Conditions Treated

January 2007

Editor’s Letter

Fortune-telling

Everytime I visit a massage therapist (which is not often enough), I feel like I’m seeing a psychic. After a studied look or a brief touch, they always tell me something I didn’t think was immediately obvious (“you have tight calves”) or predict my future (“you’ll get arthritis in your shoulders”). Afterward, I vow to visit a bodyworker regularly to loosen my calves and save my shoulders. Then life—or my wallet—gets in the way, and I don’t return until injury or serious pain sends me limping back.

I didn’t give this pattern much thought until I met with Shmuel Tatz, a Lithuanian body tuner who treats the rich and famous (Lou Reed, the late Isaac Stern) and the humble and hurt (me, for one) in his studio at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. After assessing my body, he told me I’d need 25 sessions to unclog stiff shoulders and tame a troubled tummy. Sensing my resistance, he suggested that my initial investment might prevent a more serious problem (and bigger bills) in the future. In ancient China, he told me, people visited doctors at least three times a week, paying them as long as they remained healthy. If they got sick, the payments stopped but the doctors continued to treat them. In other words, physicians were rewarded for keeping their patients well, and patients were rewarded with good health. In this country, many of us don’t visit a doctor until we’re sick, and the cost of that delay can be huge.

Of course, you readers are proactive about your health. [...] Now excuse me while I grab a chocolate bar and head back to Carnegie Hall.

Mary Bolster
Editor in Chief