About us

Naturopathy is really about having a deep understanding of how the body works and harnessing the body's healing potential. We provide holistic programs for people who've experienced some level of trauma either through their occupation, as in post-traumatic stress disorder, or it may be that they're living with cancer, or chronic pain, or depression, anxiety, loss, grief. So we address things like nutrition, and sleep, and exercise, and attitude, and how we manage stress, and how we can communicate more skilfully, and how we can switch off our mind at night so that we can find deep and restful sleep. So for me a naturopathic base is really the basis of everything that we do.

We have to stop treating diseases and start treating people. This is such an exciting time, last century we thought we were helpless victims of our genes, this century we know from epigenetics - what is above genetics - what's causing our genes to express the press or modify their expression is the environment around the cell and that's influenced by our nutrition, the quality of our sleep and exercise, the chemistry of our own emotions, the chemicals that are in the environment - some of which we have control over and some of which we don't.

We can find now through the research that's being done a really solid foundation for this continuous learning and application of naturopathic principles to the current diseases which are mostly lifestyle related. So it's a wonderful career for young people if you want to be deeply engaged with your patients or your clients so that you address not just their physical issues, but you address the entire person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It's not limited to just nutrition, or just massage, or just herbs or supplements, it's a deep understanding of the human condition. The National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine is a place that draws people who are at the forefront of their field to really be able to work together, to collaborate together, to present and to provide education for naturopathic students that is of the highest calibre.

Integrative medicine is about combining conventional western style medicine with traditional and complementary therapies, and this is about patients having choice about the way that they approach their health care, and of course this is in conjunction with the best available evidence and expert practitioners to guide them.

I don't know that there was a moment that I started practicing integrative medicine, I think that there was an evolution in the way I approached healthcare and advice to patients. I mean obviously early in your career you have your conventional medical training, but I always had a mindset that nutrition and diet and mind-body practices were extremely important.

This is about combining the best of all health care practices for the benefit of patients. The World Health Organization has a particular focus on integrative medicine now and it is challenging governments around the world to report back about what they're doing about setting up a framework for integrative medicine. I think that we are really well placed in Australia to incorporate a range of different traditional medical practices into our medical culture here, for example Ayurvedic tradition, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Western Herbal Medicine - these can all converge and work together.

It's not such a stretch to look at non-pharmaceutical ways of adding into what you can do for a patient. Whether that be acupuncture, naturopathy, herbal medicine, massage, mind-body therapies. Being able to offer these treatments to patients and combine that with their conventional western therapies is something that is going to see better results.

For doctors to work in a team with naturopaths we're going to be looking at the training and experience of that practitioner, and so we'll be looking at whether they have done a particular degree course, what their experience is and that then gives the doctor confidence to be able to refer and to work in with a naturopathic treatment. Better dialogue that we have and the greater communication that we have between practitioners then the better it is for patients because then patients will have the confidence that there's the research background, doctors will feel more comfortable working with naturopaths and that there can be a more active and productive dialogue between different types of practitioners and that's in the best interest of high-quality integrative medicine practice.

Associate Professor John Stevens and Carrie Thomson-Casey explain the concepts behind this emerging health speciality and the benefits of studying Lifestyle Medicine at Southern Cross University.

About 70 to 80 of all visits to clinicians at the moment are about lifestyle related chronic illness. We have 1.8 million people with type 2 diabetes largely caused through bad nutrition, inactivity, lack of sleep, high stress levels. Lifestyle medicine acts on all these things so the World Health Organization is really clear that lifestyle related illness chronic diseases are going to bankrupt health systems unless there's a paradigm shift, and lifestyle medicine is seen as that paradigm shift. And it's one we've needed for such a long time because health systems around the world and health practice around the world is so focused on curing illness, treating illness, whereas in fact we know that the real need is in preventing illness and managing chronic disease.

So what we're seeing with those practitioners who do lifestyle medicine and take up lifestyle medicine as an adjunct to their current practice is increased outcomes for patients, increase incomes for the clinician.

The lifestyle medicine philosophy incorporates a whole range of determinants - not causes - but determinants of ill health, and they range from things like the way we eat, nutrition we take in, physical activity, sleep, stress, relationships, communication.

As a clinician what I love about this lifestyle medicine course is that it provides really concrete skills that I can use to connect with clients, particularly around prevention. A lot of the time we're aware of the tools that are required when there's significant illness or chronic illness, but in the lifestyle medicine course we're also looking at those tools that assess wellness and how we can help clients achieve the health outcomes or help them to prevent progressing to more significant health issues.

I find that this course really goes that bit deeper and helps clinician get a really strong hold on how to communicate directly with their clients’ experience. What's really special about the lifestyle medicine course is that it's not only really suited to a broad range of health professionals, we've got a broad range of health professionals contributing to the course content.

What I love about Southern Cross University is that they were the initiators of lifestyle medicine in Australia, this is the birthplace of lifestyle medicine, education, and research, and the movement.