Naturopathic Medicine is a system of medicine that focuses, through the use of non-toxic natural therapies, on the prevention and treatment of diseases. No chemical medications, surgery or other invasive procedures are used in Naturopathy.

Naturopathy, sometimes referred to as natural medicine, is a largely scientific approach said to assist nature, support the body's own innate capacity to achieve optimal health and facilitate the body's inherent healing mechanisms.

Philosophy of Naturopathic Medicine:

Naturopathic Doctors assert that diseases are the body's effort to purify itself, and that cure results from increasing the patient's vital force. We claim to stimulate the body's natural healing processes by ridding it of waste products and toxins. At first glance, this approach may appear reasonable. However, a closer look will show that naturopathy's philosophy is simplistic.

The notion of a vital force or life force - a non-material force that transcends the laws of chemistry and physics - originated in ancient times. Historians call it the doctrine of vitalism. Previously, no scientific evidence could support this doctrine, but a huge body of knowledge, including the entire discipline of organic chemistry, and very much recently Quantum Physics have started to come in to play.

Vitalistic practitioners maintain that diseases should be treated by stimulating the body's ability to heal itself rather than by only treating symptoms. Homoeopaths, for example, claim that illness is due to a disturbance of the body's vital force, which they can correct with special remedies; Acupuncturists claim that disease is due to imbalance in the flow of life energy (chi or Qi), which they can re-balance by inserting and vibrating needles in the skin; Chiropractors claim to assist the body's innate intelligence by adjusting the patient's spine; Naturopaths speak of Vis Medicatrix Naturae.; Ayurvedic physicians refer to "prana." And so on.

The energies suggested by vitalists cannot be measured by scientific methods.
According to a comprehensive report presented to the United States Congress in 1970 by the National Association of Naturopathic Physicians (NANP):
“Naturopathy . . . is the technique of prevention and treatment of human disease, which emphasizes assisting nature. It can embrace minor surgery and the use of nature's agencies, forces, processes and products, introducing them to the human body by any means that will produce health-yielding results.”

Naturopathy is based upon the tendency of the body to maintain a balance and to heal itself. The purpose of naturopathic medicine is to further this process by using natural remedies . . . as distinct from orthodox medicine (allopathy), which seeks to combat disease by using remedies which are chosen to destroy the causative agent or which produce effects different from those produced by the disease treated.

In applying naturopathic principles to healing, the practitioner may administer one or more specified physiological, mechanical, nutritional, manual, phytotherapeutic, or animal devices or substances. The practitioner's end aim is to remove obstacles to the body's normal functioning, applying natural forces to restore its recuperative facilities. Only those preparations and doses, which act in harmony with the body economy, are utilized, to alter perverse functions, cleanse the body of its catabolic wastes, and promote its anabolic processes.

The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) states that "naturopathic medicine has its own unique body of knowledge, evolved and refined for centuries" and is "effective in treating all health problems, whether acute or chronic."

What are the differences between Naturopathic and Allopathic Medicine?

According to a 1989 AANP brochure, the main difference [between naturopathic and conventional medicine] is in the philosophic approach. Naturopathic physicians treat patients by restoring overall health rather than suppressing a few key symptoms. Naturopathic physicians are concerned with finding the underlying cause of a condition and applying treatments that work in alliance with the natural healing mechanisms of the body rather than against them.

Naturopathic treatments result less frequently in adverse effects, or in the chronic conditions that inevitably arise when the cause of disease is not identified and thus left untreated.

Naturopathic Medicine, practiced today in Western countries and open societies, is a form of complementary medicine to allopathy, meaning it enhances the quality of the outcome of conventional treatments.

What medical subjects are taught in Naturopathic Schools?

Today, in North America, Naturopathic Medicine, as a form of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, is taught in accredited schools after all the basic medical sciences such as Human Anatomy and Physiology, Histology and Cytology, Biochemistry, Pathology and so on. It addition to those, it includes a minimum of 7 basic modalities in natural therapies including:

1.	Clinical Nutrition (food, diet and nutritional supplementations)
2.	Botanical Medicine (medicinal herbs)
3.	Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
4.	Homeopathy
5.	Physical Medicine, Body Manipulation & Chiropractic techniques
6.	Counseling, life-style modifications
7.	Hydrotherapy

Many other natural modalities, such as techniques and technologies in Quantum Physics for further natural diagnosis and treatments may be selected by the practitioners according to their interests and experience. Reflexology, osteopathy, aromatherapy, many other forms of therapeutic massages, are the other effective natural modalities.

Important message for health conscious people to know:

In our world today, due to rapid growth in the number of chronic and degenerative diseases among human, increasing side effects of technologies and scientific advancements that have dragged people far away from their natural environments, adverse effects of pharmaceuticals, as well as enhancement of education and health consciousness, there is a high demand for natural medical interventions which is increasing and in fact, Naturopathic Medicine can play a major role in satisfying these needs and restoring health and preventing diseases by a more comprehensive and reliable philosophy and approach.

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