Advantages
Advantages of Naturopathic Care
Naturopathic care can support you at different stages of your health. You may be focused on maintaining your health and reducing future risks, trying to better understand ongoing symptoms or a chronic condition, or looking for additional support alongside care you are already receiving. Your ND will work with you to understand your health concerns, priorities, and goals and to identify factors that may be influencing your health.
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Naturopathic medicine places a strong emphasis on supporting long-term health and preventing illness where possible. Your ND will work with you to understand your health goals, identify individual and modifiable risk factors, and develop practical strategies to support your health and reduce the risk or progression of disease.
Because health is influenced by the interaction of biological, behavioural, environmental and social factors, care may consider areas such as nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress, environmental exposures and other factors relevant to your health. This broader understanding helps guide individualized strategies that support healthy function and address factors that may be contributing to illness.
Supporting Across Different Stages of Health
You may choose to see a Naturopathic Doctor at many different stages of your health. You may be focused on maintaining your health and reducing future risks, trying to better understand ongoing symptoms or a chronic condition, or looking for additional support alongside care you are already receiving.
The care your ND can provide will depend on your individual needs, their training and qualifications, and the scope of practice permitted in your province or territory.
Individualized Care
Naturopathic care is individualized to you. Your health history, current concerns, medications and treatments, lifestyle, environment, risk factors, goals and preferences all help inform your plan of care.
Your ND will work with you to develop recommendations that reflect your individual needs and priorities. Patient education, informed choice, and shared decision-making are important parts of naturopathic care, helping you understand your options and take an active role in decisions about your health.
Working with Your Health Care Team
Your Naturopathic Doctor can work alongside other members of your health-care team, including family physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, medical specialists, dietitians, mental health professionals and other health-care providers.
With your consent, collaborative care may include sharing relevant health information, coordinating treatment plans, consulting with another provider or making a referral when appropriate. NDs are trained to recognize the limits of their own scope and expertise and to involve other health-care professionals when additional or different care is needed.
Naturopathic medicine can be one part of a broader, coordinated approach to your health, with each provider contributing their expertise while keeping your needs, preferences and safety at the centre of care.
Research and Evidence
Naturopathic practice draws on research from a range of health disciplines, including clinical medicine, nutrition, behavioural science, pharmacology and research into specific naturopathic therapies.
As with all areas of health care, the strength of the evidence varies depending on the therapy, condition and population being studied. Naturopathic Doctors consider the quality, relevance and limitations of available evidence when making clinical recommendations, alongside their clinical expertise and the individual needs and preferences of the patient.
Research in naturopathic medicine continues to examine specific therapies, approaches to care and health outcomes, with naturopathic researchers and educational institutions participating in research both independently and in collaboration with universities, health-care organizations and other research partners.
Territory
Acknowledgement