VIDEO: What is Naturopathic Medicine?

Dr. Angela Stengler: Thanks for joining us on Natural Healing. I'm Dr. Angela Stengler, here with Dr. Mark Stengler, and we're going to be talking to you about naturopathic medicine. But before we explain what it is and how it can help you, Dr. Mark and I are going to talk to you about why we decided to go into naturopathic medicine instead of the conventional medical route. So, Dr. Mark, want to explain a little bit why you decided to go into naturopathic medicine?

Dr. Stengler: Sure. As a youngster, I was very much involved in different types of athletics, so I would experiment with different diets, training programs, and supplements — very much into natural health. Then, as I got older, like a lot of teenagers, I developed acne and was given multiple courses of antibiotics, and developed digestive problems and fatigue. After that, doctors couldn't help me with my problems — they ruled out serious diseases, but for something like that there really was no help. So I ended up seeing a naturopathic doctor, got a lot better, and decided this is what I want to do. I finished my years at university and then went to naturopathic medical school for four years, and that's where we met.

Dr. Angela Stengler: I studied abroad in college my junior year in England, and I broke my toe. I hobbled down to the health center, and the nurse there told me to go back to my room and put on something called witch hazel, which I had never heard of. I asked my dorm roommate what witch hazel was, and she came out with something that looked like a tube of toothpaste and said to rub it on my broken toe, which I did, and it seemed to bring out the bruising, and I was able to play basketball and run in no time. I thought, this is amazing. So when I got back to the States, I talked to my pre-medical advisor at college, and he himself was working on Chinese medicine, mushrooms, and how they can help cancer, so he was very positive about natural medicine and led me in the right direction. It was phenomenal, especially because I've never been able to take conventional drugs — I've always had side effects with them and been too sensitive — so natural medicine has been perfect for me.

Dr. Angela Stengler: So let's talk about what naturopathic medicine is. We strive to prevent, diagnose, and treat, and it's very important in naturopathic medicine because we want to do no harm. So let's discuss those.

Dr. Stengler: As naturopathic doctors, we have extensive training in regular medicine, sometimes called conventional medicine, in regard to diagnosing disease using all the modern lab tests, listening to the patient, and examining the patient. We're trained in pharmaceutical medications and also trained in minor surgery, but we're also extensively trained in natural therapies, which is a very wide category in itself — whether it be nutrition and diet, using supplements, herbal medicine, homeopathy, bodywork, counseling, or Chinese medicine. What we do with patients is work to treat the root cause of why they're predisposed to illness or why they're sick currently. We listen to the patient, do exams, and use modern testing, and the big difference is we focus on trying to treat them naturally. There are many advantages to that as opposed to pharmaceutical drugs and surgery: it enables us to treat the root cause of the problem more effectively, because we know through studies and common sense that a lot of conditions people have are related to their diet, lifestyle, how they handle stress, and environmental toxins. Secondly, natural medicine is superior in that the risk of side effects is greatly reduced compared to pharmaceutical medications and surgery.

Dr. Angela Stengler: Now, in the United States, there are a number of states that are licensed for naturopathic doctors to practice, and there's a difference between licensed naturopathic doctors and ones that are not licensed. We are licensed — after undergraduate school, we went to a naturopathic medical school, and there's a handful of them in the United States, and then we take our board exam, so we are licensed as family practitioners in that state. The national association is the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, also known as the AANP; they have a website, naturopathic.org, which gives a listing of all the states that are licensed and all the naturopathic doctors across the country who've been to accredited schools and have their proper training.

Dr. Angela Stengler: So, Dr. Mark, let's discuss the principles of naturopathic medicine. The first principle is the healing power of nature — talk about that.

Dr. Stengler: The healing power of nature basically states that the body has the inherent ability to heal itself, which is true — if you cut yourself, normally you're able to have that cut heal; if you get a bruise, that can heal up — and the same goes for many conditions people are exposed to. So the body has a self-healing mechanism. As naturopathic doctors, what we want to do is remove the obstacles that are keeping you from getting well — things like toxins, how you're handling stress, your diet, what nutrients you're lacking, your hormone balance, many different factors — and we use natural healing agents that stimulate the body to heal itself more effectively, more rapidly, or balance the body out.

Dr. Angela Stengler: You kind of intertwined the second point, which is identify and treat the cause.

Dr. Stengler: That's one of the big aspects people are learning about in medicine. Often people can get symptom relief using pain medications, other medications, or even surgeries, but all too often those mask what's underlying the problem. So as naturopathic doctors, we're looking at the triggers or root causes of why you have these health problems or are predisposed to certain conditions, and using natural medicine through diet and other natural healing techniques, we can get the body balanced out or help the patient identify what's causing them to get sick in the first place.

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