I am a Naturopathic Physician

I am a naturopathic physician. A Naturopathic doctor is someone who has made the comittment to train in medicine and use their knowledge to help people relieve their pain and suffering. The education a naturopath receives is essentially the same as an MD. There are six major schools of Naturopathic medicine in the North American continent. Naturopathic docttors have a different basic philosophy than do the MD's and Osteopathic doctors. This philospohy is called the Principles of Naturopathic Medicine. I will list them in a later entry. This philsohical difference might not seem to be important but it makes a significant difference in the way a patient is treated. You try as aNaturopathic Doctor to find the root cause of a person's illness versus just trying to make the symptoms go away. If you make one symptom disappear, the root cause will show up somewhere else. You had eczema and used cortisone to make it disppear, then you come down with ulcerative colitis later that year. The root cause has to be dealt with to prevent disease.
Unfortunately there are many people who view the rise of natural medicine over the last 30 years to be like a land rush to become a healer or a doctor without having to get into to school, take pre-med classes, struggle through school for 4-5 years, stay up late at night, dissect cadavers, do your residency, and take your exams to get your license. Did I forget to mention going into six figure debt? These people think they can slide in the back door by taking correspondence courses, weekend seminars, or become writers and therefore experts. They feel that if they are popular with the public then they are validated and their lack of comittment or medical knowledge is immaterial. A more insidious side of these people is their passive/aggressive attitude towards anyone with knowledge including Naturopaths, MDs, Osteopaths and Acupuncturists. The writers are the worst offenders in my view. They rely on trained professionals for their material, they need our research, writings and opinions but when trained professionals try to write about health we are tolerated to a degree but often kept out of the media club. These people who try to sneak into the profession are hoping to get grandfathered once the government wakes up. Lay practitoners are the Naturopathic Doctors biggest opponent to state licensure because every time the states look at licensure they accept the Naturopathic doctors credentials but exclude the lay practitioners.
You Need the patience of Christ or Buddha to put up with it everyday.