Introduction
Naturopathy has helped shape and reshape the holistic medicine path since the late 1800’s, leading to the creation and integrating of many important medical platforms that are widely recognized and used today. This medical system came before many of the professionalized heterodox medical systems, such as homeopathy and osteopathy, but it still strives for the same recognition and social authority. Naturopathy has a strong emphasis on a healthy lifestyle- socially, emotionally, and through dietary actions. Disease is viewed as an imbalance in different areas of a person’s life. Naturopaths also believe that nature can heal all. Many problems arose in trying to create this as a recognized system of medicine, and naturopathy is now used today in different forms around the world.
The Rise of Naturopathy
A professionalized medical system has strict core belief values. But, naturopathy is unique. They have general beliefs, but do not target a specific part of the body such as chiropractic, that focuses on the spine and spinal manipulation. Naturopaths believe in the power of nature, social influence, and preventative education. They believe germs do not cause disease- they merely invade the body when the body is at its lowest point of mental stress. Naturopaths began with using techniques adopted from the medical systems of Egypt and Central Europe, where they used health spas. These spas emphasize a healthy diet combined with physical activity and stress reducing exercise. Water treatments and societies were heavily relied upon, which started the Kneipp water societies (https://www.kneipp.com/us_en/natures-expert/water-cure/ ).
Sebastian Kneipp was the father of naturopathy’s beginning. When he was young, he cured himself from tuberculosis with water baths and hydrotherapy. He emphasized healthy eating, dietetics, fitness, and plant medications. This became the start of naturopathy with ancient techniques being incorporated into new ideas. Benjamin Lust was cured by the Kneipp treatment, and became an advocate for naturopathy. He revolutionized the way we view natural medicine and herbal supplements today by the start of his Kneipp School. The established the first School of Naturopathy in New York City in 1901, and founded the American Naturopathic Society of America, which is still highly recognized to this day.
Through Kneipp and Lust, plants and divine inspiration became heavily integrated into this form of medicine. With naturopathy on the rise to become a professionalized medical system, hygeiotherapy becomes introduced into medicine. This broad scope system was widely used in the natural medicine arena, because it included all forms of natural medicine- massage, exercise, diet, healthy thinking, and herbal medicine. Hygeiotherapy is “healing by hygienic means… [and] what keeps the body healthy is applied to cure the body when diseased” (https://books.google.com/books?id=0tk1AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA402&lpg=PA402&dq=hygeiotherapy&source=bl&ots=zc7Ps-bbBY&sig=XCv9V99LYwgoVzTgcS2D0_xjafQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDy8WEsvzeAhVlpVkKHTRdCZw4ChDoATALegQIAhAB#v=snippet&q=hygeio-therapy&f=false ).
Naturopathy began to transform. In 1930, there were twenty-four naturopathic schools and over 40,000 naturopathic practitioners. Naturopathic doctors either achieved a N.D. or D.C. degree. N.C. students are trained in “botanical medicine, nutrition, homeopathy… [and] non-surgical approaches (https://aanmc.org/resources/comparing-nd-md-curricula/). N.C. degrees focus highly on the opposite sides of biomedicine, thus eventually rendering the degree useless for naturopathy because of the lack of recognition from the medical community. Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degrees began to become predominant because of the rise in social authority of chiropractors. The relationship between naturopathy and chiropractic are the most similar of all professionalized medical systems (BOOK PAGE). So, naturopaths began to practice under chiropractors or acupuncturists. The American Medical Association began to attack naturopaths and chiropractors, and this led to naturopathic licensure ending in 1959 because of legislation passed against the practice.
The Current Naturopathic Revival
The hygieotherapy movement ended by 1877 and the biomedical community discredited naturopathy, but social movements for the medical system still persisted in the Pacific Northwest. The holistic health movement began in 1970, and started the revival of naturopathic medicine. In 1983, naturopathic doctors received their first recognition in the biomedical community. Holistic health professionals currently use practices such as faith healing, prevention, meditation, and herbal medicine (https://academic.oup.com/jmp/article/6/2/209/896164 ). Their methods are not proven to have benefits currently. Some prominent goals of holistic medicine are in the emphasis of well-being instead of disease and germs. The well-being defined in holistic medicine references social, emotional, physical, etc. well-being that completely frames the body to be receptive to disease. If one does not have a healthy overall well being, the body is susceptible to disease. Criticisms of this view include physical well-being not affecting mental well-being and accrediting the social environment one lives in to the spread and accumulation of disease.
The revival consisted of the emphasis of the chiropractor and acupuncture. These practices became professionalized heterodox systems of medicine, and had high social authority during the revival of naturopathy. Many naturopaths currently practice as chiropractors or acupuncturists for the social authority given to them (BOOK CITATION). These practices began on the West Coast, where they historically and currently have the most social recognition because of the hippie counterculture movement. Having a specific scope of focus when diagnosing and treating a patient legitimizes them, and people tend to use them because of the high prices of biomedical medicine (book citation).
Naturopathy and its Current Use in Medicine
Naturopathic medicine is on the rise, and is currently legitimized in the eyes of many cultural groups around the United States, mainly homeopaths. An experiment was done to see the plausible affects of naturopathic medicine for the treatment of temporomandibular disorders. This study compared the specialty care of biomedicine versus the system of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Naturopathic medicine (NM) in the reduction of pain in the patients. “TCM and NM demonstrated significantly greater in-treatment reductions for worst facial pain” compared to the average practices of biomedicine (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2007.0738). Alternative approaches to medicine are proven to reduce pain and fatigue compared to the specialty care of biomedicine.
Another study compared patients and their use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) versus the use of pain medications prescribed by biomedical doctors. Utilization of CAM services… were lower than expected, [but] patients self-reported decrease in the use of pain medications” (https://search.proquest.com/docview/204820400?pq-origsite=gscholar). Because of experiments such as this one, complementary and alternative medicine is becoming more popular and readily available through insurance plans for patients to utilize. Most patients reported a decrease in use of pain medications and other biomedical services after using CAM treatments, and spent much less money on medical services.
Other subsections of naturopathic medicine, such as acupuncture, have had positive impacts on patients switching to holistic, alternative medical platforms. Acupuncture was used in a study to see the effects of chronic pain management compared to other medical systems. The conditions examined were spinal pain, headaches, shoulder pain, and osteoarthritis. For all patients of the trial, “acupuncture was superior to both sham and no-acupuncture control for each pain condition” (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1357513?utm_campaign=twitter_091012&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=@archinternmed). It was concluded that acupuncture does help pain management, especially compared to no use of acupuncture in the management of pain. The results were significant enough to also conclude, “that acupuncture is more than a placebo” (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1357513?utm_campaign=twitter_091012&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=@archinternmed). The most common holistic plan to cure pain is acupuncture, and around three million adults in the United States use acupuncture for pain management. Another form of naturopathy, chiropractic treatment, is heavily used for pain management. The study was on twenty-one patients with elevated blood pressure and a twist in the thoracic spine. It was proven that “blood pressure decreased significantly in the active treatment condition” for the patient (https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/3075649/reload=0). Anxiety and pain rates are all decreased using naturopathic, holistic forms of medicine.