Recent research has shown that 75% of those surveyed had tried Natural Medicine in the last 12 months. As a Naturopath this comes as no surprise. My clinical experience has shown that my clients typically fit into one of four categories, especially if you’re over the age of 30.

1. The first group of clients are those who are passionate about healing themselves through natural medicine supplementation, improved nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle. They prefer to use natural medicine in preference to pharmaceutical drugs to treat their health conditions.

2. The second group are those clients that know that their diet is not healthy and they are experiencing health concerns such as weight gain, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, etc. but feel sure they can get on top of it, given the right information. Many of my clients who come for weight loss are already doing an exercise program but are just not getting the results that they desire because they don’t have all the information they need from a dietary or nutritional perspective to put it all together. There are also other things that affect a person’s ability to lose weight such as hormonal changes in the body (i.e. menopause, andropause, high cortisol levels, adrenal and thyroid issues), toxins, stress, inflammation, infection and allergies). Only by addressing all of these health concerns through natural medicine and diet, can real progress be made.

3. Another type of client that I regularly see are those using pharmaceutical drugs and experiencing lots of side-effects such as weight gain, reduced libido, reduced energy, etc. These clients are looking for a natural alternative to address their health concerns safely and without side-effects. A Naturopath is focused on treating the root cause of the illness rather than simply masking the symptoms. For example, instead of using antihistamines for Hay fever and affecting no real change, the Naturopathic approach would be to rebalance their immune system and supplement their diet with nutrients such as Omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium and zinc.

4. Finally, I see an increasing number of clients who have done the rounds of doctors and specialists and have completed untold numbers of tests, only to be given a complete bill of health. All the while these clients know in themselves that they are not well. In this instance the Naturopath is seen as someone who can explain why their body is producing the symptoms that it is and give them a holistic treatment plan incorporating natural medicine.

So did any of these client categories sound familiar to you?

Natural medicine focuses on changes to the diet, nutritional supplementation and herbal medicine. The treatment plan may also take into account environmental and emotional aspects of your health. For instance, what toxins have you been exposed to and what are your relationships like? Do you enjoy your work and how stressful is your life? Only by looking at the whole picture can potential explanations be given as to why your health has reached the state that it has. What is your body trying to tell you? What changes need to be made to ensure you have optimal health in the future?

Being the practitioner of last resort is not a glamorous title but it is an important one. When clients come to see me they’re frustrated, overwhelmed and at their wits end. They cannot understand why no-one can tell them what’s wrong with them let alone how to fix it. While these people are among my most challenging clients, they are also incredibly rewarding to work with, as each naturopathic consultation brings new information and improvements to their health.

As a Naturopath I get an unbelievable buzz out of helping people to help themselves. There is nothing better than providing an alternative to people who have tried everything else with little success. So if you fall into one of the above categories, you now know that Natural Medicine can help you to improve your health, not only for now but also well into the future.

It is both scientifically documented and socially accepted that when a woman reaches her mid 40’s to 50’s, she will experience “change of life” or menopause. But did you know that mid-life can also affect men? This article explores the condi­tion known as Andropause.

Can you imagine what it would be like to suffer from a hormone deficiency and have no one to talk to about it? What if this condition lead you to suffer from fa­tigue, anxiety and depression, your mus­cles lost tone and strength and turned to fat, you put on weight and your libido and sexual function went out the window?

Worse still, it affected your work perfor­mance, changed your relationships with your family and friends and left you in a state of utter confusion and despair…

Although these symptoms may sound extreme, Andropause (male menopause) affects every male over the age of 40 to varying degrees, and up until a decade ago, there was considerable debate as to whether it even existed. Colloquially, men experience a midlife crisis and may eventually develop ‘grumpy old man’ syndrome. These somewhat derogative notions are well entrenched in our un­derstanding of male behaviour. Now at last, we have a medical condition to make sense of it all.

Andropause is an androgen (testoster­one) deficiency. Testosterone peaks at 20 and is relatively stable until 40, it then begins to decline at about 1% to 2% per year. Unlike menopause which leads to a sudden withdrawal of progesterone and a steep decline in estrogen, testosterone tapers off more gradually but its affects are profound.

There is a huge lack of awareness of this condition. If a man does seek help from his Doctor he will be given a blood test for ‘total testosterone’ and the results of this test will invariably come back indicating that his testosterone levels are fine. This is because Andropause causes more of a man’s testosterone to be bound to Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) which is not available for use in the body.

The blood test merely shows that there is plenty of testosterone. However, only ‘free testosterone’ which is not bound to SHBG is available for use in the body, therefore ‘free testosterone’ is the only effective marker of Andropause. When screened for ‘free bioavailable testoster­one’ a man with these symptoms will typi­cally show a testosterone deficiency.

In the past Doctors have been reluctant to screen for ‘free testosterone’ because the early tests were not very accurate and the results were too variable. Today, there are excellent manual screening techniques which can be done with either blood or saliva. This is achieved as a non-invasive pathology test can be done with a take home kit and results are usually available within 7 days. So diagnosis is as simple as that.

Medical research papers such as “Andro­pause, An Old Concept in New Clothing,” and “Recognizing Androgen Deficiency in Aging Men”, published in 2003, clearly show that our testing techniques for tes­tosterone deficiency need to be changed to ensure that men experiencing these symptoms are properly identified.

If you have a man in your life experienc­ing the symptoms of andropause there are numerous natural treatments which can help him to regain his health and vitality. Just re­member, awareness and understanding are the key.