I recently enrolled in a Naturopathy Wellness course. When I told people I enrolled in this course, I was asked what is naturopathy? That is exactly what I asked the first time I heard the term naturopathy – so let me explain what it is and why I enrolled.
Most often when you hear about naturopathy it is about doctors who have been trained in naturopathy. Doctors trained in naturopathy are trained as general practitioners but they specialize in natural medicine. As a wellness coach I look at the root cause of the problem and work with the person to treat it with change of diet, and / or nutritional supplementation.
Naturopathy has some key principles that all naturopaths follow – whether they are doctors or wellness coaches, and they are as follows:
- The healing power of nature: Our bodies are meant to heal themselves. A naturopath helps the body to heal itself, by helping to remove obstacles to healing.
- Identify and treat the cause: Naturopathic physicians and wellness coaches look at the underlying cause of illness rather than just the symptoms. For instance – diarrhea is just a symptom of an underlying problem in the digestive tract – we don’t treat the symptom we treat the cause of the symptom.
- Treat the whole person: Naturopathic physicians treat the symptoms that the patient has rather than the general symptoms that define the disease. It is important to spend time and get to know the patient with the disease than to just treat the symptom of the disease.
- Prevention: A naturopath is more interested in preventing disease than treating a disease, also It is far easier and cheaper to prevent a disease than to treat a disease. They can discuss specific lifestyle strategies or nutritional supplementation as a means for disease prevention.
- Teaching: The primary role of a naturopath is educating, empowering, and motivating patients to assume more personal responsibility for their health by adopting a healthy attitude, lifestyle, and diet.
A naturopath is often successful at treating chronic conditions that don’t respond to conventional medicine. A naturopath doesn’t just throw medicine at the problem, we look at what might be causing the problem. Naturopathic physicians understand the art of healing, which is more than dispensing a herbal remedy or nutritional supplement. To understand the context of a patient’s illness, the physician must take the time to listen to the patient’s story. Effective naturopathic treatment requires patience and good communication.
Basically, a person who specializes in naturopathic wellness works with their clients or patients to find the root cause of their health problem, treat the problem with change of diet or supplementation, as well as educating the patient on disease prevention.