The term "Doctor", as well as others such as "Dentist" and "Nurse" are regulated tites, you have to have necessary qualifications. So yes a naturopath is not a doctor.
Wordslinger said:
Well, let's see: NO medical degree, NO formal training, AND doesn't believe in modern medical theories? How does any part of that sound good?
Basically this...
teh_pwning_dude said:
Doctors are fucking worthless. Naturopathy has done more for me than modern fucking medicine.
jpoon said:
Naturopathic doctors can do some good things and also do some bad things, but the are not beholden to any corporate entity. I would say to have her visit both a regular and naturopathic doctor and see what they both come up with maybe?
Theres are things called systematic reviews and meta-analysises, where they compile all of the studies that have been done on a certain drug/intervention. Good or bad results, they all get combined to produce the most accurate results.
The best study that can be done is a randomised control trial, usually blinded in a manner that both the researcher and subjects have no idea which is the intervention and what is a placebo (or more commonly now the gold standard intervention).
In conventional medicine, interventions require tenuous trials and research to institue a form of treatment. In alternative medicine, there's barely any research supporting their claims and if it does exist it's hugely biased.
So not only can alternative therapy not be effective, it can in turn be dangerous. For example the much lauded "anti-oxidants" have actualy been shown to increase risks of certain cancers, some alternative remedies can induce anaphlaxis and St John's wort can interefere with anti-deppressants.
Diligent said:
My cousin is actually a Naturopath Doctor, and she did indeed study medicine and did many years of university. She could have gone into the field of being a "real doctor" as it were, but this interested her more.
She doesn't try any hocus-pocus shit on people, like give them random herbal concoctions, because thats not what naturopaths do.
She can tell a lot about your health by looking at your tongue, finger nails, and eyes. Things like vitamin or iron deficiencies, which can be corrected by taking the right vitamins, or eating the right food. (Where a real doctor might prescribe some migraine medication with side effects to mask the problem, leading to pills to take care of your side effects etc.)
I don't know your cousin or her degree. But a problem with most alternative practitioners is they overexaggerate the complexity of stuff. Yes a good diet and exercise is probably the most important thing you can do to prevent illness, but for example adding extra vitamin C to your diet is not going to prevent cancer, you'll just crap out the excess.
Pimppeter2 said:
Mostly due to better hygiene and varied diets.
Both of which are covered by Naturopathy.
Actually those are covered by nurses, occupational therapists and clinical dieticians (who are different to nutritionists, as they are a regulated profession and have lots of training)
