Why I Stopped Seeing Naturopaths

I once had faith in naturopathy.

In the first few years after diagnosis with ulcerative colitis, I was willing to try anything to get well. I endured various diets and went through a small battalion of healers: numerous conventional doctors, three acupuncturists, a certified Ayurvedic doctor, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, a craniosacral healer, and four naturopaths. It’s the naturopaths I want to write about today.

I wanted badly to believe in naturopathy; I’m open to alternative medicine and sometimes write about Ayurveda on this website. There was a time when I was enthusiastic about naturopaths, too. And it isn’t that I’ve never had a good experience with one—the first time I ever saw one, she cured me of the ailment I was seeing her for!

Naturopaths have sometimes helped with my illness, too. Despite all my frustrations, I do still believe there are good naturopaths out there, and that the field has great potential for helping patients heal.

Nevertheless, when others ask for my health advice, I’ve become hesitant to recommend naturopathy except under certain specific conditions. My experiences have been too erratic, the benefits too often buried in a morass of questionable treatments, antipathy towards science, or general flakiness. Very unfortunately, by now, the best way to sum up my experience with naturopathy is: “hit-or-miss.”

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The Soy Cure

Before I explain my frustrations, let me describe my first experience with a naturopath—a positive experience.

Sixteen years ago, in 2005, I’d just returned home from Peace Corps and had all sorts of physical problems, including a hyperactive thyroid. After seeing a couple conventional doctors for this ailment and trying their treatments to no avail, one of them actually recommended I see a naturopath.

“You’ve reached the limits of what Western medicine has to offer,” she said with a sympathetic smile.

(She was making a common error. Naturopathy is Western medicine—it developed in Europe around the 1800s. She would have been correct if she’d said “what conventional medicine has to offer.”)

The doctor’s attitude reflected my city’s embrace of naturopaths. Portland is home to the National University of Natural Medicine, one of just seven accredited naturopathic training programs in North America and probably the oldest. Many people here use naturopaths as their primary doctors, and I know several naturopaths personally. (I hope they’ll forgive me for this post.)

So, following the doctor’s advice, I scheduled an appointment with my first naturopath. The first thing I noticed about her was that she had a remarkably thorough intake process. Even though I was specifically here about hyperthyroidism, she wanted to know about the rest of me, too.

Her lengthy questionnaire addressed my entire health history, my family, and even my emotions. There were questions about recent stressors in my life and large spaces in which I was free to write whole paragraphs. It took the bulk of our first appointment just to go over my answers. I found the process dizzying, but once we’d finished the intake, I also felt she now knew more about me than any doctor I’d ever seen.

All the other naturopaths I would see would have similarly thorough intake processes. Despite my misgivings about the field, this thoroughness is something I do greatly value.

That first naturopath was humble and honest. She admitted she didn’t know, yet, how to treat my hyperthyroidism. But by our second appointment, she’d consulted with colleagues and had learned that soy supplements might be one potential remedy—soy affects hormones. This option seemed worth a try, and my faith in her was boosted by her candor. I felt like she and I were collaborators. We would try out this soy treatment together.

Lo and behold, after I’d taken the supplements for six months, my thyroid activity had returned to normal. It seemed that the naturopath had cured me when conventional medicine could not. I left that first experience with my faith in naturopathy intact. 

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A Pharmacopia for Allergies

My misgivings would begin a few years later. 

One winter, in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin, I developed allergies. I’d never had them before, but now I was constantly sniffling and sneezing, my nose red and raw and my eyes burning.

The likely culprit was dust. Snow was still falling and trees’ limbs were brown and naked outside, the flowering plants still tucked deep beneath frozen soil. Midwestern winters are absent of pollen. Meanwhile, forced-air heating sends dust whirling through homes and workplaces, and the cold keeps everyone inside to breathe the dry, dusty air. Many Midwesterners develop allergies in the dead of winter.

I tried basic treatments I found online, such as dusting my house and irrigating my nose with a neti pot. Nothing worked. Winter faded into spring and I began spending more time outdoors, which I hoped would finally make the symptoms go away. It didn’t. Even as the air turned muggy and humid, my sniffling, sneezing, and runny eyes continued.

Reluctantly, in June I began taking Claritin, which I had so far avoided because I hated taking pills. Still no change occurred. With a sense of dread, I thought of friends who couldn’t shake their allergies. I felt constantly tired, worn down from what felt like a months-long cold. Was I doomed to suffer like this forever?

I finally made myself two medical appointments, one with a naturopath and one with a conventional doctor. The naturopath happened to be available first. I worked my way through another long intake form, sniffling all the way, and showed up in her office feeling a bit pathetic with my runny nose and puffy eyes.

She was a cheerful, motherly woman. She smiled in sympathy as I described my symptoms, and she said not to fret—there were ways to control allergies.

Her philosophy was about treating my whole system, she said, not just the symptoms. The underlying problem was that my immune system needed to be brought into balance, and this we could do with a series of herbal remedies. Her method would take time and patience, but she was confident it would work.

I wish that I had saved the sheet on which I wrote down everything she assigned me to do. I do still have her “pharmacy” list of supplements, though:

• Super EFA Liquid (to rebalance my fatty acids)
• A-Mulsion vitamin A liquid
• Liquid B Complex
• Selenium + vitamin E tablets

Along with all these supplements, I remember that there were several different herbs I was to purchase at the local co-op. Each needed to be boiled, steeped, and/or decanted and drunk at various times throughout each day. Every few hours, I was to return to the kitchen to make another concoction. 

I left her office overwhelmed. I tried not to feel daunted by my list of instructions and the amount of money I would have to spend, since none of these treatments was covered by insurance. At the co-op I purchased various new gadgets: kettles and funnels, measuring cups and cheesecloths, scales and thermometers. Then I spent a couple weeks following the demanding herbal regimen while trying not to fall behind on my graduate studies. 

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The Judgmental Doctor

By my appointment with the conventional doctor two weeks later, nothing had changed. The doctor examined my swollen nasal passages, throat, and eyes and listened to my list of symptoms. I mentioned that I was also under a naturopath’s care, and when I said it, I thought I saw her stiffen. Suddenly nervous, I pressed on, babbling about how I liked the idea of treating the whole system rather than just the symptoms.

“Well,” she said with an air of impatience, “if you’re seeing a naturopath, then you’ve made the decision not to accept my advice.” She looked at me with a hint of challenge in her eyes.

I stared up at her from the examining table, aghast. We’d been having a pleasant conversation. What had happened? Apparently, doctors in Madison weren’t as open to naturopathy as doctors in Portland.

“I do want your advice!” I protested, stammering. “I made this appointment because I want your advice. I want to hear from both you and the naturopath. What do you recommend?” I could feel my cheeks burning.

“Well…” She sighed, shaking her head. “I just think it’s unfortunate that you’ve been suffering so much, for so long, when the solution to your allergies is so easy.” 

All I had to do, she explained, was squirt a little steroid spray up my nose twice a day. This remedy worked for many people. 

The spray sounded to me like “treating the symptoms,” as the naturopath would have said. Unsure whether it would undo all my diligent herbal efforts, I still asked her to prescribe it so I’d at least have it as an option.

A few days later, exhausted from my allergies and all my herbs, I decided to give the spray a try. Almost immediately—within a couple of days—my symptoms subsided. 

For the first time in several months, my breathing was clear, my eyes were no longer red, and my energy had returned. The spray felt like a miracle cure. And unlike all the herbal remedies, it only took a few seconds out of each day. Relief flooded through me. I had my life back.

Looking back on my two appointments, now finally clear-headed and energized, I felt anger rise within me. I realized that both of the two practitioners had erred.

I was angry at the doctor for dismissing me so coldly just for consulting a naturopath. But I was angrier at the naturopath. She hadn’t even mentioned steroid spray as an option, even though it was within her purview to prescribe it. Until seeing the doctor, I’d been under the impression that there was no easy fix for my allergies. The responsible thing for the naturopath to do was to present me with all the options. She should have let me know I could end my suffering if I chose.

I stuck with the steroids. I found that I only needed them now and then, and only a couple times a year, to keep the allergies at bay. A few years later, I stopped needing them altogether. My system seemed to have “rebalanced” on its own.

Meanwhile, I ditched the time-consuming herbs. I will probably never know whether they might also have cured my allergies, although by now I suspect that they wouldn’t have. But I did know that the naturopath had been negligent. I never saw her again.

The incident raised a question for me. Were both practitioners equally to blame for their mutual disrespect? If both naturopathy and conventional medicine were equally deserving of respect, then the answer seemed to be yes. But if naturopathy was less deserving than conventional medicine, then only the naturopath was truly in the wrong. Was my doctor right, after all, to feel such disdain?

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The Generalist

More years passed. 

Eventually, in my thirties, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, my first serious medical condition. The diagnosis exposed both the strengths and the limits of conventional medicine.

Through a colonoscopy and bloodwork, my doctors were able to quickly diagnose my disease, but there was a lot missing from their prescriptions and treatment. Conventional specialists are siloed from each other, leaving cracks in the system that patients can fall through.

Conventional doctors are also married to using only scientifically proven treatments, leading to absurdities when they ignore unproven treatments that clearly work for at least some people. All of my doctors resolutely refused to acknowledge that diet often plays an important role in management of gut diseases such as mine, no matter how many times I reported that my diet affected my symptoms.

Frustrated with these limitations (which I discuss more in other posts), I explored alternative care. Remembering my good experience with my first naturopath, I tried to find her again—I would soon be moving back to Portland from Madison and was excited to seek her out. To my disappointment, though, she no longer seemed to be practicing.

So I went instead to another new naturopath, one who came highly recommended by friends and family. She would be the first of four naturopaths I would see for my disease.

She was a bright, attentive young woman. Like the previous two, she was thorough and caring in her intake, which I greatly appreciated—it was a welcome change to have a practitioner who was interested not only in my colon, but in all of me. She prescribed an exercise regime and daily meditation to help calm my systemic inflammation; she also prescribed turmeric supplements, bone broth, a probiotic called HMF Super Powder, and an anti-inflammatory med called low-dose naltrexone (LDN).

After our first appointment, I stepped into the sunny midday air feeling hopeful. The next morning, I mixed my new HMF Super Powder probiotic into some water and drank it down.

That night, for the first time in weeks, I was doubled over with a terrible stomachache. 

Alarmed, I stumbled to the kitchen and examined the powder, which was the only dietary thing I had changed in the last few days. I had trusted the naturopath and hadn’t looked closely at it. Now I noticed the small type on the container. Other ingredient: Fructose.

I’d been strictly avoiding sugar for weeks. The fructose was the likely cause of my stomachache.

The incident shook my faith in this naturopath. I had told her very clearly that I was avoiding sugar because it always hurt my gut. Suddenly less trusting, I googled the other things she had prescribed.

Bone broth’s supposed benefits are not backed up by science, I read. Despite the many websites and people who recommend it, it seems to be more or less a fad.

Low-dose naltrexone, meanwhile, makes sweeping claims on its main website that are extremely suspect: it’s credited with helping everything from HIV/AIDS to cancer to autoimmune disease. I wondered how a drug can help both cancer and autoimmunity, when fighting cancer requires a strong immune reaction, whereas fighting autoimmunity requires reducing the body’s immune response.

Digging deeper, I read that proponents wave this question away, admonishing that LDN “improves” the body’s entire immune response. But it was also easy to find medical experts who were dissatisfied with that answer. And an article reviewing the scientific literature on this drug cautions that, while it’s “inexpensive and well-tolerated,” its use is “still highly experimental.” 

My googling made me recognize the dilemma inherent in seeing a naturopath. Inevitably, treatments will often not be backed up by robust science—if they were, they’d be FDA-approved and prescribed by conventional doctors. This lack of robust evidence means you’re placing a great deal of faith in the skill of your naturopath. That’s quite a gamble if you don’t know her well. It requires a lot of trust—not to mention time, energy, and especially, money.

I remembered how, with my allergies years earlier, I had spent a lot of money, time, and energy following an herbal regime I hadn’t turned out to need. Already, with this new naturopath, the HMF Super Powder alone had cost me $70 out of pocket, and I was going to have to throw the whole jar away.

I was spooked. My trust shaken, I decided to find someone new.

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The Specialist

I was still not even considering giving up on naturopaths. Many people I knew recommended them, and I thought I just needed to find the right one. The one who’d prescribed the HMF Super Powder had been a generalist; I decided what I needed was someone who specialized in my disease. The following spring, I found one. To my delight, my new naturopath primarily treated gut diseases, including mine.

Right off the bat, there were a lot of things I loved about Dr. E. He was well-versed on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which I had tried, and he knew a bit about the macrobiotic diet, which I was currently on. He was also respectful of conventional medicine. He even said he sometimes prescribed Apriso, the mild med I was now on and which seemed to be helping me.

It was a relief to find someone integrative, a practitioner willing to embrace both conventional and alternative medicine. And in our first appointment, he listened with great sensitivity, offering genuine sympathy when I broke down weeping as I described my colitis history to him. By now, I’d been very sick for over a year. His tenderness meant a great deal.

Like the other naturopaths, Dr. E was interested in the whole picture of my health. Had I been under stress prior to disease onset? (Yes.) Had that stress eased? (Somewhat.) What other inflammatory conditions did I have? (Many.) When did they each begin? Had I always been underweight?

In the short term, he prescribed adding coconut oil and fish oil to my diet, healthy oils that could support my weight-gain goal. He suggested we do a stool test for fecal calprotectin, an inflammatory marker, to see whether I was truly heading toward remission like I thought.

And to get to the very bottom of my disease, he wanted to run a series of hormone and food-sensitivity tests. He especially wondered if my hormones were out of whack. If they were, then it might explain why I was so prone to inflammation and thinness. I was excited at this idea. We scheduled me a fasting blood draw for a week later.

For the fecal calprotectin, I picked up my stool test kit on the way out the door. At home, I dutifully followed the instructions and bundled the contents into the test kit. Then I noticed that the kit mentioned “requisition forms,” which I didn’t seem to have. I was supposed to drive the sample to the lab myself, and I apparently needed the forms in order to drop it off.

I emailed Dr. E’s office about the forms. Did you hand those off to me at my last appointment? I don’t think so, but sorry if I lost them.

The front desk staff was responsive and attentive, as they had been in my appointment. But to my increasing frustration, they could not seem to grasp what I needed. In three separate emails, they asked which test I was ordering. I reminded them. Several more times, they said they would send the forms “asap,” then hours passed and I had to remind them that they hadn’t yet sent anything.

At last—thirteen emails and two days later—they sent me the requisition forms. I was free to take the sample to the lab. It had been sitting in a box in my fridge this whole time, making me wrinkle my nose in disgust every time I got something to eat.

Everything else with Dr. E had felt so smooth and hopeful. I assumed this mixup was just a fluke.

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The Needle

A few days later, I showed up to my fasting blood draw appointment on time, hungry from skipping breakfast. An assistant ushered me into the back room where Dr. E would draw my blood. After inserting the needle into my vein, he bent to draw the blood out of my arm…but then he paused and sat back.

And here was where my problems with Dr. E and his office really began.

He had paused because, he explained, he’d just realized he wasn’t sure which tests we were running. In our first appointment, he had named the tests he wanted to do, but he now remembered that I only wanted to do the ones covered by Moda, my health insurer. He wasn’t sure which those were.

My heart sank. I only wanted to do the covered ones, I repeated. I was unemployed. My husband Ron was working, but between the move to Portland and my illness, we’d been hemorrhaging money over the past year.

Dr. E nodded. At least a couple of the tests would very likely be covered, he assured me. We could definitely do those. But the only way to know about the others was for me to call Moda.

His office had a policy of not dealing directly with insurers, he went on. The insurers just didn’t take naturopaths seriously. Even insurers like Moda, which did cover his office, didn’t work well with him because he was a naturopath.

I said I understood.

Half my brain was focused on trying not to think about the needle, which was still sticking into the vein in my inner elbow. Best not to look at it. I kept my eyes fixed firmly on Dr. E as we had this conversation. By now he’d gone to the front desk and retrieved a form and was standing in front of me, shuffling papers.

I could call Moda, I said. But after we drew the blood, of course? Not right now? How about if we just drew all the blood we would potentially need to run all the tests, then I could call Moda right after the blood draw?

That could work, he said, thinking from his stance in the middle of the little room. He seemed totally oblivious to the needle in my arm. He did really hope we could do all the hormone tests, he mused. It seemed really important to understand what was causing my inflammatory conditions and my failure to gain weight.

By now our conversation had lasted ten minutes. I was having trouble keeping my eyes away from the needle.

“Can we talk about this after the needle’s out of my arm?” I finally blurted.

“Oh, sure. Of course.” He drew my blood into several plastic tubes, each tube filling with the thick, deep red fluid. It was a lot of blood. He took the needle out of my arm at last and wrapped me with a bandage. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt my whole body relax.

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What does “worth it” mean to you?

“I do highly recommend the hormone tests, even if you have to pay out of pocket.” Dr. E gave me a serious look. “It’s a thousand dollars for the test bundle I most recommend. I know that might sound steep, but as far as tests go, that is a pretty standard fee.”

I nodded absently. Ron and I were not about to spend a casual thousand dollars on a blood test. I rubbed the bandage on my elbow, still awash in relief to be free of the needle.

“If it were me,” he said, “if things ever got to the point where I needed to spend a thousand dollars on testing, it would be worth it because it would go toward good health.”

At this statement I finally snapped out of my relieved reverie. A bubble of agitation was expanding in my chest. First of all, there was the subjectivity in his statement. I “needed” to spend this thousand dollars? I mean, I liked him, but we had just started working together. No previous doctor or naturopath had recommended this test. “Needed” wasn’t the right word.

Then there was the term “worth it.” Again, it was subjective, totally dependent on how much money we might have to throw around. How could Dr. E know whether this thousand-dollar fee would be “worth it” to me?

“For me, that point has come and gone,” I said brusquely, cutting off his urgings. “I’ve been unemployed for eight months already, largely because of my illness. So I’ve already lost many thousands of dollars to it. And I’ve already spent a lot of money out of pocket on it, on top of that. At this point, I don’t have more thousands of dollars to throw around.”

He nodded, picking up on my tone. He humbly said he understood.

On the way out of his office, I stopped by the front desk and wrote down the official medical codes for each of the several tests he recommended. We agreed that he would keep my blood until I called to relay which tests to request from the lab. Back in my car, I called Moda from the parking lot while ravenously eating almond butter and an avocado.

The folks at Moda seemed surprised by my question, which normally came directly from doctors’ and naturopaths’ offices, not from patients. But after some transfers and holds, I gave someone the test codes and learned which blood tests were covered and which weren’t.

Some of the tests first required authorization—Dr. E would need to download an authorization form off Moda’s website. I got directions for how to do this, then I called Dr. E’s office back with all the information.

My follow-up with him was ten days later. By then, presumably the results should have come in. I arrived in his office excited to learn about my hormones, but as we sat down, he mentioned he had some bad news: most of my blood had been thrown out.

“We weren’t sure which tests we were supposed to run, because we didn’t know which ones were covered by your insurer,” he explained.

My jaw dropped. “I called the front desk an hour after I left. I told them which tests were covered… You were supposed to submit authorization forms for some of them. Did you not get the message?”

There had been some kind of miscommunication. Somehow, my message hadn’t been clear enough.

He was very apologetic. But if I wanted those tests run, we would have to schedule another blood draw. I wouldn’t be charged anything extra, he assured me, knowing I was concerned about costs. The only charge would be for the tests.

I am a pretty patient person. A patient patient. While I was annoyed with the apparent flakiness of his office, I swallowed my ire—Dr. E was still my best bet for a good naturopath. Crossing my fingers that all this was abnormal for him, I scheduled a second blood draw, for which I would again have to fast.

No longer trusting Dr. E and his staff to get authorization for the various tests, I made many phone calls before my next blood draw. I called Moda to double-check which tests needed authorization. I called Dr. E’s staff to remind them to download the forms and explain where to find them. (Why didn’t they already know?) I called again to remind them to submit the forms, then called Moda to double-check that they had been received, then called Moda later to find out whether the tests had yet been approved.

Many of these calls involved long wait times, especially with Moda. I later looked at my phone records and saw that in the month of March 2015, I spent around thirty to forty hours emailing and calling back and forth between Dr. E and Moda about test approval.

Thirty to forty hours.

In the process, it became obvious that most of Dr. E’s patients didn’t do all this. His staff wasn’t accustomed to submitting test authorizations to insurers. Why? 

Because, I realized, his other patients didn’t care whether their tests were covered. They were prepared to pay out of pocket.

Dr. E was only used to working with patients who could afford to pay for the tests themselves.

My second blood draw went smoothly. No needle sticking in my arm for ten minutes, no mixups about which tests should be ordered. The tests, run through Boston Heart Diagnostics, included diabetes, liver, kidney, thyroid, fatty-acid balance, and hormone tests. Looking at the shiny booklet I received full of dozens of numbers, I saw that my only flagged results were for fatty-acid imbalance. I was advised to eat more almonds, avocados, flax and chia seeds, and other foods containing those kinds of fats. After all my trouble and Dr. E’s urgings, nothing seemed amiss in my hormones.

By the time we met to go over these results, I had mentally moved on from Dr. E. All the phone calls with his office and Moda had been too exhausting. My health was improving without much assistance from him, and his flakiness had eroded my trust in his judgment. Whatever we might learn by probing further, it just wasn’t worth the trouble to work with him.

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“This test isn’t backed up by science.“

By now I’d seen four naturopaths in my life and had three fairly negative experiences: with the allergy herbs, the fructose stomachache, and the flakiness of Dr. E. And yet, even now, I wasn’t ready to write off the field. I was still surrounded by people who used naturopaths, and I still remembered my one entirely good experience: the soy cure. I was holding out hope that I just hadn’t found the right naturopath for me.

In the summer of 2016, I experienced a major health crisis. A colitis flare and a severe C. diff infection landed me in the hospital for a month, and I emerged a changed woman. My time in the hospital had humbled and softened me.

As I began the long, slow process of nursing myself back to health, I began practicing mindfulness, and I found myself again more open to alternative medicine. Concepts such as chakras and energy flow, which had somewhat embarrassed me before, became ideas I now studied in earnest. I could see ways that my analytical, left-brained mindset had contributed to my crisis. I wanted to open myself to treatments that weren’t fully logical, but that might offer comfort, nurture, and a sense of wholeness. 

My mother’s naturopath wasn’t covered by my insurance, but she recommended him so highly that I decided to pay out of pocket for just one single appointment.

He turned out to be a solemn man of Asian descent with long, ponytailed hair. I described my crisis as he reviewed my intake forms. By now I had regained the thirty-four pounds I’d lost over the summer, but my hair, which I’d also lost, wasn’t growing back yet and I was wearing a wig. My acne had returned, too: just a zit or two around my nose or chin, which I’d had my whole adult life but which had disappeared during my crisis. 

The acne worried me, I said. I was eating so well and taking such good care of myself. What was I doing to still cause inflammation, even now? Was it possible I had food sensitivities I didn’t know about? If so, maybe I’d been poisoning myself my whole life without knowing it!

He agreed that that was possible. He offered to do something called an electrodermal test for food intolerances. The test, he explained, involved touching a metal probe to my finger and sending a tiny electrical current through me while the same current also passed through a vial containing food extract. The test was then repeated for each of around two hundred foods. It would be free and would take twenty minutes or so. 

Interested but also skeptical—I wasn’t going to completely turn off my brain—I asked how exactly the test worked.

He said he didn’t know. “I’ll say up front that this test isn’t backed up by science. There’s a little science, but it’s spotty. But it’s an easy test to do, and it can point you in the right direction.” He paused, then shrugged. “All I’ll say is, I’ve gotten good results from it.”

I liked this answer. I appreciated his honesty, which reminded me of when my very first naturopath had admitted she didn’t know whether soy supplements would help me. I was coming to understand the importance, for me, of such honesty when it came to experimental treatments. Both times, when the practitioners admitted to their own lack of knowledge, I could feel my inner skeptic calm down. We were departing from the realm of the known to that of the unknown. In this new realm, a different, more open mindset was required.

The electrodermal test was free, I thought. Why not do it? 

He brought out a black electronic contraption and a box holding hundreds of little food vials. All lined up in rows, the vials reminded me of a chemistry set. One by one, he slipped them into a slot in the black contraption, touched a metal probe to my finger, and watched a dial move in response.

Each vial was numbered, and if its electronic reading was erratic, he put a tick mark next to its number on a sheet of paper. He explained that he didn’t know what was in each vial—he didn’t have them memorized. To help prevent himself from rigging the test, he only matched the vial numbers to their corresponding foods after he was finished.

The results made my heart sink. According to the test, I reacted to wheat, oats, and corn; milk products except goat’s milk; sugar and various sweeteners; cocoa, chocolate, and coffee; alcohol; pork; peanuts; and bananas and strawberries. I already avoided many of these, but I often ate the grains, peanuts, bananas, and strawberries. Avoiding them all, on top of everything else I was avoiding, would be a major burden.

The test didn’t mean I was actually intolerant of all of these foods, he cautioned. Or that if I was, I always would be. It just helped point toward things to look at. He recommended going off all the flagged foods for eight weeks then adding them back in slowly, one at a time.

I left his office with mixed feelings. He hadn’t sent me away with a bunch of expensive tests or supplements to try, which I greatly appreciated. He hadn’t left me with a needle sticking into my arm for ten minutes, or with days’ worth of insurance bureaucracy to navigate. I had spent money out of pocket for my appointment with him, but while I wasn’t sure it was worth it, at least I wouldn’t need to spend more.

I had come away with a daunting list of dietary recommendations, plus his recommendations for a couple herbs to try if I wanted. Only time would tell whether any of it was worthwhile.

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A New Commitment to Naturopathy

Encouraged, or at least not discouraged, by my experience with Mom’s naturopath, I renewed the search for my own. I was excited when I found one who was covered by Moda and worked near my home. She didn’t focus on gut diseases, but she had a lot of experience with inflammatory ailments. I decided to give her a try.

I loved her immediately. A vivacious, blond woman, Dr. H seemed keen and sensitive—she’d been a therapist in a former career. I texted my sister with excitement after our first appointment. Just saw my new naturopath, I wrote. I LOVE her! She was a really great listener, and I felt like I both connected to her and trusted her as a doctor. We’re having our next appointment next week, and will make a plan then. Yay!

It had, again, taken the whole first appointment to go over my history. In our second appointment, I pulled a chair around Dr. H’s desk so she could show me the plan she’d devised for me. My anxiety ticked upward as I saw the long litany of instructions on her screen. It reminded me of the allergy regimen years earlier. 

As I listened to her explanations, though, and felt the inner turmoil that had become so familiar with naturopaths, it occurred to me that maybe I’d never given naturopathy a fair shot. 

Time after time, I’d been spooked and had ditched treatments before trying them for very long. I hadn’t followed through on the allergy regime after the first couple weeks. I hadn’t stuck with the naturopath who’d accidentally given me fructose. And I hadn’t stuck with Dr. E because I couldn’t handle the bureaucracy of working with him. Hadn’t I been somewhat flighty? 

The one time I had stuck with a naturopathic treatment—the soy—it had helped me. And the dietary recommendations from Mom’s naturopath were also proving useful as I worked my way slowly through the elimination diet he’d recommended.

What if my problem, with all the other naturopaths, had largely been my own skepticism? What if I just needed a little more faith—and more staying power?

If this is going to have a chance of working, I thought, I need to be all-in. I need to either give Dr. H a truly fair shot or not work with her at all.

Trying to suspend my skepticism, I looked again at her long list of treatments. Yes, there was a lot on the list, but this past year I had been very, very sick. I now felt better than I had months ago, but in truth, I was still very sick. Didn’t it make sense that someone so sick would need a lot of treatments?

Taking a deep breath, I made the conscious decision to place myself, and my time and money, fully into Dr. H’s hands for at least the next few months. I would try to trust her more than I had ever trusted a naturopath before. This trust was the only way to test whether she could help me—and whether naturopathy could really help me.

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Giving Naturopathy My All

I still have Dr. H’s list of treatments. There was HMF Intensive probiotic (which doesn’t have sugar), Moducare daily immune support, Super EFA essential fatty acids, serotonin dopamine liquescence, and Seacure fish protein. These supplements were each to be taken once, twice, or thrice daily—I would write myself a detailed daily schedule to remember what to take when.

There was more: at night, I should drink water with one satchet of Magnelevures, a magnesium powder; and there were four small vials of herbs and supplements that I was to drip under my tongue: three homeopathic compounds called UNDAS to take three times a day, and Intest-gen intestinal support to take once a day.

Finally, I was to spend thirty to forty-five minutes a day with a castor oil pack pressed to my liver, so that the oil would soak into my liver and help it to detox.

My new naturopath gave me her plan for me, I texted my sister that night. It’s soooo involved. Right now I’m sitting here with a castor oil pack on my liver; I have herbs and essences to take 3 times a day on top of my meds. 

At the same time, I told my sister I liked Dr. H’s philosophy. She said something profound—that her goal isn’t to find out which foods I’m sensitive to, but to settle my whole system down so I’m less sensitive to ALL foods. 

Her prescriptions are beyond my comprehension, I concluded, so I decided to just spend the money, place myself in her care, and see what happens over the next few months. It’s so much trouble, but might as well try!

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A couple days after starting all my new herbs and supplements, I noticed, to my delight, that I felt an improvement. My energy had been dragging since the previous summer, but today I felt more energized and upbeat.

I’m pretty sure the stuff is working! I texted my sister. I’m now doing it all enthusiastically, since I think it’s making me feel good.

A week or two later, I was rolling with my herbs and supplements. I’d gotten used to my complex routine and had even found a special little padded bag on Etsy in which I could carry my bottles of homeopathic compounds around. Dr. H loved my bag and asked for a link so she could purchase one herself.

She had one more treatment to recommend: neurofeedback. This was another activity that would involve sending electrical currents through me, and it wasn’t too expensive. Feeling hopeful and more trusting of her, I gamely said yes without even understanding what it was.

Neurofeedback is designed to “renormalize” brain wave patterns. According to Psychology Today:

Neurofeedback is not considered a cure, but rather a method of managing or regulating the workings of the brain so it functions in a healthier manner. This is achieved by repeated training sessions using a computerized neurofeedback program that teaches your central nervous system to reorganize and regulate brainwave frequencies.

Like most (or all?) of the other treatments prescribed by Dr. H, neurofeedback has not been scientifically proven effective. But I was okay with that for now—I had consciously decided to suspend my skepticism, and so far, that was going well.

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Once a week, I began showing up in Dr. H’s office for a neurofeedback session. She would place three or four sensors on my head, gently pushing aside the new, downy hair that was appearing on my scalp and using a translucent gel to help the sensors stick to me. Each sensor was attached to a thin wire that fed into a device hooked to her computer. Over the course of perhaps ten minutes, the machine silently sent currents through my brain as I simply sat and breathed deeply.

Finally, Dr. H would look at charts of my brain wave patterns on her computer and determine what adjustments needed to be made for next time. The idea, she explained, was for the currents to link with my brain waves and retrain those waves. Neurofeedback sessions are generally once a week for several months, so it would be a while before the positive changes occurred in my brain.

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“I don’t really know how to cook.”

Dr. H and I fell into a routine over the next few months. Each week, I would show up in her office and she would place the sensors on my scalp while we chatted about my health, then I would breathe deeply through the treatment and bid her adieu till the next week. 

In our chats, I began finding that I didn’t have much to report. After that first bump in energy two days into treatment, I had hit another plateau. I was better off than before, but was still tired compared to before my health crisis. As the months went by, there continued to be no real improvement in how I felt.

One day, as we were chatting, I mentioned a meal I’d be cooking that evening: one of my favorite Ayurvedic dals, with coconut and curry leaves for flavoring.

Dr. H smiled. “I wish I lived at your house,” she said. “I don’t really know how to cook.”

She was just making conversation. The comment seemed insignificant, but nevertheless, it sent a little shock wave through my body that had nothing to do with neurofeedback.

I had just assumed that all naturopaths would know how to cook. Eastern medicines, such as Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine, teach that food is medicine. Not only that—they teach that food is the best, most important medicine and that it should be at the very center of health. How could a naturopath not know how to cook?!

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This may have been the same conversation in which Dr. H corrected my terminology. It was she who pointed out that naturopathy is not Eastern medicine—that it’s a Western, alternative medicine. Thinking about that fact, and her ignorance of food, caused me to slowly realize that alternative medicine is far more varied than I’d understood it to be.

Not all alternative medicines can be neatly lumped together. There are enormous differences between naturopathy and the other alternative practices I was following. One difference is that naturopaths are prone to prescribe supplements where food could be used instead. My current supplements included probiotic powder, fatty acids, and fish protein, all of which I could have gotten from foods like kefir, sauerkraut, or fish. An Eastern practitioner might have done things differently.

The conversation also reawakened my dormant skepticism. Naturopathy, I realized, is not only Western—it’s relatively new. Whereas Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine are thousands of years old, naturopathy has only been around a century or two. Like those Eastern practices, naturopathy’s legitimacy doesn’t come from science. But unlike them, it also can’t claim legitimacy from thousands of years of trial and error. So, I wondered, where does its legitimacy come from?

Soon after the little conversation about food with Dr. H, my sister sent me an article about butyrate. Had I heard of it? I hadn’t, I said. She’d learned of it from her own naturopath: it’s a fatty acid involved in colon health. I could ask my naturopath about it, she said. It could be prescribed as a supplement.

Intrigued, but now a bit more skeptical of naturopathic supplements, I did a little research. Along with being available in enemas and suppositories, butyrate is also naturally produced by our systems during the digestion of insoluble fiber. It’s also found in large quantities in butter and ghee.

I was already eating a lot of kale and was presumably producing a lot of butyrate on my own. I decided to experiment with adding ghee, but not to ask Dr. H about butyrate supplements.

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A New Experiment

Summer brought welcome changes to Ron’s and my life. We were both off work. Not only had his school year ended at the high school where he taught, but I had quit my job in June in order to focus on my health and writing. My job had been stressful, and as it drew to a close, I felt elated. 

To my surprise, I found that in my first week off of work, I had more energy than I’d had since before my crisis had begun a year earlier. I wondered if this new energy bump was due to my naturopathic treatments, which I’d now been doing for three months. Maybe the neurofeedback and supplements were finally kicking in? 

But as summer continued, the real pattern in my energy levels became clear. Whenever I had a lot of mental work to do—work that involved the computer or keeping track of logistics—I became tired again. Whenever my mind was relaxed, I had more energy.

The answer was simple: thinking and stress made me tired. I had become energized at the beginning of the summer because I’d stopped working in my stressful job.

My months-long experiment with naturopathy had passed. Now I began a new experiment: I began skipping my treatments. 

At first this was accidental. My routine was interrupted a few times in June and July by little trips with Ron. But then I noticed that I felt better, on those trips and with fewer treatments, than I felt when I was home and consistently taking all my supplements. 

I began to let those lapse, too. Each time I ran out of a supplement, powder, or homeopathic compound, I didn’t reorder it. Still my energy pattern stayed consistent. Now that I wasn’t working, I was feeling great—even without all the supplements. 

By late July, all my supplements had run out. I started cancelling neurofeedback appointments, as well.

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Dr. H’s Alternative Science

I felt a bit guilty for disappearing from Dr. H’s calendar with no explanation. Wanting to touch bases, I scheduled a check-in with her. 

Our conversation would become a defining moment for my view of naturopathy. It was this conversation that would finally tip me over an inner edge, coloring my view of the whole field so that I saw it in a more negative light.

It had been a few weeks since I’d seen her. I started by giving an update: I’d actually been feeling really great. My energy had more fully come back in the last few weeks; I felt almost completely like myself again. “Which is perfect, since it’s summer,” I added with a smile. 

She smiled, too. “That is great!” She seemed genuinely happy for me.

Even though I knew she truly cared about me, I still felt relieved at her reaction. I’d been worried that my news would make her feel defensive, as though I was saying her treatments weren’t useful.

A little nervously, I confessed that I wanted to pause my work with her. At least for the rest of the summer, I said—I’d be traveling for much of August anyway. Pausing would make my life simpler. “It’s hard to keep track of all my supplements while I travel,” I explained.

She generously said she understood. “I can support that decision. And it’s important for you to feel comfortable with your treatment.”

I felt even more relieved, but still nervous about the next thing I wanted to say. “In the meantime, I’ve also been hoping to spend some time researching the treatments I’ve been doing with you. I have this skeptical side,” I said, a bit apologetically. I’d been candid about my skepticism in the past, so I knew she wouldn’t be surprised when I brought it up again. She knew I’d spent years as an environmental scientist. “It’s partly my scientific training. I just have trouble following medication regimes that aren’t backed up by scientific research. I’d like to know more about them.”

Again she said she understood. “Your comfort level is really important,” she repeated.

Since she seemed so supportive, I decided to explain further. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Ayurveda and macrobiotics. I’m drawn to the idea that medicinal substances should be consumed in their whole, original forms as much as possible. Naturopathy seems to rely heavily on supplements, but the more I learn about food and cooking, the more I’ve been moving away from that philosophy.”

At this, she surprised me by sitting forward, not disagreeing, but instead nodding enthusiastically. “I definitely agree that food is medicine. And with using food in its whole form as much as possible. That’s why the supplements I prescribe are mostly in pure forms, or from herbs that are in their whole, original forms.”

I paused, a little baffled by this statement. Nothing she’d prescribed for me was in plant form; they were all pills and liquids. Did she not see the difference between eating a whole plant part—the leaf, the root—and swallowing a pill? It seemed so clear that the latter was not whole, not fresh.

But then, I thought, this is someone who also says she doesn’t know how to cook. Maybe she really didn’t see the difference.

“I also agree that research is important,” Dr. H was saying. She still looked animated, and I thought I could feel her now stepping onto a soapbox. “But one reason naturopathic treatments aren’t always backed up by research is that research companies don’t understand the treatments they’re researching.

“For example,” she went on, “there was a study of echinacea, but the researchers used the wrong part of the plant, and they harvested it at the wrong time of year!” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “The plant wasn’t at its full potency. So of course, the study found that echinacea wasn’t an effective treatment. If they’d really understood what they were researching, they might have gotten different results.”

At first, as she spoke, I’d been nodding agreeably. But as her anecdote about echinacea had gone on and I’d realized what she was saying, I began to feel misgivings.

Her point was that the only reason science hadn’t proven naturopathic treatments effective was that the scientists didn’t understand the treatments. As a scientist, I could see glaring flaws in that reasoning. Peer review should have caught the problem she was describing. Indeed, apparently the study had been called into question—that was why she knew of its criticism. And problems of procedure could happen just as easily with synthesized, conventional medicines.

Such problems didn’t explain why most conventional medicines, but not most naturopathic remedies, had been proven effective in true, double-blind, controlled scientific studies.

“Well,” I said carefully, “The bottom line is that, as a scientist, I ultimately do respect scientific research. I know conventional medicine has a lot of flaws, but I do appreciate that conventional meds are backed up by science.”

“There are lots of problems with studies of conventional meds, too!” she said, still on her soapbox. “I mean, for one thing, many of those studies are conducted on homeless people!”

I blinked, disbelieving. I’d been diplomatic so far, but at this comment I’m pretty sure I was unable to hide my dismay. Her statement departed so far from reason that it confirmed my growing suspicion: Dr. H simply did not respect science.

I couldn’t help responding rather pointedly. “That’s possible. But the studies I’ve read, about the meds I’m taking, haven’t been conducted on homeless people. They’ve generally been conducted on populations of ulcerative colitis patients like me.”

She went back to insisting that conventional science didn’t understand naturopathy. There were too many variables at work, she said. There was an art to it. “How the meds are presented to the patient, and how the naturopath interacts with the patient, matters,” she said. “And the meds interact with each other. All of that makes it really hard to test the effectiveness of this or that individual herb or supplement.”

I was nodding politely, but by now she had utterly lost me. Everything she was saying about her own remedies could apply to conventional medicines, too. None of it negated the ability to study her remedies scientifically.

“Actually,” she went on, “because of all these problems, the National College of Naturopathic Medicine has recently been developing its own research methods that will be more applicable to naturopathic treatments. That way they can better validate the treatments’ effectiveness.”

At this I was becoming alarmed. Alternative science? “Science” that would validate the remedies’ effectiveness, rather than test their effectiveness? I shuddered inwardly.

When I would relate the conversation to Ron the next day, he would say, “It sounds like they don’t like the results they’re getting from science, so they’re coming up with a way to get results they’ll like.”

To Dr. H, I just reiterated my firm belief in the scientific method. “It would be helpful to get any information or research you do have on the supplements you’ve been prescribing for me,” I added.

She said she’d look for some. Then she paused.

“I know you tend towards anxiety,” she said, taking a gentler tone again. “And that that’s part of why you’re needing to do this now—to research your treatment plan in detail and make sure it feels safe for you. I want to honor that anxiety, since I know it’s something you deal with.”

Again working to hide my irritation, I calmly disagreed. “It’s possible that anxiety is playing a role I’m unaware of, here, but I’m actually not feeling anxious about this at all. These are just thoughts based on my observations. In the last few months, the times when I’ve felt best have always been when I got plenty of rest and exercise. It’s very possible that the supplements have played a role, but it’s also possible that they haven’t. I want to see how I do without them. I don’t feel anxious about that; I just want to make sure I’m using my time and money in the best way.”

Our half hour check-in was up. I did my best to smooth things over, thanking her for listening to my concerns. “I thought it was best to just be honest,” I said.

“It is best to be honest,” she agreed, smiling and shrugging. “Don’t worry. I’m secure about my chosen line of work.” I smiled, too.

But beneath my smile, I felt deeply uneasy. Maybe she was truly unperturbed, but on my end, I’d been disturbed by the conversation. I hadn’t realized how fundamentally she and I disagreed about science. I had thought any reasonable person would agree that, while some treatments may be effective without science to back them up, science as a whole is still valuable. If we couldn’t agree on that, Dr. H and I were in an unavoidable conflict.

We made another check-in appointment for September, when we would supposedly decide whether to resume my treatment. Already, though, I felt certain that we would not.

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It’s All About Science

The conversation with Dr. H left me reeling. Irked, I googled “naturopathy criticism,” something I’d never researched before. I expected to find some small critiques, perhaps a section labeled “criticism” on naturopathy’s Wikipedia page.

To my shock, what I found went far beyond what I’d imagined. There is an outpouring of condemnation of naturopathy, including whole organizations and websites devoted to stripping it of legitimacy. Many of these endeavors are run by doctors, scientific researchers, or former naturopaths. These critics call naturopathy pseudoscience and lambast state and federal governments for giving it too much legitimacy, allowing it to replace science-based medicine.

Most compelling of all was an article by former naturopath Britt Hermes, who is notorious in the naturopathic world for her critiques of the field.

Hermes describes in detail how naturopathic colleges misrepresent their training programs. While such colleges claim that naturopathic students spend as much time in clinic as med students, and receive training as rigorous as that of med students, the reality is that they have far fewer clinical hours and are trained with far less rigor.

Hermes also names a problem I hadn’t recognized, but that I immediately agreed with once I read it: “There are no naturopathic standards of care…I know it sounds cynical, but naturopathic medical care is like picking treatments out of a magical hat.” 

In conventional medicine, standards of care mean that most doctors will follow a similar course of treatment for similar conditions. These standards are established and honed based on treatments’ proven success records, and doctors are expected to know the standards so they can follow the courses of treatment that will most likely succeed.

Not so with naturopaths. The same patient might go to several different naturopaths for the same condition and receive a completely different plan with each one. Treatments vary widely depending on the naturopath’s level of comfort with the treatments, not the treatments’ effectiveness. Indeed, that was exactly what had happened to me: I’d brought my colitis to four different naturopaths and had received wildly different treatments from them all. 

Then there is naturopathy’s relationship with science. In an excellent rebuttal of naturopaths’ protests against a previous article, doctor Kimball C. Atwood describes the way naturopathy wants to have its cake and eat it, too, when it comes to science: “Despite their affinity for non-science-based medical systems, naturopaths crave the imprimatur of science. As a result, they desperately try to represent what they do as being science-based.”

Finding these articles was satisfying. I felt like I was pulling my head out of the sand. I hadn’t even realized it was in the sand. But all my adult life, I had operated under the assumption that naturopathy must be effective and useful because everyone around me bought into it. It was only after many years of dubious treatments that I slowly realized my experience didn’t jive with what others around me believed. 

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Looking at my conversation with Dr. H in the light of these online critiques, I felt vindicated. Dr. H’s dismissal of science had been nothing short of outrageous. And the articles made me see that my problem wasn’t just with her; it was with her training and, as a result, with her entire field.

Dr. H was a licensed naturopath who clearly had no understanding of the distinction between science and non-science. I’m not averse to treatments that haven’t been backed up by science—I’m willing to try diets and supplements and even neurofeedback, and I believe conventional medicine doesn’t have all the answers, and has its own separate set of problems. But I just can’t get behind a licensed health care provider’s failure to recognize the difference between what’s been scientifically validated and what hasn’t.

My mother’s naturopath, with whom I’d tried the electrodermal test, had presented that test in a way I could respect. He’d freely admitted that it was not backed up by science. Dr. H, in contrast, was willing to throw out the entire institution of science rather than accept that it didn’t support her methods. She also seemed to have no grasp on the scientific method and the process of peer review.

That failure wasn’t merely her own. The criticism I read made me see that this was a failure of Dr. H’s naturopathic training and her license: naturopathy fails to teach all its practitioners the critical difference between science and non-science. It also fails to consistently and honestly present its limitations to patients.

Some naturopaths do this well, but I’d like all of them to. Until then, naturopathy’s benefits will continue to be hit-or-miss.

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When I DO Recommend Seeing A Naturopath

There are unquestionably good naturopaths, people who have a firm grasp on their field’s strengths and weaknesses and who truly help their patients heal. I believe I even encountered a couple of them. But on the whole, the field is so inconsistent that it has made me hesitant to recommend it to others.

Given all my misgivings, it might be surprising that I do still recommend naturopathy from time to time. But I do—just under very specific circumstances. Here they are.

1. You have money to burn. Enough that you won’t balk at spending hundreds or even a couple thousand dollars on tests and treatments that might not work and won’t be covered by insurance.
2. You also have time and energy to spare. Enough that, again, you won’t grow disheartened if you spend time and energy on treatments that turn out not to work.
3. You already have a conventional primary care doctor. This is especially crucial if you have a serious medical condition. Naturopaths are classified as complementary medicine for a reason; they aren’t qualified to cure serious conditions and their treatments may actually do damage in some cases. They may also miss the signs of a new, undiagnosed serious illness.
4. You’re pursuing general wellness, and you want to pay someone to guide you. This is where naturopaths really shine. They can counsel you about nutrition, stress, and exercise and can help you bring your lifestyle into better overall balance.
5. You’re longing for a health care provider who is a good listener and a caring person. A naturopath will almost certainly give you more time and attention than many doctors have to spare. She or he will make you feel listened to—and that is quite valuable.

So it seems that, even after my personal rejection of naturopathy, I do still see value in this field.

I just won’t be returning to it anytime soon, myself. By now, I do have a good handle on my own wellness, and I’m unwilling to spend extra money, time, and energy on treatments I don’t have a lot of confidence in. I’ll continue incorporating alternative medicine into my life….just not through a naturopath.