Below is Dr. Gero’s essay that challenges Dr. Tavel’s scurrilous attack on naturopahty.
Rebuttal to attack on naturopathic doctors
As a naturopathic doctor who has been in clinical practice for more than 25 years and has helped thousands of patients, I take exception to the implication that an entire profession can be dismissed as “quackery.”
Healthy skepticism is essential in health care. Patients deserve evidence-based recommendations, transparency, and accountability. But they also deserve clinicians who are willing to ask questions, investigate root causes, and look beyond symptom suppression when appropriate.
Allow me to share a few examples from my own practice.
A 25-year-old male came to my office suffering from profound fatigue, low libido, gynecomastia, and laboratory confirmed low testosterone. He had previously consulted approximately a dozen medical doctors. The unanimous recommendation was testosterone replacement therapy. My first question was simple: “What do you do for a living?” He worked as a stained-glass fabricator.
His occupation exposed him to significant amounts of lead and cadmium — two toxic metals known to negatively affect endocrine function and testosterone production. Not one practitioner had asked about his occupational exposures. Rather than immediately replacing hormones, we investigated potential causes of hormonal dysfunction.
Another patient suffered for more than two decades with severe inflammation, anxiety, gastrointestinal distress, muscle tightness, and persistent brain fog. During those years he consulted more than 30 physicians and specialists. He underwent numerous tests and received numerous diagnoses, yet continued to deteriorate.
Your Turn Dr. Glenn B. Gero Guest columnist
Within minutes of taking a detailed history, I asked a question that apparently had never been asked: “Have you ever been evaluated for gluten sensitivity or Celiac disease?” The answer was no.
Subsequent investigation confirmed the suspicion, and he is now well on the road to recovery. The issue was not a lack of intelligence among his previous physicians. The issue was that no one had connected the dots.
A third patient struggled with debilitating IBS-D symptoms for 12 years under specialist care. Despite numerous interventions, her symptoms persisted. After a comprehensive evaluation of dietary factors, gut function, and contributing triggers, her symptoms improved dramatically within a week of beginning the appropriate protocol.
These stories are not presented to criticize conventional medicine. Modern medicine has saved countless lives, including many of my own patients. Emergency medicine, trauma care, surgery, and advanced diagnostics are extraordinary achievements.
However, these cases illustrate a larger point. Patients often fall through the cracks when practitioners become overly focused on diagnosis codes, treatment algorithms, and pharmaceutical solutions while overlooking nutrition, environmental exposures, lifestyle factors, occupational hazards, food sensitivities, stress physiology, and behavioral patterns.
Naturopathic medicine does not claim to have all the answers. Neither does conventional medicine.
What many naturopathic physicians bring to the table is time, curiosity, and a willingness to investigate factors that may otherwise be overlooked. If asking about occupational toxin exposure is quackery, then perhaps we need more of it. If investigating dietary triggers in chronic inflammatory disease is quackery, then perhaps we should reconsider our definition. If helping a patient identify the root cause of years of suffering is quackery, then many grateful patients would strongly disagree.
The real issue is not whether a practitioner is an M.D., D.O., N.D., P.A. or N.P. The real issue is whether that practitioner listens carefully, thinks critically, remains intellectually humble, and places the patient’s well-being above professional tribalism.
Medicine advances when ideas are tested, debated, and evaluated on their merits — not when entire professions are dismissed with pejorative labels. Patients deserve better than that. They deserve practitioners willing to ask one more question.
Dr. Glenn B. Gero, N.D., D.Sc., M.Sc., R.H. (AHG), M.E.S., C.L.C. is a Board certified Naturopathic Doctor, Registered Herbalist - American Herbalist Guild, Medical/Corrective Exercise Specialist, Holistic Naturopathic Center, Clifton, NJ
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