What to Expect on Your First Naturopathic Appointment?
Naturopathic medicine and other forms of complementary and alternative medicine have steadily been gaining popularity in recent years. Naturopathic medicine, which has been practiced in North America for over a century, emphasizes prevention and takes a holistic, proactive approach to disease prevention and illness. If you’re considering visiting an ND and would like to know what to expect during your first appointment, here's an overview.

First things first: Make Sure to Budget Enough Time
Your first visit with an ND will take considerably longer than what you’d typically spend in a conventional medical practice, usually around 90 minutes. Your first visit may take longer in fact, depending on the practitioner and your health status. Subsequent visits; however, are usually shorter, around 45-60 minutes in general.

In a nutshell, there are four phases to your first naturopathic consultation:

1. Explore – (The case taking phase)
It’s important to start at the beginning, i.e. what brought you in for a consultation in the first place. So your ND will spend a considerable amount of time on this, helping you put into words exactly what your primary health concerns are; what & how you are feeling, what has changed, what you may or may not be doing as well as you could be, what your overall lifestyle looks like, how your sleep is, what your stress levels are, what your energy levels look like, etc.

The exploration phase (or patient intake phase) is, unsurprisingly, the longest, and especially important from a naturopathic perspective, because it allows the practitioner to get to know the patient in great detail.

Your practitioner will also ask you what treatments, therapies, practitioners, medications, and/or supplements you have tried to address your primary health concern(s) you are consulting about. These include pharmaceuticals, herbals, vitamins, and any other supplements, as well as dosages and length of use. The importance of 100% transparency cannot be stressed enough here, as it will enable your practitioner to get a better understanding not only of you, but of how your body responds, as well as to warn of any potential toxicities that you may be dealing with, weaknesses in a given organ system, and/or contraindications with ongoing treatments or medications.

Your ND will also go through your immediate family’s health and medical history, as well as will ask you many questions about your daily diet including, what you regularly eat, and how you feel after eating certain foods. The practitioner will also explore the relationship between certain foods and your GI health, energy, stress, and sleep with you. This will not only help you connect the dots but will also inform the eventual treatment protocol. You may additionally be asked to complete a food diary and other paperwork before your first visit.

2. Understanding the Symptom, Discomfort, Illness
Once your ND has a good overall idea of the person in front of them, it’s time to work on trying to understand the symptom(s) you are consulting about. This is where your naturopath will help guide and focus your attention on all of the specificities of the symptoms. This involves open discussion of course, as well as physical examination, palpation, body sign observations, reviewing medical reports, blood work, and any other available test results. The “understanding phase” is important both to the practitioner and the patient, as it allows to see firsthand strengths and weaknesses in a person's health, and to start to realize what some of the most important contributing factors in the patients lifestyle may be. Your ND will also prescribe any laboratory tests that are relevant to complete an assessment and diagnosis. Your practitioner may use conventional diagnostic tools along with the principles and practices of naturopathic medicine. They may also incorporate Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnostic techniques and pay special attention to physical details that can provide a holistic understanding of your complaints.

3. Determining & Setting Goals
The next phase of your appointment will consist of goal setting. It's important to highlight that this is done in partnership with your ND, where you will work together to negotiate goals and define strategies to achieve a variety of positive outcomes for your health. This discussion will include what treatment modalities may be used, what effects are expected, what potential side effects may occur, as well as what the prognosis is based on the treatment options discussed. What’s important to reiterate here is that the naturopathic medicinal model is one in which there is a true partnership between the practitioner and the patient, where the patient will be encouraged to take full ownership of their health and as such, it makes perfect sense for the goal setting and choice of potential therapeutic modalities to be made conjointly.

4. Treatment Roadmap
Once you and your practitioner have defined and agreed upon health goals, it’s time
for your practitioner to provide you with a treatment roadmap. Sometimes this will be a temporary one as you wait for blood tests and other diagnostic tests to come back, but at least you should be leaving your first ND consultation with a clear treatment plan (albeit perhaps abridged until all test results are in), that will likely include diet, exercise, supplementation, and other lifestyle hygiene tweaks, as well as a range of other potential treatment modalities.

If you’ve chosen to book an appointment with a naturopathic physician, congratulations! You’ve just taken an important first step in taking charge of your health. You’ve also started on an amazing journey towards optimal physical and mental health and wellness. Here's a little recap of what you can expect to discuss with your ND during your first visit:

• Your detailed health history (remember to budget between 90 and 120 minutes)
• A thorough examination of your health concerns
• A methodical review of your bodily systems to try and identify the potential root cause(s) of your health concern
• A review of any medications and/or supplements you are currently taking, or have tried to address your health concern, as well as any therapies or practices you are currently on/following or have tried
• A detailed examination of your diet and physical activity
• A discussion about your lifestyle, social network, and support systems
• A physical exam, as needed
• Order of any requisite blood work and appropriate diagnostic tests, as needed
• Goal setting discussion
• Preliminary roadmap to address your health concerns and to help you meet your health goals