KOSTROMA, Central Russia -- Some people go to the Ivan Susanin sanatorium for a rest. Others check in to eat a controlled diet and drink mineral water from the sanatorium's well.
Sergei Lira went for the elk's milk.
Lira, 37, an ulcer sufferer from Nizhnevartovsk, in the Tyumen region, learned of the unusual treatment for his ailment from an article in the Russian newspaper Ne Mozhet Byt (It Can't Be).
He believed it could. He left his home and traveled to the Susanin sanatorium, which uses elk's milk as a treatment for duodenal and gastric ulcers. He spent the next 24 days drinking elk's milk -- five times a day, 100 grams a shot. By the end of his stay he had consumed 12 liters of the elixir.
A comparison of the endoscopic examinations from the first and final days of his visit showed healing in Lira's deep ulcer, his doctors said.
"It was noticeably better," said Dr. Natalia Yuskevich, a gastrointestinal specialist at the sanatorium. "His ulcer decreased in size."
The key to the milk's effectiveness, Yuskevich said, may be in the elk's diet. Wild elk eat grasses, weeds and shrubs, many of which are believed to have medicinal value, as well as more than 350 species of forest plants. Juniper berries, bilberries, raspberries and mushrooms, some of which are poisonous to humans, are among the elk's favorite forest delicacies.
The history of the cure goes back only 15 years, Yuskevich said. A research team at Yaroslavl Medical Institute, after generating a list of properties that theoretically would help in the treatment of ulcers, found that elk's milk matched their list on a number of counts: It has an unusually high milkfat content and is rich in lysozymes, naturally occurring enzymes that break down harmful bacteria in bodily fluids.
The team fed elk's milk to a group of ulcer sufferers, and found the elk's-milk group had a higher rate of improvement -- 80 percent -- than did those in a control group, who had taken more conventional medications.
Yuskevich dismissed suggestions that the cure could be linked to psychological expectations. "Eighty percent were cured of their ulcers," she said. "Eighty percent cannot be the result of a psychological factor. It is definitely a healing substance in the milk."
Regardless of why it works, or if indeed it works at all, people keep coming to the sanatorium to drink the elk's milk. During the Soviet years, the state-subsidized cure was inexpensive. "People from all over Russia came for treatment," said Yuskevich.
Now it costs 750,000 rubles ($217) for a 24-day stay at the facility, and the milk costs an additional 20,000 rubles a liter. The sanatorium's supplier is the nearby Kostroma Elk Farm, where a small herd of females produces milk all the summer long.
The elk's-milk cure may not be poised to take the medical world by storm, but it may bear some similarity to Western methods.
One element of ulcer treatment in the West involves administering an antacid to neutralize stomach acids. Dr. Marion Mannas, a family practitioner at the International Medical Clinic in Moscow, said that milk can act as an antacid.
Mannas said medical researchers are also examining how bacterial infection may contribute to ulcers. "Any milk -- human, cow, anything -- does contain antibacterial substances," she said.
"I don't know of any studies done on elk's milk," she said. But since many kinds of milk are used as food products, she said, "I do not think it would harm a patient."
Unless, of course, a patient doesn't like the taste -- a cross between buttermilk and latex paint, with a distinctly gamey forest overtone.
Lira's judgement was a bit more charitable: "At first I paid attention to the taste, but not any more," he said. "It goes down easy," he added, tossing back his head and gulping down his 100-gram morning dose. "It's just like cream."
Sergei Lira went for the elk's milk.
Lira, 37, an ulcer sufferer from Nizhnevartovsk, in the Tyumen region, learned of the unusual treatment for his ailment from an article in the Russian newspaper Ne Mozhet Byt (It Can't Be).
He believed it could. He left his home and traveled to the Susanin sanatorium, which uses elk's milk as a treatment for duodenal and gastric ulcers. He spent the next 24 days drinking elk's milk -- five times a day, 100 grams a shot. By the end of his stay he had consumed 12 liters of the elixir.
A comparison of the endoscopic examinations from the first and final days of his visit showed healing in Lira's deep ulcer, his doctors said.
"It was noticeably better," said Dr. Natalia Yuskevich, a gastrointestinal specialist at the sanatorium. "His ulcer decreased in size."
The key to the milk's effectiveness, Yuskevich said, may be in the elk's diet. Wild elk eat grasses, weeds and shrubs, many of which are believed to have medicinal value, as well as more than 350 species of forest plants. Juniper berries, bilberries, raspberries and mushrooms, some of which are poisonous to humans, are among the elk's favorite forest delicacies.
The history of the cure goes back only 15 years, Yuskevich said. A research team at Yaroslavl Medical Institute, after generating a list of properties that theoretically would help in the treatment of ulcers, found that elk's milk matched their list on a number of counts: It has an unusually high milkfat content and is rich in lysozymes, naturally occurring enzymes that break down harmful bacteria in bodily fluids.
The team fed elk's milk to a group of ulcer sufferers, and found the elk's-milk group had a higher rate of improvement -- 80 percent -- than did those in a control group, who had taken more conventional medications.
Yuskevich dismissed suggestions that the cure could be linked to psychological expectations. "Eighty percent were cured of their ulcers," she said. "Eighty percent cannot be the result of a psychological factor. It is definitely a healing substance in the milk."
Regardless of why it works, or if indeed it works at all, people keep coming to the sanatorium to drink the elk's milk. During the Soviet years, the state-subsidized cure was inexpensive. "People from all over Russia came for treatment," said Yuskevich.
Now it costs 750,000 rubles ($217) for a 24-day stay at the facility, and the milk costs an additional 20,000 rubles a liter. The sanatorium's supplier is the nearby Kostroma Elk Farm, where a small herd of females produces milk all the summer long.
The elk's-milk cure may not be poised to take the medical world by storm, but it may bear some similarity to Western methods.
One element of ulcer treatment in the West involves administering an antacid to neutralize stomach acids. Dr. Marion Mannas, a family practitioner at the International Medical Clinic in Moscow, said that milk can act as an antacid.
Mannas said medical researchers are also examining how bacterial infection may contribute to ulcers. "Any milk -- human, cow, anything -- does contain antibacterial substances," she said.
"I don't know of any studies done on elk's milk," she said. But since many kinds of milk are used as food products, she said, "I do not think it would harm a patient."
Unless, of course, a patient doesn't like the taste -- a cross between buttermilk and latex paint, with a distinctly gamey forest overtone.
Lira's judgement was a bit more charitable: "At first I paid attention to the taste, but not any more," he said. "It goes down easy," he added, tossing back his head and gulping down his 100-gram morning dose. "It's just like cream."