Bone Cancer Treatments – Naturopathic Medicine

Naturopathic Medicine for Bone Cancer

At Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), bone cancer patients are assigned an integrative, multidisciplinary care team. Part of this care team includes naturopathic practitioners, who work alongside your oncologists to create and customize a complementary bone cancer treatment program or you.

Our Naturopathic Medicine Program is designed to assist in maintaining your physical well-being, building strength, and reducing the side effects of conventional bone cancer treatments.

Naturopathic Medicine:  An Overview

Naturopathic medicine is a distinct system of primary healthcare. Naturopathic medicine centers on using the least invasive, most physiologically supportive methods possible to treat illness and diseases, such as bone cancer.

The practice of naturopathic medicine is based on the following principles:

The Healing Power of Nature
Your body is designed to inherently establish, maintain, and restore health. The healing process is ordered and intelligent; nature heals through the response of the life force. The role of the naturopathic practitioner is to facilitate and augment this process, to identify and remove obstacles to your health and recovery, to help your body maintain its healthy equilibrium, and to support the creation of a healthy internal and external environment for you.

First Do No Harm
In naturopathic medicine, therapeutic actions should be complementary to and synergistic with the natural healing process. Naturopathic practitioners diagnose illness and restore health by using methods and medicinal substances that minimize the risk of harmful effects on you, applying the least possible force or intervention necessary. Naturopathic practitioners respect and work with the healing power of nature in bone cancer diagnosis, treatment and counseling.

Practitioner as Teacher
The naturopathic practitioner is a catalyst for healthful change. In order to facilitate this understanding, the naturopathic practitioner must work to create a healthy, sensitive interpersonal relationship with each patient. The practitioner must strive to inspire hope as well as understanding. A cooperative practitioner-patient relationship has inherent therapeutic value, empowering and motivating the patient to assume responsibility for health and healing.

Treat the Whole Person
By recognizing that health and disease result from a complex of physical, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental, social, spiritual, and other factors, naturopathic practitioners treat the whole person and not just the cancer. Naturopathic medicine recognizes the harmonious functioning of all aspects of you as being essential to health. Naturopathic practitioners take all these factors into account to create a comprehensive, personalized approach to bone cancer treatment.

Prevention
Prevention is the ultimate goal of naturopathic medicine. Prevention is achieved through education and promotion of positive lifestyle habits that create good health. Naturopathic practitioners assess risk factors and genetic predisposition to disease and make appropriate interventions to avoid further harm and risk to you. The emphasis is on building health.

Naturopathic Practice

At CTCA, as you undergo bone cancer treatment, naturopathic therapies seek to leverage the inherent ability of the body to achieve wellness. Naturopathic practitioners consult with the other members of your care team to provide diverse techniques based on an individualized analysis of your needs.  

While most naturopathic practitioners are trained to be primary care physicians, some choose to focus on particular treatment methods (see below). Others may specialize in particular medical fields, such as pediatrics, gynecology, allergies, arthritis, etc.

Even though it has its own therapeutic specialties, naturopathic medicine incorporates the natural therapies of many different healing traditions. What makes a therapy part of the naturopathic scope of practice is the way it is applied (i.e., on the basis of the six naturopathic principles of healing).

The current scope of naturopathic practice includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Clinical Nutrition
The concept "food is the best medicine" is essential to naturopathic practice. Naturopathic medicine believes proper use of foods and nutritional supplements can treat many medical conditions better than by other means, with fewer complications and side effects.

Botanical Medicine
Many plant substances are powerful medicines, able to simultaneously address a number of problems. Single chemically-derived drugs, on the other hand, are typically able to address only a single problem. The organic nature of botanical medicine makes most botanicals compatible with the body's own chemistry; hence, they can be gently effective with few toxic side effects.

Physical Medicine
Naturopathic medicine has developed many of its own methods of therapeutically manipulating the muscles, bones and spine. Physical medicine can include ultrasound, diathermy (controlled "deep heating" beneath the skin in the subcutaneous tissues, deep muscles, and joints for therapeutic purposes), exercise, massage, water, heat and cold, and gentle electrical therapies.

Chinese Medicine
The healing philosophy used by Chinese medicine is complementary to naturopathic medicine. Meridian theory provides an important understanding of the unity of the body and mind, supplementing the Western understanding of physiology. By unifying and harmonizing the imbalances present in disease conditions, acupuncture may in turn stimulate the immune system and the healing response.

Psychological Medicine
Because mental attitudes and emotional states may influence, or even cause, physical illness, naturopathic practitioners employ counseling, nutritional balancing, stress management, hypnotherapy, biofeedback, and other therapies to help patients heal psychologically.

Homeopathic Medicine
Based on the principle of "like cures like," homeopathy works on a subtle, yet powerful, energetic level, gently acting to strengthen the body's immune response and helping to trigger a healing process.

Next Topic:  Mind-Body Medicine for Bone Cancer