Canadians may shy away from health treatments that fall outside conventional medicine, but naturopathic doctors say alternative techniques are actually a good complement to traditional health care.

"Naturopathy goes deeper than just the surface symptoms," Helena Ovens, a registered naturopathic doctor, told Canada AM Monday.

Ovens says naturopathic medicine works on the premise that the mind and body play an equal role in how we feel.

"Mental, emotional, physical and spiritual all exist in the same body," she says. "So if you want to address a physical problem, it’s important to know the mental-emotional component that drives them."

That’s why a typical first visit to a naturopathic doctor can last up to three hours. Ovens says she typically takes up to 12 double-sided pages of notes during a patient’s first appointment.

She’ll list things like the person’s physical concerns, mental and emotional status and personal history.

"The idea is that everything is connected to everything else. My mental, emotional state can impact on my physical state. My financial or marital situation can impact on my physical well-being."

Ovens says these problems most commonly manifest themselves physically into things like fatigue, headaches and digestion problems. She says often these ailments are "mysteries to the medical profession. Things that don’t show up on lab results."

Feeling out of whack and not being able to find a clear physical case is frustrating for most patients, Ovens says.

"It’s not that there’s something wrong with you, it’s that you’re out of balance. We need to bring you back into balance and stimulate your body again to heal itself."

Naturopaths do that by adhering to six principles:

• Do no harm
• Find and treat the cause
• Educate the patient
• Use the healing power of nature
• Holism
• Prevention

Ovens says the guidelines enable naturopaths to get to the root of an ailment, instead of treating just the symptoms, and prevent physical problems from reoccurring. Treatments incorporate aspects like nutrition, acupuncture, massage therapy and lifestyle counseling.

But Ovens cautions that people should investigate before signing for alternative therapies. Only registered naturopaths are required to go through four-years of training followed by a series of licensing exams.

Unregistered practitioners may not have the training necessary to administer treatment safely, she says.