Calling all Skeptics

My dad has begun an interesting healing process under the watchful eye of Dr. DeMartino at Superior Health Solutions (SHS) in Las Vegas. Over the next two-to-three months he will be in Las Vegas four days a week for treatment. Too bad we couldn’t have booked him for some stage time, too.

filming dad in the foot bath at Superior Health Solutions

What makes this interesting, first and foremost, is my dad’s hopefulness. There’s a lot of research about placebos and a patient’s willingness or fight to get better. I’ve read lots on both sides of the argument and by no means do I think what my dad is doing at SHS will reverse or cure his Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The greatest thing they’re offering and feel fairly confident about is pain management. My dad told me today he feels a significant uptick in the amount of pain he goes through on a daily basis over the last several months.

“Golf just isn’t much fun anymore,” he said to me flatly over lunch today.

That one line was heartbreaking because there have been two threshold points we’ve been measuring my dad’s PD with: golf and driving. We have said for some time when he’s unable to do either, let alone both, we’ll be looking at all of this quite differently. These things lend to his freedom and enjoyment of life. Without them, the world as he understands it looks very different – far less appealing to say the least.

We sat down with Dr. DeMartino and he went over my dad’s bloodwork. Then dad had three modalities of treatment: 1) Ionic foot bath (which Dr. DeMatino admitted and a quick search of the Internet will verify is highly controversial in terms of its efficacy), 2) light therapy, 3) Chiropractic adjustments – focusing on dad’s misaligned hips via pressuring points in the neck.

I am not familiar with the foot bath or light therapy enough to say more than they appear interesting and certainly do no harm. I want to reiterate a few things: we’re not paying for the treatment (outside of dad’s travel expenses), he’s allowing (even encouraging) documenting and challenging everything, the goal here is sustained pain reduction. The outside hope would be for a halt of PD symptoms but, again, that’s not the main thrust or anything that’s been promised.

As we were told, the foot bath changes colors as
toxins are pulled from the body. 

At the end of the treatment, dad did feel as if he was straighter. He did feel some pain relief. He seemed to wish he could keep getting treatment (almost as if to say: “Fix more! Fix more!”), but Dr. DeMartino is taking a slow, cautious approach.

Here’s what I want: if you think this treatment is bunk or Dr. DeMartino is a hoax, please sound off here. Let me hear specifically what you question and why. If you have any research or personal experience, again, I welcome it. My dad has said that when he’s shared this treatment plan with some others they’ve looked at him with pity – as if to say, “Oh, you’re really that desperate, eh?” While I wouldn’t say he’s desperate, he is in pain. Looking ahead at a life of filled with chronic pain without what have become assumed freedoms (driving) or enjoyed recreation (golf) has a way of coloring one’s point of view. So again, I ask: do not pull punches here. Let us know what you think.

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