Naturopathy is not a trend. It is not a health food store aisle or an Instagram fad either. It is a health science whose roots stretch back to Pythagoras and his vision of the 4 bodies, structured by Hippocrates and his 5 pillars, codified in the 20th century by men like Pierre-Valentin Marchesseau, Paul Carton or Alexander Salmanoff. A science that rests on a simple observation: your body knows how to heal itself, provided you give it the means to do so.
The four pillars
Marchesseau structured naturopathy around four doctrines. These are not abstract concepts. They are the glasses through which a naturopath reads your health.
Vitalism first. Every living cell is animated by an imperceptible force that Dr. Robert Walter called “vital intelligence.” It is neither chemical nor physical. It is this impulse that makes your body heal a wound, fight an infection, regenerate tissue without you having to decide anything. The naturopath’s role is never to “cure.” Only vital force heals. Our role is to remove the obstacles that prevent it from doing its work.
“Man becomes sick, ugly and mad because he does not obey the laws of his species.” Pierre-Valentin Marchesseau
Causalism next. Modern medicine treats the symptom. The naturopath seeks the cause of the cause of the cause. You have migraines? It’s not a paracetamol deficiency. It might be an overloaded liver, itself a consequence of unsuitable nutrition, itself linked to a lifestyle that no longer suits you. Following in the footsteps of Lindlahr, we always ask the right question: what is the root cause of your state of non-health?
Then comes humoralism. Salmanoff demonstrated this masterfully in his work on capillotherapy. Our organism is made up of approximately 80% liquids: 5 liters of blood, 10 liters of circulating lymph, 20 liters of extracellular serum, 20 liters of intracellular serum. The quality of these “humors” determines the quality of your health. This is why anti-inflammatory nutrition is the first lever to cleanse this terrain. When the terrain becomes clogged, when acids saturate our body fluids, the 100,000 kilometers of capillaries that irrigate your body become progressively blocked. Like sediment in a river that deposits in the bends where the current weakens.
“Man’s health is merely a matter of plumbing.” Alexander Salmanoff
And hygienism, finally. It is the set of life rules in line with the needs of the human species. Appropriate nutrition, sufficient sleep, physical exercise, stress management, contact with nature. Principles that modern life has made us forget but that the body has never stopped requesting.
Bromatology according to Marchesseau
Nutrition is the first of the four major techniques of the naturopath. Marchesseau did not simply speak of “eating healthily.” He distinguished very precisely between specific foods (those that suit our digestive physiology perfectly: fruits, vegetables, sprouted seeds, nuts), tolerance foods (that appeared later in evolution, useful for labor and cold: meats, fish, starch-rich foods containing trace elements like zinc) and anti-specific foods (that do not exist in nature and whose taste comes from artificial combination: chocolate, coffee, pastries, processed meats). The conclusion is clear: the more exhausted a person is, the less capable they are of digesting large meals. We return to the basics. We do as babies do: simple foods, living foods, easily assimilable. And their preparation matters as much as their quality: gentle cooking preserves the enzymes and micronutrients that heat destroys.
The law of the limiting factor
There is a law in naturopathy that I particularly like, drawn from the discoveries of botanist Karl Sprengel. It says that the health of a living being is always limited by the least respected vital need. All gardeners know it as Liebig’s “law of the minimum.” And you will notice that statistically, you will find more people burning the candle at both ends than gardeners in naturopaths’ waiting rooms.
You can eat organic, walk 10,000 steps a day, have an impeccable physique. If you scroll on your phone until 1 a.m., never see any greenery and accumulate metabolic acidosis without recovery, your body will eventually make you pay for it. Your thyroid slows down, your serotonin drops, and the terrain clogged by endocrine disruptors can no longer cleanse itself without a structured detox cure.
For whom?
For you. Catherine Kousmine expressed it better than anyone:
“I would like everyone to understand that they can only rely on themselves, that they are responsible for their own person, that the body they have must be managed like any other asset.”
Whether you are 25 or 70 years old, whether you are in peak form or dragging chronic fatigue for years, naturopathy is not reserved for “sick people.” It is first and foremost a science of prevention. And when Marchesseau said that the naturopath must above all be a health educator, he was not joking.
Based in Paris, I consult by video throughout France. You can book an appointment for personalized support.
Want to evaluate your level of vitality? Take the vitality-toxemia questionnaire in 2 minutes. If you suspect tissue acidosis, the Vasey test will help you see clearly.
My daily tools
To put these principles into practice every day, here are the three tools I recommend most in consultation:
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To go further
- Acetylcholine nature: the creative and intuitive profile according to Braverman
- Aldosterone: the forgotten hormone of your blood pressure and salt
- Breastfeeding: the maternal depletion that no one compensates
- Basedow and heart: calming the cardiac storm
Healthy recipe: Root vegetable soup: Vegetable soup: the naturopath’s plate.
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