As I was contemplating my long list of topics to discuss it occurred to me that many of you may not know or understand exactly what Naturopathic Medicine is. It's possible that you have one perception or another as to what the heck I'm doing out in Toronto for the next four years and while I secretly hope that one of you truly believes I'm singing jazz in a seedy bar off Queen Street I thought it may be valuable to explain Naturopathic Medicine as a profession.
Now I know that some of you out there are skeptical of Naturopathic Medicine and for those of you who are it may be about to get very, very shocking. Air, sunshine and water baths involved...wait for it.....
NUDITY.
GASP.
OUTDOORS none the less
DOUBLE GASP.
I'm actually laughing right now because I know that some of you have dropped all skepticism and immediately jumped on the bandwagon because of that simple fact. And I applaud you! I also know that some of you are laughing because you're trying to understand how on earth people would consider that medicine. But consider this - in a time when the treatment of the day was considered "heroic" medicine and revolved mostly around blood-letting, purging (from both ends), and other aggressive techniques that simply added stress to people who were already ill and often resulted in death, better diets, air, water and sunshine baths sounded pretty darn good.
And they worked. Such simple techniques actually resulted in astounding numbers of people being healed and while the specifics of why these treatments worked were not known at the time, the simple fact that they did was enough to convince hundreds of thousands of people to seek out nature cure for their ailments.
Most Nature Cure doctors fell into the profession, so to speak, the same way myself and many of my colleagues came into Naturopathic Medicine: they themselves were very ill and were healed by the techniques they came to employ. Vincent Priessnitz, Johann Schroth, Father Sebastien Kneipp and many more all healed because they themselves were first healed and each treated patients in a different manner. This tradition of doctors treating each in their own specialized way without strict adherence to a singular regime continues within Naturopathic Medicine today and can be cause for great debate unless one considers the extremely intuitive and advanced thinking of the man considered to be the first scientific nature doctor, Heinrich Lahmann. Lahmann said:
Each one who practices the nature cure method uses it in a different way: one more complicated, one simpler; one fights a disease with low temperatures, etc...It is impossible to point to the success of one method, in order to prove its absolute correctness, when the same success is achieved with a different method; if, for example, the different methods, A, B and C all achieve the same goal, then this is proof that all three contain an unknown quantity X which guarantees that success; and that the rest of the procedure is redundant if not harmful. Our task in the future will be to find this quality X; only then will we have a theory, only then a rational, scientific nature cure and only then the guarantee for the universal dissemination and continuation of a pure method.
- Nature Doctors, 145.
Such radical thinking considering Lahmann lived from 1860-1905 and I love this quote for several reasons but mainly because it points to the existence of the vis medicatrix naturae. Lahmann, having no knowledge of any of the advanced scientific research that is ongoing today, intuitively knew that there must be a common denominator between all of these healing modalities.
As time moved on, the Nature Doctor became the Naturopathic Doctor and in the 20th century the traditional methods of treating were combined with an allopathic understanding of the human body and Naturopathic Medicine was born. As of today we, as Naturopathic Physicians, have rigorous training in the medical sciences as well as training in Homeopathy, Nutrition, Counselling, Manipulation, Physical medicine, and Botanical Medicine. Some of us also have training in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Our hours of training, compared to that of a Medical Doctor taking the same basic medical sciences are very similar, with the focus of our practice being to treat the root cause using the least invasive treatment, educate the patient and promote prevention. We honour our roots in nature cure and in the spirituality of the Vis Medicatrix Naturae all the while continuing to pursue excellence in the field of medicine.
But really it's more than that. At our foundation, we as Naturopathic Doctors focus on restoring health, not on treating disease, and this is where we stand apart from allopathic medicine. How is restoring health different from treating disease you ask? It all comes down to where we place our focus. We focus on the health of the person, not the disease of the person. Don't get me wrong - we will treat the immediate, acute problems, and at times we may even refer you to go see your Medical Doctor, ultimately, however, we focus on why you got sick in the first place. We see disease as a process, not an entity and believe that it encompasses the mind, body and spirit. We believe that if we remove those things causing disease then we can return to our natural state of health and well being.
So you see, there's a place for all of us in this big ocean of life. We all have a role to play and none more so than you. What is one thing you can do for yourself, today, to make a healthier you tomorrow?
All my relations,
Mandy
"The uniqueness of naturopathic medicine is not in its therapeutic modalities, "natural" alternatives to the drugs and surgeries of standard medicine. It is in the clinical theory that governs the selection and application of these modalities...That is, it is the way the [naturopathic doctor] thinks about illness and healing." Zeff, Sniders, Myers in TNM Section1, Chp 3
