What Apple Cider Vinegar tells us about the predatory nature of alternative wellness

In an early scene of Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar, the camera zooms in close on the face of Belle Gibson, played by Kaitlyn Dever, waiting in a board room for her crisis PR agent. While waiting, she begins to sing, “I love what you do but you know that you’re toxic.” The iconic Britney tune holds a double meaning in the show. Belle Gibson is soon revealed to be a toxic person, but the lyrics also hold a clue as to how she became so powerful. The series is based on the true story of Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness guru who gained a massive following by telling the world she had terminal brain cancer but cured it through holistic cures and a healthy diet. Except, the cures weren’t real. Because Belle Gibson never had cancer.

Inspired by real-life cases of alternative health influencers who claim to heal the sick through diet, mindset and a rejection of traditional medicine, Apple Cider Vinegar unpacks the seductive but often predatory nature of the wellness industry. Though the show centres Belle Gibson’s con, her endless lies, her rapid rise and eventual downfall, it also widens the lens to examine the broader landscape of alternative health and the women drawn into it, diving deep into the murky world of wellness culture, where hope and desperation collide in dangerous ways.

‘Toxic’ is a word that comes up repeatedly in the show. Negative emotions are toxic, non-organic food is toxic and medical scans are toxic. The wellness industry thrives on vague, scientific-sounding terms like ‘toxic’, ‘toxins’, ‘clean eating and ‘detox’, using them to promote an endless cycle of self-purification. Without clear definitions, these concepts create a constant sense of contamination and the need for expensive “cures,” reinforcing the idea that true wellness requires perpetual cleansing, discipline and “cures” that can be bought from influencers and alternative wellness practitioners – for a price and without proof that they actually work.

Apple Cider Vinegar shows women’s health concerns being repeatedly dismissed

In the show, Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is a wellness influencer who, unlike Belle, actually has cancer. Though fictionalised, the character is based on Jessica Ainscough, an Australian woman who was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma at age 22. Young, beautiful and ambitious, Milla is devastated to learn that she has a series of tumours growing in her arm, threatening to spread. Her doctors inform her that her best chance of preventing the cancer from spreading is to amputate her arm – a devastating and scary prospect for anyone, but one that seems to particularly threaten Milla’s sense of herself. Though never explicitly stated, it’s implied that Milla’s beauty and desire to be an influencer makes her particularly aware of her appearance and she takes pride in being independent. The prospect of losing her arm is unthinkable – and her team of insensitive male doctors don’t help her feel more comfortable with the decision. Brusque, dismissive, lacking in empathy and not even looking at her while discussing amputating her arm, the doctors make Milla feel rushed, intimidated, uncared for and unheard. She decides to ignore their advice and pursue an alternative health plan consisting of a juice diet and coffee enemas. The therapy Milla follows is fictionalized for the show but appears to be based on a pseudoscientific treatment called Gerson Therapy. This decision puts her at odds not only with her incredulous doctors but also with her loving, pragmatic father.

Then there’s Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), a breast cancer patient exhausted by the physical and emotional toll of chemotherapy. When she brings up supplementing her treatment with healthy recipes and ayahuasca ceremonies to her journalist boyfriend Justin, he is instantly dismissive, telling her she can’t ignore years of medical research in favour of following an “influencer with a nose ring.” His logic, like the doctors’, is not wrong. But his arrogance, his lack of empathy and his inability to listen to Lucy’s pain reinforce a familiar dynamic: the rational, science-minded man dismissing a woman’s search for agency over her own body.

Each woman’s journey reveals a different facet of a larger issue – when traditional medicine fails to acknowledge women’s pain, wellness culture steps in to fill the void, no matter how questionable its methods.

Milla’s storyline is especially striking. She embodies the anger simmering beneath the surface for many women in medical settings – dismissed, overlooked and treated as hysterical rather than heard. At a wellness retreat, she recalls the fury she felt when doctors reduced her body to a diagnosis, speaking over her rather than to her. The alienation she experiences makes the promises of alternative medicine deeply appealing. The show powerfully illustrates how wellness spaces offer something hospitals often don’t: validation.

Lucy’s struggle, meanwhile, is more nuanced. She’s not rejecting science outright, she’s simply desperate for something that makes her feel whole again. Her chemo treatments have ravaged her body, leaving her searching for relief. Her boyfriend wants her to trust medicine but science has done little to ease her suffering. The condescension she faces for even considering holistic treatments speaks to a larger issue: women’s pain is not only dismissed within the medical system but also belittled when they seek relief elsewhere.

Why women seek alternative health solutions

Apple Cider Vinegar is a layered show that holds subtle yet damning criticisms of many people, not just Belle: the media who never fact-checked her claims, publishers who suspected she was lying but saw a cash cow, alternative wellness gurus exploiting vulnerable people for profit. But it also offers us a chance to critique the larger forces at play. The series exposes the persistent neglect and condescension many women face in medical settings, where their symptoms are frequently dismissed, their pain underestimated and their concerns ignored.

Research continues to confirm what women have long suspected: mainstream medicine often fails them. Studies indicate that women’s pain is more likely to be downplayed or misdiagnosed compared to men’s, with conditions like endometriosis – an agonizing chronic illness – frequently overlooked for years before receiving a proper diagnosis. A recent podcast The Retrievals explored how women undergoing fertility treatments at the Yale School of Medicine had their fentanyl IV painkillers stolen by a nurse who replaced it with saline, forcing the women to endure excruciating pain in what they’d been told would be a relatively painless procedure, then gaslit about their experience, minimised, disbelieved and ignored. Every woman told their doctors about their pain repeatedly and reported that they could feel everything and that the painkillers weren’t working. Nobody listened to them. This disregard is not a recent phenomenon but part of a broader pattern of medical mistreatment. History offers disturbing examples, such as the “husband stitch,” in which doctors, while suturing postpartum tears, would add an extra stitch without the woman’s consent to supposedly enhance her husband’s sexual pleasure. Another widely accepted practice, “twilight sleep,” involved drugging women during childbirth, rendering them unable to remember the experience but not necessarily preventing them from feeling pain. Even more heinous were the forced sterilizations inflicted on Black, Latinx, Indigenous and disabled women, carried out under the guise of public health well into the late 20th century. The repercussions of this legacy remain visible today, most notably in the disproportionately high Black maternal mortality rate in the United States.

Faced with a long history of sexism and medical mistreatment, it’s no wonder that many women feel left behind by a system that sees their pain as an afterthought. Frustrated by this lack of care, many women turn to alternative medicine; practices like acupuncture, herbal remedies, energy healing, and holistic wellness programs. These approaches offer something conventional medicine often doesn’t: time, empathy and a belief that women’s experiences are real. Unfortunately, they often also offer lies, exploitation and real danger.

The appeal of wellness culture

Many women feel drawn to alternative health because it puts control back in their hands. Rather than being passive patients in a medical system that doesn’t always listen, they become active participants in their own well-being. This sense of agency is incredibly powerful, especially for those who have felt dismissed for too long.

Many alternative healing practices emphasize qualities traditionally associated with femininity: nurturing, emotional support and intuitive care. Many treatments, from acupuncture to Reiki, often involve touch, listening and natural remedies, offering a softer, more personal experience compared to the cold sterility of medical institutions. Women also find a lot of alternative healthcare options in places already familiar to them, like yoga studios, beauty salons and wellness retreats. The accessibility and welcoming nature of these spaces make it easier for women to integrate holistic health practices into their lives.

But the show also exposes the capitalism lurking beneath the wellness movement. While Milla is a true believer, Belle is a master manipulator. She doesn’t just sell false hope; she profits from it. One is a victim of the system, the other a predator within it. Yet the series makes clear that the consequences are often the same. People abandon proven treatments for unverified alternatives, sometimes with devastating results.

The link between beauty, wellness and femininity

Beyond individual deception, Apple Cider Vinegar unpacks the gendered and elitist nature of the wellness industry, which is oversaturated with young, thin, conventionally attractive white women. In this package, wellness isn’t just about health, it’s about an aspirational aesthetic, one that is almost always thin, youthful and white. The industry subtly reinforces the idea that to be a well woman is to be an attractive woman, tying self-care to self-surveillance. This moralization of beauty and wellness creates an insidious equation: health is not just about feeling good, but about looking a certain way. It’s no surprise that Milla and Belle are both slim, blonde, beautiful white women who wear fashionable clothes, take photographs of themselves in beautiful locations and are complimented for the prettiness of their blogs, apps and books. We’re encouraged to view beauty as wellness and wellness as moral goodness. So if we aspire to beauty and to wellness, we aspire to goodness. By looking good and eating ‘clean’, we’re proving that we’re ‘good’ people. But it starts with aesthetics and beauty. And when we’re aspiring to beauty, we’re easy to sell things to.

Wellness influencers blur the line between health and aesthetic purity, selling the idea that a truly ‘well’ body is one that is toned, radiant and free of toxins – both literal and metaphorical. Clean eating isn’t just about nutrition; it’s a mark of discipline and virtue. Skincare routines become an exercise in purification. Detoxing is framed as moral cleansing, reinforcing the idea that bodily perfection is both a personal responsibility and an outward display of inner worth. Slimness is framed as discipline and strength and diet as self-care. If you don’t look the part, you must not be trying hard enough. If you’re still sick, still struggling, it’s because you lack the willpower to heal yourself.

Alternative healthcare’s lie of control

In this way, many alternative wellness movements promote the idea that health is entirely within one’s control – a concept that can be deeply harmful, especially for those with chronic illnesses or disabilities. They pair this toxic positivity with an ableist lens to imply that people who are sick, disabled, or suffering are somehow at fault and if only they did X and Y, they could be ‘cured’ from ‘within,’ that one’s health is a ‘choice’ and that we are all ‘free’ to make alternative choices to ‘heal ourselves.’ This mentality ignores the realities of genetics, socio-economic barriers and medical conditions that hit people randomly and/or have no cure. It also feeds into the dangerous myth that if someone remains unwell, it is a personal failing rather than a complex interplay of biological and environmental factors.

After being diagnosed with cancer, Milla reflects on her very normal 20-something partying, retroactively judging her weekends of eating junk food and drinking, saying “I knew, I knew I was putting that shit into my body.” Blaming herself for her cancer, she buys into the lie that wellness culture perpetuates: that random, unfortunate illnesses are actually moral consequences, that ‘good’ people who ‘eat clean’ and avoid ‘toxins’ won’t get sick. She then spends years drinking only juice and giving herself enemas daily, told by so-called alternative health ‘experts’ that only people who don’t follow this ridiculous, unstainable program diligently don’t see results. When alternative cures don’t work, it’s never the guru’s fault – the patient didn’t do it properly or work hard enough. It’s the same logic of diet culture, where people are told to starve themselves and follow unsustainable eating and exercise programs and then are blamed for not being able to follow it indefinitely. The program isn’t to blame, this movement says; it’s your lack of willpower.

The financially exploitative side of alternative health

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the wellness movement is how it weaponizes self-improvement and exploits people financially. Many alternative health practices come with a hefty price tag, making them accessible mostly to those with disposable income – which explains why alternative health is dominated by middle class and upper middle class white women. Some treatments are harmless but expensive, while others make big promises with little scientific backing. Remember the infamous jade eggs from Goop, which led to a lawsuit for false health claims?

In Apple Cider Vinegar, Belle profits from her followers’ desire to believe that healthy eating can cure cancer. She charges people to buy her app, sells recipe books and plugs products. Milla is on both sides of the financial exploitation, paying thousands and thousands to fly to Mexico to visit an ‘expert’ retreat, but then she starts trying to sell juice that she bills as “medicine” for $16 a bottle. She also sells tickets to retreats where she tells young women, many of whom also have cancer or auto-immune disorders that all they need is a healthy eating regimen, juice cleanses and the ability to listen to their body. In the beginning, Milla genuinely believes that she’s helping people, but as she realises that her cancer is back and spreading, she continues to try to market herself as a wellness expert, despite knowing that what she’s selling is a lie. Milla does eventually come clean and is clearly a victim of alternative wellness scams but she has perpetuated this cycle of exploitation herself.

Lucy also spends thousands on alternative treatments. One scene sees Lucy achieve a form of peace and empowerment following an ayahuasca ceremony and a guru tells her that she would benefit from seeing a visiting medicine man. Immediately, a cash machine is pushed under Lucy’s nose, asking for her credit card. Everything comes with a price and nothing comes with proof or the chance of a refund if it doesn’t work.

This lack of evidence and opportunity for profit makes it easy for scammers and outright charlatans to flourish in the wellness space. Some alternative health practitioners exploit the fear and frustration many women feel, offering unproven treatments as miracle cures. The internet is filled with influencers promoting unregulated supplements, dubious detoxes and restrictive diets that can do more harm than good. As Apple Cider Vinegar shows, in extreme cases, some women are led away from life-saving conventional treatments in favour of pseudoscientific remedies that delay or even prevent real medical intervention.

The industry thrives on an unattainable ideal of constant optimization – there’s always another cleanse, another supplement, another product to buy. Women are told that if they are still in pain, still sick, still struggling, it’s their fault. They must not be trying hard enough, meditating enough, detoxing properly or buying the right supplements. This relentless pursuit of “betterment” creates a cycle of anxiety, self-blame and financial exploitation rather than true well-being.

And because there’s money to be made, there will always be people willing to prop scammers up. Apple Cider Vinegar shows how endless women’s magazines, publishers, tech companies and public relations companies were willing to promote Belle without ever fact-checking her medical history or her claims of curing herself with diet because promoting her made them money. Promoting her sold magazines, recipe books, apps and events, which all made other people money. This aspect is important to remember in an age where endless podcasts, media outlets and influencers platform and promote alternative wellness practitioners. Hell, even the American presidential election was swayed because Trump was platformed on podcasts that pride themselves on not fact-checking anything. Misinformation sells. Just because someone is promoted and platformed doesn’t mean that what they’re saying is true and basing your health on something that hasn’t been proven or fact-checked is dangerous.

A balanced approach to wellness

In the end, Apple Cider Vinegar is damning about scammers like Belle Gibson and the way they prey on vulnerable, ill people with sometimes devastating results. It highlights the need to respect science and genuine experts, not to place your health, money or faith in people with no expertise who are trying to sell you something. It’s also a damning critique of a patriarchal medical establishment that often fuels the desire for alternatives. In one of Milla’s last meetings with her doctor, he delivers awful news with the same blunt lack of empathy that we saw in their first consultation. He represents all the doctors who can provide answers and genuine treatment plans but do so without a sense of care. Lucy ultimately finds a balance, integrating holistic practices alongside medical treatment, proving that wellness and science don’t have to be at odds. But the series delivers a clear message: when women’s health concerns are dismissed, the door is left wide open for those who claim to listen, whether they have their best interests at heart or not. The real challenge is demanding a healthcare system that truly serves women, rather than leaving them vulnerable to an industry built on their frustration and fear.

Photography by Netflix.