Article Medically Reviewed By:
Chris D. Meletis, ND
Executive Director The Institute for Healthy Aging Beaverton, OR
Overview
What Is It?
Naturopathy is a form of alternative medicine that focuses on natural remedies to stimulate and support the body's own healing ability. Naturopathy doesn't follow a single road to good health. This approach to health care embraces a wide array of noninvasive techniques and therapies. Some are as basic as nutrition or stress reduction. Others are more firmly planted in "alternative medicine," such as hydrotherapy or homeopathy. As you can tell from the term "naturopathy," it is a natural approach to health care.
Different naturopathic practitioners use various therapies to a common end: Stimulating and supporting your body's own healing ability.
The History of Naturopathy
Many practices associated with naturopathy date back centuries, but modern naturopathy was founded and named by German physician Benedict Lust in the early 20th century. It reached its peak in popularity in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. But within a few decades, conventional medicine, also known as "drug therapy" medicine, came into prominence and naturopathy faded. The tide turned in the 1970s as Americans developed a new appreciation of alternative and "holistic" approaches to medicine.
Types of Naturopathy Practitioners
It's impossible to gauge just how many practicing naturopaths there are in the United States today. Some practitioners call themselves "naturopaths," while others incorporate naturopathy into their medical, chiropractic, acupuncture or other practices.
When choosing a naturopath, try to find one who graduated from an accredited four-year program; they may be medical doctors, osteopaths, dentists, nurses or other health care professionals. And oftentimes, naturopaths are willing to work cooperatively with their conventional-medicine counterparts. You should continue your existing treatments while seeking care from a naturopath. Be sure to keep all of your health care professionals apprised of all treatments you are receiving.
The Principles of Naturopathy
While various naturopathic organizations have differing perspectives on the scope of the naturopath's practice and different practitioners take different approaches to diagnosis and treatment, traditional naturopaths adhere to certain basic principles:
- The healing power of nature. Naturopathy contends that the body has the inherent ability to heal itself and, when working at an optimal level, to ward off disease. Naturopathy is intended to help your body do just that.
- Treat the whole person. Naturopaths work from the perspective that health and disease are more than just germs and infection. Mental, physical, spiritual and environmental factors each play a role. Naturopaths take all of these factors into consideration when developing treatment. So, where a conventional health care professional may prescribe medication t...
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