When bodies talk — a naturopath listens

Maintaining health is tricky business. In large part it’s a function of adequate rest, proper exercise, appropriate nutrition and stress reduction, but sometimes optimal health still eludes us.

When we feel kind-of sick, Western medicine often can’t diagnosis the problem. The body gives us clues, but finding someone who can preventatively assess them is the work of a naturopath.

A naturopath reads the signs of the body. They look for what’s breaking down and what should be done about it.

Everyone knows what they shouldn’t do. Stop smoking and your lungs will be healthier. Stop eating desserts and you’ll loose weight. Many don’t know what would be most helpful to correct areas of weakness in the body.

Naturopaths find ways to identify and target areas of need in a focused way. When the body has problem areas, it prioritizes and allocates resources based on greatest need.

Like our financial budget, when resources are tight some items have to be cut. In the body when there’s not enough, short cuts are taken to make do. When the immune system gets shorted due to higher priorities, then help is needed.

 The naturopathic doctor can be a source of information. He uses several avenues to help identify what’s going on in your body such as live blood cell analysis, iridology, and kinesiology. Iridology is reading the iris of the eye to determine areas where the body is stressed while kinesiology uses muscles to test for weaknesses.

Live blood cell analysis assesses the condition of red blood cells under a powerful microscope connected to a camera. Stress and disease appear in the blood before they manifest in the body and often show up as imbalances in the pH levels.

A naturopath can pinpoint the area that’s hindering vitality the most and suggest helpful natural alternatives for assisting that condition. He helps patients discover the causes for the imbalance.

Change is usually required to rectify the imbalance. The naturopath suggests lifestyle, diet, nutrition, and emotional changes that might bring about the most rapid response. Changing your thinking is a powerful tool for healing imbalance.

Healing often starts with the digestive system. If digestion is weak, other functions of the body will be abandoned to strengthen it. Naturopaths agree it’s so important to eat right that they consider food as medicine.

When people have digestion issues they’re categorized into three problem areas. Either they can’t process fat, carbohydrates or protein. You’ll know which one your body can’t tolerate because you tend to crave the foods your body can’t handle.

Enzymes are what break down all of these groups of foods. Enzymes are created by our body when it has enough energy and are found in the fresh foods we eat.

Eating more raw foods is the natural way to get more enzymes. Taking enzymes to support digestion can help if the body is stressed and not producing enough and if the diet is mostly cooked food.  

The pancreas generates the enzymes of digestion, so it’s one of the body’s highest priorities. The stress response trumps digestions and gets energy allotments first.

 If you’ve just eaten and someone threatens to attack, the body’s energy would be redirected to your fight or flight response rather than to digestion.

Fasting is a great way to heal digestion because it lets that busy system rest and reset. Not eating can bring up the fears of starvation, but it’s not about more. It’s not about adding. Health often means considering what we need to remove.

The assumption when going to see a doctor is that they’ll give you something to make you better. We tend to think that the body doesn’t have enough. The body allocates energy carefully and our job is to support energy production.

If you’d like to learn more, come hear naturopath, Lawrence Hoppis, speak at The Center in Springville on Feb. 4 and 18 at 6 p.m. Call 539-2341 for more information. This article was based on his free lecture last Friday.

As a naturopath, Lawrence’s goal is to help people on their healing journey. He’s not only informational, but inspirational about health and holistic healing.

He feels that every challenge in the body is an opportunity to grow. Are you ready for a healing growth opportunity?