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Osteopathy

What is Osteopathy? 

Osteopathy is the healing art that diagnoses and treats mechanical disorders of the body. Using massage and manipulation, osteopathy aims to restore your body to a normal healthy state. 

Osteopaths are trained to palpate the body's living anatomy, motion and texture of tissues, as well as the structural make-up. It is our job to detect, diagnose and repair any faults in your musculo-skeletal system. Where you feel your pain may not necessary be where the problem lies. It is our job to ensure your body is structurally integrated and so it stays that way. 

History

The system was founded in America by Andrew Taylor Still in 1828. He developed a reputation for treating where conventional medicine had failed, before opening a school to teach his methods. The main emphasis is on the importance of normal body mechanics and how to use manipulative methods to detect and correct faulty structure. 

What can Osteopathy Treat?

According to the ASA 2016, Osteopaths are registered and proven to treat the following conditions:

• Arthritic pain
• Back pain
• General lower back pain, both acute and chronic
• Pregnancy based back pain
• Torticollis, wry neck or neck pain 
• Hip and knee pains with treatments of Osteoarthritis in those areas 
• Joint stiffness and pain, and as an adjunct to OA treatment 
• Frozen shoulder and shoulder blade pain
• Cervicogenic head pain, including headaches where the problem comes from the neck
• Migraine preventation
• Stress management and tension 
• Sciatica
• Musculo-skeletal work related injuries 
• Muscular stiffness, spasm and cramp
• Sprains and strains
• Sports injuries 
• RSI & tennis elbow 
• Rheumatic type pains 
• Lumbago
• Fibromyalgia
• Circulatory problems
• Digestion issues 

If you experience an issue that is not on the list above, please give us a call as there are other conditions that we may be able to help with, but for which tere are no controlled experiments to “prove” the efficacy of the treatment. 

Will it Hurt?

Some Osteopaths perform the massage work very gently, others more strongly. We however strive to ensure that the treatments are not too unpleasant, but still effective. Manipulation is usually more of a shock than painful. A lot of the people that we treat are in pain already and have difficulty moving. In these particular situations, almost everything will hurt but we aim to reduce your pain, so you might get momentary discomfort before the relief you are looking for.