FAQ

Do I have to choose between Naturopathic care and my medical doctor? How do their roles fit together?

No! Absolutely not!

The best health care is a combination of both.

It’s your family doctor’s job to ensure that you don’t have a life-threatening illness. Drugs and surgery are excellent life-saving tools, which is what they are designed for. Also your family doc is an excellent first-line diagnostician and will make sure you get proper diagnostic testing. Conventional care however, is not designed to heal and repair the problem, but to control it as best it can. Drugs and surgery unfortunately do not provide great solutions for chronic disease, nor does it focus on actually getting your body healthier. Most people suffer from chronic, non-emergency symptoms before they need life-saving measures.

Chronic diseases are conditions like cancer, clogged arteries, menopausal symptoms, chronic headaches, arthritis, auto-immune conditions, crohn’s, colitis, hypertension. What do you notice about these conditions? None of them are cured by medications, but they are controlled to varying degrees of success, using medications.

My job, the ND role, is to collaborate with your MD and provide medical expertise in healing and repairing the problem, the reason it got there, and getting you HEALTHY! We also provide other types of diagnostics to determine how finely tuned your system is, to discover more functional problems (like adrenal fatigue and sub-clinical hypothyroidism, food sensitivities) and to look for issues of environmental toxicity as significant etiological factors for certain conditions.

Ok, but if have a serious problem I should see my MD, right? I mean naturopathic medicine is not powerful enough, right?

WRONG! Just ask my patients with chronic fatigue, or my patient that avoided having a colostomy, or the other one with colitis and daily bleeding and stomach pain who couldn’t eat anything. Doesn’t this sound like powerful medicine to you? You SHOULD however undergo appropriate diagnostic testing, and use medications where appropriate.

Is Naturopathic Medicine covered by OHIP?

Unfortunately it isn’t, however check with you insurance company. Most private insurers provide coverage for a certain yearly amount. You are reimbursed when you submit your receipts.

What Education and Training Does a Naturopathic Doctor Receive?

To obtain a naturopathic medical credential (ND) that qualifies the recipient to write licensing examinations students must have the following:

Prerequisites including a minimum of three years of pre-medical sciences at University. Prerequisite courses: biology, biochemistry, chemistry, organic chemistry, introductory psychology and humanities.
Successfully complete a 4-year-full time program in an accredited school of naturopathic medicine that includes more than 4,500 hours of classroom training and 1,500 hours of supervised clinical experience.
Pass NPLEX board exams that are written after the 2nd year and 4th year of study. NPLEX is the standard examination used by all licensing jurisdictions for Naturopathic doctors in North America.
Meet the Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits as required by the provincial regulatory boards on an ongoing basis.

Areas of Training
Naturopathic Doctors undergo the same medical training as medical doctors and in addition to naturopathic.  The four areas of training in the four year, full-time naturopathic medicine curriculum are:

Life Sciences – This area of study includes anatomy, physiology, histology, microbiology, biochemistry, immunology, pharmacology and pathology.

Clinical Disciplines – Diagnostic medicine areas of study are physical and clinical diagnosis, differential and laboratory diagnosis, radiology, counselling, naturopathic assessment and orthopaedics.Naturopathic Disciplines – Clinical nutrition, functional and orthomolecular medicine, intervenous nutrient therapies, botanical medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, homeopathic medicine, hydrotherapy, naturopathic manipulation (basic chiropractic) and lifestyle counselling.

Clinical Experience – All students must complete 1,500 hours of clinical requirements and demonstrate proficiency in all aspects of Naturopathic Medicine prior to graduation. Extra courses and licensing are required to practice intervenous therapy.

How long will it take before I notice a difference in my condition?

Definitions

Functional Medicine

Orthomolecular Medicine

Epigenetics

Nutrigenomics

Integrative Medicine