Naturopathic Physical Medicine
(Churchill Livingstone - 2007)
ISBN - 978 04430103902
Naturopathic Physical Medicine provides a philosophical naturopathic perspective, as well as practical clinical applications, for manual, physical, approaches to health care, in naturopathic contexts of health enhancement. In addition the main range of bodywork and movement approaches and modalities are evaluated in relation to their ability to be appropriately used in naturopathic treatment settings. Just as there seems to be a tendency for some naturopaths to practice what has been termed 'green allopathy', so manual methods of treatment can be used in appropriate or inappropriate ways - to support self-regulation, or to force changes that may or may not be in tune with the patients current needs (and which may therefore be seen as either 'naturopathic', or allopathic, in nature). Symptomatic improvement, in itself, should not be seen as the yardstick by which such judgements are made - as it is all too obvious from a naturopathic perspective that symptoms can be suppressed, or modified, using physical medicine modalities, to the long-term detriment of the individual. If a definition of stress is 'anything to which the organism has to respond', then all therapeutic measures are stressful, since they demand a physiological response. That definition therefore has an implicit corollary, that there can be beneficial as well as harmful stress, depending on whether or not it is graduated to the needs of the patient. An excessive degree of any form of stress (biochemical, psychosocial, biomechanical) will overload and exhaust the individual.
Naturopathic methodology would insist that whatever modalities were employed would match the ability of the individual to respond positively, without negative side-effects. A model of care emphasised in this text recognizes that therapeutic interventions that have a naturopathic basis are likely to be recognised as focusing on one or all of the following elements:
- Enhancement of function so that the organism, system or part can better self-regulate itself in response to adaptive demands.
- Modification or removal of adaptive load factors
- Symptomatic relief without creation of significant additional adaptive demands
Traditionally European and early American naturopaths incorporated physical and exercise methods and modalities into their work as major features of assessment and treatment. Apart from the obvious arena of musculoskeletal dysfunction where physical medicine methods are an obvious first line of therapeutic input, there are a range of manual approaches that can usefully be incorporated in assessment and/or treatment of general health problems, including those where:
- Immune enhancement is required
- Circulatory or lymphatic stasis are features
- Enhanced respiratory function is called for
- Pain is a major element of the patient's distress
- Sleep and fatigue problems are major symptoms
- Postural and/or aging factors have resulted in gynaecological or digestive dysfunction due to ptosis
- ….and in relation to many other areas of ill- health.
Because the text has to be evidence based as far as possible, citations are available for all of these. Trainee naturopaths and those already in practice should benefit from detailed clinical guidelines in which manual approaches (many deriving from osteopathic and chiropractic methodology) can be shown to have proven efficacy. The text will attempt to offer an evidence base for whatever is recommended as representing 'naturopathic physical medicine'.
The book will be of use to Naturopaths, massage therapists, Chiropractors, Osteopaths (practitioners and students).
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