Truly personalized healthcare
Naturopathic medicine is a holistic, individualized approach to improving health and treating illness.
The focus of naturopathic treatment is to support and stimulate the body’s ability to heal itself, resulting in optimal health, not simply management of disease symptoms.
The range of health conditions treatable by naturopathic medicine is similar to that treated by a family physician, focusing, but not limited to “chronic” health conditions (i.e., those lasting longer than three months, for example heart disease).
Naturopathic doctors use a variety of “tools”, including lifestyle medicine, nutritional counselling, nutritional supplements, botanical (herbal) medicines, acupuncture, homeopathy, and “hands-on” therapies such as Bowen Therapy and Suikodo™. These tools are combined uniquely for each and every patient to create a treatment plan reflecting their individual health concern or concerns, their health priorities, their lifestyle demands and any other challenges or obstacles that may be present.
Benefits of naturopathic medicine
Naturopathic medicine incorporates treatments based on thousands of years of experience, with those validated using modern research techniques, resulting in a “complete” approach to healthcare.
As a “health improving” approach to disease treatment, the benefit of naturopathic treatment is often greater than a return to your original state of health. For example, a person being treated for joint pain may also, as a result of their treatment protocol, lose weight, resulting in increased energy, fewer aches and pains and improved self-confidence.
Even when naturopathic medicine is not able to completely solve a health challenge, it can aid in reducing use of conventional medications, reducing medication side effects and long-term toxicity symptoms. For this reason, it is an effective complement for conventional treatment of many health concerns.
What to expect
The first appointment with a naturopathic doctor focuses primarily on gathering the information required to create an effective treatment plan for meeting your health goals.
The information collected may include the history of your main and related health concerns, discussion of the information included in your intake forms, information about lifestyle factors that may provide challenges to success treatment, physical examination findings, and recommendations for further laboratory testing or requests of your other healthcare providers for already-completed laboratory test results.
Although every patient’s treatment plan is individualized, all include nutritional and/or lifestyle prescriptions to support a return to health, and usually use of natural medicines (e.g., botanical [herbal] medicines) or treatments (e.g., acupuncture) to stimulate healing.
Follow-up appointments are scheduled according to the therapy selected, and your response to treatment.
The ultimate goal of naturopathic treatment is for you to be empowered with the knowledge to take control of your own health, requiring consultation with only annually to monitor maintenance of health improvements.
Naturopathic medicine at Toronto Centre for Naturopathic Medicine
Initial appointments for naturopathic treatment at Toronto Centre for Naturopathic Medicine are 90 minutes long.
The first couple of follow-up appointments are usually 45 to 60 minutes in duration, followed typically by 30-minute appointments.
Our naturopathic doctors treat all chronic health conditions, with a particular focus on fertility issues, women’s and children’s health concerns, digestive care and pain conditions that have not been successfully treated using other therapies.
All our naturopathic doctors are all licensed and regulated by the College of Naturopaths of Ontario.
Naturopathic medicine treatments provided at Toronto Centre for Naturopathic Medicine are covered by most extended healthcare plans.