Saturday 14 May 2011

Treating Skin With Naturopathy

Naturopathy medicine works with the vis medicatrix or the healing power of nature and helps to stimulate the body's vital force to heal.

Q1: Are you able to describe us what naturopathy is all about?
Everything you require to heal is within nature: they use natural substances, herbs, flower essences, homeopathy and food. It is about aligning yourself with the natural order of the world, the natural rhythms: the moon, the tides, getting up with the sun, going to bed with the sun, being in sync with nature. When they fall out of tune with Sister Nature, diseases ensues.

I would say that naturopathic medicine also works at the level of spirit as well as at the level of biomechanics, biochemistry, and the mental/ emotional body. When they are out of sync and when they hold on to emotions like anger, jealousy, hatred, or impatience, those vibrations and patterns affect our body.

Dr. Bruce Hoffman, an MD in Calgary says that, 'disease is a reaction to the human experience'. So it is how they deal with the human experience. If they resist things, they get stuck in the trauma, they don't flow with life and diseases manifests. However, when they embrace and learn from our human experience, when they grow and expand with compassion and awareness, they flow as a river.

Q2: How could naturopathic medicine help people with skin issues?
There's plenty of modalities that all naturopathic doctors are trained in: nutrition, herbal medicine, acupuncture/ Chinese medicine, homeopathy, counselling, hydrotherapy, and, physical medicine. They are also trained in chiropractic manipulation. However, NDs often refer patients to a chiropractic Doctor.

The preliminary visit lasts about hour. They take the patient's medical history, where is the disease, when did it start, what makes it better, what makes it worst, etc. They also go over relatives history. They look at current/ past medications or supplements. Then they review diet, your lifestyle, what are your stressors. They also evaluate environmental factors. They also do a review of systems to see if there's other pathologies that may be related to your skin disease. For example, skin diseases often coexist with asthma, hay fever, or seasonal allergies.

Treatment begins on the second visit. In the therapeutic order of naturopathic medicine, they always start with diet and lifestyle. You can give someone homeopathy, supplements, but in the event that they are eating sweet bars every day or in the event that they are smoking a pack of cigarettes, that is going to be a immense hindrance to their cure. They are what they eat so it is about changing a person's diet.
People with a skin disease are often prescribed fish oils, which are anti-inflammatory among other things. These people also tend to be aggravated by dairy. This is something that is often removed initially at least and tested to see if there is a sensitivity.

On the second visit, I perform a complaint oriented physical examination. They also do Chinese tongue and pulse diagnosis.

Q3: Does it mean you work on both physical signs and mental causes?
It is vital to look at relatives history , if that person was breastfed, for example. Often in kids who have had skin diseases, they have never been breastfed. So they would be introduced with a formula at a early age before the GI tract had time to create, and then inflammatory processes are created. It is also about healing the digestive technique. They use supplements, tinctures/ herbs, teas and homeopathy, and also counselling.

Yes, absolutely, I feel that is key. There is always a narrative underlying the physical pathology. It is about getting to the root cause or getting to that story or delusion (limiting belief technique), as well as supporting the body with high vibrational food that is going to encourage healing and increase vitality. At the finish of the day, they are all responsible for our own healing. All of us have obstacles to face and to overcome. This is essential to growth. If they look at it this way they can see that disease is not an enemy but in lieu a mate.

Q4: Let's focus on eczema for instance; Is early diagnosis and early treatment important for managing eczema?
The more youthful anyone is, the less time they have had the disease, the faster the treatment usually goes. If someone has used topical steroids on their skin for plenty of years, it usually takes longer to treat, because the disease has been suppressed, not cured. Fundamentally the general guideline is that for every year you have had the skin disease, it may take month of treatment. However, this is not a hard fast rule.

Q5: What are the most common skin conditions for which you have received the best results with naturopathic medicine?
Probiotics are important for eczema, to re-establish lovely gut flora and to heal the digestive tract. Probiotics and fish oils are often used to treat eczema. There's plenty of other things : digestive enzymes, bitters, definite vitamins, zinc, red clover tea, and red clover cream.

Diet is immense. They usually remove dairy and gluten, and that is often effective. There is no protocol for person. You cannot give the same things to everybody. You require to treat everybody differently. Each individual requires a different homeopathic treatment that is specific to the totality of their signs, that matches their essence. That part of the therapy is different. The diet is usually similar. But again, it depends on the individual.

Allopathic medicine is important in saving people's lives, for example, emergency medicine. Some surgeries or medications for acute issues such as a serious infection are timely and appropriate for people. However, for chronic, sub-acute conditions, naturopathic medicine gets to the root cause and can be healing.

Q6: What is your view on medical treatments and how best do you involve natural treatments?
I think Albert Schweitzer said it best... 'Every patient carries her or his own doctor inside'.

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