The Good, Bad & Ugly of Natural Medicine

This is my second time working on this post, mainly the reason I trashed my first draft was because I got too sidetracked and lost focus.

My goal here is really to have a spot where I can refer to people where I have summed up in short my view on Natural Medicine. 

The way I got to this final draft was by recording myself speaking it out in less than five minutes, just in case that might help some-one I thought I would put it out there.

Staying focused now

Here are the bullet points.

The Good

• Focused on overall health
• Strengthening the body
• Medicine that is from nature and not a laboratory

The Bad

• Incorrect use of herbs and vitamins
• Not seeking proper medical care

The Ugly

• The big food supplement companies who focus on sales and not health

If you just read them you should be able to get the picture but I will expand on them shortly anyway.

The Good

Natural medicine is focused on the overall health of a person and not just the current issue that a person may be suffering from at the very moment. 

Health is not just the lack of disease but vibrance and energy that is balanced in all ways. 

A well trained practitioner will go through a lengthy questionnaire in order to properly judge a clients health. 

This should very well include blood test results.

Then a treatment plan is put together which would include dietary changes, exercises and possibly herbal and supplement prescriptions if needed. 

But the focus should not be just to solve the one thing that caused the client to seek the help of the practitioner but to move toward a state of health and well being.

The Bad

The bad side of natural medicine is usually the result of people who do not seek out the advice of a practitioner or the person that they are looking to for help is not properly trained. 

This is also why the whole world of natural medicine has such a bad name, because there are a lot of people who have very good intentions but not enough training.

Besides the possible bad side effects of certain herbs and vitamins, someone can be taking too much or even too little and not be getting the proper treatment.

In addition to all this because natural medicines are easy to get your hands on, some of them even growing wild in your yard, many people seem to take a DIY approach and try to treat themselves. 

While this may or may not be effective, problems arise when people are not seeking proper medical care as a result of this. 

The Ugly

Now that I am finally finishing this up I remembered that this is why I thought of this post to begin with.

The big vitamin companies that are just looking to make sales.

I am sure that no single person working for them thinks that way but the result is the same. 

Advertising gets put all over the internet that this herb, vitamin, mineral or whatever else is good for some thing and the fact is that most of the time just this one thing is not going to get the results. It has to be a combination of healthy habits as well as proper diet and perhaps if needed supplementation but that is only a small part of the equation but you will never hear that from a company that is trying to sell vitamins and herbal supplements*. 

*only when it's written like this if you are lucky.