Naturopathic Physicians

In this health video you will learn all about naturopathic physicians.

Raena Morgan: Hi, I'm Raena Morgan with iHealthTube and it's a pleasure to be visiting with Dr. Christopher Lepisto. He is a naturopathic doctor in Colorado. What I'd like to ask you Dr. Lepisto is, what is a naturopathic physician? Christopher Lepisto: Naturopathic physician is a doctor who helps people get well naturally. So I seek to treat the cause of the condition and support the body's own ability to heal itself. Raena Morgan: Does each person have like their own set of symptoms that are treatable by an allopathic doctor? Christopher Lepisto: Right, so somebody will usually come to me with some sort of complaint and they may have had a previous diagnosis where they may just have a list of things that they want help with specifically. So that is working with symptoms and that's a very appropriate place to work with in naturopathic medicine. Even on a deeper level what we are seeking to do is to treat the cause. So we are looking for what is the reason somebody has high blood pressure? Why is their blood sugar elevated or out of whack? Why do they have chronic fatigue? Because when we ask those questions then we can get at the root cause which is where the medicine really shines in helping stimulate the body's own healing ability around the known cause of what the disease is. Raena Morgan: So you are looking for the root rather then just suppressing symptoms. Christopher Lepisto: Absolutely and there is an appropriate place for a symptomatic treatment. For example someone with severe cough who comes into my office, we are talking about their inner child, right? That may come as part of a bigger picture but what we are looking at is we need to get this cough improved, because they can't sleep at night or because its irritating, its classic this time of the year in the winter, that people we'd straight up symptomatic treatment. And then we will also want to go to the level what is the cause. Raena Morgan: Okay, well thank you Dr. Lepisto.