Is Your Healthcare Provider Best, Good or to be Avoided?

A recent edition of the monthly Chapter Leader newsletter from the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) had some interesting information I thought was worth passing along.

This particular newsletter contained guidelines for finding a quality healthcare provider for yourself and your family – a very timely topic for those who actively seek to implement health goals.

Certainly, the healthcare provider you choose has a tremendous influence and impact on whether or not those goals come to fruition.

I’ve blogged before on how to determine if your dentist is truly holistic but have not tackled how to pick a doctor or other healthcare provider. Picking the right practitioner is a very important decision as the wrong person guiding your medical choices has the ability to upend all the good you are doing sourcing and preparing nutrient dense foods for your family with bad advice, toxic therapies or discouragement of your efforts in the home.

The importance of finding a healthcare provider that is as closely aligned with your dietary and medical philosophy as possible cannot be overstated!

The guidelines provided by the Weston A. Price Foundation were so pithy and spot-on that I thought I would share them with all of you. A big thank you to Lisa, WAPF Chapter Leader of Eugene, Oregon for crafting the wording of these guidelines.

For a list of practitioners who make the “Best” or “Good” categories where you live, contact your local WAPF Chapter Leader for his/her resources list.

Is Your Healthcare Provider “Best”, “Good” or “Avoid”?

Below are the categories with which to classify your healthcare provider. What to do if yours falls under the “Avoid” category but you need to keep seeing this doctor due to health insurance reasons?

In that case, go to that doctor only for routine tests, checkups etc, but go to a doctor in the “Best” or “Good” categories for interpretation of these results only if necessary.  Also, make a mental note that whatever a doctor in the “Avoid” category may say to you should be taken with a grain of salt as this information is not based from a traditional dietary or holistic healing perspective.

Best:
Healthcare provider who is knowledgeable about and uses Weston A. Price dietary principles in his/her practice, and who is also highly skilled and effective at working with the body’s natural healing abilities.

Good:
Healthcare provider who does not use traditional dietary principles in his/her practice, but is nevertheless effective at working with the body’s natural healing abilities, and supportive of your dietary and lifestyle choices.

Avoid:
Healthcare provider who pushes low-fat diets, USDA food pyramid, reduced-sodium diets, mercury fillings, root canals, flouride, routine antibiotics, or toxic drugs and treatments, and those who argue with or belittle their patients over their personal dietary or lifestyle choices.  

If you have a great practitioner that fits in the “Best” or “Good” categories, please post name, location and phone number if you are comfortable with that to share with other readers who live in the same area.

Do you have additional criteria for determining who is worthy of your medical trust or websites that list quality holistic healthcare providers?  Please share your tips in the comments section.