By Zach Patberg
But that's not Oasis' specialty.No, its point of pride is mud. According to its brochure, muck has a few uses other than wallowing. Like curing obesity, or chronic hepatitis, or, for that matter, male impotence. Scraped from the salty bottom of a Black Sea reservoir on the Ukrainian Peninsula, the mud, when heated and massaged on the affected area, sends vitamins and antibiotics into the bloodstream while simultaneously relaxing the tissue, as the theory goes.The center does have the therapeutic electric currents of an ultrasound, of course. It penetrates deep tissue the same as mud. Both use heat to do it, too. But, as one of the Oasis managers, Henry Alton, pointed out, ultrasound “is just a wave.” Mud, apparently, has the oomph of substance.As for the pill alternative? Forget it. Pills take the roundabout route through the blood stream and have to be ingested, Alton said. Mud goes straight to the source.”Taking an aspirin could be good for a headache, but bad for the stomach,” he explained.Alton stressed heavily the effort by the center, at 95-30 Queens Blvd., to portray itself as a medical facility with spa-like flavor.”We don't feel like a medical office here,” he said, gesturing at his surroundings. “Look, there are pictures on the walls, plants, cookies, all kinds of treats.”Oasis does has a collective of doctors in-house: one for family practice, one for neurology, one for physical therapy, one for vascular surgery and one for osteopathy. And their treatment methods do seem a bit more like pampering than most.In the “Water department,” a male patient sits with his arms submerged in two canals of warm water as two subsurface metal plates send an electrical current into aching joints. The four-chamber bath, as it's called, is said to be a good combatant of tennis elbow. Another man sits in a room while the Diapulse shoots a magnetic current from a mechanism that looks like a buffer polishing metal rather than an arthritic shoulder.In the end, the treatment one gets all depends on the state of a patient.”It's often nice to have the water,” admitted Zbigniew Matynia, the physical therapist, referring to hydrotherapy, the center's other specialty. “But not everyone can get the water. Maybe the patient has a skin reaction to it. It's all about can they physically do it.”Oasis opened its labyrinth of beautification and healing rooms about four years ago. The owner, neurologist Dimitri Kolesnik is from Ukraine, as are the rest of the staff, said another manager, Myla, who declined to give her last name. Reach reporter Zach Patberg at news@timesledger.com or at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
