It was the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates, who said, "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has." Like Hippocrates, most alternative practitioners view their clients as human beings rather than a diagnosis. This is one of the reasons that alternative medicine has become so popular.

3. Do no harm
Many alternative medical systems are rooted in the "least dramatic means" principle. The essence of this principle is, "Always use the least drastic harmful therapies first." This means that alternative medical providers, in general, choose techniques and therapies which are the least invasive or harmful to get the desired result.

In today's press, many stories have been published charging that quite often medical doctors do, in fact, harm their patients in the process of treating them. The charges range from unnecessary cesarean sections during childbirth to heart bypass surgeries which could have been avoided through diet and exercise changes. One reason for unnecessary invasive treatments is that the majority of medical doctors are not familiar with effective, less invasive alternative treatments. Historically, doctors have not been taught these procedures in medical school and many don't take alternative therapies seriously — despite the growing body of research around the world that demonstrates their efficacy.

In addition, conventional medicine has come to place greater value on the removing symptoms as quickly as possible — even if additional physical problems are created in the process. Many times a conventional treatment will bring an immediate "cure" by removing the symptoms of an illness while never addressing the true cause so that real "healing" can occur. One might say that it pulls weeds out by their tops while rarely getting to their roots.

That is not to say conventional medicine does not have a place in health care. Conventional medical interventions such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and antibiotics can be real blessings in their ability to stop, slow, and, at times, heal horrible illnesses. Such medicines are important weapons in the arsenal to fight illness and disease. But alternative practitioners believe these forms of intervention should not be the medicine of first choice, given the devastating side effects that can erode a person's quality of life. They should be the medicine of last resort. However, such treatments have been the medicine of first choice for conventional doctors for years.

In their book, Take Care of Yourself, James F. Fries, M.D., and Donald M. Vickery, M.D., state: "Drugs interact with other drugs, causing hazardous chemical reactions. They have direct toxic reactions on the stomach lining and elsewhere in the body. They cause allergic rashes and shock. They are foreign chemicals and have severe side effects . . . . Under some circumstances, they probably cause cancer."10 Though many conventional doctors would agree with this statement, they continue to practice medicine that in many cases is not really founded on the edict of "do no harm." As a result, approximately forty-five thousand patients die each year in hospitals as a result of the conventional medical treatment they received.11

In contrast, an alternative health care provider such as a naturopathic doctor (N.D.), would use a whole array of "less drastic" treatments first in order to help the patient to heal (unless, of course, the patient was in a life-threatening condition). The N.D. refers his or her patient to a conventional doctor for more drastic treatments only after finding that all the appropriate alternative treatments at his or her disposal could not heal the patient's condition.