About Us
Coeur d’Alene Healing Arts was founded in 1986 to provide safe, effective, and scientific natural therapies individualized to each person’s unique health needs. Trusted for more than 30 years by our patients and community health professionals, we believe in collaboration, compassion, and empowering our patients in their journey toward vibrant health.
Naturopathic physicians embrace a healing paradigm founded on a rational balance of tradition, science, and respect for nature. Utilizing extensive clinical assessment combined with advanced diagnostic and laboratory evaluations, we seek to understand the underlying causes of your suffering. Then, we help you tune into your own body to determine how you can alleviate suffering and reach optimum health and wellness.
At Coeur d’Alene Healing Arts, we tailor our evidence-based therapies to your individual needs, examining physical, nutritional, emotional, and spiritual aspects of health before prescribing a course of treatment. Our providers collaborate with you and your team of healthcare professionals to create a safe and scientific plan that respects and supports all other treatments you are receiving and addresses your personal health goals.
Our naturopathic physicians are board-certified graduates of four-year doctorate medical programs and have undergone extensive additional specialty training. Our clinic combines traditional natural therapies with the latest nutritional, botanical, health sciences, and current technology. We will provide you with a personalized plan, customized to address your unique needs and physiology.
To have the honor of working with someone to improve their health and the way they experience life is a privilege that we are truly grateful for.
What is naturopathic medicine?
Naturopathic medicine is a distinct system of health care – an art, science, philosophy and practice of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of illness. Naturopathic medicine is distinguished by the principles that underlie and determine its practice. These principles are based upon the objective observation of the nature of health and disease, and are continually reexamined in the light of scientific advances. Methods used are consistent with these principles and are chosen upon the basis of patient individuality. Naturopathic physicians are general health care practitioners, whose diverse techniques include modern and traditional, scientific and empirical methods.
History of naturopathic medicine
The word “naturopathy” was first used in the US over 130 years ago. But the natural therapies and the philosophy on which naturopathy is based have been effectively used to treat diseases since ancient times. The word “physician” derives from the Greek root meaning “nature.” Hippocrates, a physician who lived 2400 years ago, is often considered the earliest predecessor of naturopathic physicians, particularly in terms of his teaching that “nature is healer of all diseases” and his formulation of the concept vis medicatrix naturae– “the healing power of nature.” This concept has long been at the core of indigenous medicine in many cultures around the world and remains one of the central themes of naturopathic philosophy to this day.
The earliest doctors and healers worked with herbs, foods, water, fasting, and tissue manipulation — gentle treatments that do not obscure the body’s own healing powers. Today’s naturopathic physicians continue to use these therapies as their main tools. In addition, modern ND's conduct and make practical use of the latest biochemical research involving nutrition, botanicals, homeopathy, and other natural treatments.
Naturopathic Medical Education
A licensed naturopathic medical doctor (NMD) attends a four-year graduate level naturopathic medical school and is educated in all of the same basic sciences as a MD but also studies holistic and nontoxic approaches to therapy with a strong emphasis on disease prevention and optimizing wellness. In addition to a standard medical curriculum, a naturopathic physician is required to complete four years of training in clinical nutrition, homeopathic medicine, botanical medicine, psychology, and counseling. The naturopathic medical profession’s infrastructure is based on accredited educational institutions, professional licensing by a growing number of states, national standards of practice and care, peer review, and an ongoing commitment to state-of-the-art scientific research. A naturopathic physician takes rigorous professional board exams so that he or she may be licensed by a state or jurisdiction as a general practice physician. Additional information on naturopathic schools can be found at http://www.aanmc.org/