1. First, Do No Harm (primum no nocere)
I often see clients who have tried the conventional health care route, and it hasn’t worked for them. They decide to seek out natural health care because they have no other options. Often, when I look at the client’s history, I find out that certain treatments caused more harm than good.
Natural health care offers therapies that present a very low (if any) risk of unwanted side effects.
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2. Nature Has Healing Powers
Have you ever cut yourself and had to get a drug or treatment of any sort to make it heal? Your answer is probably ‘no.’
Our body has a tremendous ability to heal as long as the cause is removed. We don’t have to think about healing, it just happens. That is the beauty of nature.
3. Identify and Treat the Cause
Today, people rely all too often on a “band-aid” solution. If one has a headache, they reach for the nearest Tylenol™, when in fact the cause of the headache isn’t a Tylenol™ deficiency. The cause may be attributed to any number of things, for example; dehydration, tension, allergies, toxicity, or low-blood sugar.
In order to realize true healing, the cause must be addressed. Otherwise, we are just trying to support a wall that will eventually crumble.
4. Treat the Whole Person
There was a song I used to sing when I was a kid about the foot bone being connected to the leg bone being connected to the hip bone, and so on. Everything is connected in the body and we thus need to treat it as a complete organism.
Too often we compartmentalize the body as if it were separate parts working independently of the whole. If we have a cold, we go to an ear, nose and throat doctor. Problems with the heart, we seek out a cardiologist. Problems with the kidney, we get referred to a nephrologist. Brain, neurologist. Autoimmune, rheumatologist. Cancer, oncologist.
Natural medicine understands that all systems are connected and need to all be considered in a treatment plan.
5. The Practitioner Is a Teacher
Most of what I do in my office is teach. I spend much time with a client explaining three very important aspects of their health:
- How they built their current health state.
- What health actually is, and where they stand on the health continuum.
- How they will return to health.
If a client understands the why, the how will take care of itself.
I remember a particular client who had been diagnosed with celiac disease and had seen fourteen doctors over about ten years. No one had ever explained to her exactly what celiac was. When I had finished presenting her program to her, she was elated because she now understood her condition.
6. Prevention is the Best Cure
Unfortunately, most clients have failed to practice prevention and, thus, end up in my office. Once we deal with the immediate issue, a maintenance program is put in place to prevent illness from happening again.
The saying is cliche and has been used to death, but the truth is “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
I wish people would come see me before they got sick. It would make both of our jobs a lot easier.
7. Establish Health and Wellness
It is my belief that we have been given a body to use while we are here on earth, and that it is our responsibility to keep it in the best shape possible in order to carry out our life’s purpose.
Health and wellness is not a hobby, a fad, or a trend. It is a responsibility to yourself.
In great health!
– Josh
