In naturopathic medicine, recovery from illness, and disease prevention are achieved by the same mechanism: health optimization.
Health optimization is a strategy focussed on helping your body function as well as it possibly is able, as opposed to compensating for loss of function using medications.
Optimizing health is an obvious asset when working towards recovery from illness, but in naturopathic medicine, health is more than simply absence of disease.
Optimal health may mean:
In short, health optimization, be it improving your body’s ability to remove toxins, returning to a healthy weight, or beginning to live a healthier lifestyle in general, is the tool used for true prevention of illness (as opposed to “early detection” of disease), and is the difference between feeling “not sick”, and feeling great.