Naturopath offers holistic treatment and prevention

Naturopath with strong ties to Milwaukie

By Ellen Spitaleri

The Clackamas Review, Jan 2, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Dr. Jesse Buttler is looking forward to the new year, when he will open his primary care office in Milwaukie on Jan. 7.

Buttler, who is a naturopathic physician, chose to locate his new practice in Milwaukie, because, he said, “it’s on the rise and it’s a great little community.”

He added that his wife grew up in Milwaukie, and both he and his wife are La Salle High School graduates.

Buttler figures that he’ll have to educate his patients as to what a naturopathic physician does, but basically he wants people to know he has been to medical school, and has worked with “all current modern diagnostic and imaging techniques.”

The difference between his practice and that of a conventional doctor comes “once the diagnosis is established. The difference comes in the treatment,” he explained.

“A naturopathic physician uses holistic techniques to focus on helping people identify and treat the cause. I view health as a process, and we are the products of our environment,” he said.

At the heart of naturopathy is the “idea of prevention – it is a preventative approach to medicine.”

Lifestyle choices make difference

He added that he works with people on lifestyle choices and how those affect their health, including exercise, sleep, nutrition and stress reduction.

If a patient comes to him with a headache, for example, he will do the same thing a conventional doctor would do on a first visit – he’d discuss the patient’s history and do a physical exam. But instead of just prescribing some pain relief medication, he said, “We’d work to re-create a foundation of health in the body.”

He would give a patient something initially to help with the headache, he noted, but then he and the patient would “talk about daily routines that lead to the headache.”

If “you just focus on the signs and symptoms, you are not addressing why they have the headache – is it tension? A food allergy? I need to educate the body as well as the patient to re-create the foundation of health,” Buttler said.

“You have to treat the signs and symptoms, but the work doesn’t stop there; you have to dig deeper. The physician and the patient have to understand what is causing the signs and the symptoms.”

He might recommend lifestyle changes, in order to help the body “create a drive to heal itself and to build up the immune system,” he added.

“As a doctor, I need to educate my patients and help them understand their lifestyle. I don’t have the ability to help everyone, but I can plant the seed to begin to make health a priority in their life.”

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