When Dr. Jeffrey Lee was in his late teens, he was on the fast track to diabetes and a likely coronary. At five feet nine inches, he weighed more than 200 pounds, and slavishly followed the university-student diet of McDonald’s, pizza and pop.
When Dr. Neetu Dhiman was a child, she suffered not only from asthma, but many allergies that forced to her to avoid a wide range of foods, including peanuts, beans and lentils. For a person of South-Asian descent, this would be akin, for the rest of us, to abstaining from water. Even the vapours from cooking these légumes would send Dr. Dhiman into an anaphylactic reaction. Her parents had to prepare the family meals on the porch.
Both Richmond natives, Dr. Lee and Dr. Dhiman found the salvation to their health woes in naturopathic medicine. Dr. Lee has been practising for five years, and Dr. Dhiman for eight. In 2008, they joined forces and created the Brio Integrative Health Centre (yourbriohealth.com).
At university, Dr. Lee – who has a special interest in treating pain and sports injuries – realized he had to change his lifestyle. He was constantly fatigued, always sick and suffered from digestive problems.
Luckily, he had grown up in a professional family. One uncle is a medical doctor; another, a renowned naturopath. Dr. Lee’s physical condition, and his desire to find a career with meaning, led him to volunteer one summer at a naturopath’s clinic.
“In the course of 10 months, I lost 40 pounds,” Dr. Lee recalls. “It wasn’t because I was trying to lose weight, but simply because I had chosen to eat healthier.”
Dr. Dhiman credits the mainstream medical system for diagnosing her allergies, and stabilizing her condition.
“I was stable at around 14 years old, yes – but I never felt good,” says Dr. Dhiman, who has a special interest in treating women’s chronic issues such as the ones she has suffered. “I knew I had to do something else to get better.”
That something else was working with a naturopath.
“I started with a naturopath when I was 18, but it wasn’t until I met my mentor in 2004 that I began my path to healing,” she says. “Most other treatments I tried were just managing symptoms. The root issues were never addressed, and I never improved.
“However, since 2004, my naturopath has charted a treatment path for me. Today I’m much better. My anaphylaxis is gone; my asthma is gone; my eczema is gone. These problems aren’t just being treated – they’re cured.
“Today I can eat peanuts, beans or lentils without suffering any kind of reaction. Before, I would have suffered breathing problems and been rushed to the hospital!”
Dr. Dhiman notes, however: “I want to say that this took years to accomplish. In our quick-fix culture we’re impatient to see results. We want to take a pill that will fix everything – and that’s not how naturopathy works.”
Both Dr. Dhiman and Dr. Lee feel there is still a great deal of progress to be made in informing the public about naturopathy. But a lot has changed, even in the past few years.
“Even five years ago, a lot of people would think, ‘This guy is a witch doctor and all naturopaths are quacks,’ ” says Dr. Lee, who is also a registered acupuncturist. “Today, I have all kinds of professionals sending patients to me. That includes medical doctors, lawyers, physiotherapists and chiropractors. They’re referring to us because what we do works.”
Statistics support Dr. Lee’s assertion, as naturopathy has grown by more than 100 percent in the past 10 years in BC.
“Our passion and our goal at the clinic are to integrate all kinds of modalities – conventional and alternative. I know that is a tall order, because sometimes egos get in the way. But we believe it’s a better outcome for the patient.”
Adds Dr. Dhiman, “Jeff and I have the same underlying philosophy in how we practise. We want to build bridges between the alternative and established medical communities – we want to continue to educate the public about the benefits of naturopathy.
“And I think our philosophy is working! Our billings have increased by 250 percent in the past two years,” she reports. “We currently have three team members at Brio, and we would like to see that expand to eight in the next three years.
“We’re adamant about maintaining that growth by keeping our rates affordable. We want more people to be able to take advantage of our services.”
In fact, so passionate is Dr. Lee about the benefits of alternative medicine that he has launched a complementary company to teach other naturopaths how to run a business.
Through H.E.R.O.’s Business Solutions (herosgroups.com) – for Helping Everyone Realize Opportunities – Dr. Lee wants to help other naturopaths reduce the steep business-learning curve that he had to endure to make a living.
“In the US, the statistics are scary – more than 30 percent of graduates from naturopathic colleges end up not practising because they don’t have any business background. Our education does nothing to prepare us for running a business. Once we finish school, we’re thrown out into the business world, and it’s sink or swim. A lot of us sink.
“That’s where I see an opportunity. I’m passionate about helping the natural health industry become more business-savvy.”
In fact, it’s not just naturopaths where Dr. Lee sees opportunity, but in the whole alternative medicine field.
“We see this as a huge opportunity that is geared toward the health and wellness sector,” he explains. “That could mean chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists, Chinese medicine, yoga instructors, martial arts studios, personal trainers, dance studios.”
The original idea was conceived by a colleague, André Belanger. Dr. Lee launched the new H.E.R.O.’s Business Solutions in 2010.
The current H.E.R.O.’s model is to deliver seminars, workshops and video tutorials, both online and in-person on a fee-for-service model. By 2012, Dr. Lee hopes to expand the offerings from BC to across Canada.
One of H.E.R.O.’s Business Solutions’ first major events will be the Health and the Entrepreneur Conference at the River Rock Casino on November 10, 2011. Sounds like a natural!