| Fighting the Battle vs. Winning the War: Osteopath vs. GP |
| Articles - Lifestyle |
|
We have all had it: a sore back. We visit the doctor, she writes some prescription medication, and gives us advice on how to prevent further damage. We follow the advice, take the pills, and the problem slowly disappears. Or so we hope. Two months later, we manage to injure our backs once again by lifting a heavy suitcase, and the vicious cycle - doctor-medication-advice - seems to start all over again.
We have all had it: a sore back. We visit the doctor, she writes some prescription medication, and gives us advice on how to prevent further damage. We follow the advice, take the pills, and the problem slowly disappears. Or so we hope. Two months later, we manage to injure our backs once again by lifting a heavy suitcase, and the vicious cycle - doctor-medication-advice - seems to start 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 specialists in how the body works. Where medical doctors have a general overview of a large number of diseases, osteopaths are specifically trained in the musculoskeletal system. They therefore have a greater understand of how one system within the body influences the other, giving them a diagnostic as well as therapeutic advantage over GPs. 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. Osteopaths also use their hands to manipulate the muscles in your body to cure the problem (not only to diagnose). Where Medical doctors will use recommend rest and prescribe anti-inflammatory medication, Osteopaths employ a much more natural approach. By loosening up muscle tensions and stimulating blood flow, they encourage the body to engage in its own healing processes, leading to the elimination of the problem entirely. 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. DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as information only and is not to be taken as financial advice. Andrew 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. |