Should You Watch Apple Cider Vinegar? –Notes from An Alternative Medicine Fan

Here’s the picture: I’m on my couch. Tucked into my sauna blanket. A device that looks like a combination of a sleeping bag and weighted blanket, that heats up, as a sauna and emits far infrared light, the benefits of which are numerous (and possibly exaggerated) and boil down to—anti-inflammatory and promotes cellular regeneration.

I’ve been tempted into buying this device because the functional medicine practitioner, with whom I’ve been consulting for about a year now, recommended that I would do well to add red light therapy to my protocol, to support my immune system and overall health. My ultimate goal is healing my Addison’s Disease. A pipe dream, according to my medical doctor. Though he was surprised I still had functioning adrenals in a recent blood test. So, I hold out hope of surprising him further in the future and red light therapy is my newest effort in that direction. As many of you know, I also follow a protocol of vitamins and other supplements, with the same goal. In addition, my functional medicine practitioner has recommended a variety of meditation and mindfulness practices and programs, some of which I’ve followed and some of which mapped to my existing practices. And recently, she suggested that while I was applying a glutathione cream intended to remove heavy metals from my body, that I imagine a golden light healing my adrenals, which I am doing.

Back to the picture. I’m on the couch, sweating out toxins (maybe healing my adrenals), watching the show Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix. A show, based on a true story, about hucksterism in the alternative medicine (aka functional medicine, aka wellness) space.  A show about the dangers of disdaining western medicine and falling for all the extravagant healing claims around juicing and coffee enemas and supplements and veganism. The show doesn’t mention far infrared light therapy. And that’s likely because the events in the show took place a decade ago, before red light therapy became all the rage it is today.

Belle, from Apple Cider Vinegar (on Netflix), striding through a throng of groupies

In other words, I am deep into possible huckster space with my own health. As I watched the episodes spool on, I was keenly aware of the irony of each droplet of healing sweat pooling on my body and the hope that droplet contained and the potential chimera of everything I’m doing outside of taking my pharmaceutical medication three times every day.  Still, I persist with the alternative protocols. Why? Because right now, I believe that I can heal, and I want to do everything in my power to reach that star. Just there, I hesitated between writing “I need to believe” or “I want to believe”. Neither need nor want captured my state. My belief is not a need or a desire. It is.

Am I believing blindly? Am I giving up on western medicine and putting all my chips on alternative solutions? No and no. I am expanding the range of healing modalities that I include in my life. One of the hallmarks of most alternative healing practices is the need to believe in your ability to heal.  I’m on board with that ethos.

The trickster part is that the alternative practitioners depicted in Apple Cider Vinegar are also pitching exclusivity. Show your fidelity to my wisdom by abandoning all other ideas, including traditional medical modalities.  An approach that proves mortal to several characters in the show. I am not doing that. I tried ignoring western medicine right at the beginning of my own health process and my potassium marched quick step upward into unpleasant territory.  

I was devastated. I spent more than a year in a state of psychological resistance to my medication. Believing it was bad, I was bad, something was bad, because I was taking little white pills multiple times a day. A large part of that mental model was influenced by the pervasive influence of the kind of people depicted in Apple Cider Vinegar. Then a couple of months ago my doctor consented to do some tests with the levels of my medications. And while he was surprised by my level of adrenal function, I was disappointed that function was not enough to reduce my doses. At the same time, the tests created a shift. I relaxed into gratitude, true gratitude, not gratitude mixed with resentment, for my medication. I need my medication and that’s okay. My condition is not a failure to believe in myself (or to consume enough freshly juiced fruits and vegetables).

I am continuing my alternative protocol, adding things, as they seem interesting. The sauna blanket is an example. Is it healing my adrenals? Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, I feel good in many ways when I use it—my muscles recover and I sleep better, among other things.

Given all this, I might have found the show a vindication of the approach I’ve chosen. Because, in the end, that is the message the show tries to deliver. A balanced approach is best. Instead, I was frustrated with the show. By focusing on an extreme case of hucksterism, the show denigrated alternative modalities in a way that is as exaggerated as the hyped-up healing claims. They subverted their own message at the end with garbled scenes that lacked clarity. I only realized what the scenes were meant to portray in the Netflix write up about the show (spoilers!). I was left with the feeling that all alternative wellness is fraudulent.

The show was unsatisfying in other ways. The story was told in loops, circling back to the past and forward to the present in disorienting time jumps. I had trouble hanging on to who was who among several of the characters and could not always catch up with when was now in any particular scene. Instead of deepening the character arcs, I got lost and stopped caring. I was waylaid by small details like Belle drinking from single use plastic bottles, when she was preaching for the environment in other scenes. Was the plastic bottle meant to signify her treachery? Or was it carelessness on the part of the showrunner?

As you may already suspect, I do not recommend Apple Cider Vinegar. Unless you just really enjoy shows about grand scams.

As for my wellness tips to myself—I have work to do on self-love and self-acceptance. Will they heal my adrenals? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, they are essential to my wellbeing, ease and joy. The true bottom line. Top line. And every line.