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Basically the body has its own mechanism of righting itself, and people who go to see their doctors have somehow lost their way in righting themselves. A doctor will give you a chemical remedy to alleviate the pain or to act as a catalyst, and an osteopath will simply attempt to remove the barriers to health.
It is important to treat the body as a whole. Quite often people come to an osteopath last of all. Often they are the end of the line. People have gone through the normal system of seeing their doctor, perhaps having some physiotherapy, having X-rays and perhaps due to the fact that you have to wait a long time to have treatment on the health service. Their problems may be well hidden.
What an osteopath does is first of all to take a detailed case history to give himself some idea of the problem and once he has assured himself that there is nothing more seriously wrong with the person than for example a back problem he will examine the back and see if he can find the barriers to health.
Osteopathy, like many of the other complementary therapies, are holistic therapies and people can have all sorts of problems related to their backs such as lung conditions, heart conditions or even peripheral problems like ankle pains and just simple joint pains. The back is just one aspect - it is a very multi-faceted therapy.
What I would like to do is just ask you a few questions about your current health and a few questions about the history of the problem you have had. Now, first of all, I would like you to tell me when the first back pains started to occur. Go back as far as you can remember. Did they occur as a result of anything? And is the pain you have in your back similar to the pain you had then? A fairly constantly nagging ache, it becomes extremely painful with shooting pains down my leg. Did you have treatment or did you just let it ride? I have rubbed in one of the creams but that would have been about it. When is the problem at its worst. Now can you tell precisely where the pain is? Are you getting any pains elsewhere? Now I'd like to have a closer inspection of your back, including taking your blood pressure and listening to your heart and lungs.
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