Despite all the advances of modern medicine there are still many illnesses that we are unable to cure. Most diseases are however treatable and there are all manner of pills and potions that can be prescribed but not everything responds to conventional treatment. In recent years there has been a strong resurgence of alternative and complementary medicines in the West. This new emphasis on different treatments has led to people opening their minds (and wallets) to travelling to different countries for cures. One of the more bizarre treatment centres in the world was featured in this week’s UK Guardian and Turkey’s Hürriyet. Close to Kangal in eastern Turkey there is a spa which is becoming famous worldwide for it’s 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 characterised 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% 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% 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 occur naturally at such high temperatures. Known as Doctor Fish in Turkey the little brown swimmers are toothless scourers of dead skin. The treatment programme involves drinking the warm spa water and sitting in the 37oC 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 fishes nibbling is healed by the selenium and the ultra violet 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 3000 foreign patients visit per year, according to Hürriyet 75% 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 towards me. My legs and back were very bad, and they were all over them. I got straight out. Eventually, I realised 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 and it is the 6th such clinic in Europe. There are also doctor fish being used in Japan but not for psoriasis – instead they give ‘natural’ pedicures! Japanese entrepeneurs 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 scathing 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.’ Practical Fishkeeping magazine in the UK has even received letters from readers asking where they could purchase Garra rufa because they wanted to attempt the treatment in their bath at home.

Not everbody’s experience of the spa is entirely positive though. Mr James Langhan, a UK visitor from Brighton in 2005, was severly 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 reasons though, the centre advises patients to keep a distance from others in the pool and everyone has to bring their own slippers and towels.

Overall though most experiences of these aquatic munchers seems 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.