www.healthypages.net (natural-healing.co.uk)

Member Name: zebra

Product:	natural-healing.co.uk
Date:	29/08/02 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Useful UK website with informative articles, forums and directories on a wide

Disadvantages: Does not have information on all the therapies.

Dur to lack of new items and suggestions I'm slowly plodding through the mind body spirit websites listed on dooyoo.

When I first followed dooyoo's official link to the naturalhealing website I was a bit disappointed. It just looks like another business advertising exhibitions. But I delved a bit deeper and discovered a quite interesting British website.

Naturalhealing.co.uk is a site for a company which arranges mind body soul exhibitions in the South of England. But it also has an online therapist directory and resource pages which are on a separate web page www.healthypages.net. To access this web site click on forums in the navigation bar if you have followed dooyoo's link to the official website. It also produces an offline free magazine distributed through healthshops and other relevant places.

HEALTHY PAGES

Healthy pages is well organised online magazine laid out like a newspaper but also with navigation bar on the left. It seems to be very popular and receives 6500 visits per week. The main areas of the site are news and feature articles, the directories of therapies, courses and products and quite a vast array of forums.

NEWS HEADLINES

The headlines are dated and show a few lines to give a flavour of the article and a hyperlink if you want to read more. Examples of news items include: Bigger Babies are Smarter, study provides clues to allergy protection, report "proves" ambulance data fiddle, "encouraging" results for anti smoking services.

FEATURES

Features on the front page included one on music for therapy and another on the menopause.

The first article I read was 'an alternative look at the menopause', this was a well written informative article on alternatives to HRT. The information at the end of the article was very useful, giving a UK address where one could obtain a free booklet on 'treating the menopause naturally' and
it also listed four web addresses for further information. I was quite impressed.

Other features are accessed via the navigation bar and cover a wide range of topics:
The herbal diet hoax
Traditional Thai Massage
Try not to take a deep breath
Drug cowboys, about the dangers of buying prescription drugs on the internet
Is Breast really best?
The folks who live in the gym
Agony or ecstasy - medical use for E
Something to meditate 'om'

FORUMS

There are several forums with a very diverse subject area. It is possible to read the forums without becoming a member but you have to register to post. Like most forums you only have to choose a username and provide a valid e-mail address.

Rather than trawl through everything you can select to look at active topics, and you can be notified if new posts are made to particular forums or topics.

At the top was a forum about Ancient Mysteries, Atlantis, pyramids etc. Checking out this forum I discovered 36 topics with titles like Stonehenge, pyramids, new planet, alien life. I looked at a topic called the key of life and discovered a long piece on the ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol. It had received a few interested replies and had received 387 reads.

Other forums are:
Free Goodies - mainly in the mind body spirit area, e.g. free Reiki etc
General
Healing and Prayers
Pets, animals and Wildlife
Spiritual, Psychic and paranormal - very popular with 267 topics and 2333 reads

This covered 11 pages of topics. One of the most popular was 'Is anger ever a good thing?' with 63 replies and 563 reads. Another popular topic was 'chakra balancing' with 30 replies and 433 reads.
Thought for the day - inspirational
Student/Training

Therapy Forums

Body Therapies - reflexology, massage, shiatsu, polarity therapy, acupuncture, Indian head massage etc.
Diet and Nutrition - Supplemen
ts, vitamins, nutrition, food and organic products
Mind therapies - Hypnotherapy, NLP, psychotherapy, counselling and subjects relating to the mind
Natural Remedies - Discussions on Herbs & Herbal Remedies, homoeopathic, essential oils, flower remedies etc
Reiki
Spiritual Healing

Discussions on Ailments Forums

Obviously a hypochondriacs paradise - there are forums for discussing every type of ailment under various forums.

The last two forums are one for making suggestions and one for recommending websites and services

The statistic at the bottom of the page are continually updated and gave the following information while I was there: 1228 Members have made 16098 posts in 28 forums, There are currently 2180 topics and 223 active topics since you last visited.

DIRECTORY

There is a therapist directory which is listed alphabetically by therapy. There are far more therapies than I would have imagined and an awful lot I have never heard of before. There is also a services and products directory.

If you select a type of therapy you are taken to pages listing the therapists and area where they are located. More information will take you to their profile page where qualifications, web pages contact details are listed. Articles on that therapy are also listed if there are any available and also details of how to submit articles and news.

At the top of each section is a link to a what is (therapy name) article and resources if available. There was nothing under Angels or dream therapy (Do I see an opportunity for Whitehorse?) but there was a quite a detailed article on Indian Head Massage.

One of the problems of this directory is that some 'therapists' or organisations seem to have listed under almost every alternative therapy which seems a bit suspicious. Healthy Pages have of course got a disclaimer as follows:

All advertisements and listings that appear on this
site have been accepted in good faith, however, we recommend that you verify your chosen practitioner is fully qualified in the therapies used for your treatments. HealthyPages and Natural Healing U.K. does not make any referrals or recommendations for any specific therapist or alternative/complimentary practitioner, nor are we responsible for any individual services rendered or advice given.

Nevertheless for therapists and people running courses etc it probably might be worthwhile adding information to the directory - it is free.

Vacancies/ Jobs was under development as was classified ads.

COURSES, TRAINING and EVENTS

This section has 75 pages of 1502 forthcoming courses and events in the UK covering the mind body spirit topics of this web site. Thankfully there is a search facility and you can also select an area

VENUES for HIRE

This section lists venues for hire all over Britain mainly for use by therapists I think but some general meeting rooms were also included. They were supposed to be listed alphabetically but this didn't seem to work and they were in a bit of a muddle. With no search facility it was not easy to find a local place. But I am sure this will be remedied the site is otherwise very well organised.

A thought for the day - is just that.

E CARDS
On offer were a nice selection of E-cards, 220 pictures in 26 categories. Those on display were very attractive and included visionary art, Celtic, various fantasy and topics such as dreams and love.

Overall I think this looks like quite a good resource for anyone interested in health in general and specifically in all the weird and wonderful therapies which are around these days. It is particularly useful for complementary therapists who can promote themselves on the site.

Summary: