| Naturopathic Doctors (NDs) |
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Conventional Doctors (MDs) |
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| Their goal is to support your body's natural, intelligent ability to heal itself. |
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Tend to presume that your body is incapable of healing itself. |
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| Their goal is to remove and/or treat the cause of the problem. |
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Their goal is usually to treat the manifestation, or the effect, of the primary disturbance. |
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| NDs attend four-year post-graduate medical school. |
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MDs attend four-year post-graduate medical school. |
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| NDs must pass a national board exam. |
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MDs must pass a national board exam. |
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| NDs realize that dietary and lifestyle changes can significantly impact, and even cure, disease and dysfunction. |
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MDs focus on drugs and surgery to treat disease, and usually spend little if any time on the role diet and lifestyle play in how you feel. |
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| NDs realize that health and disease are on a continuum, and that not all conditions fit into conventional disease categories. |
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MDs tend to believe you're healthy if you don't fit into a disease category and your tests are normal. |
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| NDs are experts in natural therapies, including nutritional and herbal supplementation, homeopathy, and alternative methods of diagnosis. |
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MDs tend to be only familiar with drugs and surgery, and often are not even aware of the extensive research that verifies the effectiveness of natural medicines. |
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| Naturopathic Doctors are trained in laboratory and clinical diagnosis, and spend the first two years of their training studying anatomy, physiology, microbiology, and pathology. |
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Medical Doctors are trained in laboratory and clinical diagnosis, and spend the first two years of their training studying anatomy, physiology, microbiology, and pathology. |
