No! Absolutely not!

The best health care is a combination of both.

It’s your family doctor’s job to ensure that you don’t have a life-threatening illness. Drugs and surgery are excellent life-saving tools, which is what they are designed for. Your family doctor is also an excellent first-line diagnostician who will ensure you get proper diagnostic testing. 

Conventional care, however, is not designed to heal and repair the problem, but to control it as best it can.  More is required to actually get your body healthier.  Chronic disease conditions like cancer, clogged arteries, menopausal symptoms, chronic headaches, arthritis, auto-immune conditions, Crohn’s, colitis, and hypertension are not cured by medications, but they are controlled to varying degrees of success using medications.  Much can be done to improve these conditions and improve overall health with these conditions. 

Our job, the Naturopathic Doctor role, is to collaborate with your MD and provide medical expertise in healing and repairing the problem, the reason it got there, and getting you HEALTHY! We also provide other types of diagnostics to determine how finely tuned your system is, to discover more functional problems (like adrenal fatigue, sub-clinical hypothyroidism, or food sensitivities), and to look for issues of environmental toxicity as significant etiological factors for certain conditions.

WRONG! Just ask our patients with chronic fatigue, or the patient who avoided having a colostomy, or the other one with colitis and daily bleeding and stomach pain, who couldn’t eat anything and who finally got relief through naturopathic medicine.

And, of course, you should undergo appropriate diagnostic testing and use medications where appropriate. You should go to the emergency department for any acute concern, and if you are in any doubt.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. However, check with your extended insurance provider. Most private insurers provide coverage for a certain yearly amount. You are reimbursed when you submit your receipts.

To obtain the professional degree of Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine (ND), students must:

> Have successfully obtained an undergraduate science degree.

> Successfully completed the four-year full-time professional and accredited degree program at one of the 6 North American universities/specialized schools for Naturopathic Medicine. This includes more than 4,500 hours of classroom training and 1,500 hours of supervised clinical experience. 

[The curriculum matches North American medical schools curriculum,  including anatomy (with dissection lab), physiology, biochemistry, immunology, pathology, microbiology, differential diagnosis, lab diagnostics, primary care, minor surgery, pharmacy etc. It also includes regenerative medicine modalities such as chiropractic, botanical pharmacy, clinical nutrition, hydrotherapy, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), acupuncture, counseling, IV nutrient therapy, and more.]

> Pass NPLEX board exams that are written after the second year of study and fourth year of study. NPLEX is the standard examination used by all licensing jurisdictions of Naturopathic doctors in North America. 

> Meet the Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits as required by the provincial regulatory boards on an ongoing basis.

> NDs may also choose to obtain their Drug Prescribing License and must do so to be able to prescribe vitamins at pharmacological doses and to do injection therapies. This requires extensive study of medication prescribing, followed by a one-day oral and written exam. In BC and other provinces, NDs are allowed to prescribe all medications that family doctors have access to. In Ontario, despite passing the pharmacy examinations, NDs have limited access to drug prescribing, with additions occurring each year. All of our doctors have attained this designation. 

> In addition to these requirements, the learning never stops! All of our doctors have advanced professional training in many areas, including environmental medicine, orthomolecular medicine, oncology, Bowen therapy, IV therapy, chelation therapy, ozone therapies, Gestalt psychotherapy, and EFT (emotional freedom technique), Mindfullness Based Cognitive Therapy and Stress Reduction, Mold Literacy, MCAS,  Neurodiversity, and more.

This depends on you and the condition we are treating. This is a completely different process from symptom/disease management with medication. 

We are engaging in healing and repair in the body, similar to growing a bonsai tree. We need the right soil, light, water, careful pruning, and removal of irritants and garbage in the way of growth and repair. 

For example, it takes eight weeks to heal a bone fracture and six months or so of physio to repair tissue, tendon, muscle, and ligaments. This is the rate of cellular growth and repair in the human body. Some conditions will be resolved in a month. Others, over a couple of years. It also depends on how much you are willing and able to do for yourself.

Relative to “free” health care, it seems expensive. Relative to what health care actually costs, it’s a steal. 

Here is what your fees go towards:

The cost of medical education is the same as all medical schools, minus paid residencies.

The annual costs of licensing, continuing education, association memberships, and medical database memberships are also the same or more than family medicine.

ND practices are complex and detailed, as we are general practitioners providing whole-system care. The costs of running a practice, staffing, supplies, and renting commercial office space account for more than half of your fees. I love to provide you with a clinic experience that is smooth, detailed, and comprehensively supportive, and this requires staff. 

Individualized care requires a lot of time outside of consultation hours. It requires analysis and planning for every appointment. It requires researching the best new treatments and products, communication with other caregivers, and many other details that can’t occur during workday hours. This amounts to more than 20 hours of unpaid work per week.

Integrity is very important to us. Choosing to become an ND requires a high level of passion and altruism to be in service of others and to understand the extremely broad and multi-faceted topic of whole-person healing. It’s a challenging profession to be part of. The rewards come from you and the satisfaction of a deep calling to help.

Lab Tests Disclosure: Lab tests requested by an ND are not covered by OHIP. There is no HST on regular lab tests. There is no markup on lab tests. There is HST on functional medical testing e.g., salivary hormones testing, food sensitivity testing.

Dispensary Disclosure: There is only sufficient markup on supplements to account for costs incurred in managing the dispensary. The office dispensary ensures that you have immediate access to quality medicines you need at a reasonable cost. The quicker you start them, the quicker you will get results. Spending two weeks hunting down appropriate products is inefficient. You are welcome to get any medicines required anywhere you want. Products that are easily sourced at local health food stores for a lower cost due to bulk purchasing are not carried in our dispensary.

Your care is your choice, and we can go as fast or as slow as you wish. Feeling financially stressed due to treatment does not help the repair process. Feeling empowered, feeling that your investment in yourself is worth it and manageable, and feeling good about your decision to get yourself well is important. 

But the process of repair is very different from symptom control. Whole-person care is also very different from the “one problem per visit only” approach. The body is complex. Healing an issue often requires addressing multiple systems in the body at once, needing their own specific treatments. 

A person with colitis, anxiety, and nutrient deficiencies causing fatigue and other issues requires nutrients for gut repair, immune system balance, nervous system and adrenal balance, and nutrient replacement for deficiencies. Your amazing tissues need more than just one nutrient to function properly.