I can be me, and you can be you. The universe of suffering is big enough.

When I was in active practice, I would push back when someone described me as ‘alternative medicine,’ as I considered myself not to be an ‘alternative’ to anything. There were many things that conventional medicine (allopathy) does quite well, and others that naturopathic care does better. The two are really not that interchangeable.

If you’re walking down the street and someone drops a safe on you, don’t call the naturopath. If you are in a situation where you might need acute life support, don’t call the naturopath. If you need a basic fix for a straightforward problem, such as an antibiotic for pneumonia, take the antibiotic, whoever prescribes it.

When I was a student, I heard a story about another naturopathic student who had cut his hand doing yard work. He was so opposed to conventional allopathic medicine that he drove 60 miles out to the middle of Washington state to have a naturopathic doctor sew it up, and who, unfortunately, did a terrible job of things. I’ve heard other naturopaths badmouth all aspects of conventional medicine, which seemed to me to be almost comical, if it wasn’t so counterproductive.

On the other hand, my colleagues and I are often portrayed by less informed elements of the medical-social cyberscape as little more than witch doctors in grass skirts. People who know little about us often claim there's a difference in education between MDs and NDs, unaware that past studies have shown that ND students perform about as well on conventional medical examinations as their MD counterparts. Paradoxically, this is not true in reverse.

If you have been diagnosed with a chronic disease and pharmaceuticals can do no better than alleviate symptoms, call the naturopath. If you’d like to work on basic elements of health, resistance, and vitality, call the naturopath.

As a general rule, I notice that naturopaths also seem more on top of drug-food-supplement interactions than most other doctors. We get hundreds of hours of training in nutritional biochemistry, while MAHA is hoping to get 40 hours into the conventional medical curriculum. And this is not your generic home economics level nutrition: It's interventive, food-as-medicine nutrition, based on highly precise and personalized parameters, including genomics, pathophysiology, and microbiome analysis.

If either the allopathic doctor or the naturopath is dismissive of the other, please replace them. If you think that ‘health influencer’ on the podcast you just listened to is the equivalent of a fully trained, licensed, naturopath, here’s a newsflash: they are not. Only practitioners recognized by the state or province as primary care providers can diagnose.

Without this ability, you fly blind. Other health care providers provide important roles, but the ability to understand and act upon the problem is paramount.

One of these days, we’re going to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that healthcare is a spectrum, and it is very unlikely that one single epistemological system will contain all relevant elements within its set of priorities.

Recently, I was gifted with a lung transplant. In my dealings with various members of the team, I spent some time chatting with the program's creator. Sensing that I had some background in medicine, she asked what my profession was. ‘I’m a retired naturopathic physician,’ I somewhat sheepishly replied —I was, after all, there for a transplant, and not looking to advance naturopathic medicine, nor make a new enemy.

‘We really have to get a few of you on the team.’ She replied.