01/26/2021
Have you ever left your osteo appointment wondering why the OMT didn't spend alot of time and/or focus on your specific area of concern?
The osteopathic approach to treatment considers the entire body as a unit, rather than a collection of individual parts. This means that while your symptoms may be localized to 1 area, the root cause(s) could stem from any where in the body.
Imagine you are watering your garden and the hose gets a kink in it which diminishes the water pressure at the nozzle. The issue is apparent at the nozzle, but the kink is some where else in the hose and the water pressure will only be restored once the kink is removed. Your OMT is working with your body in a similar way. The issue is apparent where you feel the pain, but may actually be coming from some where else. An osteopathic manual therapist is trained to look at the body as a complex unit, and knows how to accurately assess how asymmetry, restriction, or dysfunction in any 1 part of the body is going to affect the unit as a whole. Back to the hose example, there could be a kink (or multiple) in the hose some where along its length, or there could be something faulty in the nozzle itself, or maybe the hose is kinked and the nozzle is faulty. In each case the symptom/complaint is the same; the output of water from the nozzle is insufficient. You could clean up, repair, or even replace the nozzle, but if you haven't considered the entire length of the system and if there is even 1 small kink, the problem isn't going to resolve. While the human body is a lot more complicated than a garden hose, an osteopathic manual therapist is an expert at finding the kinks!