What Can Your Osteo Do For You?
The most common question I was asked about Osteopathy 10 years ago was “What is an Osteo?”. Thankfully those days have passed and most people now know what an Osteo is.
More commonly these days I’ll be asked “What’s the difference between Osteo, Chiro, Myo and Physio?”. Ive become pretty adept at answering that one now too, though I still feel that many people don’t really know ALL of the services and Osteo can provide you.
You can see an Osteo for any physical ache or pain from headaches right down to your toe. Primarily we treat pain of “musculoskeletal” origin. That is - pain originating from muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and discs. We can also help identify whether your pain may be coming from elsewhere in the body and direct you to the appropriate health care professional.
When I say “treat” pain this means using hands-on, manual therapy techniques such as soft tissue massage, stretching, joint mobilisation, joint manipulation, dry needling and myofascial cupping. Though that is not all we do.
We can help you identify the lifestyle factors such as poor posture, repetitive strain from activities of daily living and exercise programs (or lack thereof) that may be causing you issues, so that you can make the appropriate adjustments to relieve stress and strain from your body.
Apart from hands on manual therapy and lifestyle advice, we here at Osteopathic Movement South Yarra offer individually tailored rehabilitation exercises/programs so that you can take control of your own pain and your own body, rather than relying on us to keep patching you up when you break down.
Most people believe that “rehabilitation exercises/programs” are simply for athletes or specific injury recovery such as muscle and ligament tears or post surgery recovery. This is not the case. Rehabilitation exercises aim at restoring natural range of motion of your joints and restoring optimal muscle tension with the overall goal of getting you to move better.
We believe that moving well is integral in your overall health. When you have restrictions, your body will compensate for these deficiencies and shift the responsibility of movement and load onto other structures. This is a good strategy in the short term as it allows you to seamlessly perform all the required actions of being human.
Though in the long term, this can lead to de-compensation, whereby some structures such as joints , ligaments and discs take on too much load and can eventually give way leading to acute pain or can slowly wear down over a lifetime without you knowing. This can explain why you might have one degenerative, arthritic knee for no apparent reason.
Onset of pain for “no apparent reason” such as waking up with severe neck pain or bending down to put on your socks, as you have done thousands of times before and having your “back go out” is a manifestation of poor movement patterns over time accumulating silently until your body can no longer compensate and it all falls apart.
In these times of severe pain and restriction, your Osteo can treat you to relief pain and restore some more movement, advise you on what has happened and why, give you some exercises to do at home to settle things down and provide you with a plan going forward to avoid recurrence of this injury.
This is where the term “holistic” comes from with regard to conversation about what an Osteo does. We look at your body head-to-toe, we ask questions about your lifestyle with regard to stress, work and exercise and we take this all into account to determine the best course of action to get you feeling your best once again.
If you’re interested in booking an appointment with one of our experienced Osteo’s
Book Online at: www.osteopathicmovement.com
or
Call: 0402 377 209