Bringing a naturopathic hospital to Boulder

“My true healing really started when I got out of the hospital and started looking at everything else to try and help my body to take care of itself and just become healthier and cleaner.”

Currently, when you’re very sick, you either stay home, or you go to the hospital. If you choose the hospital, it’s likely to mean treatments that focus on surgery and drugs. Some Boulder activists are striving for an alternative. .a “hospital” where nutrition, herbs and body movement are part of the standard offerings.

To learn more, KGNU’s Shelley Schlender recently spoke with advocates for an alternative Hospital. Those advocates are Naturopathic Physician Charley Cropley, and Naturopathic student Node Smith.

We also hear from Doug Enlee. Two years ago, at the age of 35, he had a non-descript blood infection in his arm that settled into a spot in his spinal chord. Doctors were concerned about his breathing and other organ functions. Enlee was taken by Flight for Life to a hospital where he stayed for five weeks, fighting for his life. Enlee says that the staff at St. Anthony Hospital saved his life, but he wishes he had some other options in his recovery. “What I would have liked to have seen or received at the hospital was another type of service or care that would almost compliment what services and medications the hospital was giving me to help restore your body and help your body heal. So the way I picture it is: I was in the hospital, they saved my life, they helped me recover but my true healing really happened once I was out of the hospital trying to repair not only what happened with my infection but also with all the medicines and things that they pumped into me to “help” me. My true healing really started when I got out of the hospital and started looking at everything else to try and help my body to take care of itself and just become healthier and cleaner.”

Charley Cropley says he currently works and would continue to work seamlessly with hospitals to maximize the beneficial aspects of conventional medicine. But he envisions a hospital run by naturopathic physicians that could also provide emergency care “naturopathic physicians bring in so many natural non-harmful therapies, their power is astonishing is what we’re seeing here. And be able to interface with physicians who are trained in this going “at what point here to do we fly him out, at what point do we put him on prednisone,” but it opens an array of tools available and not only an array of tools, but it’s founded on a different way of understanding the body.”

Cropley says there are that 17 states (including Colorado) where naturopathic physicians are licensed to be primary care physicians like in a hospital setting.

Cropley and Smith are working to establish Sanitas: the Boulder Center for Integral Naturopathic Medicine.