Osteopathy – Back to Its Roots or Full Steam Ahead for NHS Integration?

Well, this is certainly a tricky subject to tackle, particularly after an inconclusive debate at the Advancing Osteopathy event back in February 2008.

 

Osteopathy was founded at a time of industrial and mechanical revolution, 1800s – the thinking and understanding behind it was very much based on the mechanical mindset. This has been extremely successful for many decades; however, I do feel that some of its ideals are a little simplistic. The body does indeed act as a machine, however, there is so much more than moving parts and anatomy. The computer age has given us a far more detailed understanding of how the human body works. There are complex processing units (e.g. hypothalamus), inputs (e.g. nutrition, vision, hearing) and outputs (speech, expressions, movement) – the list could go on forever. There needs to be, if I may continue with the computer metaphor an “upgraded version” of the osteopathic philosophy and understanding.

 

Having said this, I don’t believe it should be involved in the mainstream medical model of chasing symptoms round the body. By integrating Osteopathy into the NHS model, there is a fear that Osteopathy will become “pigeon-holed” into an orthopaedic technician. One that only treats based on medical diagnosis and is given “back” problems or “neck problems” – this is completely contrary to the osteopathic healthcare model of the body working as a whole. Rather viewing each area or “disease” separately. From a true osteopathic prospective having a department for cardiology and a department for rheumatology etc is looking at the body in separate parts and not as a completely working machine, each area effectively every other.

 

In conclusion, I do feel that Osteopathy needs to not shy away from new ideas and techniques and this should be encourage. However, a trip into the NHS can surely only crush the osteopathic principles and philosophy which have so much common sense attached to them.

What is Osteopathy?

Osteopathy is a system of healthcare underpinned by a vast knowledge of anatomy, physiology and neurology. Osteopathy recognises that the body has the inherent ability to heal itself and contains is own “medicine chest” to do this.

 

Osteopaths have an understanding that a “problem” or “disease” does not just appear out-of-the-blue (unless it involves trauma). There has been a chain of events leading up to this issue.

 

Think of it in terms of having two brains – the unconscious, which runs all the physiology behind the scenes (e.g. breathing, blood pressure control, in fact the every process in the body that you are not aware of– the list is endless). The second brain being the conscious, the one that you are allowed to think with and causes pre-determined actions. Now let’s imagine that you have a series of changes taking place within your body over a period of time (perhaps due to occupational posture) – the body is changing and compensating for all these changes and you do not know anything about it. Why? Because your subconscious brain is taking care of it behind the scenes. Then at some point the changes become too much for the subconscious to deal with on its own; so what happens? – it begins to bring attention to the issue through the conscious brain. This is usually in the form of pain and then you start to look to healthcare practitioner for help (or leave it a few more years until it’s unbearable!).

 

Effectively, you are half way or towards the end of the chain of events when this conscious notification occurs. An Osteopath’s true job is to pick apart this chain and find out what started the process off. They use manual, hands-on techniques to “listen” to the body and determine the root cause of the presenting complaint and treat accordingly.  This process takes time and personally I believe the time required is directly linked to the how long the issue has been around. Osteopathy is not a “quick fix” therapy nor that it should be if the osteopath is being true to uncovering the underlying cause.

 

To take this further an Osteopath believes that the body is a complete unit, in fact the greatest machine we are every likely to come across. Just as in any machine, if one part is not functioning correctly, this will impact the efficiency of the whole machine. One could take this into the age of technology and use the metaphor that the human body is a computer. A highly complex system with an extraordinarily vast array of inter-connections, inputs and outputs all delicately balance for efficient operation. In disease, the computer can itself be faulty and therefore not able to process information correctly, which beings to show up on the Flat Screen Monitor (the muscles and tissues of the body!)

 

To conclude, Osteopathy is focused around the body as a whole, not to be confused with the current medical model of chasing symptoms round the body without determining the underlying cause. The word disease sums up the osteopathic understanding, the body is in “dis-ease” i.e. not at ease, not functioning optimally as a whole.