By: Nthati Moerane
Maseru
“Naturopathic medicine is a system that uses natural remedies to help the body heal itself. It embraces many therapies, including herbs, massage, acupuncture, exercise, and nutritional counseling.
The goal of naturopathic medicine is to treat the whole person — that means mind, body, and spirit. It also aims to heal the root causes of an illness, not just stop the symptoms.
A naturopathic doctor may spend 1 to 2 hours examining you. They’ll ask questions about your health history, stress levels, and lifestyle habits.”
Health professionals, otherwise known as naturopathic, will host a national health symposium on April 1st 2024 at Lesotho High School Maseru from 0900hrs to 1600hrs. The symposium comes with the purpose of educating Basotho on national health. Having realized that Lesotho as a country suffers non-communicable diseases, the likes of diabetes, mellitus and/or hypertension.
The symposium is about looking into non-communicable diseases but mostly, the main purpose is to promote African and indigenous natural medicines. Usually, health professionals being the naturopathic, gives insight on another path besides the conventional medical practices of hospitals and clinics as they have seen their weaknesses and successes for decades.
Now resorting to traditional medicines, however with its implementation dated for another decade or two, doctors are actively examining whether they cannot make a more impactful difference in combating these non-communicable diseases this way, as opposed to the conventional medicinal practices, which have, to an extent been failing health practitioners.
According to naturopathic practitioner Dr Thabang Seotsanyane, these non-communicable diseases are mostly not painful, but do have the potential to lead to paralysis or other permanent disabilities if left untreated; which may interrupt daily life experiences, for example diabetes untreated leads to cataracts, and consequently – worst case scenario, amputation.
The intensity of possible results when such cases are unattended has since led these health professionals to the obligation to actively promote traditional and indigenous herbs such that different communities are aware of what is needed as and when illnesses arise.
To the effect of this new route in medicinal practices, Dr. Seotsanyana and colleagues Lesotho host presentations on both radio and television. Because of the foreign nature of the dialect of the practice, audiences are often curious. This create greater opportunity to create awareness through illustrations of the remedial methods and herbs. Not only that, this also necessitates conversations and discussion about diseases of focus and their recommended naturopathic solutions.
Just as on media platforms, the symposium will also be for everyone to attend.
The event is an initiative of two natural healthcare centres namely Green doctors wellness centre and Medic neutracuticals, sponsored by Ts’enolo FM and Moeletsi oa Basotho puvblication. The achievement set for the symposium is for Basotho to attend, share ideas and give opinions on how to tackle challenges faced by people with non communicable diseases. Also to know about the remedies or traditional herbs to rely on.
“Some of us as health professionals are victims of treating patients who suffered from non-communicable diseases such as cancer, you find that such people face several challenges such as odour from the disease and they have no knowledge on how to handle or take care of themselves and the communities have no professionals who can help.
We saw a need for this symposium to educate them about those challenges and how to overcome them,” says Mats’episo Rakhoboso, who is also a naturopathic practitioner currently based at the Academic-iQ Multinational school.
She declares the need for this event to introduce remedies that can be accessed by everyone without going to health care facilities owing to lack of affordability. Remedies such as garlic, activated charcoal for gastric intestinal complains, and cayenne pepper for stroke hypertension are a must have remedies in the households.