Use the therapeutic order to regain your health

Following the therapeutic order allows you to slowly guide your body back to balance, and to support it as it finds its own path to optimal health.

The therapeutic order guides recommendations that we, licensed naturopathic physicians, make to support and increase your health and vitality. It is the practical application of our six naturopathic tenets:

• First, do no harm
• Healing power of nature
• Treat the whole person
• Identify and treat the cause
• Doctor as teacher
• Prevention is the best cure

Establish the Foundations for Health

Establishing the foundations for health includes identifying and removing obstacles to cure such as toxicity, habits that sabotage health and balance, not getting enough sleep, etc. For example, without proper rest, the best diet and all the supplements in the world won’t cure what ails you. This step sets the body up for self-healing.

Institute a healthy daily routine

Making a healthy daily routine encourages your body to work at its best. It stimulates the healing power of nature and the self-healing process. Restorative sleep, hydrotherapy, and homeopathy accomplish this stage. No one thing we do heals you – we simply provide support and information so your body can re-balance and heal itself. You do ALL of the work.

Give extra support

Finally, we can address weakened or damaged systems or organs with specific nutritional recommendations, supplementation, or life choices. This is where supplementation may come in. Supplements work better if you aren’t fighting against their process with unhealthy lifestyle choices.

Common actions of extra support include:

• Strengthening the immune system
• Decreasing toxicity
• Normalizing inflammation
• Increasing metabolic function
• Balancing regulatory system
• Enhancing regeneration
• Harmonizing life force

If establishing the conditions for health, instituting a healthy daily regime, and giving extra support hasn’t achieved your goals, only then do we explore structural integrity, and address pathology through natural (nutritional supplements, herbal medicines) and pharmacological means. In my naturopathic practice, we would refer out to explore surgical suppression to remove the pathology as a very last resort.

Therapeutic order in practice

An example of using the therapeutic order in practice is from a 60-year-old woman who came to us with kidney failure due to uncontrolled diabetes. Her diabetes was being managed with pharmaceuticals (and her MD was beginning to suggest insulin), but her health was getting worse, not better.

First and foremost, we discussed food and beverage choices, advised increased movement, and explored stress management. Due to her acute kidney issues, we added homeopathic drainage and botanical medicine to support her urinary system. Over time, she was treated with constitutional homeopathy, hydrotherapy at home, and continued to work on lifestyle choices. After a few months of working together, we added some supplementation to support blood sugar management.

Six years later, she continues to manage her diabetes with pharmaceuticals, but without insulin. Implementing the therapeutic order helped to not only reverse her kidney disease, but also to increase her energy and activity, gain lean muscle mass, and manage life with greater ease.