The Health Practitioner: A Genuine Guide

• The Individual at the Center of the Approach
• Consultation | Education | Reform
• Treating the Biological Terrain and the Role of Remedies

The health practitioner offers to teach life principles, giving a sense of responsibility to the patient who is at least in part responsible for his/her defiencies. Only nature will be able to correct the imbalance, provided it is given the means to do so. This implies an awareness of individual and collective responsibility and learning about the biological laws that govern us. This comes down to: assuming responsibility. The "patient-actor" is the chief artisan of his/her healing or on-going good health. 

The Individual at the Center of the Approach

Naturopathy is the best preventive medicine there is. Let's just mention here that  there is no intention in proving the superiority of one system in particular, but rather to show the differences in views, allowing each person to make the most informed choice.

In conventional medicine, it is thought that there is some kind of "deficiency of nature" that scientific resources need to correct. Here, the patient is not responsible, or insignificantly so. The patient bears the imperfections of his being.  He (or she) is victimized. Only science can make right (with medications and interventions) the failing functionality by substituting itself to it. The "patient-spectator" is under the authority of medicine.

"It is primarily within himself that the sick will find his first therapy, the most faithful, the most effective, because it is the therapy that is born of him." - Hippocrates

Consultation | Education | Reform

In the conventional view of illness, one must come up with a diagnostic; that is, determine as precisely as possible the illness of the patient, and to then offer a treatment aimed at fighting this illness. It is the classical "consultation-prescription" scenario. In this case, the consultation (including any laboratory tests, radiology, etc.) is sufficient in and of itself. The patient only has to follow the prescribed treatment.

For the health practitioner, the approch is global and aims for a lasting result.

• A vital health consultation consist in doing a checkup, that is, evaluating the state of the various natural defences. In other words, to establish the status of the terrain and state of various organs. The consultation is only the start of educational work done with the patient, who will have to follow the proposed plan. This point is crucial.
  
  
• Education aims at explaining to the patient the results of this examination. It is the first level of follow up work, giving the patient a better understanding of his/her own "reactive personality" and imbalances.
  
  
• Reform of the lifestyle allows the individual to take responsibility and therefore tend to the real causes of biological disruptions.

Treating the Biological Terrain and the Role of Remedies

Even though naturopathy is not the prescription of "natural remedies", it might eventually be useful to point out a "treatment of the terrain" aimed at helping and accelerating recovery of natural function. The patient must realize that these "natural remedies" are merely sporadic help.

It is important that any treatment not be more toxic nor put the patient in greater danger than the illness itself. But there is yet another danger: the very meaning given to the word "remedy", whether it is natural or synthetic. In the traditional "consultation-prescription" pattern, the patient depends entirely on the physician, who's knowledge becomes synonymous with power. This dependance towards medical establishment maintains the patient in the position of the assisted. This can foster negative feelings of fear and anguish. Modern psychological research shows that this mental attitude can fosters illness.

When naturopathy succeeds where medicine has failed (generally in chronic cases and those of functional disturbances), one must not conclude that the health practitioner is stronger than the physician. In fact, it is the patient that becomes stronger than the illness. We can therefore say that the patient "freed" himself (or herself) from the illness, and that the health practitioner played the role of guide.