Outgrowing Disorder in Culture and Medicine
Integrative medicine, aging, and the path to reorder
“Radical simply means grasping things at the root.”- Angela Davis
The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble….They can never be solved, but only outgrown.” - Carl Jung
These two insights — one from a political activist /scholar, the other from an analytical psychologist — help me frame both the cultural moment we’re living through and the way I practice medicine.
To be radical is not to reject, but to reach into the root.
To grow is not to solve every problem, but to outgrow what no longer serves. Sometimes we do this by becoming “bigger” than the problem itself.
These ideas help me gain perspective during this time of disorder and regression. It’s as if the world is in a global tantrum, with many countries devolving to infantile stages, then lurching through a turbulent and raging adolescence, shouting: “Democracy gives me the right to choose not to have democracy!”
And yet, even in this chaos, many wonder if we may also be on the edge of a new order.
I see a similar pattern in my clinic each week, where patients are caught in the disorder of modern medicine and the confusion of “Dr. Google,” but also searching for something deeper, more integrated, more whole.
The people that come to me are frustrated by quick fixes that don’t last, overwhelmed by conflicting health advice, and longing for something beyond than the “pill for every ill” story.
Their questions are similar to ones I wrestle with in my own life and work:
What does it mean to maintain health as a positive state, not just the absence of a disease?
How do we age “well” in a culture that tells us to fight aging (and all evidence) at all costs?
What does it mean to practice medicine that heals, rather than patches or kicks the can further down the road?
Two frameworks help orient me. Philosopher Ken Wilber describes growth as “transcend and include”. Each stage of growth goes beyond what came before but carries forward its essential truths. Kind of like those stacking matryoshka dolls, where we still carry all the previous versions of ourselves even as we expand.
Spiritual teacher Richard Rohr speaks of life as order → disorder → reorder. We begin with certainty and structure, encounter disruption and disillusionment, and, if we lean in, arrive at a deeper integration. My interview with
, Talking With Strangers highlights how we might apply this to aging.I was introduced to Ken Wilber’s integral approach in Cultural Studies in my undergrad studies in the 80s. My mum, an activist Catholic, and her ex-nun friends deeply resonated with Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk who is the quintessential wise man-grandfather we all wish we had. (He’s rocking Oprah’s world now). In the last few years, I have been reading writers like
who often draws from both thinkers (Wilber and Rohr), showing how they apply to culture, spirituality, and our current moment. I find their frameworks just as relevant to medicine and aging.
Healthcare/ Medicine in Transition: From Order to Reorder
Order: For much of the 20th century, medicine was defined by its confidence in “wonder drugs” like penicillin and the polio vaccine. Medicine entered a strong heroic phase. Doctors became heroes, armed with antibiotics, surgery, and technological breakthroughs that created a sense of mastery and invincibility with such an advanced arsenal of weapons in the fight against disease.
Disorder: But cracks appeared. Chronic diseases surged, new viruses emerged, patients lost faith in quick fixes, and the very system became burdened by costs and burnout. Skepticism toward conventional medicine has increased, leading to more polarized and binary rhetoric, particularly evident in the United States today but showing up in smaller ways in Canada where I live too.
Reorder: Out of disorder, a new integrative model is emerging — visible even on the edges of conventional medicine. “Functional medicine” and root-cause care aim to transcend the limits of heroic, intervention-first medicine while still including its life-saving tools. Figures like Andrew Weil, Mark Hyman, and Peter Attia are celebrated as allopathic pioneers of “functional medicine”. And while they are revolutionaries in that context of allopathic medicine, what’s often overlooked is that the functional medicine landscaping rests on the ground naturopathic doctors have been cultivating for over a century.
What is Naturopathic Medicine? (My Lineage)
It’s worth pausing to explain what naturopathic medicine actually is, because many people still don’t know. I’ve been a licensed naturopathic physician since 2002, and even after more than 20 years, I still meet people who assume it’s something new, trendy, or fringe.
In reality, naturopathic medicine is old school — the OG. It came to North America around 1900, rooted in European nature cure traditions: nutrition, botanical medicine, hydrotherapy, and daily lifestyle practices. Its core idea was radical then and still powerful now: that nature is a primary source of healing — through food, herbs, water, movement, rest, and connection with the natural world.
By the 1930s, thousands of naturopathic doctors were in practice, and nearly 50 naturopathic and holistic medical schools existed across the U.S. and Canada. But history intervened, and reshaped medicine in North America.
The Flexner Report commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation at the request of the AMA (American Medical Association), grouped together all schools that taught holistic modalities as what he called “sect” medicine *. He dismissed them as all being unproven and unscientific. And thus they were declared not worthy of university affiliation or funding. Sound familiar?
(If you’re curious about that story — including the impact of the Flexner Report — I’ve added a sidebar at the bottom you can explore.)
After World War II, the boom in pharmaceuticals created cultural faith in the “magic bullet,” and naturopathic medicine seemed nearly extinguished. By the 1950s, only one college in North America still taught naturopathic medicine — and it was barely hanging on.
Then came the turning point. On May 28, 1956, three naturopathic doctors filed articles of incorporation in Oregon to create the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. It was a revolutionary act, preserving a lineage that might otherwise have disappeared. It is now called the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland Oregon. (This is where I studied and graduated in 2002).
From those embers, naturopathic medicine evolved into a modern profession: four-year, full-time doctoral programs accredited in North America, rooted in biomedical sciences and all the traditional naturopathic modalities. In many states and provinces like BC, where I live, NDs are licensed as primary care physicians with prescriptive rights and many additional certifications.
Aging and the Longevity Load
The same frameworks that shape medicine also apply to aging.
Order: In youth, health feels effortless. Vitality is taken for granted.
Disorder: Over time, we begin to carry a load — the cumulative weight of stress, sleep debt, ultra-processed food, sedentary habits, chronic inflammation, environmental toxins, unresolved trauma, and disconnection from community and self-awareness. This is the stage when people often say, “I just don’t feel like myself anymore.” (I’ve developed the concept of the Longevity Load specifically for women, often invisible burdens that we carry into midlife, which I’ll expand on in future articles.)
Reorder: Yet disorder is not the end of the story. In the communities I call the Pink Zones — inspired by the Blue Zones — women age with vitality not by resisting disorder (aging) at all costs, but by reordering their lives around deeper pillars- antidotes to the Longevity Load: cultural self-worth, belonging, movement, nourishment, rituals of rest, meaning, and creativity. These practices lighten the Longevity Load, allowing women not just to survive, but to truly thrive.
Integrating to Reorder
Naturopathic Medicine is the original functional medicine. Long before “root-cause” was a buzzword, NDs were practicing it: nutrition as essential, hydrotherapy to stimulate healing and nervous system regulation, lifestyle as a foundational pillar, and docere — doctor as teacher.
Unlike binary movements that pit “natural or traditional versus allopathic ” licensed NDs don’t reject conventional medicine tools. Our philosophy has never been dualistic. We transcend and include. We use the right tool at the right time. We empower patients to be the hero of their own health journey, rather than casting the doctor or the intervention as the hero.
As chaotic as it seems, I believe “medicine” itself appears to be preparing the soil for reorder. The old order of pill-and-procedure dominance is breaking down. Sadly, many feel and many are lost in the wake of this disorder. But out of that quaking ground, a new integrative model could emerge — one that carries forward the best of science and modern interventions, technology included, while rooting itself in an approach that supports human thriving not as machine, but as organism, aligning with, not against, nature. The environmental movement has already shown us this path: just as alternative energy seeks to harness natural systems instead of depleting them, medicine too can evolve toward practices that sustain and regenerate, transcend and include.
The same is true of aging. Disorder — the Longevity Load — is real, but it can lead us to reorder: a stage of life defined by wisdom, meaning, and a deeper vitality.
Naturopathic medicine — along with other systems of traditional healing such as Indigenous, ancient Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Unani — has been preparing this ground for more than a century. I don’t know whether it will endure as a distinct profession, evolve into something new, or be eclipsed — as so many healing traditions around the world have been, surviving instead in underground or community-based forms. It may also be absorbed into conventional healthcare by those rediscovering its principles through functional medicine, which, in turn, could bring these approaches to many more people. What matters most is the invitation: not to stay stuck in our fear of disorder, but to walk through it with courage, so that we can arrive at reorder, as patients, as practitioners, and as a culture learning not only how to grow up, but how to age well.
If these topics interest you, please join me for a live conversation!
I’m excited to be joining
for a live this Friday, Sept 19 at 8:00 AM PDT: “Integrating Wellness: A Conversation between a Naturopathic and Osteopathic Physician”
Historical Note: The Flexner Report:
Although the report recommended positive changes such as a strong focus on bioscience and increased education before and after medical school, it also required that the schools make significant investments in laboratories and research facilities, which few of the smaller schools could afford without university affiliation or funding. By raising the standards for laboratories and facilities in ways small colleges could never meet, nearly all ND schools were compelled to close.
The report’s conclusions and recommendations were widely adopted by licensing and accrediting bodies across the North America., resulting in the closure of many schools of medicine.
· A 2003 article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons examined the impact of the 1910 Flexner Report on medical education.
1904 → 160 MD schools, 28,000 students
1920 → 85 schools, 13,000 students
All but two African-American schools closed
Student bodies became nearly all-male and white
The closures hit African-American institutions especially hard: all but two were shut down, drastically reducing the number of Black physicians entering the field.
At the same time, the new scarcity of medical school slots reinforced existing inequities, leading to the near reemergence of almost all-male, overwhelmingly white medical student bodies.