Naturopathic vs Allopathic Medicine

"Allopathic" medicine is what most people refer to when they talk of going to the doctor. This is the model of medicine in which most insurance and medicare will pay. In this model you call and set up an appointment with a doctor, you go to the office and wait, 30 minutes past your appointment time you are called in to an exam room where a nurse takes your blood pressure and temperature, she leaves the room, and you continue to wait for the doctor, he/she finally comes in and asks what is wrong with you, you have one or two minutes to tell the doctor your complaints, the doctor, without looking up from your chart, writes out a couple of prescriptions for you and leaves the room. You go to the front desk and pay your co-pay and off you go to the pharmacy. This is medical practice in the 21st century. In a naturopathic medical visit, you will spend considerably more time with the doctor. He/she will ask the patient many questions...some seem "strange". The purpose is to get the whole picture of the conditions surrounding the patient. Not some symptoms that the patient has. The naturopathic doctor will try to find the "cause" of a disease, not simply the symptoms. Allopathic doctors treat "symptoms": you have a headache, "here take this painkiller"; you have a fever, "take aspirin to break the fever"; you have diarrhea, "take kaopectate to stop it"; you have a cough, "take this cough suppressant". All these are treating symptoms. A naturopath will try and establish why you have a headache and they will then treat the cause. They will find the cause of a fever and perhaps they may try to push the fever higher (fever is the body's way of trying to kill off the bacteria or virus). Diarrhea? This is the body's way of flushing out toxins that are making you ill (why stop the diarrhea and leave the toxins in the body to continue to make you sick?). Same for a cough...the body is using mucus and a cough reflex to try and eliminate something that does not belong in the lung or throat. Now a naturopath may try and limit the fever, diarrhea or cough to prevent damage but will not try to prevent the body response as it tries to restore your health. Naturopaths works with the body, we do not see illness as a battle between good and evil. It should not be a war. A naturopath will find the root cause of an illness and treat the cause of an illness. We do not treat the symptoms, which are actually the body's attempts at healing. We work with the body, not against it. Quite a different attitude as the "allopaths"., In my first year of medical school, I had a professor explain to the class the difference between natural healing and "allopathic" healing. Suppose you are in a hotel and it is late at night. Suddenly the fire alarms go off indicating a fire has broken out. The alarms are signalling that there is a fire in your building. Smoke begins coming into your room under the door. The windows are locked and cannot be opened. All the while the alarms are loudly ringing warning you of danger. An allopathic doctor would look at this situation and decide to silence the alarms (the most obvious signal that something is wrong). Then they would cut the wires to the alarm and suddenly it becomes quiet. Unfortunately, the fire is still raging, but now there are no warnings. A Naturopath would asses the situation and determine the fire alarm is a warning of something deeper going on. They would find the source of the fire and put the fire out. Once the fire is out, the alarm will be silenced and the smoke cleared. This is treating the cause and not the symptoms. A final look at the difference between allopathic and naturopathic doctors is simply to look in any medical dictionary under "A". Go down and look at all the "anti" words. Anti-biotic, Anti- viral, Anti-rheumatoid, Anti-helmetic, Anti-pyretic, etc. This is the allopathic view of ill health as a war... us against the bacteria, virus, protozoa, fever, cough, diarrhea... actually, their view is us against the natural world. The is a better way for health and that is making Smart Health Choices (SHC).