Photos courtesy of PALM
PALM's Thermal Suites include aromatic steam rooms and infrared saunas for cleansing and detoxification.
Both spa and medical center, PALM Health is deliberately serene, filled with filtered sunlight, frosted glass, and pale wood. Cacti create a desert feel that’s instantly quenched—glass dispensers are everywhere, their cool water infused with green apples and clementines. The examination tables convert from padded massage beds; no cold, hard surfaces here. All the lights can be dimmed, and their fixtures are made of Himalayan rock salt to offset electromagnetic radiation from the computer screens.
Before opening PALM, its co-founders investigated on the coasts, in Europe, and in Asia. They say they found nothing comparable. The Clayton Road site—once the home of Busch’s Grove—is big enough for terraces, a teaching garden, a café, a workout room, the Oak Room (the old Busch’s Grove bar, now filled with dance and meditation), locker rooms, spa services, a lab for bloodwork, an IV therapy room, and exam rooms. The physicians on staff are classically trained, yet they talk about chi and pay attention to “the intricate interactions among the genetic, biological, environmental, emotional, and lifestyle factors influencing your health.” Appointments aren’t brusque quizzes that end with a prescription pad; they’re slow searches for the root causes of disease and distress.
PALM’s aiming for sustainable healing, wholeness, balance, and transcendence. “There will be people wanting a five-star spa and not wanting to mix with people who are having medical problems,” predicts one of the co-founders, St. Louis cardiologist Dr. Lauren Munsch–Dal Farra, “but we are here to both prevent and heal, and we designed PALM to make everyone comfortable. It needs to be a place of tolerance, respect, and compassion.”
See also: PALM Health, St. Louis’ New Healthcare Oasis, Opens in Ladue
The acronym unpacks as Personalized Advanced Lifestyle Medicine, and the overarching goal is to discover the root causes of illness and use an integrated approach to prevent and heal. As part of that process, doctors work to uncover sources of inflammation and toxicity. “At the onset, inflammation is the body’s normal physical reaction to defend itself from foreign invasion, toxins, and injury,” says Dal Farra. “We have excessive and persistent inflammation in our bodies because we are constantly giving our bodies little insults and injuries, and there’s no counter-regulation to that process.”
Why are so many of us living in a chronic state of inflammation? “Our diets have changed so much,” she begins. “We are exposed to so many refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, and other chemicals. Mental and emotional stress, Wi-Fi, TV screens—constant micro-insults. When you have this constant state of inflammation, those things break down the inner lining of our cells—in the GI tract, in the coronary arteries—and create almost a stickiness factor for the adhesion of cholesterol in our arteries.”
Chronic inflammation spirals, because it triggers inflammatory mediators whose effects cascade. “Our endocrine system, our immune system, and our neurological system are totally interconnected,” Dal Farra notes. “So often, when one system is out of balance, we are looking at a downstream result. But many of those inflammation mediators can be modified with diet, exercise, nutraceuticals, stress reduction, and various therapies, once we understand what an individual’s triggers are.”
There’s no dogma here, no fad diets or crazy workout regimens. “One person’s culprit is another’s medicine,” says Dal Farra. “We use questionnaires, bloodwork, imaging, assessments, energetic or biofeedback testing—it’s a very individualized diagnostic and therapeutic experience.”
To support any lifestyle change, coaches are on hand. “Any problem you have is going to affect the whole of you,” says coaching director Kevin Cloninger, “and sometimes that’s so true, you don’t know where to start.”
PALM specializes in figuring that out.
Courtesy of PALM
The Ionized Himalayan Salt Therapy Room lets patients breathe in negative ions to help with sinus, lung or skin problems in a beautiful setting.
The Services
- Infrared sauna
- Cryosauna
- Salt room
- Steam room
- Low-level laser treatments
- Acupuncture and acupressure
- Personal trainers and fitness equipment
- Energy balancing for allergies
- IV therapy for cancer support, stress, and immune system boosts
- Chelation therapy for heavy metal poisoning and some kinds of cardiovascular disease
- A hyperbaric chamber (opening this fall), offering 100 percent oxygen instead of the 20 percent we suck from room air
- A full array of spa services—brown-seaweed wraps, black-salt scrubs, Arctic berry peels…
- Classes (fitness at all levels, relationships, work, personality, emotional calm, balance, posture, breathing, mental clarity, graceful aging, art as therapy, poetry as self-expression)
The Cost
Membership fees range from $299 a year (with an annual goal assessment and coaching session and à la carte access) to $3,300 a year for total access to amenities and concierge medicine.
The Players
Dr. Lauren Munsch–Dal Farra cofounded PALM with her husband, Brice Dal Farra; her brother-in-law Claude Dal Farra; and her father, Dr. Robert Munsch. She cringes when the center is described as her brainchild; it’s a collaborative effort by its very nature, she points out, and also instrumental to its development were chief medical officer Dr. Sita Kedia and director of coaching Kevin Cloninger.
Cloninger is also the president of Anthropedia—the foundation that lends PALM its philosophical underpinnings—and PALM’s director of outcomes research is his father, the renowned psychiatrist and geneticist Dr. C. Robert Cloninger, director of the Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at the Washington University School of Medicine.
On staff at PALM:
- Dr. Lauren Munsch–Dal Farra (cardiology)
- Dr. Sita Kedia (neurology)
- Dr. Varsha Rathod (internal medicine, rheumatology, allergies, endocrinology)
- Dr. Basima Williams (family medicine)
- Dr. Nigel Lester (psychiatry)
- David Trybus (chiropractic)
Their services are covered by several major insurance providers.
Firsthand Experience
Kim Cella found out exactly what PALM was about when, just a few weeks after she started working there, she learned that her breast cancer had returned.
Part of Cella’s job description was to help members navigate PALM’s therapeutic services—and now she was experiencing them firsthand. The staff jumped into action, scheduling her for biofeedback and helping her shift to a more plant-based, less meat-and-potatoes diet. She did deep breathing in the salt room, cleansing her lungs; felt her deepest muscles go limp in the infrared sauna; and soothed herself in a steam room redolent of eucalyptus, citrus, and mint. She even tried the cryosauna, which freezes away inflammation and joint pain.
“The first time I was diagnosed, I held everything inside,” she says. “I retreated to my house, watched a lot of TV, and waited it out. This time I feel safe and taken care of. The people at PALM aren’t viewing me as sick or dying. They’re just saying, ‘Let’s find the best path for you to get on with your life.’”
