osteopathy
What is Osteopathy?
Osteopathy is a form of treatment where the body is examined and treated with the hands. The treatment focuses on complaints related to muscles, joints, the spine, connective tissue, ligaments, and even organs.
What makes osteopathy special is that we look beyond just the location of your pain. The site of the complaint is often not the cause, but a consequence of a problem elsewhere in the body. For example, back pain can be caused by a blockage in your foot, a stiff hip by tension in the intestines, or elbow complaints originating from the neck.
Central to osteopathy is the idea that every person is unique, and therefore every complaint is as well. Every body functions in its own way, has its own history, and responds differently to stimuli or treatments. Therefore, an apparently similar complaint in different people may require a completely different approach. Every treatment is carefully tailored to your body, your complaints and the underlying disturbances that play a role.
a brief history of osteopathy
Osteopathy was developed in the late 19th century by American physician Andrew Taylor Still. He observed that the body has a great self-healing capacity, provided everything moves and functions properly. Still discovered that many complaints arise when joints, muscles, or organs do not cooperate well or are restricted. From that insight, he developed a treatment method in which the hands are used to search for loss of movement in the body and restore it to activate the natural healing process.
Osteopathy has since developed strongly, but the core principles have remained: viewing the body as one whole, tracking down the cause of complaints instead of only fighting symptoms, and helping the body heal itself.
Five perspectives of osteopathy
Osteopathy does not only focus on the location of the complaint, but looks at the entire body from five perspectives:
01.
movement
Joints, muscles and connective tissue must be able to move properly.
02.
Fluids
Good blood circulation and lymphatic flow are important for recovery.
03.
Nervous system
The nervous system controls all processes in the body; proper functioning is therefore essential.
04.
Recovery capacity
Sleep, stress and nutrition influence how well your body can heal.
05.
Lifestyle behavior
Habits, stress or posture can contribute to persistent complaints.
osteopathy and science
Although osteopathy once originated from experience and observation, more and more scientific research today confirms what we have seen in practice for years: the body functions as a whole. Muscles, bones, organs, and the nervous system constantly influence each other.
We also know that pain does not always equate to the amount of damage. Moreover, bodies are not easily comparable; each person reacts differently to complaints and treatment.
Within osteopathy, these insights have been known for decades, but only in recent years have they gained more recognition within mainstream medicine.
The power of osteopathy calls for a different way of investigating
Traditional scientific research works with fixed protocols: people with the same diagnosis receive exactly the same treatment, so that the effect of one specific intervention becomes measurable.
In osteopathy, it works exactly the other way around. The treatment is tailored to the unique situation of the patient – not to a standard diagnosis. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach thus goes against the core principles of osteopathy.
When osteopaths are forced to treat everyone in the same way, the very strength of the approach disappears. The effectiveness of the therapy will then logically decrease.
As a result, traditional research results often do not give a complete picture of the effectiveness of osteopathy as a whole, simply because the research methods usually do not match how treatments are really applied in practice. That is precisely why more research is needed that better incorporates this individual and integral approach, so that the value of osteopathy becomes increasingly clear.
Research and effectiveness
Although scientific studies do not always fully do justice to the personal and holistic approach of osteopathy, they often do show positive effects.
Osteopathic techniques prove effective for lower back pain, neck and shoulder complaints, some forms of headache (such as tension headaches), functional abdominal complaints such as IBS, and in babies with reflux or preferred positions.
There is also increasing evidence that mobilization and manipulation can influence pain, muscle tension and freedom of movement through the nervous system.
