Heard a really sad story today. One of our patients discovered a lump in her breast 6 months ago. Instead of going to see a doctor and seek proper medical attention, she decided to listen to a friend's advice and went to see a naturopath. The naturopath prescribed her a cocktail of herbs to drink and a poultice to apply to her breast. This persisted for several months and the lump in her breast continued to enlarge. She, however, still refused to see a doctor but then one month ago, she started experiencing back pain. In the end, she went to see her GP who organised suitable referrals and investigations that resulted in her being seen in surgical outpatients. On examination, she had a fungating, centrally ulcerating breast cancer, one of the worst that the consultant surgeon had ever seen. Furthermore, her investigations revealed that her back pain was from lytic lesions in her vertebral bodies, most likely from her breast cancer.

Everyone reading this post, please advise people around you to never attend a naturopath. If you believe that naturopathy works, at least employ it as what it should be: a complementary form of medicine and not an alternative form. This patient has had a radical mastectomy and is currently undergoing chemoradiotherapy but the experts say her 5 year survival is less than 10%.