Here is a loaded question …
“How does a random lay person who has never been to a naturopathic doctor and does not understand majority of the laboratory results that their regular doctors provide through OHIP feel when they go to a naturopath and when the naturopathic doctor after having reviewed their symptoms and case history suggests various tests which yes, may be quite expensive? Most of them feel that they are being scammed because of what they DO NOT UNDERSTAND.”
I have been reading articles from various websites and also I’ve been educating myself on how I am going to answer this question.
So, I thought this blog will be for those people and others who would like to better educate themselves on what types of tests are provided by naturopathic clinic and what is the difference between what a naturopathic clinic tests versus the regular testing that your regular MD can provide through OHIP.
The Major Differences Between Regular OHIP And Naturopathic Testing
SENSITIVITY OF THE TESTING
A naturopathic doctor is trained in depth in laboratory diagnosis and is aware that the regular blood work most times is not sensitive to detect subclinical problems for example: a primary one we see at our naturopathic clinic is subclinical thyroid dysfunction, and we may suggest a more sensitive thyroid test which will not only detect if there is a thyroid problem happening or starting to happen, but would also look at other indices that would help the clinician better understand what might be going on with the client’s endocrine system. With the regular tests, quite often their reference ranges are so wide, that most times people will be in the normal range even though their body feels otherwise.
TYPE OF DIAGNOSTIC TESTS PROVIDED
Naturopathic doctors try to look for the root cause of the problem as opposed to what might be just causing the symptoms and hence tend to look the whole person, their environment presently and in the past, dietary factors, stress factors and overall lifestyle factors and then may recommend testing that may sound of the ordinary, for example, heavy metal testing using hair, or saliva hormone testing to check bioavailable hormones, they also might suggest nutritional testing to see what vitamins or minerals may be lacking in the body.
Here is a list of others tests that our naturopathic clinic offers that are not provided by regular OHIP testing:
1. Allergy or immunology testing
2. Hormone or Endocrine testing
3. Metabolic testing and Nutritional testing/ toxic / heavy metal testing
5. Gastrointestinal/ digestive testing
QUALITY OF THE TESTING PROVIDED
The tests provided by naturopaths are much more comprehensive than just the regular tests and may reveal quite a lot of information which would have otherwise not been known or understood. Since naturopaths take a lot of time to understand the underlying cause of the disease symptoms, quite often they might suggest testing for additional indices that might have been missed on routine check – ups.
You quite often read reviews of different practitioners providing all these expensive tests, but now hopefully you can understand the truth behind why it may be necessary to do more in depth testing as opposed to just recommending different treatments. As a naturopath, who believes in doing no harm and tries to address the fundamental cause of disease before treating it , I do believe that it is important to first get to the root cause of the problem, before treating it and this most often requires additional tests that may be out of the ordinary but provides scientifically – proven accurate information about the person, that would have been otherwise missed. At least I can sleep with an easier conscious knowing that I am helping my clients the best I can, with the best testing that is available out there, even though it may not be covered by OHIP. 🙂
By: Sushma Shah, Toronto Naturopath at the Nature’s Intentions Naturopathic Clinic.