Healing in a natural way: the promise has everything to seduce. And in fact, the French have a good image of naturopathy. But for several months those who practice it have been under heavy fire from criticism. The abuses of these “care” with blurred outlines are in question. In mid-January, a naturopath, Eric Gandon, was placed in pre-trial detention after the death of a man practicing the fast he had prescribed.
A few months earlier, in a video, Irène Grosjean, a figure of naturopathy, praised the practice of “derivative baths” for feverish children, which consists of “rubbing” their genitals. Faced with the outcry, the Doctolib platform announced the delisting, by April 2023, of naturopaths (among other practitioners whose training is not recognized by law).
“There is not a naturopathy, but naturopathies”, warns Bruno Falissard, director of the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health (CESP), in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). It is a set of unconventional healing practices, i.e. not recognized by modern medicine, which promises to “restore balance to the human body”, according to its practitioners. “All that is assessment, improvement of the hygiene of life, food rebalancing advice, it is typical of what we do”, details Alexandra Attalauziti, president of the Professional Union of Naturopaths.
In detail, those who practice naturopathy provide daily life advice (physical activity, breathing, etc.), natural remedies (plants, aromas, vitamins) and non-drug interventions (manipulations, massages, fasting, etc.) . It therefore covers many disciplines, including aromatherapy, micronutrition and phytotherapy.
Naturopathy is part of a very wide range of alternative medicines. The Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Aberrations (Miviludes) has counted around four hundred unconventional practices for therapeutic purposes. While some are recognized by law and are the subject of approved diplomas (acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, sophrology), a large number come under wild exotic proposals with questionable rationality, such as “craniosacral therapy” or “biology total beings”. Between these two extremes there is a whole continuum, with many practitioners multiplying labels. “We are dealing with a veritable nebula, it is so vast that it is difficult to classify”, is in despair Pascale Duval, spokesperson for the National Union of Associations for the Defense of Families and Individual Victims of Sects (Unadfi).
This is often what one can read of it; beware, however, of some misleading accounts. For example, an approach touted as medieval, “Hildegardian medicine” – a popular German school of herbal medicine and naturopathy claiming its origins in a mystical twelfth-century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen – was actually devised in the twentieth century, and falls under the of a “therapeutic construction of marketing strategists”, judges medical historian Irmgard Müller.
More generally, herbal medicine was brought back into fashion in Germany during the First World War, in the context of a shortage of medicines, before being actively promoted by the Third Reich for ideological reasons – the idealization of natural purity – and practices. The Nazi regime favored the rise of untrained therapists to deal with the shortage of caregivers during the Second World War, linked as much to human losses as to the exclusion of Jews.
The opposition between nature and chemistry is otherwise superficial: many medicines were first active ingredients found in plants, before being synthesized – like the aspirin found in willow bark. Finally, the age of a medicine is not a guarantee of its effectiveness or its relevance. “In China, if you have a cardiac arrest, we will not give you traditional Chinese medicine, we will put you in a stent”, a modern medical device, recalls Bruno Falissard.
It really depends on the case. The effectiveness of several unconventional practices has been proven, such as that of ear manipulation (or auriculotherapy) against anxiety before surgery, hypnosis for smoking cessation or even music therapy against mental disorders. behavior linked to Alzheimer’s disease, lists Grégory Ninot in 100 alternative medicines validated by science (Belin, 2022). Ditto for natural remedies popular in naturopathy, such as ginger against nausea during pregnancy, green tea against acne, or hedgehog’s mane (mushroom) against memory problems.
Others have, on the contrary, failed to prove their effectiveness, such as shiatsu against stress, ginseng against erectile dysfunction or even fasting against cardiovascular diseases. “At best, these so-called alternative medicines will entertain you, without having any effect on your health, but lightening your wallet,” writes Grégory Ninot, deputy director of the Desbrest Institute of Epidemiology and Public Health at Inserm. , Montpellier.
Finally, in the majority of cases, science has not spoken, quality studies being rare, expensive and not always easy to set up. But the public health code “prohibits the presentation as beneficial and safe of unproven treatments or therapies”.
Again, it depends. Whether a treatment is old or natural does not necessarily make it harmless: several patients treated according to the precepts of Ayurvedic medicine have been victims of heavy metal poisoning; acupuncture procedures have also resulted in pneumothorax (perforation of the lungs); bee venom treatments (apitherapy) to fatal anaphylactic shock; or even osteopathic sessions for serious vertebro-basilar accidents.
Other practices are not only useless, but rather suicidal. This is the case of fasting against cancer, “scientifically beyond the absurd”, warns Mr. Ninot. The risks inherent in magical therapeutic promises are not new: a study showed that, in the 16th century, the courtesan Diane de Poitiers died of intoxication after drinking an alleged gold-based elixir of youth.
The other risk is that of sectarian aberration. Three thousand doctors, two hundred “bio-decoders”, eight hundred kinesiologists would be linked to the sectarian movement, according to Miviludes. Among these, the total biology of living beings, biomagnetism and biorespiration, shamanism, flower elixirs, instinctotherapy, fasting, sophrology or yoga, all disciplines related to naturopathy. And the phenomenon is getting worse: in 2021, 47% of the reports recorded by Unadfi concerned the field of health, personal development and well-being.
Recently, several naturopathic pundits have hit the headlines for their practices, in particular the raw foodist Thierry Casasnovas, concerned by a judicial investigation for “illegal practice of medicine”, the influential nonagenarian trainer Irène Grosjean, who promotes sexual touching on minors, or more recently Eric Gandon, a former commercial converted into alternative therapies, indicted for “involuntary homicide”, “endangering the lives of others”, “abuse of weakness” and “illegal exercise of the professions of doctor and pharmacist” after the deaths of three participants in his intensive fasting courses. Extreme cases that “do not represent modern naturopathy”, rejects Alexandra Attalauziti.
Naturopathy is also criticized for claiming to compete with so-called conventional medicine without having the skills to do so. For the Syndicate of Naturopathic Professionals, it is nevertheless “a practice of well-being and prevention” which can be complementary, but should never replace modern medicine. But, in fact, the opposition with conventional medicine is often latent, and some naturopaths spread the idea that everything natural would be good, and everything chemical bad. “It’s false and dangerous, gets angry Bruno Falissard. Cancer is natural, tobacco leaves too. If we tell people that we are going to heal them with kind nature against bad chemistry, people will die. This is not rational speech. »
Conversely, in Rousseau’s universe of naturopathy, everything relating to the pharmaceutical industry is often struck with the seal of suspicion, and modern technologies (in particular radiology, chemotherapy, vaccines, etc.) considered intrusive, dangerous and contrary to the natural order of things… with the risk of treatment abandonment and loss of chance. “Some fairly honest practitioners won’t play that game, but unfortunately this type of anti-science discourse is often present, or at least underlying,” laments Pascale Duval. For Bruno Falissard, holding this type of speech to his client is often the red line that characterizes an irresponsible naturopath. On the side of the union, we recognize reluctance, but which falls within the private sphere and should not invite itself into the cabinet.
All the experts interviewed are unanimous in saying that this is not the case. While the well-being market appears to be a popular route to professional retraining, the rapid growth of these professions escapes all monitoring. “It is impossible to say how many naturopaths there are in France, whether they were trained in a school six months or five years, etc. “, laments Mr. Ninot.
A situation that Ms. Attalauziti also regrets, whose union has been campaigning for years for state recognition of the profession of naturopath, with recognized training, which would make it possible to move towards more regulation. “That’s the whole problem with the well-being professions, we authorize the installation of self-taught people,” she notes, all without a supervisory body to drive out deviant professionals. In August 2022, the president of the Confederation of French medical unions, Franck Devulder, denounced practices “which sometimes amount to charlatanism” and called for their strict regulation.
