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Homeopathic Remedies: Preparations containing an extremely diluted amount of a substance that causes the symptoms, prescribed on the assumption that "like cures like."

Herbal Medicines: Whole herbs or standardized extracts, prescribed as mild, natural alternatives to synthetic medications.

Dietary Supplements: Vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and other food substances, recommended as a natural boost to health and resistance.

Dietary Restrictions: Vegetarianism or elimination of certain food categories (such as dairy products), recommended to relieve sensitivity reactions and clear the body of toxins. Dietary advise often includes instruction on "proper combining" of groups.

Physical Medicine: Manipulation of muscles, bones, and the spine, and physiotherapy using water, heat, cold, ultrasound, and exercise, employed to relieve a broad array of ailments.

Stress Reduction: Counseling, hypnotherapy, biofeedback, and other methods, employed to heal physical damage from stress.

Detoxifying Regimens: Fasting, using enemas, or drinking large amounts of water in an effort to purify the body.

Naturopaths typically recommend an assortment of these approaches in an attempt to boost your natural defenses (the immune system), restore good health, and prevent disease.

Naturopathy endeavors to cure disease by harnessing the body's own natural healing powers. Rejecting synthetic drugs and invasive procedures, it stresses the restorative powers of nature, the search for underlying causes of disease, and the treatment of the whole person (emotional, genetic, and environmental influences included). It takes very seriously the medical motto "first, do no harm."
Naturopathic medicine began as a quasi-spiritual "back to nature" movement in the 19th century. Reacting against the often misguided medical practices of the day and the disease, dirt, and degradation caused by the Industrial Revolution, the European founders of naturopathy advocated exposure to air, water, and sunlight as the best therapy for all manner of ailments, and recommended spa treatments such as hot mineral baths as virtual cure-alls.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, naturopathy evolved and grew enormously, rivaling conventional medicine in popularity. Benedict Lust, a German doctor who emigrated to the U.S. in 1892, founded the health food store as we know it, and crystallized the focus of naturopathy on diet and nutrition as the chief route to health. During this period, health-food faddism rivaled that of the present day, with influential practitioners like Dr. Kellogg (of cereal-company fame) insisting that meat and other "unnatural" foodstuffs were wreaking untold havoc on human health.

With the rise of increasingly sophisticated drugs and advanced medical technology after World War II, naturopathy fell from favor (with a hearty push from organized medicine). Grains and herbs seemed like mere snake-oil in the brave new world of antibiotics and polio vaccines. Science reigned supreme until the 1960's, when the discovery of unsuspected side effects from DDT, thalidomide, and other high-tech wonders reminded Americans that "better living through chemistry" sometimes had shortcomings of its own.

Meanwhile, a new and more scientifically-minded crop of naturopathy advocates, including nutrition writer Adele Davis and vitamin C researcher Linus Pauling, helped bring fresh respectability to the idea that nature still held healing powers. This new breed was quick to adopt the research techniques of "conventional" medicine to prove the effectiveness of age-old remedies like herbs and newer options such as vitamin pills. Placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials, in which neither the doctor nor the patient knew who was getting genuine treatment and who was getting a fake, soon became common not only for drugs, but for diet as well. As the results accumulated, it became clear that our choice of food can indeed have significant impact on our health.

How well does naturopathy work? That depends on the aspect of naturopathy in question. Organized medicine, which ignored nutrition for decades, now swears by low-fat, high-fiber diets to prevent a host of diseases that plague industrialized societies such as ours. Mainstream doctors are also gaining new respect for certain antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin E, as potential bulwarks against disease, and some are even acknowledging the effectiveness of certain herbs (such as St. John's Wort for depression).