — has mapped what that experience actually contains. The findings are worth knowing.

The study sampled 472 posts under #womenshealth. 4 in 10 posts were directly selling a product or service. Over half of all account holders had a clear financial interest in what they were discussing. 69% of posts made explicit health claims. 7% referred to scientific evidence.

The most common topic: hormonal and reproductive health, appearing in almost half of all posts. Menopause and perimenopause alone accounted for 12%.

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What the research actually found

Of the individual accounts — as opposed to company accounts — more than half (55%) were alternative health practitioners such as health coaches and naturopaths. 35% were qualified medical doctors.

What that means in practice: when you search #womenshealth and land on an individual sharing health information, you are more likely to be receiving it from someone without a medical licence than from someone with one. And in both cases, the financial incentive to sell something — a supplement, a protocol, a membership, a telehealth consult — is present in the majority of accounts.

The researchers — Brooke Nickel and Tessa Copp — were careful in their framing. The problem is not that women’s health information exists on social media. Menopause and perimenopause in particular have historically received less clinical attention than the burden they carry warrants, and 6 in 10 young women now turn to social media for health information (Pew Research, July 2026). The visibility that social media has given to hormonal health is, in some respects, valuable.

The problem is that a platform built on engagement and commerce cannot reliably distinguish between a peer-reviewed recommendation and an ad dressed up as personal testimony. And the data shows the commercial content is winning.

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The both-and

Social media has genuinely shifted the conversation about women’s health. Conditions that were dismissed, undertreated, or simply not discussed in clinical settings — perimenopause, POTS, endometriosis, histamine sensitivity, thyroid disorders — have found communities online. Women have found language for what they experience, found each other, found enough shared stories to feel that their symptoms are real and worth pursuing.

That is valuable. And it has created a market.

The “both-and” is this: the same phenomenon that gave women a space to discuss their health has also given alternative practitioners, wellness brands, and commercial telehealth providers a highly targeted audience with demonstrated health concerns and strong purchasing intent. The algorithm amplifies both the education and the sales pitch, indistinguishably.

The 7% figure — posts that reference scientific evidence — is the number worth sitting with. When 69% of posts are making explicit health claims and 7% are grounding those claims in evidence, the information environment is not neutral. It is not balanced between credentialled and uncredentialled sources. It is, as the researchers write, “women’s health treated as another opportunity for engagement and sales.”

What this does not mean: that everything outside the 7% is wrong. Some naturopaths and health coaches share accurate, evidence-aligned information. Some MDs share misleading content. Credentials are a correlate of reliability, not a guarantee. The question is structural, not individual.

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What this means this week

If you use Instagram for health information — and the chances are that you do, given the landscape — the study’s recommended questions are worth building into your default filter: Who is this person? Do they have a financial interest in what they are recommending? Are they citing evidence or personal testimony? Does this claim sound too simple to be true?

That last question is not cynicism. It is appropriate scepticism in an environment where 7% of posts meet any evidentiary standard. The algorithm will not tell you whether a post is an ad or an education. The account may not disclose it. The only reliable signal is your own critical read.

If a post has prompted you to consider starting, stopping or changing a supplement, hormone treatment, or any other health intervention, the research team’s guidance is worth following: take it to a GP before acting. Not because social media is uniformly wrong — it is not — but because a GP conversation with no financial stake in the outcome is a useful counterweight to an algorithm that has learned exactly what you want to hear.

For GPs, the researchers raise a direct implication: patients are arriving at consultations with health information, treatment requests, and wellness frameworks sourced from this environment. Understanding what they have seen — asking, rather than dismissing — and providing an evidence-anchored response is the clinical version of filling the gap the study identifies. The researchers also suggest qualified health professionals could be more present in these online spaces, sharing evidence-based content in a medium that currently underrepresents it.

The proposed Australian legislation — “My Feed, My Way” — would give users greater control over algorithmically curated feeds. That addresses the amplification problem. It does not solve the evidence problem, and the two are different things.

Verdict: yes — if you use Instagram for women’s health information, knowing what the landscape actually contains is worth the 2 minutes it takes to build a more critical read.

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Sources cited

1. Looking for #womenshealth information on Instagram? 4 out of 10 posts are ads — The Conversation, 23 September 2026
2. Nickel et al. 2026 — #womenshealth Instagram content analysis, Health Promotion International
3. Pew Research — Nearly 6 in 10 young women get health and wellness information from influencers, July 2026