Despite all the advances of modern medicine, there are still many illnesses we are unable to cure. Most diseases, however, are treatable, and there exist all manner of pills and potions that can be prescribed -- but not every illness responds to conventional treatment.

In recent years there has been a strong resurgence of alternative and complementary medicine in the West. This new emphasis on different treatments has led to people opening their minds (and wallets) to traveling to different countries for cures. One of the world's more bizarre treatment centers was featured in this week's UK Guardian and Turkey's Hürriyet. Close to Kangal in eastern Turkey, there is a spa gaining worldwide renown for its successful treatment of the uncomfortable and unsightly skin condition known as psoriasis.
Psoriasis, or sedef hastalığı (mother of pearl sickness) as it is known in Turkey, is characterized by scaly silver patches of skin and red, flaking patches. It can vary in severity from sufferer to sufferer, appear on almost any area of the body and affects 2 percent of the UK population. The illness is very itchy and the psoriatic plaques are also often sore. The spa at Kangal guarantees that if you take their treatment for 21 days in the way that they outline, you will leave 100 percent better. Given that psoriasis is a recurrent illness, they don't claim a cure, but a temporary total alleviation of suffering. What is the secret to their success? Curiously, it is little sucking fish.

The Garra rufa fish live in the body-temperature, selenium-enriched waters at the spa. They are the only fish known to exist naturally at such high temperatures. Known as "doctor fish" in Turkey, the little brown swimmers are toothless scourers of dead skin. The treatment program involves drinking the warm spa water and sitting in the 37 degrees Celsius waters for eight hours a day while the fish swarm around and feed on the water softened scabs and dead skin of the ill person. Each time the patient leaves the pools, they are a little more exfoliated and healthier-looking. Any minor bleeding caused by the fish nibbling is healed by the selenium and the ultraviolet rays of Turkish sunlight. Samantha Locke from Glasgow went for treatment and said: "It felt strange knowing they were eating my skin, but I couldn't feel them touching me. It was weird the way the fish were only nibbling at the bits affected by psoriasis."

The Kangal spa has been operating for over 100 years and treating international guests since 1988. On average, 3,000 foreign patients visit per year, according to Hürriyet: 75 percent of visitors to the spa are from outside Turkey, and the German health authorities have even paid for their citizens to come here for treatment. The Turkish spas have seen their largest recent increase in visitors coming from Russia.

Therese Dillon visited the spa while on holiday and described her experiences: "The first time I got in was very scary -- hundreds of the fish came toward me. My legs and back were very bad, and they were all over them. I got straight out. Eventually, I realized the fish were lovely -- not at all aggressive." After just four days, "the effects were fantastic -- my skin was clean." The results lasted four months. She has since gone on to open a doctor fish clinic in Ireland with her Turkish husband, the sixth such clinic in Europe. There are also doctor fish being used in Japan, but not for psoriasis -- instead, they give "natural" pedicures. Japanese entrepreneurs have imported the little fish to do the job that a pumice stone would normally do.

The manager of the Kangal spa, Fuat Ünsal, is quite upset about the doctor fish treatment centers set up in Europe and Japan: "They stole fish from here and have set up fake treatment centers, but they can never offer the effective treatment that we do." The UK's Practical Fishkeeping magazine has even received letters from readers asking where they can purchase Garra rufa because they want to attempt the treatment in their bath at home.

Not everybody's experience at the spa is entirely positive, though. James Langhan, a visitor from Brighton in 2005, was severely disappointed by the facilities: "The conditions were awful. There was mould on the ceilings. The rooms were really basic, which we could handle, but the bathrooms were absolutely filthy. There were a lot of people there who had psoriasis on their scalp and when they put their heads under the water in the pools they got eye and ear infections." Koray Altan, manager of psoriasisfishcure.com, the company that takes patients from the UK, says that people don't get infections of any sort: "Everything is natural, and people do not get infections from the water. The HIV virus, for example, cannot survive outside the human body, and fish cannot transmit the virus from one person to another.: For hygiene, though, the center advises patients keep a distance from others in the pool -- and everyone has to bring their own slippers and towels.

Overall, most experiences with these aquatic munchers seem positive. For the unfortunate victims of unsightly skin conditions, the cure offered by the Kangal spa seems to be more than just a fishy story.

Todayszaman