Naturopathy encompasses a wide range of factors from our food and air quality, to our weather and climate. It is all inclusive. Asian Medicine, botanical medicine, and homeopathic medicine, are some of my favorite components of naturopathic medicine. Naturopathy shows the patient, through the doctor, how to rely on their bodies to maintain a healthy lifestyle and take full advantage of their body's natural survival mechanisms.
I was first properly introduced to naturopathic medicine in undergraduate school. I took a class with Louis Silverstein called Peace Studies. In this class, Dr. Andrew Weil's book Natural Health, Natural Medicine was required text. I do love to read, but I did not expect to discover one of my favorite books and authors for the first time in a class. But I did. I devoured it, read it inside and out, then made flashcards. I began going to the farmer's market, and kept an herb garden in my dormitory. Exploring this really kept me fascinated.
Naturopathic medicine is a more cost effective and personal form of healthcare. Holistic treatment is of the whole person, using natural remedies rather than expensive drugs with dangerous side effects. These attributes make it a perfect alternative or supplement for low income families currently trying to make due with the bottom of the healthcare system in the U.S. and other countries. This form of treatment will allow people access to quality healthcare that will include a personal approach that deals with them as people and not just symptoms. So many people live check to check, hand to mouth, taking whole days off work to get healthcare in America. By making naturopathy more available, more can be done to aide prevention methods.
Natural medicine is at a crucial point in its existence. The doctors involved in this healthcare method educate the mostly ignorant society to ensure its place in the future. It is progressing now and hopefully it will be more readily accessible in the future.
Have you heard of osteopathic medicine, by chance? DOs are trained to treat the whole person as well (MDs are supposed to be trained that way, but it tends to get lost in the traditional curriculum, though that is changing rapidly), and they do manipulations (of the skeleton) to help.
There is also a whole branch of allopathic medicine devoted to much of what you claim naturopathic medicine is all about... prevention. You know, eating a proper diet tends to eliminate the need for expensive treatments as the result of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and can even prevent some types of cancer. Doing regular exercise can prevent osteoporosis and heart disease (among other chronic diseases). These are all things that primary care physicians know and encourage in patients, and things that those specializing in preventative medicine stress. Unfortunately, most Americans don't like following that advice, so we're left to deal with those chronic diseases.
~C
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