Naturopathy is a system of healing that aims to provide holistic or whole-health care. It draws on treatment methods from several traditional systems of medicine. Naturopathy seeks to use the natural healing powers of the body to cure itself. It focuses on treating the cause of a disease rather than the symptoms themselves.

Increasing numbers looking for health care are moving away from the idea that illness happens in or to one part of the body in isolation from the rest. Illness does not happen just in the physical body. One has to consider the person’s thoughts, emotions and environment as well. The truth is we are more than the sum of our parts. We are capable of creating and curing illness with thought. We are inseparable from the environment around us. Naturopathic treatment plan takes this into account.

Naturopathy offers a rich menu of healing, including herbal medicine, homoeopathy, acupuncture, psychotherapy, yoga and meditation. Many doctors who have studied their complementary approach seriously tend to use it predominantly when treating patients. The doctors' confidence in the efficacy of other forms of medicine offers hope that more patients could be treated effectively. The mind-boggling sums spent each year on pharmaceutical medicines could be reduced. The helplessness of well-meaning doctors with only pharmaceutical drugs or surgery to offer is plain to any chronic patients.

In Germany, 70 per cent of doctors routinely prescribe herbal medicine. In France, homoeopathic pharmacies are in every town. In Britain, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group.

Curing diseases is only a part of the Naturopathic approach to health-care. It believes that it's far better never to get sick at all.