If you’re one of the 60% of Americans who don’t feel rested and refreshed in the morning, chances are you’ve been told it’s completely normal. Fatigue is one of the most common complaints among US adults, followed by vague symptoms such as pain, brain fog, anxiety, and feelings of unwellness. While these complaints are common, they aren’t “normal.” In naturopathic medicine, symptoms like these are warning signs that something is out of balance within your body.
Naturopathic Medicine Symptom Treatment vs. a Conventional Medicine Approach
A naturopathic physician understands the body’s complex network of interrelated systems and how they affect each other. For instance, an imbalance in the gut plays a significant role in autoimmune disease flare-ups, anxiety, and fatigue. Meanwhile, hormonal imbalances affect every aspect of your physical and emotional well-being, causing everything from sleep disorders to chronic pain and brain fog.
In naturopathic medicine, symptoms are treated not as stand-alone conditions but as signals that your body isn’t functioning correctly.
Conventional medicine takes a disease-centered approach, treating each symptom as its own condition. Medications may temporarily control your symptoms, but they return when the drug is stopped.
For conventional medicine providers, high blood pressure is a single disease process. For naturopathic physicians, high blood pressure is a symptom rather than a disease. This difference is why naturopathic medicine fights symptoms successfully where a conventional approach may fail.
Why Do Many Conventional Medicine Providers Consider Symptoms Normal?
Because so many Americans seek medical care for common conditions such as fatigue or pain, without naturopathic medicine symptom relief, it’s easy to discount these symptoms as normal. There are several other reasons for this mindset as well.
Side Effects of Prescribed Medications
Prescribed medications treat conditions through strong chemicals which are meant to control the body. Sometimes these can be temporarily effective in relieving a symptom, but this process can distort and irritate the body – causing side effects and complications.
For example, anti-anxiety medications accounted for 9.7 million prescriptions in 2020, and their usage continues to climb. Unfortunately, taking anti-anxiety medications causes symptoms such as brain fog, sleep disorders, and fatigue.
Common over-the-counter medications, such as pain relievers or allergy medications, cause tiredness, dizziness, sleep disturbances, and GI upset.
Medical Gaslighting
Medical gaslighting is a term used to describe physicians who discount a patient’s complaint as trivial or, even worse, “all in their head.” The reasons for medical gaslighting range from bias to an inability to connect the symptoms to a diagnosed condition. Simply put, conventional medicine often does not have an effective solution or way to understand many common symptoms, so the symptoms can be dismissed – sometimes with a phrase such as “all the labs look normal.”
In naturopathic medicine, symptoms are recognized as connected to an underlying cause, even if they seem unrelated. Through “treating the whole person” and addressing the underlying imbalances in the body’s systems (such as the nervous system, the hormonal system, etc.) the symptoms can be resolved.
Aging Process
Many commercials and advertisements are directed at relieving vague symptoms such as exhaustion and pain. With the sheer number of these advertisements, many people believe these symptoms to be normal.
The most significant disadvantage of this approach is convincing people that the symptoms they experience are a natural part of aging. Even conventional medical providers believe that the aging process causes these symptoms and seek ways to alleviate each symptom as it arises.
With the holistic approach taken in naturopathic medicine, symptoms that conventional medicine considers normal for the aging population are identified and addressed as part of an underlying condition.
Inability to Treat Many Common Symptoms
While conventional medicine has protocols for many conditions, some symptoms are outside their playbook. Traditional medicine offers few accepted approaches to treating symptoms such as brain fog, nonspecific pain, or exhaustion.
Conventional medicine seeks treatment for concrete conditions such as high blood pressure or infections. Because many symptoms are so vague, they can be treated only with a holistic approach that recognizes each as part of an underlying condition.
Naturopathic Medicine Symptom Relief
Naturopathic physicians provide wellness plans that target the underlying conditions causing your symptoms.
Your body is an entire network of interconnected systems. Each system relies on the others to function normally. If one system isn’t working correctly, all other systems are affected. This imbalance results in fatigue, anxiety and depression, pain, GI issues, weakness, frequent colds, brain fog, and many other symptoms.
Many people learn to accept their symptoms and cope with them in unhealthy ways, such as using stimulants, sugar-laden snacks, or alcohol.
It’s important to remember that, while very common, these symptoms we are talking about are not normal. Naturopathic medicine symptom relief has helped millions worldwide by providing effective wellness plans that address the root cause.
Your naturopathic physician will do a thorough evaluation of your
- Lifestyle
- Environmental factors
- Diet and nutrition
- Lab results, if indicated
- Genetics
- Medical history
Following your assessment, your provider will create a customized wellness plan for you. Your plan will include adjustments to your lifestyle, environment, diet, and all-natural therapies and supplements to restore your healthy balance.
It’s not normal to feel unwell. Your body is designed to heal when it’s provided the proper support, and when a healthy balance is achieved, you will feel refreshed, renewed, and re-energized.
With naturopathic medicine, symptoms such as exhaustion, pain, mood swings, weakness, and low energy can all be a thing of the past. If you’re ready and committed to meeting your health goals, we are ready and committed to helping you achieve them. Book your discovery call now.
