Osteopathic manual practitioners assess and treat your body as a whole, because:
- symptoms sometimes show up in a different part of your body from where the problem actually is
- there may be several factors contributing to the symptoms you experience
Osteopathic treatment is efficient, which helps to minimize the number of visits you need. Practitioners go through many years of training to develop their highly refined palpatory skills.
Your therapist offer something special – their unique approach to patient care :
- they teach patients how to prevent illness and injury by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
- they look at the whole person to reach a diagnosis. They don’t just focus on the symptoms.
- they help the body to heal itself.
- they believe that all parts of the body work together and influence one another.
Treatment focus is on finding the source of the problem, not just treating the symptoms, and seeking out the major contributing factors that created the dysfunction in the first place or are maintaining it.
Your practitionner spend more time with their patients, taking a global approach and integrating the whole body into the treatment.
We also have many different types of techniques we can use depending on a patients needs or preference. Supportive exercises are often prescribed to reduce pain and help improve posture.
The Benefits of Osteopathy for Prevention
If you have just recovered from an injury or acute condition then osteopathy can be used to reduce the likelihood of your problem reoccurring. For example, if you have just recovered from a period of knee pain, your osteopath will be able to work to strengthen the structures that support your knee and retain the mobility in your joint. This will prevent you from injuring your knee in a similar way. Equally, if you have never had an injury, but have a hobby or lifestyle that puts you at risk, then osteopathic treatment could benefit you by preventing an injury. A common example of this is if you drive for long periods of time then your osteopath will be able to treat your body in a way that prevents you from developing pain in your back (which is a common complaint of people who drive for their living).
Here are some links on research/efficiency :
http://jaoa.org/article.aspx?articleid=2498824
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1208896/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3601389/
The Benefits of Osteopathy for Relaxation
Osteopathic treatment will bring you added benefits as it will give you time just to think about yourself and your body. You will probably find your consultations extremely relaxing and osteopathy is known to reduce your stress levels by increasing the efficiency of your bodies systems (such as your blood flow, nerve supply and immune system).
