The Principles of Natural & Naturopathic Medicine

1. First do not harm

This was Hippocrates instruction to physicians and may be thought of as an application of a Golden Rule. Whatever intervention a Health Practitioner can make in a patients health and life, the only acceptable act is one that does not further damage the patient's health. How simple and more sensible does it get than remembering the first rule you learned as a toddler: "Don't hurt anybody."

Unfortunately the majority of modern medicine is far away from following this principle.

2. Healing occurs by way of Nature

Naturopathic/Natural Medicine always relies on the healing power of Nature to help restore patients to complete health. An experienced Naturopath is one who knows how to ‘work the modalities' (explain what these are/what this means) to choose from the natural materials and medicines to help the sick recover and then apply them to the vast variety and complication of Diseases common today.

3. Treating the whole person-Treating People not Disease

Always treat the patient with a holistic approach, don't just treat the disease. Naturopaths won't give you a medication that will heal the stomach while hurting the heart or that will clear up your skin while getting your hormones out of balance and giving you Asthma. Naturopathic Medicine respects the whole patient, not just treating a small part of the body with obvious symptoms and ignoring the rest of the body systems. This means, if you require medicine for your heart, a Naturopath will ensure you get one that is perfect for your heart, yet does not interfere with any bodily function.

4. Treating the Cause of a health problem

In Naturopathic Medicine, we mainly look for the cause of a problem, not just how to treat the symptoms. We don't just stick a bandaid over the problem. An experienced Naturopath will always follow three steps:

1. They will prescribe you something to get relief from your Symptoms;

2. They will look for the regulatory inbalance (Point of Entry=Cause of Disease); and

3. They will consider the depth of the disease

 (e.g. See Six Phase Table - Chapter Homotoxicology).

How does this work? Let's say you have arteriosclerosis (chronic diseases characterized by hardening and thickening of the arterial walls) which has caused heart problems and high blood pressure. You will be prescribed something symptomatically that ensures your blood pressure doesn't rise and cause a stroke. The actual treatment will treat the cause and you will receive further treatments to stop the hardening of the arteries. When you clean out the arteries, the blood pressure drops down, and the heart can heal as well. So, with this treatment method, you have solved all three problems instead of just the high blood pressure.

5. Preventing Diseases

Preventing Disease before it occurs is one of the long term goals in Naturopathic Medicine. This helps the patient to achieve a healthy life. The improved, healthy lifestyle enables the body to recover and regenerate, to strengthen the Immune System and lets us better deal with daily Stress and Toxic conditions that our industrial society imposes. Our study and practice of natural environment medicine shows us how important it is to remove toxins from the immediate environment as well as from our patient's body.

6. The Doctor is a Teacher/Educator

This is the most important of all! In order to help the patients it is very important to educate and teach them how their body functions and what it needs to become or stay healthy. Patients must understand what's going on in their body and why they are getting sick. This allows them to actively take responsibility for their own health. Therefore, Health Practitioners should be more of an educator/teacher than a healer. See it like this:

If you give somebody a fish he will have food just for that day. But if you teach him how to fish, he will have food for a lifetime. Next to treatments, Health Practitioners should educate, guide and help where it is necessary for the patient to gain better health. With this resource and guidance, the patient with the most success, will be the one that learned to do his part of the share.