The Tenets of Naturopathic Medicine

Short form:
I. First, Do No Harm.
II. Prevent Illness.
III. Identify and Treat the Cause.
IV. Let Nature Heal.
V. Educate the Patient.
VI. Treat the Whole Person. 

The long form can go on for pages. Let me attempt to explain how this philosophy unfolds for me.  

First do no harm is the foundation of medicine, it is the first oath of a physician. There is a great debate ongoing about euthanasia and abortion because they involve harm to someone. How can a doctor do such a horrible thing? Life is not so simple, and death is a mandatory part of life. All people, including doctors, sometimes have to chose between one harm and another harm. It can cause a patient pain just to examine them, but if you do not examine them you will not know what is wrong. Treatments can be uncomfortable, painful, or even risky. Body parts are harmed to save the whole person. Body systems are overwhelmed with medications. Many times the harms done by treatments are not fully investigated, usually when there's millions to be made from them. But in physician's efforts to do the least possible harm, we often choose smaller, temporary harm in the hopes of preventing longer-lasting and greater harm. And sometimes exactly what is harm is up for debate. It is comprehensible, to me at least, that extending life might be more harmful than allowing a patient to peacefully die. It is also comprehensible that it might be kinder for some humans to never be born, rather than be born into sick or abusive situations. These are very difficult propositions for many people.  he oath for physicians begins simplistic and absolute, but in practice it develops into a discussion of what constitutes harm, or more harm than what else.  In the end we each decide for ourselves what harm we will tolerate and what we will not, but we all want to know that our doctors are on our side, trying to help us through this life with as much joy and grace as possible.

The prevention of illness is probably where we fail most often. We do terrible things to ourselves not knowing any better. But if we knew, if we could see the future and chose differently to avoid that outcome, we just might. Naturopaths are far better trained in preventative medicine than conventional physicians, because it is a central principle of our practice. Sometimes what you think is your worst habit may not be. Sometimes a small change can make all the difference. Usually people who are very ill have a great many areas of their life that are challenged. We can make ourselves healthier in the future by learning how to live better today.

Identify and Treat the Cause of illness. Unfortunately the cause is often hard to find. If you just give medicines to control symptoms, you have not helped the patient in the long term.  They still have the original illness, and they have the side effects of the drugs that you used to suppress the symptoms, and they have whatever conditions are caused by the suppression of symptoms.  The widespread treatment of symptoms is one of the aspects of the modern practice of conventional medicine that is most problematic.  Why is this person sick? We need to know the answers. Rarely is there just one reason that someone is ill.  Usually there are many, and it takes some work to tease them out. Some causes can be changed, others are fixed.  We have been fascinated in the last decade to learn that some things that we think of as genetic can be changed by environment by turning the genes on or off. And that those switchings can be inherited. More is in our power than we know.

Let Nature Heal is a short way of saying that left to our own devices, our bodies health themselves.  It is astounding what we can suffer and still rebound to full function. Our bodies know things. If we get a fever, there is a reason why. Symptoms of illness are effects of the body's attempts to heal itself.  When we suppress symptoms, we stop the body from doing what it knows how to do. People talk about vitalism as believing in a spirit or force in the organism, well to me that force is life. Life wants to keep living. Give it just a fraction of the raw materials it needs, and it will build. Take away just a few of the insults to its health, and it will thrive. There are layers to this saying: let nature heal. We humans have become increasingly removed from our animal selves, from instinct, from our sense of smell and our intuition. When we go out into nature we are awakened again as living organisms. We can feel this when we are together as creatures. Fresh water nourishes us. Wind invigorates. Sunshine activates vitamin D in our skin. Fire warms our bones like little else can. The scents of pine trees and ozone from waterfalls influence our neurotransmitters. We are part of the web of life, and by participating in the web, we become more alive.

Educating patients sounds simple but really this is the biggest challenge of the job, and another area where the conventional model fails. We know that most of you will never read this, and may not read the handouts we send you, or even the dosing instructions on the bottle. But we want you to. Docs want to teach people all we know about how to live better, even if we're still working on it ourselves. It is a process. Nobody can change everything on a dime.  We all have resistance.  We all have reasons why we've always done things that way. If you come to us for help, we're going to try to help by reminding you of all the simple ways that you can take better care of yourself.  The difference between going to a doctor and reading a health article in a magazine is that the doctor's teachings are specific to you as a person, your strengths and weaknesses. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by the million things you "should" be doing, come find out the top 3 and see if you can actually do them. Doctors can complain or give up because patients are unwilling to make the changes that would help most. In this case our job is to make sure that you understand the price or payoffs of your choices, the alternatives that you have, and then letting it go. It is up to each of us to decide how to live, based on the information that we have. Nobody has a perfect lifestyle; we all do the best we can do at the time.

Treating the Whole Person involves understanding the whole person. This is no simple matter, nothing like throwing pills at a symptom. People are complex and layered. Treating the whole person involves providing support where there is weakness, encouragement where there is strength, and inspiration where there is hopelessness. This tenet is based on the Holistic premise that a person is an animal being, rational being and spiritual being all at the same time. The parts of a whole person are continuous with each other, interacting and in balance. A person is not just their body, or their attitude, or their spirit. A person is more than the sum of all these things. Our goal is to understand and to love the person, so that we can support his or her recovery in every way that matters.