A Naturopathic Pediatrician's Strategy: Therapeutic Order.

What is therapeutic order?

The naturopathic standard of practice is based on a hierarchy of interventions we revere as the therapeutic order.

In the western world, we have adapted to the belief that every ailment can be matched to a drug to make it stop. If we have heartburn, we pop a Tums. For congestion, we take sudafed. Allergies, asthma, insomnia, depression, restless legs, psoriasis…there’s a drug for everything.

Think back to your last doctor visit. You check in, wait for a while, the nurse takes you back and collects your health data and vitals, then you wait some more. The doctor comes in and spends an average of 7 minutes in the room with you, most of that time is spent reading the data on the computer screen. They collect a few more details about your symptoms, then do one of 2 things:

write you a prescription and send you on your way
tell you to follow up if it gets worse

Maybe I’m over exaggerating a little, but I have 3 kids and have been to a fair share of appointments that felt like a waste of time because the doctor didn’t listen to me and I left without a solution.

Caveat: this is an overgeneralization and I recognize not all docs practice this way, and the ones who do are usually forced to rush through patient visits because that’s the box they’ve been put in by our medical system. I respect doctors who work hard and genuinely care about their patients, no matter what their title is.

There’s a reason these visits are so dreadful – they skip from the bottom tier all the way to high-level intervention. There are important aspects of the disease process that are overlooked when we forget to ask these questions:

What other strange or unusual symptoms have been occurring?
Where there any significant life events that may have triggered this?
What are the staples of your diet and are you well hydrated?
Are you sleeping well?
How is your social life? Your relationships?
What motivates and inspires you on a daily basis?

Why the therapeutic order works.

Following the therapeutic order prevents oversight. When we start at the basic foundations that make up a healthy lifestyle and make modifications there, we can start to uncover the root cause of the dysfunction. Then we start to incorporate self healing techniques and low-level intervention to reverse symptoms, while building a healthier lifestyle foundation.

By doing this, the disease reverses itself.

That doesn’t mean every disease is completely curable. But many times, if we can’t cure the disease, we can still treat it to a point that it is manageable and overall quality of life improves.