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General Description

This is an ideal career for analytical and logical thinkers. The job of a Naturopath is to use traditional medicine to treat sickness and encourage general wellbeing in patients, instead of offering surgery or drugs which can often suppress symptoms. You specialise in remedies such as lifestyle advice or herbal alternatives.

A Naturopath believes in the holistic principal that the balance of the mind and body is vital to preventing illness and disease. You deal with a range of ailments, from nutritional deficiencies, allergies, fatigue, to stress, depression and muscular or skeletal disorders.

The natural techniques you may utilise include homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, herbalism, nutrition and myotherapy. However, within these methods, you can also employ other natural therapies, such as iridology, Reiki, NAET (Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique) and remedial therapy.

What you do every day

A Naturopath dealing with a new patient will conduct an assessment before beginning treatment. Your interview process will include the patient’s previous illnesses, family medical history, lifestyle, emotional state, and a physical examination. This will enable you to pinpoint the underlying causes of the illness, and take an appropriate direction when conducting the healing process.

You will see a number of patients with a range of ailments on a daily basis. Depending on the illness in question and your specialisation within the field, you may do a number of things:

• analyse the patient’s diet and set them a nutrition plan;
• prescribe natural medicines;
• encourage the body’s ability to heal and maintain itself using natural techniques;
• use physical medicine to manually manoeuvre their body to correct muscular, skeletal or postural disorders; and
• study the iris for discolouration to indicate which organs within the body require treatment.

Personality that best fits this career

Overall, as a Naturopath you must be empathetic, with a desire to help people reach a state of good health. The best are observant and astute, able to recognise symptoms, and determine the ailment and possible causes quickly and accurately.

You must have good communication skills and a strong bedside manner. A mature and self-assured personality will help clients to trust your knowledge, and believe that your treatments will succeed. You also need the ability to work independently and the confidence to trust your own judgment. You are naturally a logical and analytical thinker.

As a naturopath, you will need to be interested in the natural health industry and be dedicated to preventive medicine, alongside your traditional treatments. Due to the number of contemporary medicinal practitioners who view naturopathy with scepticism and disdain, you will need a strong belief in the methods of your practice.

Best thing about this career

The best aspect of being a Naturopath is the sense of pleasure and satisfaction you feel after healing a patient. Despite the pressure of determining the cause of an ailment and consequently treating it, your client’s gratitude is always worth it. The constant challenges to apply your knowledge in varying circumstances only make your work more rewarding.

Overall, although the methods of traditional medicine do not always make scientific sense, it is empowering to know that you do not have to operate or prescribe drugs to heal someone.

Worst thing about this career

Naturopaths are still struggling to be universally recognised as legitimate medicinal practitioners. With the advancement in science and consequent leaps forward in contemporary Western medicine, traditional practices look weak and unreliable by comparison. A stigma regarding natural medicine continues to influence people in popular culture, and although general acceptance is certainly increasing, you may still face the contempt and disbelief of society.