Naturopathic Practitioners Practice Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)

One of the most common criticisms of natural medicine is that it lacks supportive evidence. This is simply not true! In many cases, there is as much or more research evidence for natural medicine as conventional medicine. However, there are also areas in which the research evidence is sparse or incomplete.
While the official definition of EBM does fit with naturopathic principles, the applied definition, in terms of how the health care system actually operates, does not. Many people argue that conventional medical interventions are considered to be safe, valid, and effective when in fact many lack scientific basis or have been proven ineffective.
 
What is evidence-based medicine?
EBM is defined as the “conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about care of individual patients (Sackett et al, 1996).” Furthermore:
“The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. By individual clinical expertise we mean the proficiency and judgment that individual clinicians acquire through clinical experience and clinical practice (Sackett et al, 1996).”
This definition of EBM does not conflict with the principles of naturopathic medicine. Naturopathic medicine is based on a large body of evidence gathered through systematic research and knowledge gained through clinical experience. Its principles support the application of this information to devise the most effective treatment for our patients.
However, the colloquial understanding of EBM supports randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled studies as gold standard of knowledge and leaves little room for other forms of research or for clinical experience.
 
There are 3 major flaws with using this conventional definition of EBM in the clinical setting:
 
What about holistic health care?
Conventionally understood EBM is limited in encouraging health care that adheres to naturopathic principles. First, EBM does not recognise holistic treatment of individuals, and in fact seeks to boil down complex information to a simple conclusion recognising only how the majority of subjects respond to a single intervention.
Not only does this ignore the knowledge that could be gained through examining all the subjects in a study and why they each responded in the way that they did, but also is not necessarily applicable to real life health care since patients are nearly never under controlled conditions and subject to only one intervention.
Naturopathic practitioners are interested in treating real patients in the real world and therefore in gathering knowledge in any area that will serve this purpose. In many cases, this knowledge includes clinical observation and experience with real patients.
 
Study limitations
An article titled, ‘The Mythology of Science-Based Medicine’ provides examples of conventional medical interventions considered to be safe, valid, or effective when in fact they lack scientific basis or have been proven ineffective. This article provides links to sources and some responses from the authors and other medical experts in the comments. Here is an addendum to that article further addressing comments.
Another article titled, ‘How Common Are Medical Mistakes?’, which delves into the startling fact that the third leading cause of death of Americans is iatrogenic causes, meaning caused by doctors, medical treatment, or diagnostic procedures.
The “gold-standard” of medical research is the double-blind randomised controlled trial, which attempts to isolate the effect of a single intervention and control all other factors (including many features of patients such as pre-existing conditions, medications, lifestyle, diet, etc.) This makes sense in a research context but has little bearing on reality, in which medical interventions are used in conjunction with other treatments in a wide variety of patients. It is important to understand that a clinical trial is only the first step in evaluating treatment. It provides information on how something works and verifies safety in the short-term but is most definitely not a verdict on the effectiveness in the real world. This can only truly be gauged in the context of an uncontrolled patient population over time.
 
The funding flaw
Funding committed to research is not allocated based on what areas of knowledge are the most interesting, warrant the most investigation, or even may be the most beneficial to the public. Most research is conducted by pharmaceutical companies on products they hope to bring to market in order to earn profits for shareholders.
Unfortunately, this capitalist drive behind health knowledge is not conducive to researching how low-cost treatments such as diet and lifestyle changes can be far more effective than any drug. It is also not conducive to gaining knowledge through “failed” experiments, such as when pharmaceutical research does not yield results favourable to the drug being researched. Currently, pharmaceutical companies are not required to publish such research, although there is a movement to change this, thankfully. Naturopathic practitioners are interested in achieving results, even if there is no particular product to sell.
 
What about quality of life?
Something important to note about bypass surgery and angioplasty is that while they do not extend life (which is the case for many common medical treatments), this is not the only important measure to consider! Quality of life is also incredibly important and these procedures can make a major difference here. Patients with cardiovascular disease who in the past would not have these options would be severely limited by the inability to engage in even the most basic everyday activities but would also not be ill enough that they would pass away. These procedures have allowed many patients to return to a more normal level of activity and participation in life, which is invaluable, even if their lifespan remains the same.
 
An Example of Depression: The importance of treating the cause
Regarding antidepressants, it should not be surprising that they are not very effective except in cases of severe depression. In most cases, antidepressants are the sole treatment prescribed despite mountains of evidence that combining them with other treatments (most notably psychotherapy) is far more effective.
For many patients with depression, there are valid reasons to feel depressed, such as grief, declining health, emotional stressors, post-partum changes, etc. Depression is a natural human response to life’s ups and downs. Unfortunately many of us are just not equipped to accept and work through life’s challenges on our own.
Psychotherapy can be enormously helpful in arming patients with coping and self-care skills. There are also many patients for whom antidepressants are very useful in boosting them up enough so that they can actively seek other treatments to address the underlying causes of depression, but the key here is that the cause must be addressed and corrected. Otherwise antidepressants either just don’t cut it or simply mask a problem that will re-emerge once the patient discontinues the medication.
This is common considering the many uncomfortable and intolerable side-effects of these medications. There are so many proven and safe treatments for depression (such as nutrition, exercise, supplements, lifestyle changes, homeopathy, therapy) that can be used in place of or in conjunction with antidepressants to achieve much better outcomes.
 
Empower yourself with knowledge
Finally, naturopathic practitioners also act as teachers, seeking to empower patients with information so that they can care for themselves. EBM places power in a faceless research environment, removing it from clinicians with decades of experience, and therefore also removing it from individual patients who may know their unique needs best.
While the official definition of EBM does fit with naturopathic principles, the applied definition, in terms of how the health care system actually operates, does not.

---