Bad-ND — Naturopaths Disciplined by Their Regulators

Bad-ND: Naturopaths Disciplined by Their Regulators

Every practitioner in this section has been found by a discipline tribunal, a regulatory college, or a court to have done something wrong. The pages here are built from the published decisions, the underlying notices of hearing, and — where we have them — our own complaint files and correspondence with the regulator.

What belongs here, and what doesn't: Bad-ND applies the same standard as the Bad-MD Files, to a different profession. A naturopath who was investigated and cleared does not belong here and will not be listed. Neither does one whose complaint ended in advice carrying no penalty and no public record. Unproven and unapproved treatments, and the practitioners who sell them where no adverse finding exists, are covered separately in Dubious Rx. Physicians are in Bad-MD. The distinction matters, and we keep it.

Cases

Michael Prytula, ND — Nature Medicine Clinic (St. Catharines, ON) Sold oncothermia, photodynamic therapy, UV light therapy, IV chelation and bio-oxidative intravenous therapies; advertised that his clinic could treat cancer, HIV and AIDS and achieve "complete cancer resolution"; and injected and compounded substances Ontario naturopaths are not permitted to touch. He routed it all through private membership agreements with an American body called the Pastoral Medical Association, keeping a separate patient database he told investigators his regulator had no right to see. Found guilty of thirteen acts of professional misconduct plus a breached undertaking in November 2024, and found ungovernable. The regulatory warnings began in 1999 — and a QuackeryWatch complaint from 2006 turned up nineteen years later in the College's own list of aggravating factors supporting revocation. Registration revoked — appeal dismissed

In preparation

Michael Um, ND (St. Catharines, ON) Prytula's colleague at the same clinic, jointly responsible for the same website, prosecuted on substantially the same allegations before a separate panel. Found guilty of the same thirteen acts of professional misconduct; certificate suspended for eighteen months with conditions, plus costs. The two men testified at each other's hearings, and the Divisional Court dismissed both appeals together in April 2026. Page in preparation

Where these cases come from

Naturopathy has only been a regulated health profession in Ontario since 1 July 2015, when the Naturopathy Act, 2007 was proclaimed and the College of Naturopaths of Ontario replaced the Board of Directors of Drugless Therapy – Naturopathy. The College publishes its discipline decisions, and for hearings held after 25 October 2018 the exhibits filed with the panel are public as well.

In the decade since, the College has published roughly two dozen discipline decisions. That is not many for a profession of this size, and the record before 2015 is thinner still: only the final five years of the old Board's decisions were carried over onto the College's website. A good deal of what happened under the BDDT-N survives, if it survives at all, in complainants' own files.

Every province regulates naturopaths differently, and some barely regulate them at all. Cases from outside Ontario will be added here as they are documented.

General resource: If you have a concern about a naturopath in Ontario, the College of Naturopaths of Ontario accepts complaints from anyone — you do not have to have been a patient. Its published discipline decisions are on its discipline outcomes page. Concerns about a medical device go to Health Canada's Health Products and Food Branch Inspectorate. Naturopaths in other provinces are overseen by their own regulators, where one exists.

Corrections: These pages are built from primary documents. If you believe anything here is inaccurate, write to us and cite the record — we will correct it.