Safety needs to be paramount. One rule that resonates throughout many therapies is “first do no harm”. The concept of acceptable risk for the benefit, is relatively foreign to most natural therapies. Hence it is rare for natural treatments to be government regulated or available only by prescription.
But as mentioned in the discussion on natural health care, natural does not mean safe. You are faced with techniques and substances that can be dangerous in the hands of the untrained. Chiropractic and Acupuncture are examples, and some of the herbs in use are toxic unless prepared in a specific manner. You should always ensure that the practitioner you are using is qualified, registered with the appropriate governing bodies and insured.
Apart from care over the safety of treatments you also need to be sure that your use of a natural treatment is not preventing you from seeking a different treatment while your condition continues to deteriorate.
You should expect your treatment to work. Your practitioner should be able to guide you. You should have an idea of what changes they expect to see and how they will measure your progress. If no progress is being made you should seek help elsewhere.
If you need guidance on the likely possibility of a particular treatment being of benefit, you should consider discussing it with the schools and governing bodies of the therapy.
When seeking guidance about a particular therapy be careful about only taking advice from Western Medical Practitioners. Whilst their training is excellent in scientific medicine it is usually extremely limited in areas of natural health care. In fact their scientific bias can make them very poor judges of natural medicine. A common question in natural health clinics after a patient has improved is why did my GP not tell me this was possible?
Finally you should be cautious of extravagant claims or extremely expensive treatments. If you have any concerns discuss them with a governing body for the therapy and perhaps with natural therapy schools. Remember the saying “If you want to stay healthy, don't follow the money”
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