Tag: naturopathic education
Twenty days in primary care practice, or “naturopathic residency”
The metastasis of alternative medicine throughout the health care system comes, in no small part, at the hands of the federal and state governments, mostly the latter and most particularly the state legislatures. Under their jurisdiction rests the decision of who can, and cannot, become a licensed health care practitioner, and what they can, and cannot, do. This is the gateway through...
2013 Legislative Review: placenta take out
It’s official in Oregon now. You can take your placenta, along with your new baby, home from the hospital. This was already a practice among the CAM set but apparently new mothers were running afoul of laws designed to protect us from bio-hazards. New legislation exempts “the removal from a health care facility . . . of a placenta by a postpartum...
Licensing Naturopaths: the triumph of politics over science
Naturopaths shouldn’t get too excited about having a special week in their honor. The U.S. House of Representatives gave watermelons a whole month. As between naturopathy and watermelons for my good health, I’ll go with the watermelons any day. You’ll soon understand why. Today is not my usual blogging day. But when David Gorksi announced SBM’s celebration of Naturopathic Medicine Week, I...
Naturopathic organ repositioning coming soon to Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania legislators need to know only one thing about House Bill 612 (licensure of naturopathic “doctors”) to vote against it: As a means of “naturopathic musculoskeletal therapy” the bill would allow naturopaths to “reposition body tissues and organs.” This is impossible. You cannot “reposition” tissues and organs of the human body by external manipulation. Why does this tell us everything we need...
Fighting Back
As I hope I demonstrated in Legislative Alchemy: Naturopathy 2013, below, licensing “naturopathic doctors,” especially as primary care physicians, is a bad idea. Unfortunately, the only people usually interested in opposing their licensing efforts are medical doctors and their organizations. Of course, this allows naturopaths to pretend they are the victims of the evil, Big Pharma-controlled medical-industrial complex which kills and maims vast...
Naturopaths push for licensing in Massachusetts (again)
I have some good news and some bad news about a Massachusetts naturopathy practitioner licensing bill. First the bad news: the bill passed both the Massachusetts House and Senate in December of last year. Now, I am certainly no expert in the arcane workings of the Massachusetts legislature, but after doing a bit of research I’ve come to wonder if the way the...
Naturopathy Embraces the Four Humors
The ancient Greeks posited a system of health and disease based on the four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. According to this system, health is defined as a harmony of these four humors and disease is caused by an imbalance among them. Restore the balance, and health is restored. Bleeding is a familiar example of humoral medical treatment based...
Disingenuous: Deconstruction of a naturopathic white paper
Science is the Concept by which we measure our reality I don’t believe in magic I don’t believe in I-ching… I just believe in science…and that reality. John Lennon. Sort of. As regular readers of the blog are aware, I am science/reality based. I think the physical and basic sciences provide an excellent understanding of reality at the level of human experience....
Naturopathy and science
Naturopathy has been a recurrent topic on this blog. The reasons should be obvious. Although homeopathy is the one woo to rule them all in the U.K. and much of Europe, here in the U.S. homeopathy is not nearly as big a deal. Arguably, some flavor of naturopathy is the second most prevalent “alternative medical system” here, after chiropractic of course, and...