A medical review of the documentary (Un)well
This 6-part documentary series explores current health fads that have been co-opted by companies looking to cash in. The benefit data for most are lacking beyond the expected placebo effect, but individuals interviewed in each episode passionately insist the particular therapy discussed has greatly improved or even saved their lives.
Should you view this series as a list of options to consider for your health or as an exploration of power, money, and exploitation on a massive scale? That depends on your perspective.
Each episode begins with a warning that this series is “designed to entertain and inform” so you know the producers don’t want to be sued when you try bee therapy and go into anaphylactic shock or try ayahuasca and have a seizure. “You should always consult your doctor,” they say. Yes, always good advice, but the series comes off as entertainment and promotion rather than entertainment and information.
At some point in each episode, they do interview at least one doctor or scientist who acts as the minority voice of reason (Boo! Boring!), but the majority of each episode is focused on promotion of the therapy. Inevitably, we are bombarded with a snake-oil-salesman list of all the symptoms and diagnoses that this therapy could (in theory) relieve.
We also meet the people behind the companies set up to cash in, many of whom are True Believers who use the product on themselves. The theme becomes obvious: the more desperate, the more willing to try anything, the more likely to be exploited.
One can’t help but root for the emotionally scarred individuals looking for something, anything, to make them feel better. Western medicine has clear limitations, and CAM (complementary and alternate medicine) therapies can be an option for those in need of comfort. In each case, we find companies that have stepped in to create multi-million dollar industries with decidedly mixed results and several deaths left in the wake of its destruction.
Episode 1. Essential oils: “like a cult” vs. “cured my cancer”
Essential oils are extracts from plants with scents many find comforting. After a “Holistic Nurse and Clinical Aromatherapist” spends time with a patient trying different scents to find the right blend, the patient states that he feels better.
“I don’t know if it’s the attention or the oils but I feel better.”
Well said. Others are not quite so insightful as correlation becomes confused with causation. One individual states that he had cancer, took the oils, and now doesn’t have cancer. Despite the many complex factors involved, he is convinced essential oils are what cured his cancer.
The second part of the episode focuses on doTERRA and Young Living, two companies that hawk essential oils as multilevel marketing companies. If you watched Dirty Money, another Netflix documentary series, you already know about Herbalife, a similar predatory multilevel marketing company that uses the same pyramid scheme to sell a worthless product and defraud its own employees.
To work for Young Living, you have to spend hundreds of dollars per month on inventory. Only 6% of employees make more than $1 per month, and most go into debt. To make actual money, you can’t just sell the product, you need to convince your network (friends and family) to join the company so you can take a portion of their profits. The collateral damage is highly destructive. A class-action lawsuit is ongoing.
Episode 2. Tantric sex: “cultural appropriation” vs. “orgasmic energy”
On the surface, it is difficult to complain about “good sex with the promise of wellness.” Even if you don’t get well, at least you’ve still got the good sex. But much like yoga, tantric sex has been westernized from the original Indian tradition to become something else entirely.
We meet Sasha Cobra, who charges $225 per hour by phone/skype (or quite a bit more in person). She has a soothing voice, a gentle touch, and promises full-body orgasms. Is she an intimacy coach or a new age prostitute?
Before we can figure it out, we shift to a cult in Thailand where the charismatic male leader views assault and rape as “sexual healing” and “enlightenment.” It’s all horrifying. By the time we return to Sasha talking about how empowering it is to “give women permission to expresses their sensuality,” she looks quite good in comparison.
Sasha calls herself an “energy worker” rather than a sex worker. Whatever she is, she is certainly cashing in after this extended advertisement.
Episode 3. Bulking up with breast milk: “sewer water” vs. “liquid gold”
Many lactating women will donate excess breast milk to neonatal ICUs in hospitals to help struggling new babies. Or donate it to adopted babies whose new mothers are not lactating. All very noble, but there is quite a bit of money to be made by selling it on the internet, so that happens.
Who buys it? Among others, we meet a bodybuilder convinced that human milk is more “natural” than anabolic steroids and a cancer survivor that has correlated his ingestion of human milk to reductions in his PSA level (a marker for prostate cancer). As with everyone else we meet, there is no scientific basis to their beliefs, but data is sparse, so who’s to say?
Dr. Sarah Keim, for one. She notes that human milk purchased on the internet is often cut with cow milk or baby formula, subject to environmental contaminates, and if not transported correctly will often have pathogenic bacteria like E. Coli and Salmonella.
“Unless you have a lab in your kitchen,” she quips, “you really can’t test the milk yourself and know that it’s completely safe.”
Given all the babies who need it, human milk not an “ethically-grounded nutritional source” for adults.
And, you know, yuck.
Episode 4. Fasting: “risking death” vs. “the body can heal from virtually anything if (you) fast long enough”
The trend of not eating for most of the day was made popular by Silicon Valley biohackers who like to fast for most of the day to “improve performance.”
Grasping the general theme by this point, I kept wondering how someone could possibly exploit fasting for personal gain. Why would anyone pay someone else to help them not eat? Oh, how naïve I am. Turns out there are long-term water-only fasting facilities you can go to where they will charge you money to watch you intentionally starve yourself for days at a time.
TrueNorth is a medically supervised long-term (5-40 days) water-only fasting company. Yes, not eating will absolutely help you lose weight, but it will also catabolize your organs, and the re-feeding after a prolonged fast can cause abnormalities in electrolytes causing loss of consciousness and cardiac arrest.
But at least they monitor you and help you survive the process unlike Tanglewood Wellness Center (in Costa Rica), which is not medically supervised. The director, Loren Lockman, proudly eschews the “burden” of medical training and calls medicine the “third leading cause of death” (!) I was disappointed that he didn’t inform us what he thinks the first two are. Is it exercise? Not smoking? Dang, is it aliens?
On a more serious note, we meet a woman whose husband died at the center. Loren takes no responsibility for the death, stating that he is right because he knows that he is right, a difficult argument to counter. He claims with no evidence that fasting cures heart defects, arthritis, cancer, and blindness. Yes, blindness. On the off chance you are still not convinced of his confidence, he concludes that if God told him that he had the wrong diet, his response would be…
“Thanks for your opinion. I’m good.”
Episode 5. Ayahuasca: “induce psychotic outbreaks” vs. “heal psychic wounds”
In the indigenous Peruvian tradition, the Shaman drinks ayahuasca, and the song he sings is the medicine. Not surprisingly, Westerners want to drink the drug themselves, creating a tourist boom in Peru. Here is another indigenous tradition transformed by Western influence (AKA corrupted by money).
Unlike the other fads, there is not some mild placebo effect exaggerated by True Believers or those looking to cash in. Ayahuasca is a serious drug that induces protracted vomiting followed by an altered state of consciousness.
The issue at hand: does this drug help people with substance abuse and/or mental health problems like PTSD and depression? Some evidence suggests that it may (click the above links to see for yourself). That’s presuming it doesn’t kill you first: risks include seizures, serotonin syndrome, psychotic outbreaks, and malignant hypertension.
Like with marijuana, the DEA has (mis)characterized ayahuasca as schedule 1. I, for one, would like to see larger controlled studies. For the more severe, refractory cases, ayahuasca may be a risk worth taking.
Episode 6. Bee sting therapy: “exploited by the culture of belief” vs. “a wonder cure”
Using bee stings as acupuncture needles, a new industry has arrived to pray on the hopeless. Unsubstantiated claims include healing for multiple sclerosis, arthritis chronic pain, arthritis, and the always vague chronic Lyme disease.
Neurologist Dr. Steven Novella describes bee venom is a witches’ brew of toxins and chemicals developed by nature to cause pain and destroy tissue. OK, but on the other hand, check out the slick marketing by The Heal Hive:
“Use science as a friend but bee venom as the medicine.”
I like friends and medicine! What I don’t like is watching people kill honey bees (yes, they always die after they sting you), especially as bee colonies are collapsing around the world.
Conclusion
As long as people suffer, they will be willing to try new therapies despite a lack of convincing data and despite risks of adverse effects or death. Some therapies may one day prove beneficial, others are useless or detrimental. If this documentary teaches us anything, it’s that whatever the actual effect, all therapies can be exploited for financial gain.
I found it difficult to get through many of these episodes. The individual anguish and despondency mixed with flagrant profiteering left me with a dim view of humanity. The focus on hearsay with only a sprinkle of science created a false balance that permeated every episode.
I’ll leave the final word to my new favorite neurologist, Dr. Steven Novella:
“There is a standard in healthcare, and it exists for a reason. It’s so that we don’t exploit desperate patients by offering them treatments that really don’t have a reasonable chance of working. But they’ll pay for out of their desperation.”
(Un)well is available for streaming on Netflix.
About the Author
David Z Hirsch, MD is the pen name of the author of the award-winning novels Didn’t Get Frazzled and Jake, Lucid Dreamer, both available for purchase on Amazon or may be read for free with Kindle Unlimited. Didn’t Get Frazzled is also available on Audible.
He is an internal medicine physician with an active practice in Maryland.
Check out my other reviews:
A medical review of the documentary Cowspiracy
A medical review of the documentary Down to Earth with Zac Efron
A Medical Review of the documentary End Game
A medical review of the documentary Fed Up
A medical review of the documentary Feel Rich
A medical review of the documentary Forks Over Knives
A medical review of the documentary Heal
A medical review of the documentary In Defense of Food
A medical review of the documentary Sugar Coated
A medical review of the documentary Super Size Me
A medical review of the documentary The C Word
A medical review of the documentary The Magic Pill
A medical review of the documentary The Truth About Alcohol
A medical review of the documentary What the Heath
A medical review of the documentary Why Are We Getting So Fat?
And the video 5 Netflix Health Documentaries Worth Streaming
