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Naturopathic medicine originates from hydrotherapy, a medicine based on cold water applications which was used in Eastern Europe in the mid-1600. With time, it has transformed into an assemblage of alternative medicines brought together by a common philosophy: The majority of natural products are very safe to use, but most importantly, naturopathic doctors have learned to recognize life-threatening diseases and they know when to refer to the appropriate health-care practitioners. Naturopathic doctors believe that the body has an inherent ability to establish, maintain, and restore health. Thus, the role of the naturopathic doctor is to facilitate this process by identifying and removing obstacles to recovery, such that ultimately it is the body’s vital force that will shift the patient from a disease process to a healing one. A symptom is nothing but the expression of the body's attempt to heal. It is not the disease, but the manifesttion of the disease. For this reason, nathropathic medicine always tries to see beyond the pathology to understand the pattern of imbalance of the whole organism, which usually results from many interacting factors: Heredity, early childhood environment, social environment, past medical interventions, events causing physical or psychological trauma, food intake, physical activity, exposure to toxins, and so on. Suppressing a symptom weakens the body, which then has no choice but to find another route of expression. For example, it is common to see asthmatic children with a past history of eczema: The eczema having been suppressed a few years earlier, the body’s expression of disease shifted from an external organ (the skin) to an internal organ (the lungs). To avoid such process to happen, it is thus imperative to address the fundamental cause of the disease whenever possible, and to use suppressive interventions only as temporary measures. From the teachings of German hydrothapists such as Father Kneippe stemmed two main branches of naturopathy: the Western European and the North American one. The European branch, which was later exported to Quebec, remained centered around nutrition, lifestyle counseling and herbal medicine. In contrast, the North American version slowly expanded to include new modalities; the last modality to be integrated was chiropractic medicine in 1960. The curriculum of North American naturopathic schools also puts a strong emphasis on medical sciences (anatomy, physiology, histology, pathology and physical and clinical diagnosis), such that today, the training delivered by the accredited schools is a 4-year full-time program which combines an in-depth knowledge of the allopathic approach with the art of the following alternative medicines: After their training, naturopathic doctors emphasize their therapeutic choices based on individual interest, personal experience and the legal parameters of the jurisdiction in which their practice is located. A growing number of U.S. states and Canadian provinces are now being regulated. In the provinces that are regulated, future naturopathic doctors must pass a series of licensing exams at the end of their studies, just like other medical professions such as medical doctors, chiropractors and veterinarians do. |
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