Osteopathy: What is it and what does it treat?

What is osteopathy and what does it treat?

1982, USA. The founder of this system, Dr. E. Still, founded the first American school of osteopathy. He formulated and disclosed the features of the approach to treatment: "Osteopathy is a scientific knowledge of anatomy and physiology in the hands of an intelligent and trained doctor who can apply this knowledge for the benefit of a person who is sick or injured. If all parts of the body are correctly oriented, we can boast of excellent health. If not, this leads to the development of disease. If the body parts are returned to their correct orientation, the disease will recede."

• Osteopathy considers all human problems in their entirety, includes knowledge of many areas of medicine: anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, propaedeutics.
• The task of the osteopath is to see and understand the entire system of functional disorders in the body that led to the current consequences.

Osteopathic appointment

An osteopathic doctor begins an appointment in the same way as any doctor - with an assessment of the patient's general condition, collecting complaints (anamnesis). This is necessary in order to determine to what extent osteopathic treatment is indicated for a given patient and whether there are any contraindications to it.

After that, we ask the patient to undress down to his underwear (it is allowed to come to the specialist in shorts, but they must be loose, not interfere with movements and manipulations) and analyze: how he stands, which zones are open and which are clamped, in which direction there is a distortion or deviations from the axial lines.

When a person stands, we see the whole picture, for example: the pelvis is twisted, one leg is longer and overloaded - its muscular-fascial elements are clamped, the spinal column is compensatorily curved, one shoulder is higher than the other.

Testing

Tests can be divided into 3 categories:

1. active: when we ask the patient to make various kinds of bends and rotations, during which the osteopath looks at and evaluates how the skeleton moves, whether there are any violations of freedom and symmetry of movement in the joints of the spine and limbs;
2. passive: when the doctor independently studies the range of mobility, making movements with the patient's body;
3. palpatory: when, placing a hand on the tissue, we evaluate its quality. In osteopathy, this is called "listening" - we listen to the body with our hands: we put our hands on the knee and already understand that this knee is tense, the fascia is gathered, we need to work with them.

Treatment

With the help of testing, the osteopath determines the presence of dysfunctions, their severity, significance and priority, after which he carries out treatment - correction.

• For example: this sore knee became a compensation for the liver - it was more convenient for the body, because the functioning of the liver for life support is more important than the knee.
• Therefore, you need to work not only with the overloaded joint or muscle, but first of all with the element in the chain of disorders that became the root cause.

Initially, this could have been a birth injury, but the secondary symptoms are already so developed that you need to deal with two problems in parallel.

What is the difference between an osteopath and an orthopedist?

First of all, different clinical thinking and different training focus.

An orthopedist is a specialist who deals with joints and the spine, that is, he considers the patient as a spine or joint that has come to him. An osteopath must see everything as a whole. What is the spine? It is the musculoskeletal system that is connected to the entire body, and it will adapt to emerging problems in order to compensate for them.

• When a person comes with a posture disorder, from the point of view of orthopedics and manual therapy, the reason is an incorrectly positioned vertebra or a tense muscle that has brought this vertebra into an unnatural position.
• Osteopathy asks the question: why did this vertebra get into this position? We consider the body as a single mechanism.

For example, a patient comes with headaches - they start treating his neck. But initially he had appendicitis: after the operation, adhesions formed, tightening the iliac region, and as a result, the intestines are pressed. And the body, adapting, insures this organ, forms a system of functional tensions, as a result of which the cervical-occipital region is overloaded.

The osteopath does not get attached to the diagnosis.

Clinical knowledge is important to cut off a non-osteopathic problem. If a patient comes with acute appendicitis or stroke, we cannot treat him, but after drug treatment or surgery we will return normal blood flow and outflow in the tissues, restore their mobility.

Osteopath or manual therapist

The training of a manual therapist is 3 months, and that of an osteopath is 4 years. A classically trained manual therapist works exclusively with the spine, functional blocks (reversible impairment of mobility of the intervertebral joints) mainly using two types of technologies:

1. post-isometric relaxation - the tense muscle is relaxed and stretched due to the patient and doctor's resistance;
2. manipulation and mobilization - using joint play (movements that are physiologically alien to the body), the joint is displaced and then pushed back to its correct position with a crunch.

Classical manual therapy does not take into account that the body is a single whole, and mobility disorders in the spine are closely related to dysfunctions of internal organs and tissues. If your lower back hurts, then there is a block here, you need to "click" it - and the patient will feel better. The effect will most likely be, but not long-term, because the root cause is not eliminated, and the patient will return with a relapse after some time.

At the moment, manual therapy in Russia is gradually transforming into osteopathy. Many manual therapists received osteopathic education and became osteopathic doctors.

Now an osteopathic doctor is the highest degree of training for a manual specialist.

Osteopathy and massage

Massage is a type of technology for working with connective tissue: skin, subcutaneous fat, muscles, fascia, which has certain goals and objectives. This effect is aimed at improving lymph flow, relieving muscle tension, but the massage therapist works on the fact. There is a tense muscle, he "works" it, but should not look for the reason why this muscle suddenly became tense.

We are not saying that massage therapists are not needed. In our clinic, specialists in this field perfectly combine their practice with osteopathy. Both are reflex effects. And if an osteopath sees during an appointment that the patient has a muscular-tonic syndrome, there are myofibrosis changes, why not let the massage therapist alleviate these conditions and improve the quality of muscle tissue.

In a few days, the recovering person (I do not want to use the definition of "patient") will return to the osteopath and continue treatment. These are complementary things.

Who comes to this specialization - surgeons, neurologists?

Osteopathy is a methodology of thinking, diagnostics and influence on the anatomical structures of the body. At the moment, you can come to it with any higher medical education. Abroad, this is a separate branch of medical development: you can become an osteopath in 4 years of study without having a medical education, but the qualification of "Doctor of Osteopathy" is not equivalent to MD (Medical Doctor).

In Russia, this specialization has already become official: an osteopathic doctor is a primary care doctor.

There are many gynecologists in osteopathy. They are excellent at managing pregnant women and restoring after childbirth. I came from manual therapy, someone comes from surgery, orthopedics.

• A narrowly trained specialist looks only at the problem with which he interacts due to the nature of his specialty, without thinking about how this problem and the ways to solve it are related to the functionality of the entire body.
• For example: a surgeon rarely asks himself the question of what role postoperative adhesions in the abdominal cavity can play in changing the biomechanics of the body. His task is to correctly and as safely as possible perform the necessary operation.
• A cardiologist does not always associate heart rhythm disturbances with a spasm in the area of the left dome of the diaphragm. His task is to restore the correct rhythm by prescribing the necessary medications.

Rarely does any narrow specialist think about the functional reserves of the body. But thanks to them, we have the opportunity to live and work effectively even in the most difficult conditions.

One of the features of osteopathy is the ability to significantly increase these reserves by building a harmoniously functioning system in the body that does not have to spend energy on maintaining an incorrect balance.

It is very difficult to say in one sentence “osteopathy is…”, and during the conversation with Oleg Vladislavovich we collected material for several articles in advance. In the following publications, we will talk about how osteopaths work with newborns and why their practice is closely connected with psychology.