Large Number of Patients Seek ‘Unconventional’ Therapy : Medicine: Naturopathy, which emphasizes the healing power of nature, is among the popular alternatives for treating and preventing ailments.
Natasha Puffer returned from an eight-month tour of Southeast Asia suffering from anemia, a chronic sore throat and the lingering effects of a parasite infection.
Visits to nearly a dozen doctors over four years failed to cure her maladies, she says. The antibiotics she was prescribed wiped out her digestive system, and she developed severe allergies. She was ready to give up. Then she turned to a naturopathic physician.
A year later, Puffer says, “I’m like a whole new person.
“I’m happy and I’m active and physically I feel good. I feel much better than I’ve felt in the last few years.”
Puffer’s treatment at the Natural Health Clinic in Seattle included iron and vitamin C supplements for anemia and capsules of plant derivatives to allay her hypersensitivity. She was told to eliminate foods such as wheat and dairy products from her diet. Allergens such as potted plants were removed from her home.
Although Puffer’s throat inflammation hasn’t gone away, she says her allergies and most of her other health problems have. She credits naturopathy--a drug-free, holistic approach to medicine that emphasizes the healing power of nature to prevent and treat illness.
Proponents say naturopathy, or the practice of natural medicine, has been making rapid inroads into a public health arena long dominated by conventional, Western-trained doctors.
A survey published in the Jan. 28 New England Journal of Medicine said that one in 10 Americans in 1990 visited “unconventional” medical practitioners, a category that includes naturopaths. About one-third of adults used some sort of unconventional therapy that year, the report said.
The medical doctor who conducted the study said the surprising popularity of the alternative treatments underscores the need to examine such treatments thoroughly to see if any really work.
“We don’t have enough data to say these are effective or worthless. That’s where we need to go from here,” said Dr. David M. Eisenberg of Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital.
The American Medical Assn. has not taken a position on naturopathy. A spokesman for the association says there are doctors both for and against.
Some critics say naturopathy is a fad whose time will pass.
People are interested in all kinds of unusual things, says Dr. John Renner, a family physician and founder and president of the Consumer Health Information Research Institute, an organization based in Kansas City, Mo., that promotes accurate health information.
Most naturopathic physicians think of themselves as family doctors, best at treating day-to-day ailments such as ear infections, colds and gastrointestinal disorders.
Their therapies are a mix of nutrition, herbs, homeopathy (treating a disease by administering tiny doses of a remedy that would in a healthy person produce symptoms of the disease), acupuncture, physical measures such as massage and ultrasound, and counseling and lifestyle modification.
Unlike medical doctors, naturopathic physicians are not allowed to prescribe drugs or perform surgery. In Washington, they cannot treat cancer.
Advocates say the survey in the New England Journal of Medicine is among several recent indicators that interest in natural medicine is growing.
About 80% of the 750 licensed naturopathic physicians in the United States have received their licenses in the last 15 years, says John Weeks, executive director of the Seattle-based American Assn. of Naturopathic Physicians.
Seven states license naturopathic physicians--Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Weeks says a licensing drive is under way in New Hampshire, Idaho and North Carolina, and is expected in at least four other states.
And a new school, the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, opens next year near Phoenix.
“What’s happening now is that there’s a broad enough interest in alternative medicine, a growing confidence in the field, that now some of the people who were worried about associating with naturopathic doctors are now saying, ‘OK, it’s time to acknowledge the real value that the profession has,”’ Weeks says.
Nowhere is the movement stronger than in the Pacific Northwest. Nearly 600 of the 750 licensed naturopathic physicians are in Oregon and Washington. The region has the only two accredited naturopathy schools in the nation--National College in Portland, Ore., and Bastyr College in Seattle.
Applications to National were up 34% this year.
At Bastyr, this year’s enrollment is 296 students, up 25% from a year ago, says the college’s president, Joe Pizzorno. The number of patients treated at the college’s affiliated Natural Health Clinic has doubled in 2 1/2 years.
Bastyr, now housed in an aging, brick elementary schoolhouse leased from the Seattle School District, is growing so rapidly that it’s trying to raise $10 million to buy a new campus in four years.
Bastyr’s research director, Leanna Standish, was appointed in May to an advisory committee for the National Institutes of Health’s new Office of Alternative Medicine. That office will soon accept proposals from researchers who want to explore the merits of non-mainstream medicine.
“I think the attitude is changing. Many of the things they were calling quackery 20 to 30 years ago, they’re now coming to say, ‘Gee, these are right,”’ Pizzorno says.
“If you asked a medical doctor 20 years ago, ‘Can you use nutrition to prevent or treat disease?’ They would have said that was totally unscientific and unfounded. Nowadays you have the American Cancer Society and the surgeon general talking like a naturopathic doctor.”
“Over the last 100 years we’ve really focused on technology and really separated our connection with nature,” says Ron Hobbs, director of admissions at Bastyr. “This kind of medicine is basic, common-sense medicine. It’s low-tech. It’s connected with nature. It’s a lot of the things that this culture has forgotten.”
Critics say naturopathy should remain a relic of the past.
“I think it would be marvelous if we could all live in tepees and wigwams and log cabins and burn wood again and not drive cars,” says Renner of Consumer Health Information Research.
“I think it would be marvelous, except life expectancy in those days was also considerably below what it is today.”
Renner is also a clinical professor of family medicine at the University of Missouri and adjunct professor of preventive medicine at the University of Kansas. He rejects the notion that natural medicine is invading mainstream America.
“More bottles of iodine and Band-Aids are sold in this country than herbs,” he says. “The health-care arena is not ready to be taken over by herbals.”
Critics say naturopathic remedies have not undergone the same rigorous scientific scrutiny that conventional drugs have. They say treating illnesses with grab-bag concoctions can have potentially harmful results.
Proponents counter that most conventional doctors ignore all studies on naturopathic remedies. Weeks and others also say that naturopathic treatment is a many-faceted approach--something that cannot be tested via the traditional single-agent, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies that most drugs undergo.
Pizzorno says naturopaths want to be allies, not enemies, of conventional doctors.
“Clearly there are areas where conventional drugs and surgery would be more appropriate. For things like automobile accidents, broken bones, conventional medicine is fine. When you have pneumonia, antibiotics work great,” Pizzorno says.
“But for day-to-day ailments--ear infections, eczema, susceptibility to colds--naturopathic medicine is far superior. Not only are we able to alleviate the disease and its symptoms, we’re making fundamental (lifestyle) changes that prevent this and other kinds of things from happening in the future.”
