1. Medical Spas – Now visible to the consumer!

Working toward bringing medicine and spas together has been a particular passion of
mine – inspired by the late Alex Szekely. Many of you knew Alex from his involvement with ISPA, as president of the Golden Door and Rancho La Puerta, as a husband, a father, a friend, and one of the kindest, gentlest men ever. These are the words I remember him saying so often:

"Picture a dangerous cliff where people are continually falling off and getting hurt. Ambulances come to pick up the injured and take them to the hospital, where high costs are needed to bring them back to health. Now think about how much smarter it would be for someone to build a fence at the top of that cliff – a fence that would prevent people from falling off in the first place. Spas are fences."

Today, the medical community and the spa industry are coming together to build a better model for wellness. Those efforts are meant to spare people the financial, physical, and emotional costs of falling off that cliff.

So it is with a great deal of excitement that I am able to announce the launch of SpaFinder's new Medical Spa section on Spafinder.com. This new part of the site will bring the preventive and aesthetic concepts of medical spas to consumers. April 18th is the official launch date for the press, but I wanted you to be among the first to see what it's all about. After all, you are "Insiders!" You can begin your journey through the site by clicking the "Medical Spas" section at Spafinder.com.

On the new site, you will find a glossary of medical spa terms, a page with medical articles and resource links, a geographic search capability, medical spa products, a list of questions consumers might ask when choosing a medical spa, and, of course, overviews of some of the top medical spas in the country. In time, we will expand our database to include medical spas abroad. Here are the services and procedures that will be listed; it will give you a sense of how comprehensively medical spas serve the consumer. If you would like additional information or want to be considered for inclusion, please contact Tamara Bedrosian.

2. Statistics from SpaFinder's U.S. Medical Spa Survey, October 2003

When we asked regular spa goers, "Are you familiar with the term medical spa," these were the results:

Northeast
52% said yes
48% said no

California
38% said yes
62% said no

Overall
46% said yes
54% said no

3. Final thoughts on science...and that loving feeling

Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love is a new book written by anthropologist Helen Fisher. She studied the brain scans of people in love. One of her findings is that when people are in love, their levels of the hormone oxytocin go up. This hormone, which is associated with love, may influence our ability to bond with others. Guess what else drives up levels of oxytocin? Massage!

Till the next Insider,



Susie

P.S. You may want to check out Diet Wars, a PBS special airing April 8, 2004 at 9:00 p.m. Dr. James Kenney, the nutritionist at Pritikin, will take part in the discussion and present what many spas teach in terms of healthy eating. Here is a link to the information: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/2211.html