If you are like many Americans then you have at one point or another looked into using complimentary medicine to augment traditional health care. Indeed, spending on alternative or complimentary medicine in the United States is easily tens of billions of dollars a year. One such consortium of complimentary medicine providers is the Wellness Bank. The Wellness Bank touts the ability to offer services such as acupuncture, yoga, life-coaching, chiropractic services, massage therapy, nutritionist advice as well as a variety of other complimentary medicine services. The financial reason for such a consortium forming are obvious, a person who might use acupuncture therapy to relieve chronic pain, might also be open to using various yoga techniques to improve their health or enlist the services of a chiropractic doctor to relieve chronic back pain.
Clearly, the scope of the healing services offered by the Wellness Bank are outside the realm of modern western medicine. And for many patients who use complimentary medicine, they also have faith in modern western medicine to deal with serious medical conditions such as trauma, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. So where exactly do the services of the Wellness Bank fit in the lives of the average person? As insurance companies limit the time that doctors can spend with their patients, leaving many patients feel that their overall health is neglected, complimentary medicine services such as the Wellness Bank seek to promote wellness is less sterile setting and without using medications and invasive procedures.
Indeed, the Mission Statement listed on the Wellness Bank website seek to promote therapies which may give patients relief, but which are not medically or surgically invasive. Such as using positive thoughts and actions, and eating a clean organic diet, to stress relief and relaxation. Although stress reduction is important to living a healthy life, chances are your physician doesn’t have the time to council you on reducing stress in your life, mostly because it can not be billed for in a modern medical practice.
A quick glance at the list of medical conditions that the Wellness Bank claims to be able to treat is large, and includes conditions such as celiac disease, fibroymyalgia, “all forms of respiratory conditions”, as well as smoking and tobacco chewing cessation. Certainly, there are a variety of counseling techniques that could be applied very well in a complimentary medicine clinic to help patients give up smoking. And doubtlessly, stress reduction and healthy eating could help almost anyone suffering from a respiratory condition. Certain diseases such as celiac disease have been proven to be caused by ingestion of gluten which is contained in a variety of bread and food products, and avoidance of these products will allow a person to recover from celiac disease.
Dr. Steven J. Schwartz, listed on the Wellness Bank website as being the founder and director of advanced health solutions is trained in chiropractics. A doctor of chiropractic practices a form of complimentary medicine in which medications are not prescribed, and invasive procedures are not performed, but techniques such as spinal manipulation may be used to heal a patient. On the Wellness Bank website, it is noted that chiropractic doctors will refer patients to a traditional physician when their condition warrants, therefore adding to use of chiropractic techniques as a form of complimentary medicine.
Besides using Chiropractic techniques, the Wellness Bank also makes use of a variety of other complimentary medicine techniques such as acupuncture. Acupuncture has been practiced for many hundreds of years in China, however, modern health care practitioners in China rarely use the technique. Many millions of people worldwide claim to find relief from acupuncture techniques, and there is some research showing that acupuncture may actually produce real results. As acupuncture is based on assessing lines of energy flowing through a person’s body, the Wellness Bank on their website notes their belief that the human bodies are “electrical” and also that human bodies are “computers”. Both of these statements are actually quite true scientifically as our nervous system uses principles of electricity to communicate with our muscles, and also the human brain is recognized as an advanced computer by many neuroscience experts.
The Wellness Bank also promotes such as new age techniques such as “Psych-K” which uses techniques developed by a licensed councilor to rewrite the brain’s software so that you can reach your “full response potential”. A variety of testimonials on the Wellness Bank’s homepage attest to the use of therapies such as Psych-K, acupuncture, and other techniques to treat a variety of disorders including allergies. Many of the patients offering testimonials state that they were insufficiently treated by traditional western medicine doctors, and turned to alternative treatments to seek help with their medical conditions. As more Americans are diagnosed with chronic medical conditions, such as food allergies, which may be difficult for western medicine trained doctors to treat, complimentary medicine providers such as the Wellness Bank are sure to flourish.