A medical review of the documentary Heal
Heal is a 2017 documentary by Kelly Noonan Gores that examines the power of the mind to heal the body. Taking a holistic approach to health, she focuses on chronic disease and how the mind can have a positive or negative effect on disease. While this is undoubtedly true, she takes this concept to an extreme and decides that the mind is the only thing responsible for most disease.
Various talking heads pontificate and theorize on various alternative medicine ideologies and their opinions are accepted without challenge or critical debate. The documentary relies heavily on anecdotal support but no actual studies (with one interesting exception that I will get to later). The most engaging part of this documentary is the individual stories of patients with chronic disease and emotional distress. The remainder dragged like a series of late-night infomercials.
By claiming “the ultimate cause of disease is stress” and suggesting that you can undo stress to rid yourself of cancer, Noonan Gores puts the onus on you for being sick. Pseudoscience such as heat accumulation, super-immune response, sound frequencies and the like are all equally accepted at face value while science and medicine are disparaged. This isn’t just wrong, it is unnecessary.
Treatments that do not adhere to conventional evidence-based medicine are referred to as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In other words, these treatments can be used along with conventional medicine (complementary) or instead of it (alternative). Most people in Western societies use it as complementary (also called integrative) medicine and that was generally the case in the anecdotes discussed in this documentary. So why the competition? Disparaging the proven benefits of conventional medicine doesn’t make CAM therapies any more or less effective. A truly holistic approach would consider all treatments and combine them in a way that best benefits each individual.
The placebo effect
CAM therapies often shy away from discussing the placebo effect, but this documentary dives right in. Placebos are defined as medications or therapies that have no therapeutic value, yet many people respond to placebos. The placebo effect, or the power of positive thinking, is the basis of CAM therapy. It is the power of belief, both in the spiritual and the non-religious sense. If you think the medical medium waving his hands over your body or the spiritual psychologist channeling the power of God can make you better, then by the power of positive thinking you may actually get better.
I found this argument a compelling explanation of why all types of CAM therapies can actually work for some individuals despite a lack of proven efficacy. For example, it explains why you may think “full body acidity” is nonsense (because it is), yet if others believe it is true, some may actually benefit.
Less compelling was the assumption that if positive thinking can heal pathology, negative thinking can cause pathology. In logical reasoning, this is the inverse and is not necessarily true. Taking this error of logical reasoning to its logical conclusion: your negative thinking is why you are sick. Blaming people for their own disease is, arguably, the documentary’s most egregious contention.
The only study in the entire documentary
Scientific studies need to prove that a given therapy is superior to placebo to be considered efficacious. Not surprisingly, the only study in the entire documentary was not placebo-controlled. Still, it was an interesting study worthy of discussion.
The investigators drew blood tests on a group of 120 people who spent 4.5 days meditating and found most of the group’s cortisol levels decreased and IgA levels increased. This is an interesting finding even if, from a medical standpoint, you can base absolutely no conclusions from it. This is because they used surrogate endpoints (cortisol is linked to stress and IgA to infection resistance but stress and infection resistance were not the endpoints measured).
There was no discussion of how long these effects lasted and no discussion of replicating the experiment (you need to do a prospective study to prove that the findings of a retrospective study didn’t occur by chance). Still, finding a potential scientific basis for positive thinking (in this case, meditation) is fascinating stuff.
Conclusion
Healing the mind and the body in tandem is crucial for managing chronic disease. This documentary does a good job exemplifying the need to do both and can be inspirational. Maligning physicians and suggesting that it is your own fault for being sick is not. Opinions are accepted without challenge or critical thought, obscuring the otherwise helpful message of addressing underlying stress as a critical factor in healing.
Most forehead-smacking moment: a woman in this documentary has a very positive response to one cycle of chemotherapy and asks her oncologist if he thinks the wheatgrass she had been drinking at the same time is responsible for her remission. Her oncologist feels the chemotherapy that had been rigorously tested in controlled studies was more likely to have helped her than the unproven wheatgrass. Obviously, there is no way to be certain who is right in this specific case since she took both at the same time. Nevertheless, her conclusion is that her oncologist is “not a very good doctor.” Sigh.
Stupidest made-up statistic: “100% of diabetes type 2 has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with lifestyle.” – David R. Hamilton, Ph.D. (organic chemist). Most people who make up statistics know better than to pick “100%” as their number. This quote is doubly stupid given the numerous twin studies in type 2 diabetes mellitus that have demonstrated a genetic component:
Diabetes mellitus in twins: a cooperative study in Japan. Committee on Diabetic Twins, Japan Diabetes Society. Diabetes Res Clin Pract 1988; 5: 271– 280. Kaprio J, Tuomilehto J, Koskenvuo M, Romanov K, Reunanen A, Eriksson J, Stengård J, Kesäniemi YA: Concordance for type 1 (insulin-dependent) and type 2 (non-insulin- dependent) diabetes mellitus in a population-based cohort of twins in Finland. Diabetologia 1992; 35: 1060– 1067. Newman B, Selby JV, King MC, Slemenda C, Fabsitz R, Friedman GD: Concordance for type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus in male twins. Diabetologia 1987; 30: 763– 768.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a complex disease with multiple etiologic factors including age, race, and family history, along with lifestyle factors such as weight, activity, and diet. In any documentary when someone with undue confidence claims their simplistic idea is “100%” the case, it is best to be skeptical rather than impressed. Consider me unimpressed.
Heal is available for streaming on Netflix.
About the Author
David Z Hirsch is the pen name of the author of the award-winning novels Didn’t Get Frazzledand Jake, Lucid Dreamer, both available for purchase on Amazon or may be read for free with Kindle Unlimited.
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 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 In Defense of Food
A medical review of the documentary The Magic Pill
A medical review of the documentary Sugar Coated
A medical review of the documentary Super Size Me
