Osteopathy

The principles of osteopathy are that all systems of the body are interconnected, that structure and function form a continuum and that the body has the ability to heal itself. This wholistic concept would not be possible were it not for a single tissue that reaches every single part of you. This amazing tissue is called fascia.

At the core of your structure you have a cytoskeleton. From an evolutionary point our sophisticated cytoskeleton is no more than the adaptation of the already complex protein meshwork that formed the basic structure of multicellular organisms. This primitive protein meshwork blobbed about in primordial swamps until some of its cells differentiated to develop a central nervous system, bones and muscles in order to get around in search for food and a mate. This makes your cytoskeleton the oldest and most fundamental part of you and at the core of it all there is fascia.

Fascia envelops and supports your bones, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, lymphatics and all your internal organs. It reaches your toes and fingertips. It is organised into thick supporting sheets at the base of your spine as well as forming microscopic sheaths around individual muscle fibres. It’s everywhere.

Fascia is "wired" (it is supplied by the automonic nervous system, which also supplies your heart) and is also contractile which gives it a dynamic structural role. It not only supports your body, it helps to organise blood flow to every single part of you by being in a state of plasticity.

Understanding this plastic state is where analytical physical medicine begins.

Osteopaths do a standing exam…is the answer to the question osteopaths get asked most frequently.
You could take 100 pain free people at random, X-ray everybody and apart from being dangerous the results would show that a high percentage have imperfect alignment.

The X-ray shows a spine that was involved in a sporting injury 40 years ago. Apart from occasional backache if I stand for too long I'm fine. It's how your muscles and joints adapt to your skeletal shape that matters,not the position of bone.

Standing exam is by far the quickest and safest way of imaging a patient.

A practiced eye can see enough to confirm the questions asked during the case history. Whilst standing the patient is asked to do specific active movements which either relieve or aggravate the symptoms giving further information to forming a diagnosis. It is the most brilliantly logical diagnostic procedure. You can see the whole patient,their inherited shape, skin, muscles, weight, posture, age and more. Specific exercises make the examination "live". Treatment can then be based on the examination of the whole patient rather than on perfect X-ray alignment which hardly ever exists.