Sweet Medicine

I’m not sick, but I’m not well. I get dizzy if I stand up too quickly, I’m always cold and I’m pretty sure that I have far less energy than most people my age. But, like many people feeling run-down, it’s not exactly a catalog of complaints I can justifiably bug my doctor with. Which is why when I was offered the chance to visit Tria, Bangkok’s brand-new integrative wellness center, I hopped on the first flight over. Maybe I’d finally work out if I was just a hypochondriac after all.

Tria is just one of several “integrative wellness clinics” springing up all around Asia to cash in on the region’s booming wellness trend. They offer the well-heeled a total relaxation package complete with some degree of actual medical service beyond vaguely helpful “chi” massages. (Check out the sidebar for our list of the best clinics.) A bit skeptical of the medical benefits of these glorified spas, I decided to check into Tria with an open mind.

This particular resort approaches wellness with a combination of Western medicine and an arsenal of complementary therapies: chiropractors, physiotherapy, ayurvedic medicine, naturopathy, acupuncture and psychiatry—to name just a few. Nonetheless, I showed up feeling unsettled. Would they strap electrodes to me and force me onto a treadmill just to assess just how unfit I really am? Would tests reveal that I’d been suffering from a multitude of hideous tropical diseases?

My worries dissipated when I met Dr. Chang, a radiologist by trade who came to Tria after realizing that its holistic approach could help patients overcome pain or illnesses when other institutions—after running the usual gamut of tests—can see nothing wrong. “Many people who come to us have been suffering in pain or discomfort for years,” she says. “Sufferers of chronic neck pain will be told by their doctors that their pain is psychosomatic if traditional diagnostic tools detect nothing abnormal. Our approach means that we can look into every aspect of a patient’s life and really get to the root of the problem, or relieve stress, depression and pain caused by the ailment with alternative therapies combined with traditional medicine.”

Before you baulk and cry quackery, consider that the term “holistic”—a word that many have come to associate with pseudoscientific voodoo—merely means looking at the body and its functions as a whole, to better understand why it behaves in certain ways. Thus, with an open mind and open medical history, I was sent to a consultation with Dr. Torsak, who asked me about my diet, exercise habits, medical history, and allergies in order to detect abnormal functions or habits that might have explained my symptoms. After reeling off all my body’s quirks, he concluded that my dizzy spells might be related to an inability to metabolize caffeine, also evidenced by my tendency to become twitchy and nervous after one espresso. He backed up his theory with the fact that broccoli and cauliflower—my most hated and therefore least consumed veggies—are the best vegetables for helping a body to expel toxins building up in the system.

Dizzy spells addressed, I was then led to the center’s resident Japanese acupuncturist and shiatsu masseuse, who told me that I had tension in my shoulders. He explained that my cold fingers are due to my tight shoulders affecting blood flow, and that I should have a gentle shoulder massage once a week to reduce tension and increase blood flow to the area. A few weeks and a few shoulder massages later, there’s a noticeable improvement to my usually frozen fingers and toes.

But of course any resort worth its wellness can be measured by the spa. Tria’s spa has facilities that could rival any of those in Bangkok’s top hotels. Simple, modern and packed with all the mod cons, it offers a huge range of treatments, from massage and facials to hydrotherapy and wraps. Not to mention the infrared saunas, steam baths, and indoor and outdoor pools. I was booked in for a “Soporific Bliss” stone therapy massage, 75 minutes of pure bliss where warm and cool stones were used to relax and invigorate.