Watching Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar can feel like you’ve ventured into the pit of a misinformation cesspool and are oscillating between horror, disgust, and bewilderment the entire time.

The series tells the story of real-life health influencer Belle Gibson (played by Kaitlyn Dever), the Australian sensation who in 2015 confirmed that she had faked having brain cancer and that she had cured it through alternative medicine in order to achieve celebrity status. The true story is nightmarish, in part because Gibson’s practice of building a massive following based on lies that endangered everyone but herself is far from an anomaly, especially in the influencer space.

Apple Cider Vinegar frustratingly elides some of the nuances that made Gibson’s ascension possible, including her whiteness, race- and gender-based inequities in medicine that can lead patients to mistrust doctors, and a frightening disinterest in the truth amid our social media age. There’s been a widespread rise in misinformation from health and wellness influencers. And Apple Cider Vinegar is far from the first instance of people turning to other remedies to try and cure cancer. Liana Werner-Gray, who advocates for “natural health” remedies, wrote a bestselling 2014 book titled The Earth Diet, about how she overcame cancer by going on “a massive detox plan.”

Fake truths like those are a particular source of concern for many medical professionals. Gail Cresci, a dietitian and researcher at Cleveland Clinic, says that people often come to her reciting whatever a health influencer has said with little regard for facts. Take, for instance, an apple cider vinegar antidote that’s portrayed in the Netflix series. While Cresci, who offers advice on product development as a member of Bragg’s Scientific Advisory Board, considers the benefits of apple cider vinegar “wonderfully diverse,” she quickly adds, “But can it cure cancer? No.”

“I teach medical students, and I hear how they're even talking about things that are just on social media,” she says. “They listen to an influencer. I'm like, ‘There's no evidence for that.’”

Why people are drawn to wellness influencers
Apple Cider Vinegar reflects the clout health influencers have and the stark medical reality facing many patients. In one episode, a sarcoma patient named Milla (played by Alycia Debnam-Carey and partly inspired by the real-life Jessica Ainscough) dismisses her doctors’ recommendations to amputate her arm in favor of so-called cures like apple cider vinegar that she learned about from Gibson’s popular social media account.

It isn’t until Milla’s illness progresses that she desperately returns to her doctor seeking his help. But by then, it’s too late. She dies at age 30.

“I think a lot of patients, when you get that early diagnosis, don't feel pain,” says Cresci. “I deal with this all the time. People who have early pre-diabetes or hypertension, they don't really feel it until it gets more progressed. And then they start to feel what's going on.”