Fighting the Battle vs. Winning the War: Osteopath vs. GP
We have all experienced it: we go to the doctor with back complaints, she diagnoses the problem, gives us some medical advice on what activities to avoid, along with a prescription for painkillers. We take the painkillers, follow the advice, and after some time the problem disappears. Or so we think. Two months later, our back gives way again as we attempt to lift some heavy luggage, and are forced to launch ourselves in the vicious doctor-drugs-advice cycle 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 much more specialized that your local doctor. Since they have had special training in the musculoskeletal system, they are much more knowledgeable about how one part of the body can influence another. This gives then a diagnostic as well as therapeutic advantage over medical doctors, who simply have a general background knowledge in human anatomy.
2. Osteopaths can use Osteopathic Manipulative Training (OMT) – a special diagnosis technique with the hands. This form of diagnosis gives the body opportunity to heal itself naturally by allowing the blood to flow free to the areas that need it most.
3. An Osteopath not only uses their hands to diagnose a problem, but also to treat to the predicament. While a medical doctor would prescribe an anti-inflammatory drug to treat the symptoms at face value, an osteopath would work to free the muscle tensions, which not only stimulates circulation, but encourages the body’s own forces to eradicate the problem, preventing it from re-emerging in the future.
4. While medical doctors work to treat the immediate symptoms of an illness, osteopaths look at the history of the disease. If a patient were to have a knee injury, for example, a GP would most commonly acquire a patient’s medical history through means of laboratory procedures, such as blood tests, or other psychical examinations. Osteopaths work differently: they obtain a patient’s history by questioning whether the patient experienced excessive stiffness in the joints in the past, whether increased activity further aggravates the knee, and whether the pain varies based on the position in which the knee is placed. By obtaining the history in this manner, osteopathic doctors aim to find the source of the problem, and ensue to eradicate its cause.
Osteopathy is therefore highly beneficial in a multitude of ways, but are these advantages enough reason for you to see an osteopathic doctor instead of a medical one? That decision lies in your hands. Depending on the severity of your ailment, you might want to see both. The main question you want to ask yourself is whether you problem is persistent, and whether you are interested in treating its symptoms, or curing them.
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Posted: November 25th, 2008 under Health.
Tags: back injury, back pain, back pain relief, Frozen Shoulder, Health, lower back pain, neck pain, Neck Pain Relief, Osteopath, Osteopathic, Osteopaths, Osteopathy, Sciatica, shoulder pain, Sports Injuries, Stiff Back, Whiplash