The Healy wearable: Just a newer, weirder multi-level marketing scheme

In ye olden daies, multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) tended to focus on the same generally-nonessential consumer goods: Supplements, cosmetics, kitchen toys, weight-loss snake oil, etc. After a while, new products entered the fold: Pearls—dyed and embedded in oysters, stretchy clothes that covered a multitude of sins, international travel, legal services, insurance, and the like. But now, the next generation of MLM products seek the attention and money of people who don’t understand just how predatory these schemes truly are.

And Healy, one of the newer products entering the MLM fold, might be the weirdest one yet.

Related MLM posts: MLM coaches scavenge a declining industry; Claims of MLM success amid the pandemic are slightly exaggerated; Toxic optimism in MLMs; Yes, MLMs are a cult.)

Healy: A woo gadget for the modern age

The “Healy” is a wearable device that claims to send vibes of various natures to its wearer. A basic Healy unit resembles an alarm tag, similar to retail theft-prevention tags. Healy World also sells a smartwatch, and the MagHealy, which looks a bit like a fire alarm. With a smartphone, users can easily customize these products’ functions.

That is, quite literally, its only FDA-approved function. Otherwise, it does nothing discernible. For the USD$2,000+ it costs, by contrast, the MagHealy apparently just sends out magnetic waves.

If connected properly to a user’s body, a Healy can act as a TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator) unit. TENS units utilize microcurrents to hopefully bring temporary pain relief to users. According to the “Science” section on their website, however, the Healy’s electrical stimulations and “frequencies” actually make users’ cells change behavior:

As we just mentioned, the transport of matter into and out of the cell functions by a kind of magnetically controlled valve mechanism.

The voltage potential, i.e., the difference between the voltage inside the cell and the voltage between the cells, is responsible for healthy (physiological) cell metabolism.

In principle, this mechanism explains why frequencies can be applied for many different purposes.

“The Scientific Basis of Frequency Application,” Healy World (archive)

According to its fans and salespeople, wearing a Healy can cure everything from autism to chronic pain to depression to infertility to basic cuts and scrapes. However, the FDA has approved use only as a TENS unit. The FDA’s premarket notification repeats the same limitation in its “Regulation Number” field. In fact, they specifically cautioned Healy World about making claims beyond that.

In response, Healy World has decided that the FDA isn’t its real dad:

Notice: Healy is a microcurrent medical device that has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only for local relief of acute, chronic, and arthritis pain and muscle soreness due to overexertion. Healy also has non-medical applications that use Individualized Microcurrent Frequencies (IMF) to harmonize your Bioenergetic Field. Always use your Healy in accordance with its Instructions for Use.

“Manage Your Pain with Healy,” Healy Shop (archive)

Needless to say, not a single bit of evidence supports even the existence of a “Bioenergetic Field.” There is a legitimate biological field regarding bioenergetic systems, but it’s not the same thing.

The science behind Healy, such as it is

Healy World is based out of Germany. Though they cite two scientists as the inspiration for the device, the company’s two owners/developers very obviously have little-to-no legitimate medical training or experience.

One of its main developers, Nuno Nina, runs woo clinics around the world. He claims to have developed a “unique, ideal” healing water.

Using his excellent knowledge in engineering and biochemistry, Nuno Nina has been able to develop water with unique, ideal properties:
high negative ORP (oxidation-reduction potential)
* rH2 lower than 10
* active hydrogen
* neutral pH
* biominerals

“About Nuno,” Nuno Nina Akademy (archive)

Nina also claims to have created “144,000 ‘Gold Frequencies.'”

The founder of Healy, Marcus Schmieke, appears to have no medical background whatsoever. That said, he’s written a truly impressive number of New Age woo books.

Healy World bases a lot of their ideas on the work of Björn Nordenström, a Swedish radiologist. Decades ago, he announced the existence of “a new, electrically-controlled circulatory system in the body.” By passing electrical current through this system, he claimed to have cured cancer. Unfortunately, Nordenström actively avoiding providing support for this claim.

Healy World also draws upon the work of Robert Becker, an orthopedic surgeon. Around the same time as Nordenström’s announcements in the mid-1980s, Becker published a much-criticized book called The Body Electric. It described various electrical experiments he’d conducted over the years, then swept into a theoretical framework for future study:

We encounter some strange creatures, such as dogs in which implanted battery packs stimulate bone growth and salamanders in which cancer was induced on their tails and allowed to spread to other locations but which recovered entirely from all the cancer when the tails were amputated through the original tumors. [. . .]

But when he raises electromagnetism to the foundation of life his book becomes largely theoretical and ends with a proposal for a new vitalism – in which electromagnetism is seen as the force that binds us and differentiates us from the inanimate universe.

Review, The New York Times, April 21, 1985 (archive)

Vitalism, of course, is another field of solid woo. Among other things, this expansive theory predicts that only living organisms can produce organic molecules, as well as claiming that humans produce an energy field. It’s been debunked for years. Friedrich Wöhler disproved it in 1828 by producing urea without any vitalistic life forces involved at all. Not to be deterred, its modern-day believers use it in a wide range of pseudoscientific therapies of dubious value, like the equally debunked healing touch.

This Healy stuff sure does rest on a solid foundation!

It’s just not the foundation that Healy World wants it to be. Even Quackwatch has a lengthy critical article up about it.

The sheer audacity of this price list

Healy World seems to have entered the MLM world right around the beginning of the pandemic. In the past couple of months, though, the company’s distributors have been blitzing Instagram with marketing. One Healy distributor promises the moon, and she promises it constantly. At one point, she convinced the mother of a severely autistic boy that she could communicate with him through this thing:

This same distributor listed packages and contents, but strangely no prices at all:

She even tried to show how gosh-darned versatile the Healy is by attaching it to a jug of water:

If you’re remembering Nina’s own forays into woo water, then good. That’s probably where she got the idea.

Her omission of prices isn’t unusual, either. Few of these distributors seem to talk much about prices. And I can see why. According to one site’s price list, oh boy are Healy products expensive.

At a bare minimum, buyers can expect to shell out about USD$500 for just a basic Healy unit. That cost can soar upward into $3,000 and $5,000 very quickly with add-ons and optional programs. That said, interested parties will be happy to know that Healy add-on kits for their pets are quite reasonably priced at around $60, not counting connectors, travel cases, etc.

(Please don’t use a TENS unit on pets.)

This marketing has a deeper purpose than just sales

If someone sees the endless deluge of bright-eyed woo posts about Healy and wants to order a package, something interesting happens upon checkout:

Customers must have a “referral link” from someone who sells Healy products. Clicking that link at the end of the boxed statement leads customers to an information-gathering form. At the bottom of it, customers must check a box to share their information “with a local Healy World Member.”

These aren’t just members of the Healy World fan club, like the one operated by the Beanie Baby company or Neopets. They are distributors for the MLM that Healy World operates. When I looked up how one could become a Healy World Member, I got led straight to one Healy World distributor’s sign-up website. There, the distributor explained that “member” really means “distributor”:

Why Become A Healy Distributor?
As a Healy World member, you can rely on a variety of support models to build your business community

“JOIN OUR INTERNATIONAL HEALY DISTRIBUTOR TEAM!”, WearableFrequencyDevices.com (archive)

So normies can’t simply buy Healy products on their own. They must either use a distributor’s referral code or sign up to be distributors themselves.

And like all MLMs, Healy World’s compensation plan is absolutely byzantine.

Why they’re called multi-level marketing

The entire term multi-level marketing derives from the fact that distributors in these schemes draw income from a number of sources. First and foremost, they usually profit from their own sales activity in the form of commissions.

More importantly in most MLMs, distributors get a commission percentage of all the sales of the people they sign up to work under themselves (their downline), and all the sales of the people who those people sign up under their own selves, and so on. By the same token, whoever signed the distributor up to the program (their upline) gets a commission from everything the distributor and their downline buy.

That second bit is where most MLM distributors focus. They tend to make a lot more money on commissions from downline sales than they do on anything they sell by themselves. So they tend to want to “build a team” as quickly as they can.

In addition to upline and downline commissions, most MLM companies provide bonuses of various kinds to especially prolific sellers and teambuilders. Healy, for example, apparently sponsored a quick trip to Bali as an incentive earlier this year. I’m sure it was fun; MLM incentive trips tend to be really nice.

Many MLMs also famously offer high-producing distributors a subsidized lease on a luxury car, which the distributors like to call free cars. It’s not free, however. If distributors fail to hit sales targets that month, they get to pay for the (luxury) car lease themselves that month.

How to make money with Healy, sorta

Like all MLMs, Healy World demands that each distributor make a certain amount of sales on their own. However, these sales don’t simply qualify the distributor to receive a commission. The amount of a distributor’s sales determines their overall level of commission.

And Healy World expects a lot of personal sales. The distributor receives a 30% bonus on sales, paid out weekly. To get an extra 10% commission, the distributor must sell 5000 “DPV,” or “Device Personal Volume,” by month’s end. This usually roughly correlates to USD, but not always. Here, it seems to be about twice its cost in Euros. So 2100€ in sales translates to 5250 DPV.

(Their diagram confusingly refers to DPV as BV, or “bonus volume.” I’m sure that’s no accident. I’m decent at reading these compensation plans by now, and this one is just dizzyingly complicated.)

In addition, all those program subscriptions for the Healy device generate a commission as well. If they can generate 1000 Customer Subscription Volume (CSV) per month, they’ll earn 15% of that as a bonus.

Obviously, an MLM focuses hard on “growing your team,” as Healy World puts it on page 10 of their compensation statement. They pay distributors for enrolling people into their downline. The more people on the team, and the more downline team members sign up underneath them, the more money the distributor makes. Eventually, large upline owners get money from giving speeches and teaching sales to their downline.

The compensation plan spends most of its pages talking about the benefits to prolific teambuilders. On p. 21, we see some truly exorbitant bonuses paid out to their top ranks. But if a Healy seller doesn’t sell anything that month on their own, then they don’t get counted as “Active.” If they’re not active that month, bonuses roll over them, or “compress,” to the next upline above them who is Active.

For someone with a huge social-media footprint and tons of followers who have way more money than they have critical thinking skills, the Healy might make them some good money. From what I’m seeing in the Healyverse, everyone else trying to make money out of this scheme is having a very tough time making sales.

That assessment very much appears to include the lady I mentioned earlier—you know, the one scamming the desperate mother of that autistic kid. Her sales tactics smack of pure desperation to me. If it were selling well, she’d never need to stoop to such a level.

The appeal of these new MLM devices like Healy

There are other pseudoscientific medical devices entering the MLM world besides the Healy. One is the LifeWave X39 patch. According to a stem cell biologist’s review of it earlier this year, it makes some truly stunning claims for a patch lacking any drugs or therapeutic mechanisms:

Activate your stem cells!
Patented phototherapy is designed to elevate a peptide known to enhance stem cell activity
Supports relief of minor aches and pains.
More energy and better sleep – must be experienced to be believed
Supports natural wound healing process
Maintains healthy inflammatory response

“LifeWave X39 stem cell patch story has holes,” The Niche, February 2023 (archive)

And consumers can gain these dubious, utterly-unsupported benefits for a measly $150-280 per monthly pack of patches. At least it’s far less expensive, I suppose, which makes it an easier product to sell within a social-media network.

These devices no doubt appeal to some people who want an easy way to manage their own health—and perhaps more importantly, their fears about health.

After following the Instagrams of various women shilling the Healy (I found zero men selling it), I came away with a real sense of the anxiety they must feel nowadays. Almost all of them embrace most or all of the misinformation flying around constantly about the pandemic and its vaccines and safety measures.

As a result of their fears and beliefs, it must be really scary for them to think about getting sick. And it must feel very empowering indeed to think that they have this super-secret way to keep from getting sick—which they will share with their “Soul Sister Collective” downline and customers—for a price, of course.