In today’s world of managed care and allopathic medicine, it seems to be getting harder and harder to find practitioners who want to get to the source of the problem in lieu of only treating the symptoms. Increased public awareness of alternative medicines has offered new and effective treatment regimes to scores of people who have not found relief from traditional allopathic medicine. I know from firsthand experience.

As a guinea pig of the allopathic community for over a decade, I was put on one drug after another in repeated and unsuccessful attempts to cure my various ailments. I finally got tired of dealing with the unpleasant after-effects of poisoning my body and came to the realization that there just had to be another way.

It wasn’t until I became more open-minded about bodywork and alternative therapies that I felt dramatic improvement in my own personal health. The first step was the largest one—I started by accepting personal responsibility for my own well-being.

I then got my feet wet a little bit at a time by incorporating massage and meditation into my self-care regimen. Like anyone else, I was skeptical at first. But it was hard not to appreciate the immediate and visible improvement. The changes I had elected to make to my lifestyle returned me to an active participant in my health, and started me on a search for other solutions that didn’t involve a poke, prod or lab test.

There is no lack of products on the market that emphasize self-care, whether they are nutraceutical supplements, durable equipment, or self-help books and tapes. As a health care provider, you’re doing your patients and clients an injustice by not suggesting that they seek out and evaluate for themselves the potential benefits of things that are good outside the clinic or treatment room environments. Not everything out there is going to be the pot at the end of the rainbow for your patient or client, and what works for one may not necessarily work for another. But there definitely are high quality, reasonably priced, and efficacious products that deliver value and results.

Interactive Health offers products that encourage health and self-care regimes that enhance people’s well-being. These products include a full line of attractive Zero Gravity reclining chairs, which cradle you, promote relaxation, support the lower back, and bring the feet above the level of the heart to assist circulation. We offer a wide variety of massage chairs that promote spinal health and improve flexibility of movement. In addition to these are a variety of handheld and foot massagers.

We have something for everyone. From the sports enthusiast to couch potato. From the chronic pain sufferer to the person who never gets sick. From the company executive to starving college student, and everyone in between.

So keep an open mind. Don’t be afraid of the unknown. Your open mindedness will elicit the same in your patients, which will in turn lead to a search for the things that will achieve the balance leading to good health. Keep searching. Be well and be healthy.