Naturopathic vs. Conventional Medicine
| Naturopathic Doctors (NDs) | Conventional Doctors (MDs) | |
| Their goal is to support your body’s natural, intelligent ability to heal itself | Tend to presume that your body is incapable of healing itself. | |
| Their goal is to remove and/or treat the cause of the problem. | Their goal is usually to treat the manifestation, or the effect, of the primary disturbance. | |
| NDs attend four-year post-graduate medical school. | MDs attend four-year post-graduate medical school. | |
| NDs must pass a national board exam. | MDs must pass a national board exam. | |
| NDs realize that dietary and lifestyle changes can significantly impact, and even cure, disease and dysfunction. | MDs focus on drugs and surgery to treat disease, and usually spend little if any time on the role diet and lifestyle play in how you feel. | |
| NDs realize that health and disease are on a continuum, and that not all conditions fit into conventional disease categories. | MDs tend to believe you’re healthy if you don’t fit into a disease category and your tests are normal. | |
| NDs are experts in natural therapies, including nutritional and herbal supplementation, homeopathy, and alternative methods of diagnosis. | MDs tend to be only familiar with drugs and surgery, and often are not even aware of the extensive research that verifies the effectiveness of natural medicines. | |
| Naturopathic Doctors are trained in laboratory and clinical diagnosis, and spend the first two years of their training studying anatomy, physiology, microbiology, and pathology. | Medical Doctors are trained in laboratory and clinical diagnosis, and spend the first two years of their training studying anatomy, physiology, microbiology, and pathology. |
Naturopathic Doctors are licensed as physicians in about 20 states, provinces, and jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada, to diagnose disease and treat it using natural methods. We tend to focus on wellness, and restoring you to health, rather than on managing the supposed inevitable progression to disease and debility.