Types of Alternative Medicine - About Naturopathic & Functional Medicine
We are trained as experts in functional and natural medicine, which encompasses several types of alternative medicine. We see all types of patients that a regular general practitioner would see in our Fort Collins, Colorado practice.
Types of Alternative Medicine
Our doctors don’t prescribe drugs for medical problems; rather we work with the body using a variety of natural medicines and lifestyle adjustments that assist in healing. Some types of alternative medicine and functional medicine we use include various combinations of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, herbs, nutraceuticals and glandular/hormonal support to get you healthy.
As some of the few clinically trained naturopathic and functional medicine doctors in Fort Collins, we utilize traditional and functional lab tests as part of the diagnostic process. These are tests that not every doctor orders, much less understands.
Your treatment with different types of alternative medicines targets the original health problem, rather than just drugging the symptoms with toxic
substances – drugs rarely lead to true health, by the way.
We use our extensive training and education, as well as functional laboratory testing to correctly discern the needs of our patients. We don't use any gimmicks to diagnose a person’s state of health.
It's Not A Drug Deficiency You're Suffering From...
Most often, people come to an alternative medicine clinic because they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. Most of these people have been to their doctor, and basically turned away because ‘nothing is wrong with them.’ Or, they're offered another prescription medication that doesn’t address the cause of what is wrong. Sound familiar?
Do you get several colds and flus each winter? Well I am happy to tell you that you're not suffering from an antibiotic deficiency...
Are you a woman in her 40’s or 50’s who feels tired, irritable, emotional or moody? Guess what? I am almost certain you are not suffering from an antidepressant deficiency…
Have you been told you have ‘irritable bowel syndrome’? Did you know that many doctors refer to this as a “garbage can diagnosis”? This means that in the absence of any other solid diagnosis, the patient gets lumped into a group with similar confounding symptoms.
I could go on and on with examples like these. The person who gets many colds and flus each year needs to have their immune system boosted…that way, it will be strong enough to fight off all those nasty bugs. And those ladies who are having a lot of mental-emotional symptoms aren’t depressed…their hormones are falling out of balance and need to be supported. The person with ‘irritable bowel syndrome’ needs to have a thorough review of their dietary intake, to start! This is the beauty of different types of alternative medicine - they can help a large variety of health problems.
When you come in to the clinic, we'll spend at least an hour together to find out the cause of your health issues. Your treatment plan will be focused on correcting those underlying causes of symptoms; different types of alternative medicines and functional medicine may be utilized.
What is Naturopathic Medicine?
Naturopathic medicine is a system of medicine that works with your body as an integrated whole to achieve what conventional medicine cannot – get you truly healthy.
The current, mainstream model of medicine ignores the real causes of disease and illness; naturopathic medicine doctors incorporate prevention and wellness to dramatically improve chronic problems that are poorly addressed by conventional medicine.
The answer to your health issues is not another prescription. The answer lies within the cause of the symptoms you are having, and correcting that causative factor. We identify and treat the cause, so you don’t have to medicate your symptoms for the rest of your life.
We provide practical medical solutions that make sense, address the cause, and have little to no side effects.
How is this medical approach different, and why do you need it?
Naturopathic medicine focuses on caring for the main systems of your body, rather than providing a drug to mask symptoms. Symptoms are your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong! So if you take a drug that treats the symptoms, does that make you well? No!
But don’t get us wrong. We're not anti-drug; rather we are pro-health and wellness. Prescription medications are absolutely necessary in certain cases, and they have saved countless lives. But 80% of the illnesses from which we suffer are caused by other issues that drugs cannot always fix.
Our thinking about how we get sick is completely wrong.
You cannot ‘catch’ a disease. You don’t just wake up one day with heart disease, diabetes, cancer, asthma or any other disease. Current medical thinking and treatment of chronic or recurring disease is off the mark, and doesn’t help people to address their worsening health. Modern medicine is not making any progress in fighting chronic disease; in fact it is getting worse.
We believe that medicine is not just about taking a pill; it’s also about staying healthy.
Naturopathic medicine doctors recognize that complementary and traditional medical therapies play important - but different - roles in keeping you healthy.
Naturopathic medicine is based on the premise that no single therapy can provide a complete solution to optimal health. It borrows the best science-based aspects of conventional and alternative therapies to treat the immediate problem AND identify the conditions that caused the problem in the first place.
The future of medicine is here, and it does not include fancier, more costly drugs.
Many types of alternative medicine include a holistic, functional medicine approach that nourishes and revitalizes the body’s broken systems using naturally derived substances. This revolutionary new way of thinking by Naturopathic medicine doctors about health and disease will guide you toward renewed health and vitality.
