It is a money pit.
The only thing I thought he might do some wonders is by HBOT.
The Dude Abides said...
I was going to comment yesterday about the claim of 94% success. But, my reply was a bit skeptical, as I'm in the following group that Garzie mentioned:
"...plenty of people simply give up - or run out of funds - or cannot find anyone to treat them properly - and so stay sick for these reasons."
I'm trying to get myself mentally unstuck, but I'm finding it difficult.
Part of my frustration and skepticism has stemmed from the claims of various practitioners vs. my actual experience spending time and money with them. Of course, it's very defeating to get our hopes up and then not have the experience that was suggested (implicitly or explicitly) or that we might have imagined for ourselves.
There are many practitioners who purport to treat "Lyme." (Here, I think we tend to refer to Lyme and Co-Infections as "Lyme," though, of course, they are different.) There are medical doctors, osteopaths, physician assistants, naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, and, a new one that I ran across just yesterday -- a Licensed Professional Counselor who is also a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist.
Much like my skepticism increases in proportion to how far afield these practitioners get, it also increases with the number of different modalities that practitioners employ and claim mastery. My personal opinion is that many of these modalities are nonsense and are just another avenue for revenue generation.
Anyway, Dr. Minkoff (board certified in Pediatrics) lists the following in his biography on the LifeWorks Wellness Center website:
"In the process, he gained expertise in Biological medicine, integrative oncology, heavy metal detoxification, anti-aging medicine, hormone replacement therapy, functional medicine, energy medicine, neural and prolotherapy, homeopathy, and optimum nutrition. He studied under the masters in each of these disciplines until he became an expert in his own right. Dr. Minkoff is one of the most in-demand speakers in the field and wrote an Amazon best-selling book called 'The Search For The Perfect Protein.' The demand for the products and protocols he discovered became a catalyst for founding BodyHealth.Com, a nutrition company that now manufactures and distributes cutting-edge nutritional solutions for the many health problems of today."
On the same website, they list over 40 different "therapies" they employ. Some of these include Bio-Energy Testing, Homeopathy, Kinesiology, Meridian Health Analysis, Ionic Foot Baths, and Kaqun Water, to name a few. Based on my own experience with some of these, I think they're largely nonsense. Again, that's just my opinion.
This clinic also cites therapies like Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement, "Detoxification," Heart Disease Treatment, and Celergen -- a "Swiss marine cell therapy supplement."
Here are some of the conditions they purport to treat:
Adrenal Fatigue, Alzheimer's, Autoimmune Diseases, Brain Fog, Cancer, Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Pain, COVID (Long Haul), Dementia, Detoxification, Epstein Barr, Fibromyalgia, Gut Issues, Heart Disease, Heavy Metal Toxicity, Inflammation, Knee & Joint Pain, Leaky Gut, Lupus, Lyme Disease, Mold Treatment, Multiple Sclerosis, Neurological Disorders, Parkinson's Disease, Shingles, and Thyroid Disease.
To me, that's a lot of areas to claim expertise or mastery. Any one of them alone is likely phenomenally complex. But, maybe they can solve all those issues. They have three doctors (including Dr. Minkoff) and five nurses (including Dr. Minkoff's wife) listed on their website.
In attempting to read some of the reviews linked from the LifeWorks Wellness Center website:
* One of the links is dead
* One page shows 43 reviews available, but only one is listed (4 stars out of 5)
* One page with eight reviews -- seven of them being 5-stars
* One page with 91 reviews and all of them being 5-star reviews.
Unlike other review pages, the last review page (with the 91 five-star reviews) cannot receive reviews from the public. The page is hosted by the company SolutionReach -- a "patient communication and retention platform." Thus, it seems LifeWorks Wellness Center pays SolutionReach to post only their most positive reviews.
As I was about to finish this (looong) post, I decided to look at Google Reviews and found 98 of them. Of these, I found 28 of them to be 1-star reviews. Some have no comments as to why the low rating, while others are quite lengthy and provide more details:
Here's one of the 1-star reviews:
"...an eight week program requiring me to be in the clinic for 6 hours a day 5 days a week receiving IV therapy costing $50,000 ... I was told that was the maximum program without any testing but the testing component was $7,000!"
In reply, the clinic responded:
"We are sorry to hear that we did not meet your expectations. Unfortunately insurance doesn’t cover what we do. We have successfully treated many patients with fibromyalgia and we know we can help you too. Our treatment programs are specifically designed to treat and heal your body. Your condition didn’t just happen overnight and so you have to be willing and able to commit the time and money to healing your body. It really depends on what you want to spend on your health. Truthfully, by doing one day here and there as it suits your schedule will unfortunately make no difference to your body and that would be a waste of time and money for you."
Another review is said to be a husband who lost his wife to pancreatic cancer (one of the specialties listed on the LifeWorks Wellness Center website) and wrote the following:
"...my wife ... believed that life Works Wellness Center could help her. I was very skeptical when I arrived hearing customers in the lobby talking about not being any better after years of treatment at the center. My wife was being treated with the same treatment that Lyme disease patients were receiving I feel a lot money was wasted. Im concerned that they mix medicine in the back room. Is the person mixing the chemicals properly trained to do this? The Center has no clue how to treat pancreatic cancer and should be honest about that and not just think about how much money they can make off an individual patient knowing it's not working. My wife kept calling saying she was not feeling good everyday and they just stopped and started treatments like they had no idea what to do I would not recommend this facility unless you just want to throw away $50,000"
The clinic's partial response:
"While we feel we offer safe, natural and effective alternative cancer treatment, we are simply not going to win the battle against cancer 100% of the time and any doctor who claims otherwise is misleading and committing fraud. Patient outcomes vary based on a patient's medical history, stage of disease and many other factors."
While I agree with the clinic's response, going back to the review that preceded it, the clinic wrote:
"We have successfully treated many patients with fibromyalgia and we know we can help you too. Our treatment programs are specifically designed to treat and heal your body."
They "know" they can help and their treatments are designed to "treat and heal" the body. That sounds pretty unambiguous.
Finally, I reviewed the Florida Department of Health's website and looked up Dr. Minkoff's medical license and found one disciplinary action against him. There was only one (a wrongful death suit) and it was a long time ago. His license is no longer suspended. I did not review the license of the other two staff physicians.
These are the things I would review and consider, before considering going to such a clinic. I think many of us have seen other clinics that claim to resolve a wide array of conditions and we read a mixture of reviews from people who actually go there and pay the lofty fees.
While my perspective on this clinic is (obviously) negative, there are also a bunch of positive reviews. Can any reviews, whether positive or negative, be trusted? Who knows. Anyone can go post a 1-star review for any reason. But, anyone can also go post a 5-star review.
Even if I had unlimited funds, I would still be cautious about any doctor or clinic which claims expertise in so many diverse areas, when some of those treatments involve me ingesting substances into my body. I would want to see some sort of evidence for some of these therapies. Not only is that a reasonable ask, I think it's incumbent on any doctor or practitioner to be able to support their treatment decisions, since there is oversight by medical boards. The practitioners should be able to justify and defend their decisions.
What often ends up being the conundrum for many of us is Price vs. Efficacy. We want to have some "reasonable" assurance that spending $15k, $30k, $50k, or more will get us the desired result -- or, very close to it. But, of course, there's no way to know this in advance. We have to pay to play. And, there are no refunds.
I'm not sure if this wandering brain dump helps at all, but I wish you much luck, no matter what path you take.