Naturopathy vs. Allopathy: Why the difference matters for your health.
Challenging Viewpoints: A Survey of Naturopathy, Allopathy, Germ Theory, Terrain Model, Energetic Herbalism and the Spectrum of Health.
Before continuing with The Tao of Poo series, I want to provide a comparison between Naturopathic and Allopathic perspectives, but primarily to highlight another perspective that you may not have considered, or even heard about.
Two Paths: Different Perspectives
Naturopathy: Naturopathy takes a holistic approach to health, considering the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of an individual’s well-being.
Conventional Medicine: Conventional medicine primarily focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of specific diseases and medical conditions. It tends to address symptoms and manage illnesses using medications, surgery, and other interventions.
What is Allopathy?
Allopathy is undoubtedly the form of healthcare that you’re most familiar with, and what most people accept as the norm. We’ve been adapted to it over the course of our lives, and it doesn’t take too much explanation.
The word “allopathic” comes from the Greek “allos” — meaning “opposite” — and “pathos” — meaning “to suffer.” This word was coined by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in the early 1800s. It roughly refers to treating a symptom with its opposite, as is often done in mainstream medicine. Hahnemann was interested in other approaches based more on ancient principles of treating “like with like.” He later left his mainstream medical practice and is considered to be the founder of homeopathy. [Emphasis Added] Healthline
“Treating a symptom with its opposite”— for instance you may treat constipation with a laxative. If you get a cold, you would go to the pharmacy and get an over-the-counter medication that will suppress your runny nose and persistent cough. We’re all aware that some of the management approaches have side effects requiring further management. The underlying cause remains, and the symptom(s) may reoccur.
There is certainly a place for allopathic medicine, and I’m not saying otherwise. This is especially true with an accute injury such as a broken arm or trauma from a car accident, or when there is an immediately life-threatening situation such as when a stroke or heart attack occurs. This is, in my opinion, where allopathic medicine shines the brightest - emergency care in an immediate crisis.
Allopathic medicine understands the importance of preventative care and they do make recommendations about diet and lifestyle changes. However, it’s common that their preventive care is accompanied by medications.
There is little general understanding of the side effects and long-term risks associated with “routine or elective” surgical procedures, chemotherapy or radiation used for cancer treatment, over-prescription of medications, antibiotic use, use of over-the-counter medications, and the reliance on some isolated therapies such as estrogen or testosterone therapies, or cholesterol-lowering medications, just to name a few of the many allopathic options available today, even while they may provide short-term relief.
Medication overload among older adults — also known as polypharmacy — is a real and devastating public health issue. As a report by the nonprofit Lown Institute noted, “Over the past few decades, medication use in the U.S., especially for older people, has gone far beyond necessary polypharmacy to the point where millions are overloaded with too many prescriptions and are experiencing significant harm as a result.” WebMD
Increasingly, doctors are recognizing the value of the naturopathic approach, or what is termed alternative medicine, or complementary medicine when it accompanies allopathic treatment. Although some changes are being made, the fact remains that there is a gray area between providing patient care and the economics of healthcare.
It is no secret that ethical concerns about drug pricing, treatment marketing, and patent exclusivity have been a constant battle between pharma companies, regulatory agencies, healthcare professionals, and patients. However, one less-known gray area is the role of pharmaceutical sponsorships in provider education. … Overall, it’s unlikely that pharmaceutical sponsorships will ever completely dissipate from medical education. Financial reliance on these sponsors and investors could cause economic repercussions if they were eliminated. PharmaNews Intelligence
This is a complex topic that exceeds the space of this post, however, it is important to understand the motivations, as well as the differences in perspectives of different medical and healing methods.
What is Naturopathy
Naturopathic medicine is a distinct system of primary health care that emphasizes prevention through the use of food, herbs, and natural therapies — and most importantly, supporting the body’s innate ability to heal itself.
That cold mentioned in the allpathic description is one of the body’s primary methods of ridding itself of excess waste and the build up of toxins. Suppressing this healing mechanism may drive the waste and toxins deeper into the body, and leave the underlying cause unresolved. What we often consider a “mild” symptom is actually one end of a spectrum that, if left unchecked, may move into the “severe” end of the spectrum later on.
Naturopathy is a broad healing approach that considers the person as a whole and focuses on lifestyle, stress reduction, nutrition, hydration, and exercise along with detoxification, fasting, and other holistic modalities, as needed. While it is not considered modern science, it has ancient roots and a foundation similar to Western Traditional Herbalism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy, and Ayurvedic Medicine that humanity has successfully utilized well before modern ‘scientific’ medicine was born.
In fact, doctors of the early 20th century were primarily naturopathic in nature. But, this method of healing fell into a decline during the mid 1900s due to the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry, and subsequent political/social dominance of allopathic medicine.
Through the growth of modern hospitals, emergency medicine and improved hygiene through the late 19th century and early 20th century, lives have been saved and life spans extended. However, a 2018 study by Johns Hopkins claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000. Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.
It's a well-documented fact that adverse prescription drug effects and other medical errors are the third leading cause of death in America. Adverse drug events harm 2.7 million hospitalized patients in the U.S. annually, with over 106,000 deaths and that's just for hospitalized patients.
Frequently, Naturopathy, or alternative medicine, is a last resort for a person who has not been successful in finding healing, or is not satified with their current quality of life, or for someone who has been told that nothing else can be done for them. They leave their allopathic comfort zone, they look at their medications with some hesitation, and venture out to find something that may provide the relief and healing that they have been hoping for. Also, too many people are told that their symptoms are a result of aging rather than poor health, and this is accepted because there has been little experience of healing.
The fundamental principles of Naturopathic Medicine include:
Trust in the Healing Power of Nature.
Identify and Treat the Underlying Cause.
Do No Harm.
Treat the Whole Person.
Practitioner as Teacher.
Prevention.
The goal of the naturopathic practitioner is to restore balance and promote the body’s natural ability to heal.
Differences in Holistic Approach
There are allopathic practitioners today that are beginning to give more weight to diet, herbal medicine, and other holistic practices. However, at the same time there are holistic practitioners that use herbal remedies the same way allopathic practitioners prescribe medications— essentially using herbs to “treat” individual symptoms.
In addition to what I’ve outlined, there are long-standing and related holistic practices such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayruvedic Medicine that may be more familiar, but not completely understood.
Holistic health has more variation and depth that you may not be familiar with. These are complex topics all on their own, but I can provide a glimpse into their many layers. These methods are well worth exploring further.
The Gaia Hypothesis
Gaia hypothesis, “model of the Earth in which its living and nonliving parts are viewed as a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Developed c. 1972 largely by British chemist James E. Lovelock and U.S. biologist Lynn Margulis, the Gaia hypothesis is named for the Greek Earth goddess. It postulates that all living things have a regulatory effect on the Earth’s environment that promotes life overall; the Earth is homeostatic in support of life-sustaining conditions.”
The Earth, as a self-regulating system, is capable of auotmatically adjusting temperture, salinity of the oceans, and atmospheric conditions in response to changes in the planet’s ecosystem. Lovelock and Margulis correlate these actions of the Earth to the human body that is constantly regulating its temperature, fluids, and the tone of organs and tissues. Essentially, the architecture of the universe, the Earth, and the human body all have the same underlying method of self-regulating operation.
Terrain Model vs. Germ Theory
The germ theory of disease is the currently accepted scientific theory for many diseases. To suggest otherwise will lead only to rolling eyes and ridicule. It states that microorganisms known as pathogens or "germs" can cause or lead to disease.
"Germ" refers to not just a bacterium but to any type of microorganism, such as protists, fungi, viruses or other pathogens that may cause disease. Diseases caused by pathogens are called infectious diseases. Even when a pathogen is the principal cause of a disease, environmental and hereditary factors often influence the severity of the disease, and whether a potential host individual becomes infected when exposed to the pathogen. Pathogens are disease-carrying agents that can pass from one individual to another, both in humans and animals. Infectious diseases are caused by biological agents such as pathogenic microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, and fungi) as well as parasites.” [Wikipedia]
Germ theory indicates that if “other factors” are strong, that the germ or pathogen may not become problematic, and this is important.
Germ theory originated with Louis Pasteur, a 19th century French biologist and chemist. The word “pasteurized”, is a sterilization process used to kill bacteria, such as in packaged foods, wine, dairy products, and fruit juices. The high temperatures of pasteurization dramatically reduce antioxidant activity, if not eliminating it completely, destroying the naturally occurring digestive enzymes within the fruit (and juice) and changes the pH from alkaline to acid.
Less known, is that Pasteur had a fierce rivalry with other French scientists and researchers of the time, namely Antoine Bechamp and Claude Bernard, who were promoting the Terrain Model. However, the germ theory took hold and has prominently shaped the direction of modern medicine.
The Terrain Model, also referred to as Natural Hygiene (this link lists the major contributors to this practice), was later expanded on by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton, and others including T. C. Fry, a voracious researcher and scholar of the sciences of nutrition, physiology and healing, who continued the work with Dr. Shelton’s material as his foundation.
The Terrain Model does not dispute the fact that germs, bacteria, viruses or other pathogens can make us sick— but that the body condition is the important and prevailing factor. This is often ovelooked when this topic comes up, and fuels controversy. Terrain Model contends that bacteria or microbes are natural to the human body (our microbiome) and they provide many vital roles and functions, when in the proper balance. It states that a poor diet, the use of medications, and various lifestyle factors adversely affects the interior terrain, which creates a condition where the harmful pathogens thrive, and the beneficial bacteria and their ability to replicate and function is suppressed, or even eliminated.
The term “microbiome” is shorthand for the vast and still largely unexplored worlds of bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microorganisms that inhabit every corner of the planet. Bacteria form tiny ecosystems side by side with our own cells on our skin, in our mouths and along our airways and digestive tracts, as well as on all the surfaces we interact with—including our homes, workplaces, and hospitals, and the air, water, and soil. (Our microbiome even facilitates communication with every organ system in the body, including the brain through the gut-brain axis. It is vital to body functions that the microbiome is diverse and healthy.)
These microbes are so impactful that some researchers consider them to be a separate organ, which shapes our metabolism, susceptibility to allergic and inflammatory diseases, and even responses to medical treatments. But scientists at the University of Chicago and other institutions around the world are just beginning to fully understand the role that bacteria play in our health.
Terrain Model also contends that even when bacteria/germs are not natural to the human body, foreign or mutated, that a body in balance will have a robust enough immune system to effectively neutralize or eliminate them. This is fundamentally of great importance because it means that germs themselves don’t make you sick just because you’re in contact with them, but having a misaligned body that has sustained damage from incorrect diet, the use of toxic medications and antibiotics, toxins from food or the environment, and other factors creates a poorly functioning immune system that does [make you sick]. We all know the importance of a healthy immune system, so this doesn’t seem to contradict the Terrain Model.
Is Illness Actually Healing?
The Terrain Model, in face of our conditioning to germ theory over the course of our lifetime, is not easily understood at first because it goes much deeper than we can imagine. The body’s natural cleansing, immune responses, and healing methods create symptoms that are its natural healing mechanisms (such as the elimination of cellular waste and toxins that the body is expelling through a runny nose, or a fever that is counteracting the overgrowth of bacteria/germs), but that are misunderstood and mistreated by allopathic practitioners. And that misunderstanding is heavily supported by the pharmaceutical industry that profits from germ theory.
Antibiotics indescriminately kill both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria, or gut flora. With more than 70% of our immune cells in the gastrointestinal tract, this results in a poorly functioning immune system, whose job it is to cleanse, protect, and repair and regenerate damaged tissues. This makes it difficult to eliminate degenerated cells (cancer cells) that multiply and function without their ‘proper’ guidance system, or organizational matrix. “Every cell in your body uses blood sugar (glucose) for energy. But cancer cells use about 200 times more than normal cells. Tumors that start in the thin, flat (squamous) cells in your lungs need even more glucose to fuel their growth.” (WebMD)
According to Terrain Model, tumors are created to protect the body, while it is waiting for an opportunity to eliminate the degenerated cells and debris. The introduction of acidic and toxic medications to treat cancer, such as chemotherapy, which is an acidic carcinogen, only serves to impede the body’s immune respone and delays it’s natural healing capabilities. The Terrain Model clearly states that a body doesn’t heal from the same types of poisons that created its ill-health in the first place. You can’t poison a body back to good health.
The cancers most often linked to chemo are myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Sometimes, MDS occurs first, then turns into AML. Acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) has also been linked to chemo. Chemo is known to be a greater risk factor than radiation therapy in causing leukemia. Source: National Cancer Society
If the immune system cannot adequately repair cells and tissues, the efficency of organ systems and functions slows in tandem with the body’s inability to cleanse and repair itself. There is a progression through seven stages of disease from mild symptoms (that are not too disruptive), to degenerative conditions like diabetes and cancer. I recently heard an analogy that you don’t clean a cluttered house by bringing in more clutter.
However, when the body is given support, the immune system is revived, then the body will resume restoration of cells and tissues, and its housecleaning reduces tumors in size until they are completely eliminated. This has been demonstrated time and again using foods and energetic herbs that revitalize and support the immune system.
Energetic Herbalism
Now, the Terrain Model does not support herbalism. However, Energetic Herbalism supports the body in a different way than we typically think of using herbal remedies, which are fequently purchased in lieu of over-the-counter medications, to treat symptoms and not the underlying cause. I do believe that the authors who developed the Terrain Model did not fully realize the ancient and traditional knowledge of medicinal plants, and their role and relationship to the Earth and human beings.
“Energetic Herbalism has been promoted by herbalists and writers such as Matthew Wood, Thomas Easley, and Kat Maier. In Kat’s words: “The word energetics may conjure images of New Age crystals, and the term is sometimes misapplied to any and all new healing modalities. In truth, though, energetic herbalims is as old as the Earth herself. This mode of healing is based on the truth that the vital force of nature and the vital force of an individual human are one and the same. The indigenous cultures the world over call this force Spirit in their native language. Ancient Greeks call this force vitality, the Chinese call it Qi (chi), Iroquois national calls it Orenda, Ayurveda calls it Prana, West Africans call it Ashe.”
“The goal of Energetic Herbalism is to enhance our terrain, which is our inner landscape— our tissues, organs, vessels, and all of the forces that are engaged to maintain our health. The aim is to create an environment where we optimize nutrition from foods, breath from air, and joy from our surroundings so our vitality flows with the least hindrance. To be in the flow is the goal of these traditions. Vitalism is the teaching that states there is an invisible force governing our health, lives, and planet that is unseen and unmeasurable. [Tao] This force has the intelligence to be not only self-directing but brilliantly self-correcting. Of course, this is what Indigenous teachings have been saying for millennia in describing the sacred connection of all form of Nature.”
“Experiencing plants as kin is inherent to Indigenous cultures all over the world from Celts in Ireland to the Quechua in Peru to the Taino people of Puerto Rico. Today, we speak of plants as allies, partners to work with in creating optimal health. I credit the plants as teachers even more than as partners, because their healing abilities are like none I have witnessed before.”
The argument that Terrain Model advocates use against herbs is largely that they go against natural healing and are irritating to the body. But, when we work with them, with respect and gratitude, and then ingest healing plants, they “teach” the body and that is the inherent role they perform for humanity. They instruct the body in how to re-establish its balanced energetic patterns so it can resume healthy and correct functioning. Each plant corresponds to an energetic matrix of an organ, system, or the body as a whole. This type of herbalism is a relationship that humanity has with the plant kingdom. It is an entirely different relationship from using herbs to force the body to shift or suppress, like the effects that pharmaceuticals have. Fostering the understanding of our relationship to herbs and how to work as a natural partner with them is the aim of Energetic Herbalism.
Conclusion
As a holistic health and life coach, I utilize what I think are the strongest and best aspects of all of the health and healing approaches that I’ve discussed here. I think that Allopathy is the strongest in diagnostic testing and emergency medicine. Naturopathy is the strongest in terms of discovering the underlying cause off disease and using food and non-invasive methods that support the body’s own inate ability to balance and heal itself. I work from a solid foundation of Terrain Model, or what is referred to as Natural Hygiene, understanding that it is more important to take away what harms, provide what heals, and to not “treat” the body with the same type, or level, of toxins and poisons that contributed to ill-health to begin with (i.e. toxic pharmaceuticals, OTC, meds, suppression, degraded foods, etc.) The strength of Energetic Herbalism is gaining wisdom through plant medicine.
A significant component of the naturopathic approach is to begin at the point where the individual is starting from, consider history and mindset, and transition as fast or slow as the health situation demands. I highly regard the value of diagnostic testing, such as a blood analysis, acupuncture, chiropractic, yoga, and other alternative practices and practitioners that may assist in promoting a higher level of health, wellbeing, and longevity. Of course, I wholly embrace detoxification as a method to aid the body in the vital task of cleansing itself.
I ask you to not dismis Naturopathy as a preventive and healing modality, food and lifestyle as medicine, and to not scoff at the Terrain Model or Energetic Herbalism concepts, and to explore them further. There is more to your energetic body and connection to the Earth than you may have been taught. It is a powerful exploration that will guide you, naturally, back to a higher state of wellness you can maintain throughout the remainder of your life. These models and concepts are not difficult or unobtainable—actually they are relatively easy to implement, affordable, and logical.
Remember that the state of your body’s health can range from a robust highly energetic state to exhibiting mild imbalances. It can proceed to deeper imbalances that are disruptive, and then finally to degeneration states that may become life-threatening — these are not isolated conditions, but rather a spectrum. Also know that this spectrum works in the reverse order, and that your body can heal if you create the right conditions for it to do so.