The Healing Power of Nature
Recently I’ve found myself going back to the real basics of Naturopathic medicine. The principles First, Do No Harm and The Healing Power of Nature have been incredibly important and have stood me (and those patients I’ve work with) in good stead.
In a month of complex cases, patients have presented with myriad symptoms that seem to have little common thread. The lady with fatigue, fluid retention, headaches and random rashes appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Her blood results are perfect. Or the man with horrible gut pain, headaches and attacks of vomiting whose scans are all clear and nothing shows up in his blood tests either. It is situations like these that often prompt people to show up to a Naturopath in the first place, when their GP doesn’t have any obvious answers for them.
I don’t mind, in fact I love that I can be the one to de-complicate things for them and, instead, guide them to understand what their body may be trying to tell them.
First, Do No Harm. Aside from the obvious, this principle really means that illness has a purpose, the symptoms of which are the body trying to heal itself. Therefore, we do not want to suppress the symptoms without removing the underlying cause(s).
The Healing Power of Nature. Each body has a profound ability to heal itself. Our job is to simply create the right environment for it to do so. This means:
Removing obstacles that get in the way of healing:
Poor diet: refined/processed foods devoid of any nutritional value, sugar, deep fried foods, lack of fruit and vegetables
High-burden substances: alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, food colourings and preservatives
Lack of water
Toxins: Our world is full of them (PCBs, exhaust fumes, xeno-oestrogens, pesticides, etc.) but we can certainly minimise them through wise choices around cleaning products, make up, organic veggies
Supplying lots of the stuff it needs:
An abundance of richly coloured vegetables and fruits
Good quality proteins
Plenty of water
In an ever-more-complicated world, it’s a relief to keep it simple. For both these patients, where the underlying cause was just not obvious, all we did was to RESET the body. A couple of weeks just eating veggies and meat and fish and eggs and drinking loads of water. No sugar, no grains, no alcohol no coffee. They felt pretty ghastly for the first few days, but then it’s as if a light turned on. The body, having been unburdened of all that stuff that was getting in its way, and given the right environment in which it can do what it’s designed to do, starts the process of healing.
Rocket science? – No.
A little bit magic? – Maybe.