What is Natural Medicine?

Dr. Houtie's perspective on how to truly heal the body.

I’m writing this post because I think the general public has the wrong idea of what “natural medicine” means. Most often, people believe that natural medicine is the usage of natural products to address symptoms/disease states. While this isn’t necessarily erroneous, I take fault with this definition because it doesn’t address the whole picture. So, what does “natural medicine” really mean?

I believe natural medicine equates to using biological tools to support and re-establish normal physiology, so that the body can function optimally and exude resilience.

Now, you may be wondering, why can’t drugs do that? Well, I have to say that I’ve not yet come across a pharmaceutical drug which works with physiology. Any and all drugs that I’ve studied work against physiology. This is an approach which may be palliative for a while, but ultimately pushes the body into a further state of untunement or dis-ease.

Natural agents can of course be used in the same palliative manner as drugs (it’s called “green allopathy”). Although both drugs and natural agents used in this way can be helpful for acute situations, they shouldn’t be used long term. This is because the further we push the body away from its optimal physiology, the more we are pushing it towards chronic disease. Consider this: the body always behaves the way it does for a reason, even if its actions cause disharmony. Wouldn’t it be best to determine the cause of the body’s disharmonious behaviors, rather than exacerbate them and cause further harm?

Here’s where biological medicine, such as biotherapeutic drainage, gemmotherapy, homeopathy, and pleomorphic agents, etc come into the picture. These remedies do exactly what we need from them: they work with the body to restore normal physiology (and sometimes even beyond normal!) because they aim to reverse the root cause of disease (hint: most of the time, it’s toxicity).

The caveat with these biological medicines is that they can take time to work. Logically this makes sense: when physiology has been pushed so far into the black hole of untunement, it’ll likely take some number of months to get physiology back to its normally harmonious state! But the wait is worthwhile because once normally physiology is reached, the body will not only function better, but it will be able to heal itself much more effectively in the future which leads to increased resiliency.

Isn’t that the whole point of natural medicine? To restore natural functioning and allow the body to self-regulate as nature intended?