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Prevention
Every small bit of prevention adds up!
In today’s world, our healthcare system seems backwards. It has become quick fixes, masking symptoms, eating processed food, molding into set values, cutting struggling body parts out, poisoning disease out, and more. To me, this should not be called health care. Despite scientific advancements, technology, and research groups, many diseases are on the rise as well. In fact, many animals are sicker than they have ever been!
I believe most “healthcare,” whether for people or pets, is going in the wrong direction. Instead of embracing nature and the body’s own ability to heal, we are taught that our body’s cannot and will not heal on their own and that we will eventually fall ill. We are taught that drugs and surgeries are necessary. These are methods that are going to mask the symptoms of disease and go against normal processes of the body. It does not look to the root cause of why the disease is happening in the first place and suppresses our body’s own ability to heal.
There is another way, naturopathy, which looks to the root cause of the condition, and works with the body’s ability to heal, not against it, allowing for true health care. Naturopathy applies common sense reasoning to the solution of the problems of health, disease, and cure. (Lindlahr) It looks to nature for answers to health. It also teaches us that health is not merely the absence of disease.
Every living creature is born with innate intelligence and the ability to heal. Every process in the body is kept in balance through a process called homeostasis. Today, there are many ways to interrupt innate intelligence and homeostasis to bring the body out of balance to allow for symptoms, disease, and poor health to occur.
I like to call the factors that can bring the body out of homeostasis the “3 T’s.” This comes from my chiropractic background, as it was B.J. Palmer, one of the pioneers of chiropractic, who said that dis-ease comes from thoughts, trauma, or toxins. Naturopathy looks to these same three areas for the cause of disease, the root cause of why a pet may be suffering from poor health. Therefore, instead of masking symptoms, the problem is treated at the source, and the entire body, not just a part.
The conventional side tends to see disease as coming from the “3 B’s,” bad genes, bad diseases, and bad luck. (Epstein, 1998) As for bad genes, monozygotic human twins have been studied and found to have an absolute 4% excess tumor incidence. While, this does show that genes can play a role in disease, why are we concentrating on genes rather than the other 96%? Tumors are not sporadic. Moving onto bad diseases, and using cancer as an example again, many campaigns use the phrase, “why me?” Many allopathic methods also convince people to take an active role in reducing their risk of cancer. Taking an active role in preventing disease is a good thing, however, the active roles are usually cancer screening techniques, such as mammography, taking fat out of the diet, and exercising, not necessarily taking the big picture of the body’s needs to thrive into account. As for the last factor, “bad luck,” the occurrence of an un-earned disease many times is more of a nightmare than death itself. Many victims of disease view it as an all-or-none occurrence, an act of God, inferring they had some type of pre-existence of susceptibility. Bad luck isn’t the cause of disease anymore than witchcraft or divine intervention. "Bad luck" is human perception. Illness is the natural and inevitable result after the laws of nature are violated.
Two analogies come to mind when thinking of our traditional allopathic system compared to animal naturopathy:
If you have a house that is on fire, do you take a sleeping pill to make the “symptoms” of the fire to go away or do you utilize water to get down to the root cause and put the fire out? Putting yourself to sleep will get rid of all of the outright signs of the fire, but is the fire still there? Yes! Without getting to the root cause, the house surely will burn and crumble down.
Another analogy for the conventional system is to purify water by adding sewage to it. In the end, would you want to drink this water? Of course not! However, our medical system believes that adding toxic substances to the body is going to promote health.
In order to employ a lifestyle that prevents disease, education is crucial. Educating about disease, the causes of disease, methods to maintain health and work with the body through the laws of health is important. Health can not be derived from a week of doing a special diet or a certain medication. Health needs to come from lifestyle. When treatment is necessary, naturopathy will use the least invasive and harmful treatments available, while maintaining an effective protocol. If dis-ease should occur, naturopathy focuses on the root cause of the dis-ease, options that work with the body’s natural healing capabilities, what to expect along the way (such as a “healing crisis”), and the outcome. This allows the body’s own healing capabilities to flourish, and I believe, is the best way to go about true “health care.”
There is a time and a place for conventional medicine, mostly in acute conditions, and emergency circumstances. For all other aspects of healthcare, following the laws and ways of naturopathy makes much more sense, because health is maintained through a proactive lifestyle where dis-ease is prevented, instead of waiting for it to develop.
It is much easier to build and maintain health than to lose it and have to regain it.
Excerpts from:
Animal Naturopathy: A Vital Role in Maintaining Animal Health, by Dr. Erin O'Connor
I believe most “healthcare,” whether for people or pets, is going in the wrong direction. Instead of embracing nature and the body’s own ability to heal, we are taught that our body’s cannot and will not heal on their own and that we will eventually fall ill. We are taught that drugs and surgeries are necessary. These are methods that are going to mask the symptoms of disease and go against normal processes of the body. It does not look to the root cause of why the disease is happening in the first place and suppresses our body’s own ability to heal.
There is another way, naturopathy, which looks to the root cause of the condition, and works with the body’s ability to heal, not against it, allowing for true health care. Naturopathy applies common sense reasoning to the solution of the problems of health, disease, and cure. (Lindlahr) It looks to nature for answers to health. It also teaches us that health is not merely the absence of disease.
Every living creature is born with innate intelligence and the ability to heal. Every process in the body is kept in balance through a process called homeostasis. Today, there are many ways to interrupt innate intelligence and homeostasis to bring the body out of balance to allow for symptoms, disease, and poor health to occur.
I like to call the factors that can bring the body out of homeostasis the “3 T’s.” This comes from my chiropractic background, as it was B.J. Palmer, one of the pioneers of chiropractic, who said that dis-ease comes from thoughts, trauma, or toxins. Naturopathy looks to these same three areas for the cause of disease, the root cause of why a pet may be suffering from poor health. Therefore, instead of masking symptoms, the problem is treated at the source, and the entire body, not just a part.
The conventional side tends to see disease as coming from the “3 B’s,” bad genes, bad diseases, and bad luck. (Epstein, 1998) As for bad genes, monozygotic human twins have been studied and found to have an absolute 4% excess tumor incidence. While, this does show that genes can play a role in disease, why are we concentrating on genes rather than the other 96%? Tumors are not sporadic. Moving onto bad diseases, and using cancer as an example again, many campaigns use the phrase, “why me?” Many allopathic methods also convince people to take an active role in reducing their risk of cancer. Taking an active role in preventing disease is a good thing, however, the active roles are usually cancer screening techniques, such as mammography, taking fat out of the diet, and exercising, not necessarily taking the big picture of the body’s needs to thrive into account. As for the last factor, “bad luck,” the occurrence of an un-earned disease many times is more of a nightmare than death itself. Many victims of disease view it as an all-or-none occurrence, an act of God, inferring they had some type of pre-existence of susceptibility. Bad luck isn’t the cause of disease anymore than witchcraft or divine intervention. "Bad luck" is human perception. Illness is the natural and inevitable result after the laws of nature are violated.
Two analogies come to mind when thinking of our traditional allopathic system compared to animal naturopathy:
If you have a house that is on fire, do you take a sleeping pill to make the “symptoms” of the fire to go away or do you utilize water to get down to the root cause and put the fire out? Putting yourself to sleep will get rid of all of the outright signs of the fire, but is the fire still there? Yes! Without getting to the root cause, the house surely will burn and crumble down.
Another analogy for the conventional system is to purify water by adding sewage to it. In the end, would you want to drink this water? Of course not! However, our medical system believes that adding toxic substances to the body is going to promote health.
In order to employ a lifestyle that prevents disease, education is crucial. Educating about disease, the causes of disease, methods to maintain health and work with the body through the laws of health is important. Health can not be derived from a week of doing a special diet or a certain medication. Health needs to come from lifestyle. When treatment is necessary, naturopathy will use the least invasive and harmful treatments available, while maintaining an effective protocol. If dis-ease should occur, naturopathy focuses on the root cause of the dis-ease, options that work with the body’s natural healing capabilities, what to expect along the way (such as a “healing crisis”), and the outcome. This allows the body’s own healing capabilities to flourish, and I believe, is the best way to go about true “health care.”
There is a time and a place for conventional medicine, mostly in acute conditions, and emergency circumstances. For all other aspects of healthcare, following the laws and ways of naturopathy makes much more sense, because health is maintained through a proactive lifestyle where dis-ease is prevented, instead of waiting for it to develop.
It is much easier to build and maintain health than to lose it and have to regain it.
Excerpts from:
Animal Naturopathy: A Vital Role in Maintaining Animal Health, by Dr. Erin O'Connor
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