Confessions of a naturopathic doctor
A mom was en route to my office. Her 5-year old child in the back seat was unresponsive. She was on the phone with our receptionist. She reported her kid could barely speak and was ghost white. Speaking through the receptionist, I insisted the mom drive straight to the emergency...
This post originally appeared on ScienceBasedMedicine.org on March 13, 2015. I am including the article here in its original form to help readers easily discover the truth about naturopathic education. In 2011, I graduated from Bastyr University with a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. I passed the Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examination...
I love to talk. Socializing is one of my strong suits. When hosts Dr. Jason Luchtefeld and Dr. Grant Ritchey of The Prism Podcast asked me to talk with them about my journey away from naturopathy, I jumped at the chance. Drs. Jason Luchtefeld and Grant Ritchey are practicing general...
“I am a naturopathic doctor.” “Huh? A natur-o-what? Is that like a homeopathic doctor?” “Oh, no. We are totally different than homeopaths. Naturopathic doctors are trained as primary care physicians in four-year post graduate naturopathic medical schools, just like medical doctors.” When I was practicing as a licensed naturopath, I...
For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women. —Elizabeth Blackwell (The first female physician in the U.S.) As a new blogger, I’ve been paying more attention to online health sources. I have noticed many of the media...
This post originally appeared on ScienceBasedMedicine.org on April 13, 2015. I am including the article here in its original form to help readers easily discover the truth about naturopathic education. Right before I left the naturopathic profession, an Arizona naturopath told me that “all NDs are doing something borderline...
I am no longer a licensed naturopathic doctor. My Arizona license expired on New Year’s Eve of 2014. My Washington license expired this past week, on my 31st birthday. Both states gave me unreasonably broad scopes of practice. I was allowed to diagnose and treat disease, order labs and imaging,...
There is no way that naturopathic training produces better health care that is affordable or more efficacious than what is currently available. Yet, this is exactly the rhetoric fed to federal and state lawmakers about naturopathic medicine, and it is wrong.
In the summer before starting at Bastyr University, I met a naturopath at a Dave Matthews concert. She recently graduated from Bastyr and was excited to meet someone who was about to embark on their own naturopathic journey. “One of three things will happen to you while at Bastyr,” she...
I did not want to be a skeptic. I equated skepticism with two character traits I did not like: pessimism and cynicism. As a naturopathic student and then naturopathic doctor, I felt it was important to remain likeable so I didn’t challenge information in ways that could be perceived as...