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Host: My favorite principle of naturopathic medicine is this one: first, do no harm.
Dr. Stengler: That's a principle that goes all the way back to Hippocrates. There's no use using a therapy with a patient which is going to harm them, causing more problems than they started with. The beauty of natural medicine in naturopathic medicine is that the therapies are generally so safe, because they work with the natural healing systems of the body, so harming the patient isn't really much of an issue typically — we're able to help them in a non-toxic, safe way.
Host: This next principle, doctor as teacher — I think you are a prime example of that. You're always taking your supplements, you do your vegetable wheatgrass shake and chia seeds every morning, you do your exercise every morning. You really do practice what you preach.
Dr. Stengler: When you're a doctor as teacher, you can be a good representative of what you represent, but we also need to teach patients. As naturopathic doctors, we teach people how to get healthy and how to stay healthy, and that's ultimately what you want for the patient — once they get healthy and you teach them what to do to take care of themselves, that's the best way to help people. If you're just giving drugs and masking the symptoms, the person doesn't ultimately recover from the illness. So we want to teach people what they need to do — their diet, their lifestyle, stress reduction, identifying toxins in the environment or the diet — and how they can prevent illness themselves.
Host: Another principle we want to talk about is treating the whole person, which I think is really important, especially for women, because sometimes we don't feel heard when we go to the conventional doctor.
Dr. Stengler: There are many factors to health: the mental component, the emotional component, social factors, spiritual factors. As naturopathic doctors, we like to look at the person as a whole — their diet, nutrition, family life, and the many factors that affect your health. By addressing all those factors, you get much better results, and it allows you to treat the root cause or causes of why a person is sick or susceptible to getting ill.
Host: This principle, prevention, is extremely important, but unfortunately the public, including me, does not realize how important it is to prevent illness, because it does take work.
Dr. Stengler: As naturopathic doctors, we partner with the patient. We partner with them to teach them what they need to do, to identify the problems in their life which are causing illness — what's going on with their diet, how they're handling stress — using modern lab testing to find out where their imbalances are. So you partner with the patient more as a team to help them, which is a really different dynamic than what you typically see.
"Do no harm." The first principle of naturopathic medicine goes all the way back to Hippocrates. Obviously, there's no use in using a therapy for a patient if it's going to cause some other kind of harm. Our San Diego naturopathic doctors avoid prescriptions like those you'd find commonly from conventional doctors that will have adverse side effects. Natural medicines are good for the whole body, and that's the core of naturopathic medicine. Watch this three-minute video on this and some of the other principles of naturopathic medicine.
