Why Working With a Naturopathic Doctor can Benefit your Health

In the spirit of Naturopathic Medicine Week, we wanted to write an article that lets you know why a naturopathic doctor is a great addition to your healthcare team.

The body has an amazing ability to adapt to its surroundings – this is why we are able to fight off viruses, regulate to changing weather and deal daily stressors.

The problem is that when our bodies are forced to adapt to chronic unhealthy situations, these adaptations can result in unfavourable systemic changes that lead to chronic disease.  Disease doesn’t “just happen”- if you have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism in June, it doesn’t mean that the disease started in June.

The body’s ability to adapt allows us to function in disease-promoting environments  for months to years – we often don’t know this is happening until symptoms become too unbearable to cope with in our daily lives.

Multiple factors that lead to chronic disease include poor dietary choices, chronic stress, lack of proper sleep and exercise (to name a few).

During this transition, we actually have many symptoms that warns us something is off, many of which we think are “normal” symptoms – feeling unhealthy or unwell, even if mild, is not normal if it becomes a consistent feeling.  Symptoms are the body’s way to alert us that there may be something about our health that requires tuning and treatment.

If these signals are ignored then disease will continue to flourish.  Many of these symptoms are non-specific, such as:

• chronic headaches
• low energy, low concentration, low moods
• sleep problems
• weight gain
• gas/bloating
• trouble with bowel movements
• severe PMS
• joint pain
• weak immune system

If you have any of the symptoms, it’s time to see a professional that can help you manage these symptoms and prevent chronic disease. As a society, our ability and awareness to detect if our body is out of balance has been greatly lost, and we are led to believe that these symptoms are “fixed” by popping a pill that makes symptom go away.

Benefits of Seeing a Naturopathic Doctor

Seeing a naturopathic doctor can benefit anyone who is determined to take control of their health, whether you suffer from chronic illness (disease state), or if you feel slight imbalances in your health (imbalanced state).

Naturopathic doctors have a reputation of being the “last resort” to many people – usually after failed attempts with conventional treatment, and realizing the impact nutrition and lifestyle can have on health, many people seek out our care without realizing that they could have been doing this from the start!

Our treatments compliment what you are doing with your family physician and specialist, so you don’t have to choose one system over the other.

The primary goal of naturopathic treatments is to awaken and encourage the body’s natural and innate system of healing by treating the ROOT CAUSE of the complaints.Naturopathic medicine works BEST when we are treating the “imbalanced” state – the further in to the “disease state” you are, the longer it may take to see results.

The length of time it takes to see good results using naturopathic treatments depends on 1) the severity of disease 2) the compliance of the patient.

So no matter if you have mild digestive issues or have been diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, naturopathic medicine as well with your determination and commitment can drastically improve your health!