Horne offers drug-free approach to healing

Even with all the scientific advances of today’s modern society, about two thirds of the world’s population still uses traditional medicine.

Here in St Vincent and the Grenadines, naturopath Dr Stan Horne has opened the doors of the Rose Clare Natural Healing Clinic, to offer more Vincentians {{more}}a drug-free approach to healing diseases.

The clinic, which opened in September last year, is located at Prospect.

There, Horne uses his training in naturopathy to bring healing to his patients, who may suffer from a number of ailments and diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, hormonal imbalances, gall stones or even simple headaches.

“In essence, a naturopath practises the health care which is holistic and using a wide variety of herbs, spices and medicines, different therapies to treat various conditions,” Horne, a Vincentian, explained.

“What has happened is that we’ve messed up our food. We’ve processed it, we’ve refined it and in doing that, the food that we eat has lost a lot of its natural nutrients and so on. So, to provide those nutrients to the body, will help the body to heal itself. The body has an incredible capacity to heal itself.

So, it’s about using nutrition, because as a naturopath and most people of my ilk, we believe that nutrition can solve a lot of medical problems, if not all of them; so, we use nutrition, we use herbs.”

In addition to herbs and nutrition, other methods of healing are used, and for this particular naturopathic doctor, these methods include acupuncture and reflexology.

Horne, who began his training in 2002 and studied acupuncture in Nanjing, China, said some persons are often skeptical about acupuncture, especially since it requires inserting fine, individually packaged needles into various sites on the skin.

He, however, assures that the process is not only helpful in relieving pain and curing some ailments, but it is also not painful at all.

“Acupuncture is an old traditional Chinese medicine system of care and it works with the energies of the body. When you have pain, it’s because the energies of the body are not flowing properly. When the energy is not able to flow smoothly or properly through the body, then it gets jammed up and then there is pain, because the energy piles up right there and it’s very active so it creates pain.

“There are different pathways for different energies and on those pathways, there are different points and you can press or you can put a needle into anyone of those points and redirect the energy, speed it up or slow it down, or encourage the body to heal itself,” he said, noting that the needles are sterile and not reusable.

“I’ve also had the experience where persons are quite nervous because it’s needles. They were quite nervous and I would say ‘ok, I’m going to put this in’ and they would kind of close their eyes and anticipate. Even after it’s gone in, they would say to me, ‘are you done, are you ready?’”

Horne also spoke of the power of using reflexology to heal his patients.

The treatment, which is essentially a foot massage that can last up to an hour and a half, focuses on different parts of the body represented on the foot, to promote healing in those areas.

“It’s a very powerful thing. Reflexology is so powerful so that if a woman was pregnant and I touched the wrong area, she would actually abort. It’s something that’s been going on for years; it’s not the regular conventional medicine. It’s one of a kind,” the naturopath said.

Furthermore, reflexology has been known to detect illnesses that have not even showed outward signs as yet.

Other services offered by Horne include constitutional hydrotherapy, which is the application of hot and cold to the upper body to strengthen the immune system and cleanse body and acupressure, which help persons relieve stress and pains.

The doctor says he will even take time out to teach special exercises designed to cure some health issues.

Consultations with Horne may last up to an hour and even if one does not have treatment on that same day, the doctor guarantees that the client will be better educated about his/her condition than when he/she first stepped into his office.

According to Horne, modern medicine has been set up to make people believe that natural healing is the wrong way to go, that “herbs don’t work, but drugs do.”

“Well 80 per cent of the drugs that are in the pharmacies still come from plants; so how then is it alternative? With natural medicine, holistic medicine, they look at the body as a whole. If something is going on in the head, there are other things going on in the body that is causing the headache,” he explained.

“Conventional medicine doesn’t necessarily treat the causes; it treats the symptoms. We look for the root of the problem, the cause of the problem and try to get rid of that. If I get rid of the cause of the problem, then you don’t have that problem anymore. But if I treat your symptom by giving you a pain pill, when it wears off, two things happen. You have to come back to me to get more pain pills and the pain will come back with a vengeance, so you’re back to where you were.”

Since he has set up his clinic in September 2014, the naturopath, who writes “Cheers to your Health” in the SEARCHLIGHT<$>, revealed that clientele is growing and feedback has been great, especially since persons are seeing the need for this type of medicine.