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Over the course of a couple million years, the human body has evolved to develop incredibly efficient self-defense and self-healing mechanisms. Yet when you visit a doctor complaining of an illness, the doctor typically disregards what nature has so carefully crafted and offers treatments cooked up in a laboratory, many of which degrade your body’s own healing power. Consider the use of antibiotics, which kill not only harmful bacteria but also healthy bacteria in your gut – bacteria that are essential for proper digestion, nutrition, and immune response.

Natural medical practitioners take a different approach. They work with nature to strengthen the body’s ability to fight infection and heal itself. In this section, I provide additional insight into the natural cures approach, provide some background on its history, reveal the science that supports it, and let you know what to expect from it as a patient.

Defining natural medicine

Natural medicine is any healing practice that harnesses the power of nature, including the human body’s self-defense and self-healing mechanisms, to prevent and cure illness. Natural medicine includes the following practices:

✔ Aromatherapy: Essential oils extracted from plants are used in numerous preparations, including massage oils and bath salts, to enhance physical and psychological well-being.

✔ Ayurveda: This traditional Hindu system of medicine seeks to establish healthy balance in mind, body, and spirit through diet, herbal formulations, and yoga.

✔ Biofeedback: This healing technique helps you control bodily processes normally thought to be outside an individual’s control. It does so by providing real-time monitoring and information about those processes as you perform techniques to regulate them.

✔ Chelation: Detoxification of heavy metals and other toxins from the body gets rid of harmful substances that your body isn’t geared to eliminate on its own.

✔ Functional medicine: Functional medicine is personalized medicine that recognizes and addresses each person’s individual genetic uniqueness and the complex interactions among genes, diet, and lifestyle.

✔ Herbal medicine: This practice treats illness with plants or plant extracts and is perhaps the oldest form of medical practice.

✔ Homeopathy: Homeopathy treats illness by giving the patient minute doses of natural substances that would cause the same symptoms in a healthy person. The concept behind homeopathic remedies is similar to the concept behind vaccination, which deliberately exposes people to dead or weakened bacteria or viruses to protect them from infections caused by those organisms.

✔ Massage and bodywork: Manipulation of the body, primarily the bones, muscles, and nerves, to relieve tension and pain, establish balance, promote detoxification, or treat specific conditions comes in many forms, including chiropractic adjustments, traditional massage, acupuncture, reflexology, rolfing, Reiki, and shiatsu.

✔ Naturopathy: The Swiss Army Knife of natural healing, naturopathy uses numerous alternative treatments to promote healing and health, including diet and lifestyle counseling, herbs, homeopathy, massage, aromatherapy, acupuncture, and biofeedback.

✔ Chiropractic treatment: Chiropractic treatment seeks to realign the spinal column and joints that cause pain and dysfunction related to the nerves, muscles, and organs of the body. Many chiropractors follow a functional medicine approach. Look for a chiropractor who’s received advanced training in functional medicine.

✔ Nutritional medicine: This approach uses food along with vitamins, minerals, and other supplements as medicine to cure illness and optimize health.

For more about these natural healing disciplines, check out Chapter 3. Head to the chapters in Part II for details on treating specific health conditions.

No two individuals are alike; effective treatment requires a personalized treatment plan. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to visit an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP) doctor or a naturopath for an initial evaluation to determine whether you have any food allergies or sensitivities, nutritional deficiencies, digestive disorders, or genetic vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. To find a practitioner who has trained with the Institute for Functional Medicine, visit www.functionalmedicine.org and click Find a Practitioner. To find a naturopath, visit www.naturopathic.org and click Find a Doctor.

Sifting through the science behind natural cures

Conventional science often questions the effectiveness of natural medicine by citing the dearth of well-designed clinical studies, but natural medicine actually has a growing body of scientific evidence to back it up. This evidence comes primarily in two forms:

✔ Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled (RDBPC) clinical trials: RDBPC studies, which test the effectiveness and safety of medications, are the gold standard in the pharmaceutical industry. More and more, these same studies are used to test the effectiveness of alternative treatments, including nutritional supplements. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is devoted exclusively to studying and reporting on the safety and effectiveness of alternative and complementary treatments; visit nccam.nih.gov for details.

RDBPC studies aren’t always suitable for testing natural treatments, however, because these treatments are often tailored to the individual patient’s needs and involve a combination of interventions, including dietary changes, nutritional support, exercise, and physical manipulation.

✔ Investigations into human biology and physiology: Advances in technology are revealing more and more about how the human body functions and how genetic, environmental, and lifestyle variables alone and together influence health and illness. For example, a recent study published in the journal Cell found that some of the bacteria living in the human body produce antibiotics, which help prevent and fight infections from certain harmful bacteria. This study provides additional support for the natural cures approach of supporting a healthy immune system with probiotics and avoiding the overuse of broad-range antibiotics that kill beneficial as well as harmful bacteria.

Science not only supports the use of natural medicine, but it also drives its development. Many reputable nutraceutical manufacturers now have their own research departments to develop and test products. (A nutraceutical is a food-based product that’s used as a medicine.) Among other advances, this research has helped to develop vitamins and minerals that are more easily and fully absorbed by the human body, probiotics that survive stomach acid exposure so more live microorganisms can populate the gut, and formulations that provide the right mix of nutritional supplements to support the proper function of various systems in the body, including the digestive, cardiovascular, and immune systems.

Buy products only from reputable manufacturers that have researched their products for effectiveness and that adhere to strict quality-control standards and practices; look for those that are Good Manufacturing Processes (GMP) certified. I’ve been treating patients for 33 years and practicing functional medicine for over 20 years. I’ve seen many fly-by-night nutraceutical companies and poor-quality products come and go. Take the supplements in the form I recommend from reputable manufacturers. Otherwise, your body may not absorb them properly, and they may simply not work.

Knowing what to expect from natural medicine

Natural medicine requires that you become an active participant in your own health. It requires commitment and sacrifice. You may need to eliminate from your diet some of your favorite foods and beverages. You need to exercise at least 30 minutes every other day. Most importantly, you need to invest time and effort in exploring what makes your body tick and figuring out what’s causing certain symptoms or what your body needs and isn’t getting to achieve optimum health.

The payoff is good health and vitality. Inflammation, at the root of many chronic illnesses, dissipates. You feel less congested and bloated and achy. You’re less susceptible to infections and chronic illnesses, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. You add years – quality years – to your life. And if you do become ill, you know exactly what your body needs to kick its self-healing powers into high gear.