Hi Everyone. I was recently reading when I came across the following research newspaper summary.
I was fascinated by it. This was criticism, from a non Naturopathic source, which articulated a Naturopathic criticism of the allopathic system of disease that has existed for at least a century, and which was held by our forbears for centuries prior to the formation of Naturopathic Medicine.
To remind ourselves the principles of Naturopathic medicine are
- The body is a self regulating whole.
- Disease as an attempt of the vitality to restore balance within it’s whole self.
- Successful treatment of disease involves the stimulation of the bodies own self regulatory ability.
Allopathic medicine holds to different principles:
- The body is a complex machine
- Disease is a malfunction of the machine
- Successful treatment of disease is the return of the body to statistically normal function
These basics, while simple, lead to some profound differences in practice and all other aspects of Medicine, diagnosis perhaps most of all.
Allopathic medicine’s ideas about health and illness tend to also produce the concept of the diagnosis, the idea that there are entities, which we term diseases, that afflict people. Naturopathic medicine, in contrast recognizes common physiological processes which can become disordered in individuals, but places much less emphasis on entities. In allopathic medicine diagnosis leads to a treatment to treat diseases and return it’s functioning to normal. Naturopathic diagnoses tend to focus on physiological functions that have been disrupted, and, using homeopathy, the curative therapy. Naturopath’s diagnose a phosphorus pneumonia, a rumex cough, a calc carb diarrhea, and so forth.
The above article that I mentioned pointed out the futility of the allopathic system of diagnosis and treatment in the area of psychiatry. Diagnoses are overlapping and arbitrary, and bear no relationship to therapy. Diagnoses also conceal a number of common processes, such as developmental trauma, and I would also argue, developmental plateau and nutrient deficiency, common processes which contribute to many pathologies.
Allopathic therapies, based on drugs, electroshock therapy, and some psychotherapy, do not address these processes, by and large. Some noble and notable MDs have indeed spoken about about this, such as Gabor Mate, and Megan Rodway, have spoken on this, but the vast majority of practicing psychiatrists have not absorbed these insights. At the moment, only those rare MDs, and Naturopathic Doctors, are thier best option.