Most of the patients who end up on the doorstep of Dr. Lucia Coletta, who recently moved her naturopathic practice from Enfield to Granby, have tried everything that traditional medicine has to offer, yet nothing has worked.

“They say, ‘Let’s try this,’” Coletta said in a recent interview at her new offices.

Such was the case for Ray Richards, who has been seeing Coletta for over 10 years for his intestinal issues.

Richards said that he had seen numerous doctors, none of whom could pin down how to help him out.

When he saw Coletta, she tested him for food allergies and, sure enough, he was allergic to yogurt, which he ate twice daily.

“It turns out that the stuff I was eating that I thought was helping me was hurting me,” Richards said. “It’s little things like that.”

In broader terms, Coletta’s practice involves treating a wide spectrum of medical conditions with vitamins, herbs, diet programs, allergy testing/treatment, physiotherapy as well as hypnosis for weight loss, smoking cessation, and changing lifestyles.

On a recent visit to her office, Coletta also held up a file for a patient she was treating for ITP (low platelets in her blood), who is concurrently seeing a hemotologist.

“My perspective helps [doctors] out with their ability to treat strange diseases,” Coletta said.

There’s also the patient she treats who has Parkinson’s, the myriad of people who come to her with some form of food allergies and those who see her to quit smoking or lose weight.

Coletta has been in practice for 25 years, 19 of which have been in Connecticut. She moved her practice from Enfield to Granby because of issues with the former building her practice was located and, as she put it, “I like [Granby’s] vibe.”

Naturopathic medicine, while still not necessarily in the mainstream, is no longer treated as voodoo, either.

“When I first started [in 1993], it wasn’t known,” said Coletta, a graduate of Bastyr College [now University], one of the top school for naturopathic medicine. “There were just six or seven states that licensed naturopaths. Now that’s more than doubled.

“It’s no longer opinion, it’s science. We don’t prescribe drugs, but we use supplements. Vitamin companies use specially tailored research for diseased states.”

The general public isn’t just accepting the science; most insurance carriers also have Coletta in their networks, either as a primary care provider or as a specialist.

One of the things that Coletta stresses is that she is not denigrating or looking to replace traditional Western medicine, but to augment it.

“Doctors don’t always assess all of the points,” Coletta said. “Once you clean up the diet, your health improves. … Most of my patients improve from all sorts of chronic conditions.”

Coletta helped Richards’ 10-year-old son avoid surgery for his serious sinus condition, as well as Richards’ niece, who has a kidney problem.

“She’s a very smart woman,” Richards said. “I’d recommend her to anybody.  … I’m not saying that traditional medicine is lousy. It’s just that she has a place in it all.”

Dr. Lucia Coletta's office is located at 15R Hartford Ave., Ste. 2J in Granby. Her telephone number is 860-653-6299. For more information, visit www.drluciacoletta.com