What is Osteopathy?

Osteopathy is a primary healthcare profession, governed by statutory law, to provide the highest quality care for patients possible in the treatment of their every day aches and pains as well as less well known complaints (click here for a comprehensive list). Today there are around 3,000 osteopaths in the UK performing over 6 million patient consultations per year.

Osteopathic reasoning in a nutshell

In all areas of our patient's discomfort, your osteopath will look to assess how your body is reacting to the osteopathic principles detailed below and integrate these with orthodox medicine.

1. "Form and function are reciprocally interrelated"

If you wear a hole in your shoe, thus changing the shoes structure it will lose its function at keeping your foot warm, dry and safe. Conversely, structure has to be related to function, so if you want your shoe to be able to kick a football, then you're better wearing a football boot than a ballet shoe.

2. "The body has its own healing mechanisms"

The body has its own medicine box to help cope with the ever changing environment that you put it through, so when you have caught a bug, the body knows this and puts the temperature up to help with the fight in hand. We as osteopaths believe, that given the right tools, the body will do its level best to help its self get back to normal and out of pain and discomfort.

3. "The rule of the artery"

We have all had the experience of being sat in a traffic jam; temperatures and tempers can rise quickly. Taking the traffic jam analogy one stage further, if the lorry's that are carrying the essential supplies to the town ahead are also stuck in the jam, then that town is left short and may starve and wither, and even worse, if the rubbish truck coming the other way is also stuck then the town will become toxic as well as hungry and thirsty - the town quickly becomes in a state of "dis-ease"

These three principles apply to your individual health. If you can ensure that all parts of your body are receiving all the goods they need via your blood and nervous system, and that the rubbish can get out, then health can be restored as the body is free to heal its self. The best way of getting these essential communications working properly, is to restore your body's' structure into its correct position.

These three simple explanations are used in all areas that we treat, we assess where and why the structure has changed, then work to restore and maintain this so that the body can heal itself. The holistic part to osteopathy, is integrating the reasons why the body's structure and function has changed and perhaps why it is responding in the way it is, i.e. why then, why now, why there and what are the maintaining factors to getting back to full health? For this an integrated assessment of the whole body structure is required and also an idea of the patients chemical and nutrition makeup ("you are what you eat") and an appreciation of the emotional state of play ("I feel like I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders").