Your Symptoms Tell Part of the Story, but What’s Really Underneath? Finding the Root Cause.
You might have heard naturopaths talk about finding the root cause of your symptoms.
That’s because naturopathy isn’t about simply asking what hurts and offering a quick fix to make it go away. While that approach might work for an occasional headache, it’s rarely a sustainable solution when symptoms keep returning or evolving.
If headaches are becoming more frequent, or digestion, energy, mood, or sleep issues are lingering despite your best efforts, something deeper is probably going on.
Instead of masking symptoms with a quick fix, naturopaths investigate. We ask questions. We look at patterns. We explore what else is happening in your body and your life. And we keep going until we understand why those symptoms are there in the first place.
The Root Cause Is Rarely Just One Thing
When we talk about finding the root cause, the reality is that it’s often not a single, simple reason behind your health concerns.
There are layers.
Your body is made up of complex, interrelated systems, and symptoms that show up now may have been developing quietly behind the scenes for months or even years. Hormones, digestion, immunity, inflammation, energy production, and mood don’t operate in isolation, they influence one another constantly.
At the deepest level for most people, many chronic or recurring symptoms trace back to the nervous system.
The Nervous System: The Missing Piece for Many Health Issues
Your nervous system is the body’s central control centre. It constantly monitors your internal and external environment and makes rapid adjustments to keep you safe.
It influences:
Hormones
Digestion and gut function
Circulation
Immune responses
Energy levels
Mood and emotional regulation
Your body’s ability to heal and recover
From a nervous system perspective, danger equals stress. That stress might be:
Emotional
Physical
Environmental
Relational
And importantly, whether you think something is stressful doesn’t matter if your nervous system has registered it as a threat.
Stress isn’t just about what happens to you. It’s about how your body responds — and your nervous system determines that response.
Why Stress Affects People So Differently
Two people can experience the same situation, yet their bodies respond in completely different ways. That’s because your stress response is shaped by many factors, including:
Your upbringing and early life experiences
Past trauma or long-term pressures
Genetics and family health patterns
Current lifestyle, relationships, workload, sleep, injuries, and health status
Your perceptions and beliefs about what is happening
When the nervous system remains in a prolonged state of fight, flight, or freeze, the body shifts into survival mode. Over time, this can impact digestion, hormones, immunity, inflammation, energy, mood, and overall healing capacity.
This is why symptoms can persist — or even worsen — even when you’re “doing all the right things”.
Why the Advice to “Just Reduce Your Stress” Isn’t Always Helpful
You’ve probably been told to reduce stress, slow down, or change your environment, especially if your health issues are thought to be stress-related.
But that advice isn’t always realistic.
You can’t instantly:
Change your job
Remove family responsibilities or pressures
Undo past experiences
Pause life while your body recovers
And big changes often come with a whole new kind of stress.
So when changing the environment isn’t possible, changing how your nervous system responds to stress becomes essential.
Three Ways to Support Your Nervous System at Perth Natural Medical Clinic
1. Training Your Nervous System to Regulate Under Stress
Rather than trying to eliminate stress entirely, this work focuses on building capacity.
Through psychotherapy, life coaching, or hypnotherapy, you can learn how to:
Understand why you respond the way you do (awareness is the first step)
Regulate your nervous system in real time
Shift unconscious stress and reactive patterns
Build emotional resilience and a sense of safety in the body
Change internal responses even when external stress remains
Both Eddie Enever and Amanda Davies support clients using evidence-based therapeutic approaches designed to create lasting change.
2. Supporting the Body with Naturopathic Medicine
Chronic stress is biologically demanding. Over time, it can deplete nutrients, disrupt hormones, weaken digestion, and place strain on the immune system.
Once we gain a clear and often complex understanding of the factors contributing to your symptoms, our naturopaths may use:
Herbal medicine
Targeted, high-quality supplementation
Functional testing where appropriate
Individualised nutrition and lifestyle strategies
This is never a one-size-fits-all approach. Your symptoms, history, and biochemistry guide treatment, helping your body meet stress more effectively and recover before disease develops.
3. Acupuncture and FSM Therapy
Acupuncture and Frequency-Specific Microcurrent (FSM) therapy help your nervous system shift into states of calm and relaxation.
This not only provides relief during sessions, but also helps train your nervous system to access states of healing, safety, and regulation more easily over time.
Ready to Find the Root Cause and Get the Right Support?
If you’re feeling stuck with ongoing symptoms despite your best efforts, a truly holistic approach may be what’s been missing.
Get in touch with our team to learn more or book an appointment with one of our practitioners. You can call us on 08 9328 9233 or book online now.