Emigre Doctor Dispenses Mud and Massage--but Not Medicine

Underwater massage. Mud masks. Herbal steam baths. In Russia, these are common treatments for a range of maladies. In the United States, they’re considered luxuries.

Alexander Ravikovich knows both sides.

The 40-year-old doctor from the former Soviet Union operates the European Health Center--a Russian-style spa--out of a 1,000-square-foot strip-mall office in this affluent east Seattle suburb.

His clients include Russian emigres, wealthy elderly suburbanites and people recovering from accidents. Some just want to relax. Others seek help with lingering health problems.

“He’s a wonderful chap, and he certainly knows his work,” says Audrey House, 92, of nearby Medina, where she lives next door to Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates. House, who uses a wheelchair, has been going to Ravikovich for several months for massage and other treatment.

“My goal is to make people enjoy their life, to make them healthy and live a quality life,” says the bearded, wiry Ravikovich, an engaging man who speaks fluent, accented English.

In Russia, Ravikovich specialized in natural medicine. He treated patients who couldn’t tolerate conventional chemical-based medication, as well as people--many of them elderly--undergoing rehabilitation after surgery.

A native of the Ural mountain region, Ravikovich arrived in the United States in 1988--three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union--with $140 and two suitcases filled with Russian medical books and underwear.

After a few months in a “very, very low-quality hotel” in Manhattan, Ravikovich made his way west to Seattle.

He didn’t speak a word of English, and his Russian medical training didn’t qualify him for a license to practice medicine in this country. So he went to massage school. He had used massage therapy extensively with patients recovering from accidents during a stint in Latvia, where he worked several years as a consultant to a hospital.

Ravikovich worked at several Seattle-area beauty salons until he had saved enough to start his own business in a Bellevue hotel. He later moved to his current location.

At his European Health Center, there’s one room for massage and mud wraps, another with a Jacuzzi-style tub for underwater massage and mineral baths, and a steam room fitted with a tiny aromatic-oil injector and dispenser. The small waiting room features a cardboard replica of St. Basil’s Cathedral, a Moscow landmark with vividly colored onion domes.

In Russia, says Ravikovich, the treatments he offers were routine in sanatoriums--places where people go for extended stays to relax, recuperate and rejuvenate.

On a more mundane level, Russian coal miners, industrial workers and others who toil in polluted air refresh themselves in herbal steam rooms, which help cleanse their soiled lungs. There they inhale a cocktail of therapeutic herbs tossed onto fire-heated rocks, massaging each other with dampened dried tree branches.

Ravikovich isn’t trying to re-create the Russian experience. His version of the traditional steam bath is a private, sanitized shower stall, without the hot rocks. A special dispenser injects the steam with extracts of such bracing herbs as chamomile, eucalyptus and Siberian fir.

Early on, most of Ravikovich’s American patients were from high society, seeking facials and other elective coddling.

But he felt he wasn’t making use of his Russian medical training.

“You cannot fix a car which is running very well and tell everyone you’re a great mechanic,” Ravikovich says. “You have to take the bad car, a broken one, and fix it.

“So that’s why I moved to people who need some medical attention. I started to work with them and got good results.”

From referrals, advertisements in community newspapers and word-of-mouth in the region’s burgeoning Russian emigre community, he slowly built his business. His rates vary, from $50 for an hourlong massage to $30 for a half-hour herbal bath and $95 for a two-hour “deluxe mud therapy” using mud from the Dead Sea.

Svetlana Tuilina, a native of Siberia, heard about “Alex” from her Russian friends. She came to see him for treatment of chronic back pain that followed injury in a car accident last year.

Tuilina, 40, undergoes what Ravikovich calls “wet traction” therapy. Using a combination of straps, Velcro pads and weights, Ravikovich stretches her lower back muscles under a stream of hot water to ease pressure on the spinal cord.

“I like it. It’s very good. It’s good for my health,” Tuilina says. “Many people have different opinions. This is my opinion.”

House, Gates’ elderly neighbor, has had difficulty walking since a fall about five years ago. She’s used a wheelchair for two years.

Medical doctors have been of little help, she says, but her legs have regained strength after visits to Ravikovich.

The “wonderful man,” as she calls him, massages her legs after wrapping them in plastic wrap and cloth.

“He says I’m going to walk. . . . I feel he’ll take the kinks out of me,” she says.

Her caretaker, Pat Carlson, says the swelling in House’s legs has subsided and she has become more agile.

And her disposition has improved, she says.

“Whether it’s her mind or half and half, I don’t know,” Carlson says. “But it’s definitely healing her. If he can please her, he can please anyone.”

Ravikovich says elderly people like House are prime candidates for his services.

“They want 100% life, and unfortunately sometimes” traditional medicine cannot provide it, he says. “This is where people like me come into the picture.”

The goal is improved quality of life.

“My point is it’s not a great deal if you can live an additional 10 years in a bed,” he says.

Ravikovich is happily adjusting to American-style capitalism.

In Russia, he saw about 30 patients weekly as a hospital consultant. His government salary totaled about $70 a month, and he often bartered his services for hard-to-come-by treats like cognac and sausage.

Today, he sees about the same number of patients and grosses $7,000 to $8,000 a month. He has developed his own line of skin cream and hopes someday to have larger quarters with more elaborate hydrotherapy equipment.

“Of course when you live in Bellevue or Seattle and you have Bill Gates, definitely you cannot compare,” Ravikovich says of his upward course.

“But basically I think I’m doing OK. Of course, I want to do better.”