I hear this one alot ‘You treat bones don’t you?’. I wanted to write an article busting this particular myth as I think it prevents a number of people seeking help from an osteopath for conditions which could easily be helped.
A problem we have with our profession is in the name. Osteo as a prefix comes from the ancient Greek word for bone. It is no wonder therefore that so many people think that is what we treat. This common misconception will only shift by changing the name or helping people better understand what osteopaths do. I don’t think the former is about to happen so let’s start with the latter. Back to the title ‘osteopaths treat the whole body and not just bones’ – so we do treat bones but that’s not all we treat.
Osteopaths treat the whole person and all their living tissues. Osteopathy really is ‘holistic’. You may come to me having had a broken bone and wanting some help to optimise your recovery. Even in such a case I am not just treating your bone but treating you – a person who is alive and who functions as a whole. My osteopathic treatment is directed at helping your body to undo the strain patterns which it absorbed when you broke your bone. You may come to me with chronically tight and achy shoulder muscles – again I’m not just treating your shoulder muscles I am treating the whole of you in order to help those muscles function in a more balanced fashion with the rest of you so they don’t end up chronically fatigued and starved of oxygen.
Osteopathic treatment is about helping your body to find its optimal health patterns at a point in time. And how do you do that? That will have to be the subject of another article. Watch this space.
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