Skip to content Natural practitioners.
These are types of health practitioners who won't just dispense pharmaceuticals.
Herbalist
Herbalists use botanical medicine for healing. Plants have been used for medicine since the beginning of time. The world was created with hundreds of thousands of herbs to help every illness. Outside the United States, nearly 85% of the world currently uses plants for medicine, instead of synthetic drugs. Pharmacists focus on ‘active’ ingredients of the plant, chemicals within plants that have a definable physiological effects on the body. These constituents and their actions within the body are also referred to as pharmacology. An herbalist though uses a whole plant part for healing. Extracting specific components from a plant, turns a plant into a drug. Most drugs use synthetic forms of isolated plant components. Plant chemistry is very complex and includes the interaction of active and ‘inactive’ compositions and when plants are taken in whole plant form, they are safe and processed in the body like food. All of a plant’s parts work together to heal and are beyond the analytical comprehension of science. Some plant constituents are: acids, alcohols, carbohydrates, phenols and phenolic glycosides, tannins, coumarins and their glycosides, anthraquinones and their glycosides, flavones and flavonoid glycosides, volatile oils, saponins, cardioactive glycosides, cyanogenic glycosides and alkaloids.
Homeopath
Homeopathy was developed about 200 years ago in Germany. It is based on the concept of ‘like cures like,’ that a disease can be cured by a substance that produces similar symptoms in healthy people. Homeopathy also uses the notion that the lower the dose of the medication, the greater its effectiveness. Many homeopathic products are so diluted that no molecules of the original substance remain. Homeopathic medicine is energy medicine since instead of relying on a plant’s chemical composition, homeopathy uses the energy present in the plant, mineral, or animal to treat illness. For more resources on homeopathy see homeopathycenter.org.
Naturopathic doctor (ND)
Naturopathic doctors diagnose, prevent, and treat acute and chronic illness to restore and establish optimal health by supporting the person’s inherent self-healing process. Rather than just suppressing symptoms, naturopathic doctors work to identify underlying causes of illness, and develop personalized treatment plans to address them. They try to identify therapies to provide the greatest benefit with the least potential for damage. Maimonides would have been considered an ND in today’s terms. He focused on preventing illness rather than just treating symptoms.
Naturopathic medicine is a system that uses natural remedies to help the body heal itself with herbs, acupuncture, exercise, and nutritional counseling. There are only a few Naturopathic medical schools left. For more information see Naturopathic.org.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
Traditional Chinese Medicine is a complete medical system that has been used to diagnose, treat, and prevent illnesses for more than 2,000 years. TCM is based on the concept that the body needs balance in opposing energies for good health. TCM is many times used in conjunction with acupuncture to support the healing process. Herbs are prescribed usually as formulas, rather than individual herbs and are tailored to a specific, individual traditional Chinese medicine diagnostic pattern to meet the medical needs of each patient.
Homebirth midwife
A licensed midwife will help deliver a baby in someone’s house. They come with equipment for the rare emergency. Childbirth is not a medical procedure. It is a natural event that happens on its own and safest with the least interference. Some midwives are holistic minded, others are more medicalized.
Chiropractor
Chiropractic focuses on the neuromusculoskeletal system — the bones, nerves, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. A chiropractor helps manage back and neck pain through the use of spinal adjustments to maintain good alignment. Chiropractic is focused on the body’s ability to self-heal and includes other treatments like nutrition and exercise. By improving the neuromusculoskeletal system’s ability to perform, chiropractors believe the benefits of spinal adjustment and realigning joints improves the functioning of other systems throughout the body.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a technique in which practitioners insert fine needles into the skin to treat health problems. The needles may be manipulated manually or stimulated with small electrical currents (electroacupuncture). Acupuncture has been in use in some form for at least 2,500 years. It originated from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) but has gained popularity worldwide since the 1970s.
What is a Functional MD?
Some medical doctors (MD) who want to learn natural ways for healing take a functional medicine course to become a functional medical doctor. Most are still very medicalized because of their medical school training background, while some become more holistic.
