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People often ask me about the difference in philosophy between conventional medicine and naturopathic medicine. While the differences are numerous, some of the more fundamental ones can easily be explained. Imagine your body is a house, and the health of your body is the maintenance of that house. If you don't do regular maintenance on this house, the roof of your house begins to leak and you might notice water dripping into your home every time it rains. The water is a symptom of an underlying problem -- a roof with poor maintenance.
The difference between conventional medicine and naturopathic medicine can be described in the way that health practitioners would perceive this problem and attempt to resolve it. Conventional medicine would look at the water dripping out of the roof and find a way to measure it. So they would have a number, which might be 60 drips per hour, and they might say anything above that (such as 70 drips per hour or 100 drips per hour) is a disease, and they would name that disease something like, "Roofoporosis Disease."
They would identify the symptom itself -- the water -- as being the disease, and they would try to figure out which chemical would take care of it. In this case they might prescribe water absorbing crystals that you would spread around the house to absorb this excess water, completely ignoring the integrity of the roof, as well as the need to actually repair the roof and not allow water to drip through it. If you said to them, "well, maybe we should think about repairing the roof," they would say, "The problem is clearly the water -- you can see the water, here's a measurement of the water." They might even say if you don't aggressively treat this excessive water, you're going to end up flooding your entire house.
In contrast to that, a naturopathic approach involves a little more investigative work. A naturopath would use the dripping water as a clue, but then ask: what is the underlying fundamental cause of this water dripping into the home? The naturopathic physician would trace the water back to the stain in the ceiling, and this stain would indicate that water has been chronically dripping in from a leaky roof. Then, he would trace it through the attic to the roof and find a hole in the roof. After a bit of detective work, he (or she) would decide to patch the hole, repair the roof and stop the leaking water at its source.
Treat the problem, not the symptomNaturopaths aren't treating the water -- the symptom -- and this confuses conventional medicine to a great degree. They don't understand how someone can treat cancer without treating the tumor itself. Because conventional docs think the symptom is the disease or the disorder. But naturopathic medicine sees the cancer tumor as only a symptom of a much deeper problem. Just like the water dripping into the home is only a symptom of a broken roof in need of repair, a cancer tumor is only a symptom of a serious underlying metabolic problem.
The naturopathic physician would fix the cause of the problem, but they wouldn't stop there. They would also realize that if the roof has one hole in it now, it seems likely that there could be other holes that are beginning to form, too. They would look at it from a holistic perspective and work to not only solve today's problems, but also prevent the development of other chronic degenerative problems that share the same cause.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
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