Natural Health Care v.s. Conventional Health Care

By Dr. Cynthia Horner

I’m often asked how does natural health care such as chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy or naturopathy differ from conventional  health care.  The difference is in the intention of the care giver.

For example:

Conventional Health Care                        

• Is designed for crisis
• Treats symptoms
• Health comes from the outside  in

Natural Health Care

• Is designed for wellness
• Finds the  cause
• Health comes from the inside out

How Crisis  Differs From Wellness

Conventional  health care has become good at treating crisis, but doctors soon realized that handling crisis once it has occurred is not as effective  as preventing it from happening.

This led to the popularity of preventive medicine. Prevention became the new buzz word in the halls of medicine with all kinds of tests being performed. To prevent illness? No. To prevent a crisis. Diseases were found sooner but Americans did become healthier because it was found that focusing on crisis and disease only led to more crisis and disease.

The natural health care community knew that preventing crisis was not the same as promoting a healthy body. The concept of wellness became clear. To be healthy it made sense to monitor daily habits and chose those that promote a healthy body and limit or eliminate those that do not. To do this a doctor must educate, motivate and support patients to wise health habits.  Teaching more than testing is needed to create a healthy population.

How Treating Symptoms Differs From Finding the cause

Symptoms are what bring people to a doctor’s office. A symptom is what you are feeling, but it is not the problem. A symptom is an indication of something else. Much like the noise of a smoke alarm is not the problem but  is an indication that there is a  problem.

The question is not  “Where do you hurt?” but “Why do you hurt?” Answers to “the why” gets to the real cause.

Common causes that create symptoms are:

• Poor biochemistry from incorrect nutrition or stress
• Suppressed immune function
• Lack of good germs (flora) in the gut
• Inflammation throughout the body from any of the above

How Viewing Health From the ‘Outside in’ Differs From Viewing Health  From the ‘Inside Out.

Conventional medicine has convinced people that their bodies are not capable of healing without something added to it (medicine) or taking something away (surgery). Every ear infection or sinus problem needs an antibiotic; every dys-functioning gallbladder needs to come out.

Natural health care relies on the fact that everything needed to be healthy is already in the body, and the body is quite capable of healing itself. The inborn intelligence within each body is more capable of making the best decision for that body than all the doctors in the world. The goal of a natural health care professionals is to find how to work with the body to allow and promote it to heal and improve in function.

What my Patients have taught me:  “Asking the right questions is more useful than having the right answers.”