Role of a Doctor vs role of a naturopath

[Guest guest]

Well, if you think about health care, there are kind of two basic philosophies -- one is kind of the interventionist philosophy seen by conventional medical doctors, where the role of the doctor is to diagnose that disease and treat that disease. And the other side of the pendulum, you might say, is more of the natural oriented kind of practitioner who believes their primary role is to promote the health of the patient rather than specifically treat disease.

Now, Naturopaths do treat disease, however, we treat diseases from the perspective of helping the body get healthier so that the body can get rid of the disease. So, for example, a medical doctor might use a drug, an antibiotic, to kill off an infection when a patient has an infection. What we would rather do is look at why is that person's immune system not working the way it's supposed to, and look at what diet, herbal, lifestyle changes they need so that their immune system will work properly, and not only will that current infection go away, but they'll have less chance of infections in the future.