At the Doctor’s
These days many are finding it difficult to see a doctor at all. They might get a brief phone call or if they are lucky a five minute meeting. Either way the result is likely to be a prescription for one or more drugs.
Doctors are no longer expected to determine the root cause of health problems, and form-filling and handing out pills has become the accepted norm. All this has allowed the pharmaceutical industry to become incredibly rich and powerful.
However, there was a time in the past when ‘kitchen remedies’ were passed down through families. They often involved natural treatments that dated back millennia and if they hadn’t worked then, we might not be here now.
Animals instinctively know which plant to head for when they have a medical issue
So it’s no surprise that a revival is underway. Natural remedies are being tested under scientific conditions and sometimes improved as a result. Meanwhile old advice and procedures are being scrutinised and developed afresh. The result is people are turning back in their droves to alternative expertise and natural supplements and remedies that the body recognises and accepts because it evolved alongside them.
Health practitioners appear under a variety of names, including naturopathic, alternative and complementary. To complicate definitions still further, some doctors are forming a bridge between the old and the new, becoming known as integrative, functional or holistic. Regular doctors focus on controlling symptoms but naturopathic practitioners look for an underlying cause and treat the whole person.
Health Local hopes to turn this grass roots revival into a more organised and useful reality, one that is delivered at local level and grows as time, experience and support allow.
How it works
The Health Local website is entirely free to use for both Patients and Practitioners.
Practitioners are asked to complete a form on the Practitioners Only page, describing their services. On it they should identify the medical condition(s) they are best able to help. All applications to join Health Local, and any later updates, are checked by Admin before inclusion.
Patients locate their condition(s) on the home page and the system searches for the practitioner(s) who will be best able to help. Patients decide on the one(s) they’d like to use and make contact in the normal way.
Both Patients and Practitioners may wish to forward information for possible inclusion in Health Local. Please use the contact form here.
