Fasting, yoga, Ayurveda, medicinal plants, mindfulness, vegetarian diet... The choices of naturopathy are more relevant than ever. However, it is difficult to orient ourselves. Some of the recommended treatments require a more critical look. On the other hand, effective methods of naturopathy are devalued by some doctors, even though they themselves lack knowledge and experience in the field.

Nevertheless, the majority of people now want their treatment to include methods of naturopathy when faced with an illness. Therefore, it is time for an assessment that equally considers experience, practice, and research.

Because medicine needs naturopathy – and indeed more urgently than ever before. For thousands of years, traditional therapeutic methods of naturopathy kept people alive and healed them with impressive results. Then came modern medicine with its scientific perspective and incredible diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities, and the old knowledge fell into oblivion because it was deemed outdated or even incorrect.

Today, the latest research methods of modern biology and medicine show that naturopathy does not belong to the past. It has shed its outdated image and has become a branch that is based on scientific evidence. It is no longer on the margins of so-called conventional medicine, but collaborates with it. Esteemed university clinics promote it and integrate it into their therapeutic programs.

As a professor of Clinical Naturopathic Therapy at the Charité Clinic in Berlin and director of the Naturopathic Therapy Center at the Immanuel Hospital in Berlin, I consider it my duty to convey to the general public the knowledge of the great potential of naturopathy – to bridge the gap that opens between high-tech medicine and empirical knowledge. The goal is not separation but unification and combination – on a scientific basis. With this mindset, we successfully treat thousands of patients every year.