Recently, I have been thinking so much as to what career path in medicine to take. While I have 3 that I am deciding between, I was just curious what everyones thoughts are on Natural medicine. It is one of the paths I have been looking into. Not a very spoken topic, as well as a category of medicine in which many believe may not always be best under certain circumstances.
There is no such thing as board certification in “naturopathic medicine” from the American Board of Medical Specialties. Here are the choices:
http://www.abms.org/member-boards/specialty-subspecialty-certificates/
Naturopathy is the very opposite of evidence-based medicine. Naturopathy embraces a number of discredited, pseudoscientific and possibly unethical practices, including homeopathy, and preaches avoidance of vaccinations, antibiotics, medications (including insulin and other life-saving drugs) and surgical procedures.
There are no national licensing requirements for naturopaths and there are no national regulations governing the education and training of naturopaths. In many states, anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves a “naturopathic healer”–without any formal training or education, and without going through a state or national licensing process.
For these reasons, naturopaths are often regarded as frauds, charlatans and quacks.
They are board certified by the ANMCB, but I see what you mean.
^^^But that’s not a recognized Board. It’s not recognized by the governing body of medical specialties. There’s no residency in “naturopathy.” You cannot be a good physician without becoming board certified in a recognized medical specialty. If you want to integrate non-traditional medicine into your evidence-based practice, that’s a different story.
There’s a word for “alternative medicine” that works. It’s called medicine. :))
What are your three paths?
As a pharmacist I see more and more interest in “natural” remedies. I’m extremely interested in them including the homeopathic formulations that seemingly shouldn’t work at all but do for so many people. More often than placebo effect would allow.
I predict that at some point “natural” medicine will be a viable career option for professionals and not just the charlatans that occupy that space presently. A good “medicine man” is valuable. In an environment of extremely expensive “cures” it is becoming more important to provide some cost effective alternatives.
That said…the best path to gain any credence is to have traditional science education in a medical field.
Pharmacy, medicine, nursing. A field that encompasses chemistry, drugs, scientific literature evaluation.
- I had a chronic condition called IBS my whole life that was resistant to treatment. My naturopath did some blood tests and a stool sample. The blood tests came back indicating certain food sensitivities. Eliminating them along with taking some supplements completely eliminated the problem. I have been IBS free for years now. While he did nothing that an MD couldn't have done, he got results, whereas, several gastroenterologists after invasive procedures, and some of you know what I mean, could do nothing for me.
- Several states do license naturopaths and they can serve as primary care physicians.
- In most of Europe, because research is funded by public health systems, many natural substances are prescription drugs there but are over the counter here. As a result, they are not often recommended by MDs in the US because MDs are overly influenced by drug companies and in the US, natural medicine can't be patented, and thus not generally produced by profit seeking drug companies. I'm thinking of several supplements for depression like St. John's Wort or SAM-E. There is also a natural supplement for sinus infections that doesn't keep me up all night called Sinupret that I can get in Whole Foods which is made by a German drug company.
The controversy exists because so call evidence based medicine requires a very high level of evidence before something is deemed to be effective. However, just because a substance hasn’t been tested to that level of evidence, doesn’t mean that it isn’t effective or safe. There are just more risks (in the probabilistic sense in terms of uncertainty).
I think the same is true for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) which I’ve had some success with, but have concluded that it’s hit or miss depending on the skills of the practitioner.
One area where naturopaths are working with MDs is in the area of functional gasteroenterology. Check out Gerard Mullin’s writings.
One of my 80 year old neighbor is an MD from St, Louis University. He was a naturopath believer and wanted to set up many clinics in CA. However, his plan could not materialize because the Obama care will not pay the cost of naturopath clinics.
Nevertheless, I don’t think every naturopathic doctor is practicing quackery, at least for my MD neighbor.
Your neighbor was misinformed, or you misunderstood. “Obamacare” is not a form of health insurance and it is not a health insurance company. It is the nickname for a law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Nothing in the law prevents an insurance company from covering “naturopathy.”
http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001815
Insurance companies (for example, Aetna, Blue Cross, Oxford, etc.) can choose not to cover certain procedures and treatments. But nothing in the law PREVENTS them from doing so.
In addition, the law says that the provider must be “acting within the scope of that provider’s license or certification under applicable State law.” Perhaps this is the part that tripped him up.
My neighbor could not have been misinformed, he was the one who was in practice and he is an MD for over 40 years. I may not have all the facts straight, but it is him that told me the failure to establish a naturopathic practice has to do with Obamacare, whether it is due to non-payment or not maybe debatable. Either way, the fact there are few naturopathic practice is a fact and non of the hospitals has a department about it.
My in-laws were both physicians. My MIL decided to open a naturopathic practice years ago. She had some odd ideas, but she did help a lot of people - they would come from all over the world to see her. It drove my FIL up the wall, though - “Why don’t you do real studies on what you’re doing so you can prove it works?” But she never did.
When I was pregnant with our first child, she waved a crystal over my belly and said there was a 95% chance it would be a girl. It was a boy. Oh, well!
As demonstrated in the quote from the law in post #9, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act decisively does not prohibit reimbursement for natural medicine. If you go into the link I provided you’ll see extensive analysis of this very point by many experts. Here’s one of them:
Here’s another:
Unless he was planning to administer treatments that were against state law, there is nothing in the ACA that prohibits coverage for natural medicine—given by MDs or non-MDs (chiropractors, acupuncturists, etc.)
Even with ACA, different states offer different insurance oversights, regulations and frameworks in which insurance companies can operate. Agree with brantly, try to distinguish between the law itself and the individual practices of different insurance co’s under the law. Eg, in some areas, acupuncture is covered by some insurers and not others.
Btw, before deciding whether to become a naturopath, consider the geo area you hope to practice and live in, how they respond to alternate medicine. Some areas are more receptive. In others, you could spend an inordinate amount of your time just trying to attract clients.