An Afternoon of Holistic Health Treatments: Real Results or Placebo Effects?

Hello, hello!

I awoke on my birthday yesterday to a bouquet of bright flowers sitting in my kitchen. I always can appreciate some pretty flowers! I started my morning off with a relaxing yoga session….

…and followed it up with a delicious birthday breakfast: chocolate chip banana pancakes drizzled with cashew butter. Cashew butter is my current favorite nut butter!

Birthdays always make me appreciate just how many people care about me. All day long I received calls, texts, cards, and gifts from the people I love. I’m definitely a lucky woman!

I got not one but TWO Edible Arrangement deliveries – one from my parents, and one from my friend Danielle. I suppose that they really know that the way to my heart is through chocolate and fruit! My hubby gave me a bunch of music books for the piano… because he’s getting me a piano! I played the piano for 12 years, but haven’t consistently played in recent years because I don’t have a piano. Well, that’s about to change now that I’ll have one at home. I dream of one day owning a Baby Grand piano, but for now, a decent used one will certainly be sufficient. 😉

For dinner last night, A and I headed to a super yummy casual restaurant that I would recommend to anyone wanting delicious, healthy food called Lotus Cafe. I ordered vegetarian chili + black bean enchiladas; he had tomato & artichoke soup + a mushroom pasta dish. Afterwards we found a new wine bar/restaurant that we really liked in the area for an after dinner drink.

In between all of the above, after getting work done, I headed to a rejuvenation facility for what I thought would be an afternoon of pampering to treat myself on my birthday. What took place was way more kookiness than I had anticipated. When I called the facility prior to going in, the woman said that a “specialist” would be with me for the afternoon, but it was more like me getting worked on by a bunch of different fancy machines. However, I tried a bunch of holistic treatments that I had never done before, and since this is a healthy living blog, I thought I’d share my thoughts on them with you all.

When I walked into this rejuvenation place, I was expecting a spa-like scenario. Instead, I walked in and people were working out in this exercise room near the front desk. They were lifting weights, squatting, and just plain standing on these crazy vibration machines, which I found out are called Power Plates. It did look interesting, so I hopped on to try it!

According to the website, Power Plates use a vibrating platform, which moves 25 to 50 times per second resulting in corresponding muscle activation. The vibrations are harmonic, which are safe, consistent and controlled levels of vibration, moving in three directions – up and down, forwards and backwards and side to side. I wound up participating in a Power Plate workout class which included lunges, squats, tricep dips, pushups, and ab exercises.

Verdict: Power Plates claim to provide a ton of benefits, including accelerated fat loss and muscle growth, the building of bone mass, improvement in ligament recovery after injury and cellulite reduction. After trying it, I do believe that Power Plates could yield some great results. Working out on one was challenging, and I could tell that my muscles were working extra hard!

Next up on my agenda was a compression massage. I had thought I was going to be getting a massage, ya know, by another person, but it was a massage where my body was wrapped in these babies:

Verdict: As I laid there with a machine squeezing me, I had to laugh. It was not what I had expected, but it did actually feel pretty nice. As it compresses and releases, the compression massage is said to promote healthy circulation throughout the body. I definitely think it works in doing that. My old calf injury that acts up sometimes was feeling tender during the massage, and I think it’s because I don’t typically have good blood flow in that area.

I wouldn’t ever go to a spa to have this treatment (intentionally, anyway!), but I wouldn’t refuse compression wraps if someone offered them to me. They’d be nice to use when my muscles are feeling sore and fatigued!

Next up was time in this tanning bed lookalike:

I was definitely wary of this machine. It brought me back to my high school days, when I laid in my share of tanning beds and didn’t think about them causing that little thing called cancer. But, I was reassured that the Jade infrared sauna was nothing like a tanning bed. It claims to utilize the “ancient power of the jade stone” with high tech infrared rays to do things like sharpen mental alertness, decrease stress, result in an anti-aging effect, increase cardiovascular conditioning and detoxification.

Verdict: Hmmmmmm, the jury is partially out on this one. I do think that the sauna has the ability to reduce stress and fatigue, but mostly because you’re just laying in a little pod, so naturally you relax a bit. The Jade Sauna claims that you’ll burn 600 calories in an hour of laying there, and I’m calling its bluff on that one! 600 calories? That’s a good, heart pounding workout! They set the sauna for 45 minutes, and after half an hour I had had enough “relaxation” in the hot chamber.

Next up was the foot detox – which won the award for the grossest treatment of them all….

The foot detox consisted of sticking my feet into a bucket of water for half an hour, in what’s referred to as a ionic foot detox machine that balances the body’s natural energy system. Utilizing principles of osmosis and ionization, it’s claimed to enable the body’s natural detoxification processes to function at their peak by clearing out toxins.

Verdict: Google ‘ionic foot detox’ and you’ll see quite a slew of articles calling it a hoax, and I can definitely see why. One aspect of the detox is definitely a scam: the water changing colors. At the facility I was at, they had a whole chart claiming that the color of the water is determined by the area of the body that toxins are coming out from – orange if it’s detoxifying from the joints, black if it’s detoxifying from the liver, white foam for the lymphatic system, etc.

Feeling skeptical and curious about this, when I got home I did some research, and I’ve concluded that the water changing colors is just because of the chemical reaction between the electricity and the salt water, not because of toxins. This makes much more sense to me! As for any results of the foot detox, I have no way of knowing if it balanced the pH in my body. I don’t think there’s any harm done in trying it, but let’s just say that I could go the rest of my life without another foot detox.

Next up was the oxygen bar, where different flavors of oxygen are pumped into your nostrils:

Verdict: Supposed oxygen bars benefits include reducing stress, increasing energy and alertness, lessening the effects of hangovers, headaches, and sinus problems, and generally relaxing the body. I’ve done the whole oxygen bar thing once before, and that time nor this time did I feel at all different afterwards. Funny enough, I currently have Swimmer’s Ear and my ear keeps feeling clogged. I was hoping that the oxygen bar may help to alleviate it a bit, but after 15 minutes of breathing in oxygen with a ‘sinus’ aroma (whatever that means), I still felt stuffed up. Whomp whomp. I’m calling this one bullshit, as it just doesn’t seem at all real to me!

Lastly, I received a treatment by an actual human being – a lower body lymphatic massage. I was getting slightly worried when the masseuse kept referring to the procedure as “lymphatic drainage” and was picturing something scarier than what it turned out to be — the therapist rubbing up and down my legs along the structure of my lower body lymphatic system.

(source)

Verdict: This felt relaxing and wound up being the treatment that I enjoyed most. The massage is intended to encourage the natural drainage of the lymphatic system, and for that reason, may reduce swelling near the lymphs. After the woman massaged one leg, she kept asking, “Doesn’t your leg feel so much lighter? It looks a lot less swollen, no?”  I believe that the idea of a lymphatic massage makes sense, but to be honest, it didn’t feel lighter nor did I think my legs looked different afterwards. In any event, it felt nice and I don’t think there could be any negative effects from getting a lymphatic massage.

My afternoon of holistic treatments was interesting to say the least. I think that some of them produce real results, and others produce placebo results. I thought about this a lot during my somewhat relaxing, mostly awkward treatments, and I think that when it comes to health, placebo effects are real effects to some degree. If you feel less stressed and more healthful doing some of the treatments I mentioned, then I suppose they’re doing their job, regardless if they’re really removing toxins or balancing your pH or not. Stress takes such a toll on a lot of people, and if you feel calmed by doing any of these treatments, then it can only improve your health.

Thoughts? Have you ever done any of these holistic treatments? Have you ever had a weird spa experience?