Combining old, modern medicine can be effective

If modern medicine doesn't work as well as we hope, we may resort to some of the more traditional treatments used and prescribed by our forebears.

Those include natural or naturopathic medicine, among them ancient cures like acupuncture and herbal medicine.

But it's not either-or, as naturopathic cures can complement modern medicine, says Dr. Margarita Hernandez Guzman, a Yuma practitioner of naturopathic medicine.

"Naturopathic medicine originated in the early 1900s in Europe, but it is gaining more force," she said. "Many people believed that the body is wise and that we can help it to react in the optimum way to reach an ideal level of health.

"Naturopathic medicine integrates the wisdom of the past with the present," she said. "We explore Chinese acupuncture and herbalism, but also the most modern techniques and diagnostic advances, such as the state of neurotransmitters and the state of inflammation of the body caused by the foods one eats.

With naturopathic medicine, she said, "the patient has the benefit of two worlds."

Hernandez Guzman will discuss naturopathic medicine on Thursday Sept. 24 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Yuma Library, 2951 S. 21st St., in a Spanish-language presentation sponsored by Sunstone Cancer Support Center. Admission to the presentation is $7. To reserve a place, call Sunstone at 783-5595.

Sunstone previously offered the presentation in English in April and the turnout was good enough that it decided to offer it again for Spanish speakers.

"I'll talk about options in health care," Hernandez Guzman said. "They are conventional medicine, called allopathic, and natural medicine, or naturopathic - which not many people are aware of."

The difference, she said, is in the treatment: conventional medicine makes use of chemically produced medicine, while naturopathic medicine used acupuncture, herbal cures and detoxification.

But, she added, naturopathic medicine makes use of modern techniques such as neurofeedback, biofeedback and corporal feedback.

"Using today's technology to help the mind change its rhythms can help people who have attention deficit, hyperactivity, autism, depression, anxiety or loss of memory," she said.

"The human body is dynamic," she said. "Cells reproduce themselves constantly and (the body) can stimulate its own recovery."

Hernandez Guzman, a native of Mexico, is a graduate of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Tempe, and arrived in Yuma last year to begin her practice at Sonoran Desert Oncology.