Fasting Film Review
“The documentary shows have many patients have gotten rid of type two diabetes, cancers, and other serious health problems” (Jung, 1).
Brief Overview: This is a positive film review of Doug Orchards new documentary Fasting.
February 19, 2020
Fasting a new documentary that Doug Orchard has come out with, it is about the fasting diet. This documentary follows many different types of doctors and people, whose lives were changed by fasting and by doing the diet for more than a couple weeks. Doug Orchard, an award-winning director for other documentaries like The Motivation Factor has hit the mark with another great documentary called Fasting. This documentary shows the lives of people who are in the diet and getting great health benefits of the diet, and how their lives are changing every single week and month of their lives.
This film includes many physicians like Valter Longo, and Jason Fung, they describe how the diet completely saves lives by fasting. Within the first five minutes of the film, the documentary is already shooting out multiple facts on how fasting changes lives and helps people with multiple kinds of health problems. The doctors come out and tell facts about the diet, and it also tells the multiple types of fasting like intermittent, juice, warrior, and one meal a day fasting.“This new movie gathers many experts to explore the crazy health benefits of skipping some meals” (Centeno, 1). The doctors are different types, there is a nephrologist, Jason Fung, and a regular physician, Valter Long, which tells us all of the data on how fasting has changed their patient’s lives.
“This new movie gathers many experts to explore the crazy health benefits of skipping some meals” (Centeno, 1).
This documentary then shifts ultimately toward the actual patients, and what type of fasting they have chosen to do, and how it has affected their lives in the past months. Many have gone with the regular intermittent fasting, which is you only have a certain eating window, then you spend the rest of the day not eating or fasting. This type of fasting is the most popular one that most people go with. It also is the most featured or talked about in this documentary.
Fasting also shows how this diet can help with mental health issues that are growing, and a very hot topic in the world and especially in the United States. One of the main characters is Kevin Rail, who suffered from depression and other mental health issues. He said that fasting helped him with battling his mental illness and getting through life every day. He says that it helps him control something that he actually likes and that he actually can control which helps him with his depression and also his eating disorder/body image.
Fasting also shows not only the positives of the diet, but it can also have some very negative effects if not done properly, or even without a physician’s overview, depending on the type of fasting you will be doing. Brittany Auerbach was another main character in the documentary, she tells how everything could go wrong if you do a water fast without the supervision of a physician. Brittany went to a fasting retreat that she thought would help her, she then realized that it was not a place to be, and how she had significant health problems after, like having severe stomach issues for over two years and an even worse eating disorder after that failed thirty-day water fast.
Physicians are very strict when it comes to such long fasts, Jason Fung a nephrologist, tells how harmful it could be without supervision and side-effects of a long fasting diet like a water fast. “Taking the most extreme fast (water-only fasting, as opposed to allowing some bone broth or some caloric intake), to an extended period of time (30 days instead of 1–2 days), in anybody irregardless of whether this is medically appropriate, without any adequate medical supervision or access to bloodwork? I can tell you right now, that’s pure stupidity.” (Fung, 1).
The physicians are also one of the main characters in the film as well. These physicians argue that this is the best diet for weight loss and is the best diet for other health problems, including diabetes, and certain types of cancers. “The documentary shows have many patients have gotten rid of type two diabetes, cancers, and other serious health problems” (Jung, 1). A well-respected physician Jason Fung said, “It presents the science of fasting, and how people can lose weight and even reverse many metabolic diseases such as type two diabetes and its related conditions” (Jung, 1). “The rest of the movie is fantastic, again weaving together the threads of the story of how fasting has changed lives, cured disease, and why this works” (Centeno, 1).
Fasting can be very confusing at times, it does not go well in-depth on the actual types of fasting, it will not tell you how to actually do the fasting diet. It will mostly just tell you the health benefits that will keep on repeating throughout the whole movie. I think that the movie could’ve benefited from telling how to actually do the diet, rather than just telling us the actual health benefits of the diet and how it has affected their patient’s lives. Many times, in this documentary you will likely get bored or even get lost about what they are actually talking about. If you are not contemplating a diet, or if you want to know how to further benefit your physical lifestyle or your health, I would suggest skipping over this documentary.
Fasting was a good documentary to watch if you are contemplating dieting and which one has the most health benefits to people. The documentary would be great to watch with health professionals or other people who are going through a health crisis. There will be some points in the documentary that has nothing to do with fasting, "Watch the last three sections with your finger on your remote fast-forward button" (Chris, 1). There are some parts that probably will not benefit you at all, like the history of fasting, or four-plus week water fast. But, all in all, it was still a very interesting documentary to show one of the best, healthiest, and beneficial diets in the modern world