Tolle Totum: "Treat the Whole Person"

Recently, more health care providers are paying closer attention to the importance of lifestyle in both building and maintaining a foundation for health. Increasingly, both allopathic and naturopathic doctors are stressing the importance of the individual and acknowledging that the spiritual and emotional aspects of health are connected with physiological functioning. It is becoming more
common for physicians to recommend a wholesome diet, to advocate the proper functioning of the organs of elimination, and to encourage nourishing interpersonal relationships and a supportive work environment.

Unfortunately, an essential piece is all too often missing in the growing practice of  “wholistic” medicine. Naturopathic Physicians know that the systems of the human body are intimately interconnected, each a reflection of the whole. We recognize that optimal health is achieved when all aspects of the individual – including physical, mental, emotional, genetic, spiritual, environmental, and social factors – are functioning together in harmony.  Each body system is responsible for a specific portion of the physiological workload—maybe nourishment, elimination or communication. Any deficiency in one of these functions places an undue burden on other systems ill-equipped for the job and inefficiencies result. Therefore, an imbalance in one system of the body can create, as compensation, a symptom in another location.

This multifaceted nature of health and disease requires an approach directed at these fundamental causal links. For instance, a child with eczema exhibits a clear skin lesion. The parent can see it, the doctor can measure it, and the child certainly feels its itch. But, eczema is not just a skin problem, it is a sign on the skin that a more complex problem exists. As naturopaths, our work is to discover what that problem may be because under the skin’s surface, a similar process is at work in every cell of the body. And, this process is likely creating imbalances in many areas of the patient’s biology. As a result, we recognize it is not possible to ‘remove’ the eczema. We must, instead, address the dysfunction and restore each organ system to its proper biological role. When we are successful in this, the external expression of dis-ease will resolve itself.