Botanical Medicine
Botanical Medicine involves the use of plant substances for their healing effects and nutritional value. There is a vast amount of clinical research done on botanical medicine as it dates back to the beginning of civilization. Botanical plants are the basis for the majority of modern pharmaceutical agents and often have a similar action in the body with fewer side effects.
The majority of herbs have few side effects or adverse reactions; however, some can have negative interactions with medications and can have harmful consequences if taken incorrectly. Naturopathic doctors are trained and skilled in understanding these potential adverse events and are currently the only health care providers in Canada regulated to use botanical medicine.
Botanical medicine can be used in many different forms such as capsules, tinctures or teas. When using a botanical medicine, it is very important to use a high quality product to ensure a standard amount of an active ingredient. At Restoration Integrated Health, botanical medicines are most often used to treat fertility, insomnia, depression/anxiety, inflammation and digestion.
Clinical Nutrition
As the foundation of naturopathic medicine, clinical nutrition is an integral part of both the treatment of chronic disease and the management of acute conditions. Food intolerances, deficiencies, dietary imbalances or nutritional excesses have been associated with many medical conditions.
A naturopathic doctor is trained to understand the impact that your diet is having on your health. With appropriate dietary modification and nutritional supplements, health concerns can be treated with fewer complications and side effects.
At Restoration Integrated Health, we offer food allergy testing and nutrition counselling where we discuss how to put achievable diet modifications into sustainable practice. Because no one diet is good for everyone, we take the time necessary to create an individualized treatment plan.
Lifestyle and Prevention
Mental attitudes and emotional states are strong determinants of a person’s overall level of wellness. Too often one’s mental/emotional state may influence, or even cause, physical illness.
Lifestyle factors that are fundamental to health are too easily overlooked in our fast paced environment. We take for granted the importance of sleep, stress reduction, exercise, proper hydration, and a healthy diet. Instead, we turn to the overly simplistic route of taking a pill to solve all of our problems. When we take a step back, we realize that our health is more important than the next deadline, and how we treat our body today directly influences how it functions tomorrow.
Dr. Bell works with patients to help them reduce risk factors in order to achieve long term disease prevention.
Physical Medicine
Physical medicine is the use of manual therapies to restore function to the body by decreasing pain and increasing mobility. These treatments include manipulation to improve alignment, exercise therapies to strengthen surrounding musculature and hydrotherapy to improve circulation. Treatments are extremely effective at reducing pain and restoring function. They are commonly used for headaches/migraines, back pain and joint pain.
Dr. Bell recognizes that chronic pain has a detrimental effect upon every aspect of a person’s life and therefore she is passionate about alleviating pain. She always seeks to remove any obstacles that are preventing a person from maintaining an active lifestyle because she recognizes the importance of activity in achieving life long wellness and in the reduction of chronic disease.
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a therapeutic system of medicine developed by Samuel Hahnemann nearly 200 years ago in Germany. Homeopathic remedies are made from specific dilutions of plant, animal and mineral substances. When carefully matched to the patient they are able to affect the body’s “vital force” and to stimulate the body’s innate healing forces on both the physical and emotional levels, with few side effects.
Homeopathic medicines do not treat symptoms or conditions, but the whole person. Some conditions that do not respond well to conventional medicine respond effectively to homeopathy.
Injection Therapy
To keep our bodies at their optimal level of health, we need a wide array of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants that support our immunity, improve energy and boost our brain power. We rely on a wide array of nutrients coming from a balanced diet. However, we know that the foods that we eat are often depleted of the vitamins and minerals that are so vital to wellness and that our digestive systems are not always working optimally to absorb the nutrients.
Injection therapies deliver a variety of therapeutic agents directly into the body, bypassing the slow and often inefficient digestive tract and allowing 100% absorption.