EDU: Alternative Health Care options - Naturpathy

[Guest guest]

Naturopathy uses a variety of alternative health techniques that include

such things as botanicals, Chinese medicine, environmental medicine, nutrition

and health awareness. Here is some basic information found at

www.naturopathyworks.com What is Naturopathic Medicine? Naturopathic

physicians are naturopathic doctors (ND), or naturopathic medical doctors (NMD).

After graduation from a four-year college or university, naturopaths are trained

in four-year medical colleges just as other physicians are. The difference is

that in naturopathic medical school, in addition to learning such basic medical

sciences as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, pathology,

pharmacology, immunology, histology, neuroscience and genetics, naturopaths also

learn the naturopathic therapies. These include: clinical nutrition (that is

nutrition as both a healing therapy and applied biochemistry), botanical

medicine (nutritive and therapeutic herbs), homeopathy, Traditional

Chinese Medicine such as acupuncture and Chinese herbs, as well as

environmental medicine, physical medicine and hydrotherapy. Naturopaths are

trained both in the classroom and in a variety of clinical settings.

Throughout the naturopathic medical curriculum and professional careers

naturopaths are required to take board exams to ensure that both the training

and skills come up to the standards required across North America for the

naturopathic profession. Just as for medical doctors and osteopaths,

naturopathic physicians are required to take Continuing Education courses

periodically in order to stay at peak competence.

In Arizona, naturopathic physicians are licensed to diagnose and treat disease

with any combination of the therapies listed above. Thirteen other states,

including the recent additions of California and Idaho, also license

naturopathic physicians. So does every province in Canada. The difference with

other doctors is this: a naturopath can help you feel much better and get rid of

disease without drugs. How is this possible? The licensed naturopath receives

more classroom hours in medical sciences and natural therapies and their

application to patients than any other type of physician. By the time

naturopathic students get to the clinical training part of their curriculum,

they know how to apply herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture, nutrients, physical

manipulation, temperature modulation and detoxification for various disease

conditions. They then still have two more years of clinical training to apply

and refine those skills.

Just be sure that you ask for a licensed ND (Naturopathic Doctor) or NMD

(Naturopathic Medical Doctor), because licensed naturopaths are the ones who are

both classroom and clinically trained to practice medicine using herbs,

homeopathy, nutrition, traditional Chinese medicine, hydrotherapy and physical

medicine, as well as environmental medicine.

For the most part, naturopathic medicine is still not covered by most medical

insurance. There are exceptions. However, as many people have happily

discovered, the out-of-pocket costs to a naturopath's patients are often much

less than the out-of-pocket costs (that is deductibles and uncovered services

and products) for fully insured people who go to conventional physicians and who

need pharmaceuticals and/or hospital care. That is, a naturopath's tools, which

are basically materials found in nature, plant materials mostly, are so much

less expensive than patented prescription drugs that you end up paying less even

without insurance. These savings are magnified as time goes on, considering the

much greater relative improvement in overall health of the naturopathic patient

over the conventional medical patient.

Naturopathic medicine is perhaps best described by its six defining

principles:

First do no harm

Healing occurs by way of nature

Treat the whole person

Treat the cause

Prevent disease

Doctor as teacher

" First do no harm " was Hippocrates' instruction to physicians and may be

thought of as an application of The Golden Rule. Whatever intervention a doctor

can make in a patient's health and life, the only acceptable action is ones that

will do no further damage to the patient's health. How much more sensible does

it get than to remember the rule first learned as toddlers: " Don't hurt

anybody. "

Second, naturopaths rely on the healing power of nature to help restore

patients to complete health. The really excellent naturopath is one who knows

how to " work the modalities " : that is to be able to draw from the vast materia

medica of natural materials to help the sick get well and be able to apply them

to the great variety and complication of illnesses that are common today.

Another principle is to treat the whole person. Naturopaths know better than

to give you a medication that will heal the stomach while hurting the heart, or

that will clear up the skin while skewing your hormones out of balance.

Naturopaths are trained to respect the whole patient, not just the small part of

the body with obvious symptoms. In other words, if you need medicine for your

lungs, the job of the naturopath is to make sure that what you get is completely

good for all of you.

The fourth principle is to treat the cause. This means if you have say

arteriosclerosis, which has led to heart problems and high blood pressure, the

naturopath does not treat the blood pressure right away. The naturopath goes to

the cause of the problem and treats the hardening of the arteries, because when

you clean out the arteries, the blood pressure comes down, and the heart is able

to heal. So that way you solve all three problems instead of just one.

To prevent disease is another naturopathic principle, and one that is closest

to the long-term naturopathic goal of helping patients to achieve a healthy

life. This improved lifestyle is what enables the body to regain homeostasis, to

strengthen the immune system and to better deflect the constant stresses and

toxic conditions that an industrial society imposes. Our study and practice of

environmental medicine teaches the importance of removing toxins from the

immediate environment (and ideally the larger environment) as well as from the

patient's body.

Perhaps the last principle is most important of all. In order to best help

patients; it is even more important for a doctor to be a teacher than a healer.

In accordance with the idea that if you give someone a fish he may eat that day,

but if you teach him to fish he may eat for a lifetime, the doctor must teach

how to heal. Ultimately, the most successful patients learn to take

responsibility for their own health, with the doctor acting as a resource and

tutor toward that goal.

The Naturopathyworks website serves to acknowledge time-honored and successful

natural medicine treatments. Here you will find an introduction to some of the

most effective and health-promoting natural treatments in use today, as well as

a sampling of the research on these treatments showing that natural medicine

does indeed work. We hope you find your visit to be an informative one!

(Beautiful Southern Oregon, USA)

We may not be able to change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust our

sails.

May you have enough happiness to make you kind, enough trials to make you

strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy.

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