Consideration of the benefits of using naturopathic medicine to care for chronic illness begins with the basic fact that people are divided into two groups, those who believe that people are divided into two groups, and those who don’t.
So, practitioners of naturopathic medicine are divided into two groups, naturopaths, and naturopathic physicians, depending on the extent of their departure from the practice of conventional medicine, with the former group employing features of both naturopathy and conventional medicine. You can learn more about the philosophy of this practice by consulting the American Association of Neuropathic Physicians. In addition, the group’s website discusses such current issues as how to prepare for the impending flu season and whether the practice will be recognized under the new health care legislation.
What would lead a patient to seek the services of a practitioner of naturopathic medicine? It could be that a patient suffers from chronic pain or from a degenerative disease such a Parkinson’s or cancer. Another possibility is that the patient is a Christian Scientist or adheres to another faith that eschews the use of conventional medicine. It is also possible that a patient might be discouraged by his or her perception of the costs, benefits, and risks of medicine as it is currently practiced, even in the most prestigious hospitals.
For example, in one of the great teaching hospitals, a patient was given a stimulant instead of an anesthetic during an operation because, first, the substances were decanted from marked into unmarked vessels, and then the wrong vessel was used, with the result that the patient died. In another case, a patient receiving elective knee surgery died when due to unforeseen complications. Other sources of patient misgivings are reports of unmanageable staph infections, especially in hospitals that fail to follow established hygienic procedures and publicity regarding unnecessary tests that may be administered in order to practice defensive medicine or spread the cost of maintaining expensive equipment. Recently Sixty Minutes ran a segment on a hospital chain that has been accused of setting goals for the admission to the hospital of patients who present themselves to the emergency room.
In sum, it appears to have become more difficult than ever for conventional doctors to follow the maxim, “First Do No Harm.” Therefore, it is understandable that patients managing their own chronic disease or helping someone else may wish to seek the opinion of a practitioner of Naturopathic Medicine.
