Naturopathic Medicine is the Future of Healthcare

By Dr. Darcy A. Ries

Chronic disease care in the U.S. follows a predictable storyline. It goes a little something like this:

The Quick Fix

You begin to experience some bothersome symptoms, so you make an appointment with your doctor. After 3-6 months (or more) of waiting, your appointment date comes around. You sit in a stuffy waiting room for 20-30 minutes, before getting shuffled into a treatment room by the medical assistant, who dutifully takes your vitals and checks off the items listed in the computer’s intake while barely looking you in the eye. 

The doctor finally comes; she asks a few pointed questions and writes you a prescription, before whizzing out the door because she’s over-booked. With 20 more patients to see that day, she just doesn’t have the time to sit with your case or listen to your health story. It’s not that she doesn’t care; the system doesn’t afford her the time to care. 

You head home, prescription in hand, and a few weeks later are feeling well again. Until you aren’t. Weeks or months go by, but you begin to recognize the slow return of old symptoms, or the onslaught of new ones. Things seem to be compounding. The process above repeats, maybe for months, perhaps for years.

Healthcare? Or Sick Care?

Over time, you realize your health has somehow become like a runaway train that you just can’t get control of. Maybe you chalk it up to aging. Or stress. But everyone is aging and busy, so what’s wrong with you, you wonder? 

Now, your medical chart lists two or three regular medications and a handful of diagnoses that you never seem to graduate from. Your health picture becomes “complex” and now you have a specialist or two or three. Your doctors don’t often talk to each other, making your care process disjointed and sometimes redundant. 

Through it all, you feel like something is missing. After all, shouldn’t you be getting better? You don’t want your conditions to be “managed”; you want your health back. 

The same approach is getting the same unsatisfying results. This is where many people start looking for alternatives: functional medicine, integrative medicine, holistic practitioners. 

Enter Naturopathic Medicine

This approach slows down to look at the whole picture. It knows there are important connections in your story that provide clues to how you got here, and how you can find your way back. It takes more than 12 minutes to figure out where things went wrong, and naturopathic doctors will give you between 45-60 minutes of facetime, education, and expertise at each visit to help you get there. Beyond this, we know the body can heal, when given the right tools – including natural therapies. We’re interested in bridging the gap between what conventional medicine can offer, and what it can’t. 

Naturopathic medicine is both functional and integrative. As taught at an accredited naturopathic medical school, naturopathy blends natural medicine, functional medicine and integrative medicine approaches, resulting in comprehensive alternative health care. Licensed naturopathic doctors follow all the functional medicine principles – and have even before “functional medicine” became the buzz word it is today. The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) was actually later created by the same individual who helped establish the first accredited naturopathic medical school in North America, Bastyr University. This is no accident. This was naturopathic medicine sharing its wise approach to care with the rest of the medical world. 

What it means to be “Integrative”

Integrative Medicine marries holistic care with conventional care and diagnostics, and honors an evidence-based approach.  In many states, licensed naturopathic doctors serve in this very role. Before moving to VA, Dr. Ries practiced integrative medicine in the state of OR, using conventional diagnostics and offering alternative treatments alongside conventional ones, allowing patients a choice in their care.

A New Approach to Chronic Disease Care

While conventional medicine excels at acute care, naturopathic medicine excels at preventing and addressing chronic disease. It doesn’t aim to simply band-aid a problem; it’s looking for the source of the problem and asking “What’s underlying and contributing to this patient’s disease process?”

This peels back the layers of chronic illness so the process can be slowed, halted, and ideally reversed. How did this person’s health get off-track? How do we re-orient the body towards health? What systems do we need to support? What obstacles exist that are getting in the way? Naturopathic medicine addresses these questions and more. 

Another important factor to approaching chronic disease is engaging the patient as an active agent in their own care. By helping them understand the body they live in and how their choices and environment impact their health, healthcare becomes a partnership in which patient and provider are both rowing together in the same direction.

The Future of Healthcare, Divided

Naturopathic medicine is perfectly poised to address the chronic disease epidemic in America. But it faces some challenges due to accessibility and oversight. 

In many states, naturopathic medicine is licensed and regulated, allowing naturopathic physicians to serve as primary care providers and/or medical specialists. In others, like Virginia, no licensure or regulation exists, meaning naturopathic doctors can only serve as health consultants, and will need to partner with the rest of your care team due to limitations on practicing general medicine. This also means that in unlicensed states, many naturopathic “doctors” have simply completed short online health training programs – in no way equivalent to a medical doctorate with clinical training – which can further confuse matters. 

When choosing a naturopathic doctor, consider those that hold a naturopathic medical license somewhere – yes, even in another state – as this means they’ve gone to a 4 year accredited, medically based program, passed national two-part board exams, and have been vetted, approved, and are being actively overseen by a naturopathic medical board somewhere. Without these factors, one is not eligible for holding a license. And if you’d like Virginia to join the ranks of the other states that license and regulate their naturopathic doctors, tell your legislators. You can advocate for safe and comprehensive naturopathic healthcare in VA here.

Dr. Ries is a Oregon-licensed naturopathic doctor who received her doctoral training in Portland, OR at the National College for Natural Medicine, now NUNM. She is also a licensed massage therapist. Her practice provides naturopathic medicine consultations and therapeutic bodywork to help women move toward optimal health and feel more at ease within their bodies. Schedule a consultation to learn more.