What is Osteopathy?
Put simply your body experiences pain and discomfort for three reasons:
1. Trauma causes injury to tissues. This can range from a mild strain to severe injury from a fall, sport or crash.
2. The muscles and joints are too stiff and cause immobility leading to pain.
3. The muscles and joints are too flexible/mobile and create an instability leading to pain.
The job of the Osteopath is to correct the problem and restore function.
Because the human body is so good at self- regulating we often take it for granted, those aches and pains from work or sport can alleviate themselves through rest but sometimes they don’t and by the time you do something about it the joints and muscles have become so stiff and tight that the issue has become ‘set in’ and painful.
An Osteopath is able to detect these problems and imbalances and correct them through manual therapy, i.e. stretching and mobilising the muscles, ligaments and joints.
I am often described as the “back expert” or “back man”. This is because the majority of my patients have bad backs and stiff necks. In reality I treat humans and the entire human body. My youngest patients are babies (sometimes only days old) and my eldest patient to date was 95.
If I split the body into sections I can highlight some of the common issues I deal with:
Head and Neck
- Migraines and head-aches
- Neck pain and stiffness
- Trigeminal neuralgia
- Sinus congestion
- Whiplash
- Jaw pain
- Disc injuries
- Sports injuries
Shoulders and Arms
Radiating pain into arms and hands.
- Rotator cuff injury
- Pain on or around the shoulder blade
- Postural problems
- Tennis/golfers elbow
- Repetitive strain of arms and fingers
- Sports injuries
Lower back/pelvis.
- Muscle or ligament pain
- Vertebral joint pain or dysfunction
- Disc injuries
- Postural/work related strain
- Sports injuries
- Pre and post natal pain
- SPD (symphysis pubis disorder)
- SI (sacro-iliac) joint pain and dysfunction