A Path to Healing

Book excerpt: Twenty years ago, at age twenty-nine, Andrea Sullivan was a high-level executive at HUD in a state of what she now calls "dis-ease": stressed out, thirty-pounds overweight, with a face full of acne. Moved by a desire to help her community and herself in a "meaningful way," she quit her job and decided to become a doctor. She applied and was accepted to Bastyr Medical School for Alternative Medicine and became a naturopathic physician. Since then, Dr. Sullivan has been at the vanguard of naturopathic medicine and has helped hundreds of African Americans create dramatic and lasting lifestyle changes. Unlike traditional doctors, naturopathic physicians, with the aid of herbs, roots, and other natural remedies, treat the patient, not the disease. Here, in easy-to-understand language, Dr. Sullivan provides an overview of alternative medicine (paying close attention to naturopathy), discusses the African American tradition and its link to naturopathic medicine, and delves into stress, high blood pressure, arthritis, obesity, depression, and diabetes (all problems that plague African Americans), and prescribes an overall guide to maintaining health and keeping disease at bay. In "A Path to Healing, Dr. Sullivan makes a convincing case for naturopathic medicine as the best way to prevent disease and treat chronic illnesses, while not discounting the use of traditional Western medicine, especially in cases of traumatic injury.