To Treat or to Cure? The Benefits of Osteopathy

To Treat or to Cure? The Benefits of Osteopathy

Leicester Osteopath Avin Patel shares his knowledge on the benefits of osteopathy.

We have all experienced it: we go to the doctor with back complaints, she diagnoses the problem, gives us some medical advice on what activities to avoid, along with a prescription for painkillers. We take the painkillers, follow the advice, and after some time the problem disappears. Or so we think. Two months later, our back gives way again as we attempt to lift some heavy luggage, and are forced to launch ourselves in the vicious doctor-drugs-advice cycle all over again.

Treating a physical problem is always an uphill struggle - that is, unless you eradicate the problem completely. This is where osteopaths come in: they don't just treat the symptoms of an ailment, they cure the cause of the problem. That is the fundamental difference between your local GP and an osteopath - while a doctor just examines individual symptoms, an osteopath will look at the 'total person,' or the body in its entirety. There are various other factors that distinguish osteopathic doctors from medical doctors:

1. Osteopaths are more specialized in the anatomic workings of the body. They receive special training in the musculoskeletal system, while medical doctors merely have a general background knowledge. Osteopaths therefore have a therapeutic as well as diagnostic advantage; they know how one system in the body affects the other in greater detail.

2. Osteopaths can use Osteopathic Manipulative Training (OMT) - a special diagnosis technique with the hands. This form of diagnosis gives the body opportunity to heal itself naturally by allowing the blood to flow free to the areas that need it most.

3. An Osteopath not only uses their hands to diagnose a problem, but also to treat to the predicament. While a medical doctor would prescribe an anti-inflammatory drug to treat the symptoms at face value, an osteopath would work to free the muscle tensions, which not only stimulates circulation, but encourages the body's own forces to eradicate the problem, preventing it from re-emerging in the future.

4. Where doctors deal with the present symptoms of a given problem, osteopaths will look at the persistent history of an illness. If a patient has injured his knee, for instance, a medical doctor would gather a patient's medical history through a means of blood tests, psychical examinations, and perhaps certain laboratory procedures. An osteopath would acquire this same history by questioning the patient about whether he previously experienced stiffness in the knee joints, whether the knee is more painful in a specific position, or whether the pain increases in the patient's most active moments. By getting a patient's history through this approach, osteopaths work to find the cause of the problem, and attempt to cure it at the source.

The benefits of osteopathy are therefore numerous, but do they override the advantages of visiting your local GP? That is for you to decide. Depending on the nature of your ailment, you might even want to see both. The primary question you have to ask yourself whether your physical problem is a reoccurring one, and whether you want to treat the symptoms, or cure the disease.

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