Long Island businesses sell wellness — and some big health claims

In a dimly lit private room, labor and delivery nurse Natasha Vasquez stood beside a white bathtub filled with 50-degree water.

She spoke to herself, psyching herself up for the plunge.

“I was so proud of myself. I did a whole 60 seconds,” said Vasquez, who visited wellness studio SWTHZ in Roslyn to use a gift card from a friend. “The longest 60 seconds of my life.”

A mother of three, Vasquez now makes time to visit wellness businesses, a growing category on Long Island. The local landscape is increasingly populated by businesses that offer cold plunges, vibration therapy, red-light therapy, IV infusions and peptide injections shipped to clients’ homes.

Wellness and fitness businesses are “definitely on an uptick,” representing about 30% of new retail leases on Long Island in 2025, according to CoStar data, said Melissa Naeder, a senior director in the Melville office of Cushman & Wakefield.

“It’s one of the fastest-growing categories,” Naeder said. “Wellness is no longer a niche category.”

Naeder represented SWTHZ in its lease transaction. The business occupies space on the lower level of a building whose wellness roster tenants include a Bar Method, Solidcore, SkinSpirit and Drybar.

“It’s kind of like what boutique fitness used to be,” Naeder said. “We saw boutique fitness expand years ago, and now we’re really seeing consumers invest in recovery, longevity, and preventive health.”

But the services sold by these businesses range from relaxation treatments to medical interventions accompanied by claims that physicians say may be overstated or unsupported.

'We have a solution for that.'

After the cold plunge, Vasquez took a vitamin C-infused shower. The first 60-minute session at SWTHZ, which includes a sauna, cold plunge and shower, costs $40. After that, sessions cost $80, or customers can purchase a membership.

“When you’re a mom, you tend to ignore your own wellness, so to speak,” Vasquez said. “But now my kids are older, so when I turned 40, I was like, ‘OK, I really need to focus on my health.’”

At Revive Health Studio in Huntington, clients sit between panels that emit red light or lie on a Tunebed that vibrates in time with music. In Commack, visitors to The DRIPBaR peruse a menu of “lifestyle drips” and “health support drips” that the location’s brochure claims can kill cancer cells, remove heavy metals or help fight the flu. Long Island residents also can have peptide injections mailed to their homes.

Marketing materials for local wellness studios often feature buzzwords such as "inflammation,” “anti-aging” and “immunity.”

“We have a range of different vitamin infusions that we do,” said Stefani Cornejo, assistant general manager of The DRIPBaR. “We have ones for energy boosting, for inflammation, for rehydration, anti-aging, immunity boosting, detoxing, weight loss, allergies, everything.”

For any potential improvement, Cornejo said, “we have a solution for that.”

Clients can pay per menu item or buy a membership that includes access to a red-light sauna. Nurses administer the IVs, which are prepared in a sterile hood, Cornejo said. A physician assistant consults with clients virtually to approve treatment, she said.

Though Cornejo said there was strong medical evidence to support IV fluids as an effective treatment for dehydration and other ailments, the medical community has questioned its efficacy in healthy individuals. 

Quoted in a 2019 blog published by California medical center Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Sam Torbati, then co-chair of Emergency Medicine, said the reason recipients of IV therapy say they feel better after treatment is because they have received hydration quickly. 

"These treatments are mostly harmless and really just result in people making expensive urine," Torbati said.

But vitamins administered via IV skip a stop at the stomach and immediately enter the bloodstream, he said.

"When you put something straight into the bloodstream, you bypass all of your body's built-in safeguards and filters," said Dr. Torbati.

Evidence supporting wellness treatments varies widely, said Dr. Stephanie Widmer, an emergency medicine physician at Northwell’s Northern Westchester Hospital.

“If you’re not getting your information from a doctor, somebody who’s licensed and credentialed really to be talking about this, you may want to get a second opinion,” Widmer said. “Because all this can be overwhelming, and a lot of the claims are certainly overstated.”

Not for everyone 

At SWTHZ in Roslyn, red-light therapy is delivered through a device resembling a tanning bed. When a client finishes a red-light session, the client can spend 10 minutes on a vibrating platform that SWTHZ says promotes lymphatic drainage.

“This is great for inflammation — like one of the best things for inflammation — because it’s going to target the cells,” said Nyasia Turpin, a manager at SWTHZ.

During phone screenings, SWTHZ managers Turpin and Felisa Bronzino ask prospective customers whether they have implanted medical devices, are pregnant or are undergoing active cancer treatment, they said. If a customer answers “yes” to any of the three, staff members offer a refund or an extension on the purchase.

Turpin and Bronzino also rely on clients, some of whom are referred by physicians, to disclose their medical histories and understand the treatments, they said.

Widmer said treatments such as cold plunges, saunas and red-light therapy may make some people feel better, but they are not appropriate for everyone.

“If something makes someone feel better, that’s great,” she said. “Just make sure you’re an appropriate candidate for this.”

Sometimes, Widmer said, clients are trying to solve problems that do not actually exist.

Inflammation, for example, is not necessarily a problem to be solved, Widmer said.

“The word ‘inflammation’ has become one of the biggest buzzwords in wellness,” Widmer said. “The reality is that inflammation is a normal immune response that’s essential for healing.”

The problem would be “chronic, uncontrolled inflammation,” she said.

“A lot of people are just on this hunt to rid their body of something that is also kind of a normal process in some situations,” Widmer said. “There’s no proven cure-all out there for inflammation, or for a lot of these wellness concerns that people have.”

As a medical professional, Widmer expressed skepticism about some of the wellness fads driven by social media.

“We definitely are living in an interesting time, where people are getting a lot of their information from social media and wellness influencers, and you can buy a lot of things online,” Widmer said. “It’s really important to be well-informed, to make sure you’re not putting yourself at any risk and, at the very least, make sure you’re not wasting money on something that’s doing nothing for you.”

She recommended consulting a physician before beginning a new wellness treatment and warned that nothing is without risk. Depending on an individual’s medical history, age and medications, certain treatments may not be appropriate, she said.

“Lymphatic drainage is a real therapy for people with lymphedema, but for healthy people, there’s no evidence to support the need to drain toxins or move around stagnant lymph,” Widmer said.

The main tenets of wellness will always be eating and sleeping well, and incorporating movement, she said.

“None of these things can replace a healthy, well-balanced diet and getting adequate sleep every night, and just taking care of yourself the traditional way that we know how to,” Widmer said.