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Natural Medicine
Natural Medicine - Naturopathy Naturopathy has a holistic and preventative approach to health care. A naturopath will want to know about a patient’s diet, lifestyle, and environment, as well as the history of their complaint. This range of information is important to the practitioner, who seeks to discover the cause of illness and treat the whole person, rather than the symptoms alone. The range of non-invasive techniques used in naturopathy includes: The range of disorders commonly treated by naturopaths includes: Naturopathy maintains that the body can heal itself if given the right conditions. These natural medicine treatments are non-invasive and are designed to stimulate the body’s own healing powers. They include:
Homeopathy attempts to stimulate the body to recover itself. First, we must accept that all symptoms, represent the body's attempt to restore itself to health. Instead of looking upon the symptoms as something wrong which must be set right, we see them as signs of the way the body is attempting to help itself. A homeopath will give a remedy that will cause the symptom in a healthy person, and thus stimulate the ill body to restore itself. In conventional medical thought, health is seen simply as the absence of disease. You assume that you are healthy if there is nothing wrong with you. To a person versed in homeopathy, health is much more than that. A healthy person is a person who is free on all levels: physical, emotional, and mental. Obviously, a person with a broken leg is not free, on the physical level, to move around. But on a more subtle level, a person who cannot eat certain foods or is allergic to certain materials is also experiencing a lack of freedom. The homeopath recognizes such limitations and attempts, through the use of the properly selected remedies, to restore the person to health and freedom. An important basic difference exists between conventional medical therapy and homeopathy. In conventional therapy, the aim often is to control the illness through regular use of medical substances, even if the medication is nothing more than vitamins. If the medication is withdrawn, however, the person returns to illness. There has been no cure. A person who takes a pill for high blood pressure every day is not undergoing a cure but is only controlling the symptoms. Homeopathy's aim is the cure. Natural Medicine - Herbalism Also known as phytotherapy, is folk and traditional medicinal practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts. Finding healing powers in plants is an ancient idea. People in all continents have long used hundreds, if not thousands, of indigenous plants for treatment of various ailments dating back to prehistory, the beginnings of natural medicine. Herbs or medicinal plants have a long history in treating disease. In traditional Chinese medicine, for example, the written history of herbal medicine goes back over 2000 years and herbalists in the West have used “weeds” equally long to treat that which ails us. We are all familiar with the virtues of Garlic, Chamomile, Peppermint, Lavender, and other common herbs. Herbs are considered treasures when it comes to ancient cultures and herbalists, and many so-called weeds are worth their weight in gold. Dandelion, Comfrey, Digitalis (Foxglove), the Poppy, Milk Thistle, Stinging nettle, and many others, have well-researched and established medicinal qualities that have few, if any, rivals in the pharmaceutical industry. The active ingredients from many of these natural medicines have been isolated and synthesized in many pharmaceuticals.
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