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You are Here My Baby 1on1 » Health-and-fitness » To Treat or to Cure? The Benefits of Osteopathy
To Treat or to Cure? The Benefits of Osteopathy
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. Osteopathic doctors 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 are uniquely capable of using Osteopathic Manipulative Training (OMT) to diagnose an illness within the body. In involves the manipulation of certain muscles with the hands to encourage the blood to flow to necessary regions of the body, which gives the body a much more natural opportunity of healing itself. 3. An Osteopath is trained to use their hands, rather than medication, to help treat an ailment. Instead of using anti-inflammatory treatments, for instance, as a medical doctor would, osteopaths adopt the more natural approach of manipulating the afflicted muscles with their hands, freeing the blood flow and thus motivating the body to engage in its own healthy process. This prevents the same problem from resurfacing in the future. 4. While medical doctors work to treat the immediate symptoms of an illness, osteopaths look at the history of the disease. If a patient were to have a knee injury, for example, a GP would most commonly acquire a patient's medical history through means of laboratory procedures, such as blood tests, or other psychical examinations. Osteopaths work differently: they obtain a patient's history by questioning whether the patient experienced excessive stiffness in the joints in the past, whether increased activity further aggravates the knee, and whether the pain varies based on the position in which the knee is placed. By obtaining the history in this manner, osteopathic doctors aim to find the source of the problem, and ensue to eradicate its cause. 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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Article by: AndrewMitchell |
Total views: 9 |
Word Count: 529 About the AuthorAndrew Mitchell, editor of Osteopath Network, writes articles about osteopathy, back pain, neck pain and soft tissue injuries. If you are looking for a Edinburgh osteopath or for an osteopath in the UK please visit his website.
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