The Most Controversial Advice Celebrities Have Given Fans

Celebrities seem to have it all: the style, the money, the success, the flawless skin that seemingly defies age (bless good plastic surgery that doesn't relegate you to Botched). One thing they usually don't have is any sort of medical degree — unless they're Dr. Phil, who's more of a diabetes spokesperson than he is a psychologist, anyway. Although "he holds a doctorate in psychology," he "is not a licensed psychologist," according to Vox.

Nonetheless, many of us still find ourselves taking advice from our favorite A-listers, especially the ones that tow the line of pseudo-doctor, but what we don't acknowledge is that most of these celebrities could be getting their information the same way we do: from Google, YouTube, their friendly cab driver, or their childhood best friend. This sometimes breeds bad advice that can even be dangerous. Think about that the next time you shove a crystal up your you-know-what. Here's the most controversial celebrity advice you could take.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop adventures have long been criticized as wildly out of touch. Remember her failed food stamps experiment? What about her 300 calorie/day diet, or when she suggested women steam clean their lady bits and someone ended up sustaining second-degree burns? Still, few of Paltrow's suggestions have garnered as much attention as her jade egg. So what is it? An egg-shaped hunk of jade (or quartz depending on the model) that you're meant to put where the sun don't shine.

In a Jimmy Kimmel Live interview, Paltrow claimed the eggs are used in "an ancient Chinese practice" that "help[s] tone the pelvic floor." According to Health.com, Goop also claimed it could "balance your menstrual cycle" and "improve your sex life," but gynecologists weren't sold. Actually, women's health experts claimed it could harbor the kind of dangerous bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome. In other words: stop putting stuff up there that's not meant to be up there!

According to The New York Times, Paltrow's lifestyle website was eventually sued over the eggs and an additional aromatherapy product they claimed could prevent depression. After an investigation, Goop was ordered to pay a $145,000 fine for making unsubstantiated marketing claims, but that's a small price for an epic round of free press. In a separate New York Times profile, Paltrow revealed that she uses these controversial moments, which she dubbed "cultural firestorms," to "monetize those eyeballs" that visit her site. Yup, even the rich like clickbait.

Shailene Woodley puts Goop to shame with what she calls her "fairly alternative" lifestyle. She "gather[s]" mountain spring water monthly, "forage[s]" for "wild food," and makes her own toothpaste. Maybe she's training to replace Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games (sorry, Divergent is arguably the dollar store version of YA dystopia). Maybe she's training for Naked And Afraid. Who knows? All we know is that the star "make[s] her own medicine" and doesn't "get those from doctors" — at least that's what she told Flaunt. She may not be a pharmacist, but she could play one in a movie!

While it's probably dangerous for Woodley to rely on homemade medicine if she falls seriously ill, she has been doing her best to boost her health by eating clay on the advice of her taxi driver. The star told Into The Gloss that "clay is one of the best things you can put in your body .. it apparently provides a negative charge, so it bonds to negative isotopes." She also claimed it makes your bowel movements smell like metal, which supposedly means it's ridding your body of heavy metals. Exciting.

Before you start eating your clay face masks like that woman from My Strange Addiction, know that the body already detoxifies itself. Hello, kidneys and liver. According to HuffPost, eating clay is "mostly harmless" but there's no evidence it removes toxins from the body. Beyond that, our bodies need certain metals to survive.

There is one time in your life that self-cannibalism is partly acceptable — at least if you're January Jones. In an interview with People (via ABC News), the Mad Men star advocated for eating her own placenta. "It's something I was very hesitant about, but we're the only mammals who don't ingest our own placentas," she said, adding, "I suggest it to all moms."

The practice of eating your own placenta — whether it's "dehydrated and made into vitamins" as Jones preferred or cooked into lasagna, as some people actually do — has been billed as a way to speed up pregnancy recovery and stave off postpartum depression. It's common in a lot of cultures, but according to ABC News, there's no real evidence proving it has any human benefit. In fact, the advice can be dangerous because postpartum depression can lead to suicide. It needs real treatment. Then, there's the bacteria.

Parents reports that dehydrated placenta pills were linked to a case of one newborn developing "a dangerous blood infection" that was linked back to the child's breastfeeding mother, who was consuming capsulated placenta. The organ, which filters out toxins in the womb, can be contaminated with bacteria, which is possibly why the FDA hasn't approved the use of placenta pills, as of this writing. That being said, research has shown that the organ is filled with nutrients, but ... multi-vitamins also still exist, right? 

You can't cast a single stone on Instagram — or refresh your explore page — without running into a sponsored ad for a weight loss product, but Jameela Jamil is the one celebrity you can count on to call it all out. The Good Place star slammed Kim Kardashian for promoting appetite suppressant lollipops just like she lambasted Cardi B for promoting detox tea. "GOD I hope all these celebrities all s**t their pants in public, the way the poor women who buy this nonsense upon their recommendation do," she said in a tweet directed at the rapper.

Cardi knows how to handle tea, so she shook it off with some humor. According to Vulture, Mrs. Migos replied in an Instagram re-post of Jamil's tweet that she won't "s**t [her] pants" because there are "public bathrooms everywhere ... ooooo and bushes." Jokes aside, doctors still warn that detox teas do more harm than good, and we're not just talking about emotional scarring from squatting in shrubbery on the side of the road.

According to Women's Health, detox teas are largely promoted as cleanses that rid the body of harmful toxins and/or aid in weight loss while reducing stomach bloating. In reality, they may actually make your problems worse. Per the report, teas can exacerbate bloating "by drawing more fluid into the gut," and cause weight gain by putting your body "into starvation mode." Plus, your body already rids itself of toxins without help.

Sean Connery better be kissing the ground Al Gore walks on for taking his time creating the internet because if the actor ran his mouth today, it would've spread on social media like wildfire. People have been cancelled for a lot less. Just look at what happened to James Charles for (allegedly) promoting gummy vitamins behind Tati Westbrook's back.

While we can all agree that any type of violence is ill-advised, the Goldfinger star advocated for domestic abuse in a disastrous 1965 Playboy interview. "I don't think there's anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman ... An open-handed slap is justified," he said (via The Guardian), adding, "If a woman is a b**ch or hysterical ... I'd do it."

Connery's take was obviously met with harsh criticism, but Barbra Walters gave him a chance to explain himself. Instead of smoothing things over, he claimed he had a "violent temper" and doubled down on feeling justified in hitting a woman "as a last resort" to end an argument. "Women are pretty good at this. They can't leave it alone. They want to have the last word, and you give them the last word, but they're not happy with the last word. They want to say it again," he said. "Then I think it's absolutely right." Clearly, James Bond's brain has been shaken, not stirred. According to a United Nations report, domestic violence is the number one cause of female homicides.

In 2005, Tom Cruise sounded the "glib" heard round the world. During a bizarre interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, the Scientologist went on a heated tangent about how Brooke Shields should have never used antidepressants and psychiatry to help her postpartum depression. Rather, she should have turned to other methods like "vitamins and through exercise." Does jumping up on Oprah's couch count as exercise?

"Psychiatry is a pseudoscience," Cruise said, adding "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do ... All it does is mask the problem, Matt, and if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance."

Though Tom Cruise did play a doctor in Eyes Wide Shut, people who actually went to medical generally disagree with his advice. Nada Stotland, who once served as the president of the American Psychiatric Association, told WebMD that psychiatry isn't a pseudoscience at all. "We can see differences between brain images of someone who is depressed and someone who is not depressed," she said. "And if we give medications, the brain of the depressed person goes back to looking like a person not depressed." Of course, that doesn't mean medication is the only way to treat depression. It just means that it can help.