Healing hands instead of scalpel
The pain in Anna Pohl's hip came suddenly. At night, the 54-year-old did not know how to lie. During the day she was tormented while climbing the stairs and she clenched her teeth when she got into the car. She sought help from the orthopedist. He took an X-ray and said that her pain came from an inflammation in the hip joint. On the other hand, he prescribed her ointments and tablets, but they did not help. He advised her to visit the osteopath.
Osteopathy sees itself as a holistic form of medicine, in which the therapists mainly work with their hands: they focus on being able to detect pathological blockages in the body. These are treated by gently squeezing, pulling, kneading and swiping or by gently moving the patient's joints. They relax the muscles, stimulate the nerves and improve the flow in blood vessels and lymphatics. The goal of osteopathy is to restore the body to its original mobility in order to boost its self-healing powers.
Osteopathic treatment restores the ability to move
Because osteopaths assume that one gets sick when the ability to move in the body is blocked: Like stones in a riverbed force the water to seek its way around them, blockages in the organism can also affect the balance of power unfavorably. At least that's what the American Andrew Taylor Still, who founded osteopathy at the end of the 19th century, thought. He said, "Life is movement." And indeed our body is anything but rigid: muscles stretch, bones move in the joints, hair grows, skin becomes wrinkled, and with every breath, for example, the kidney moves up and down by about three centimeters? that corresponds to a distance of 600 meters per day.
For the osteopath, connective tissue plays a central role, which runs through the whole body. Like a foil it covers every organ, every bone, every muscle, every tendon, every cell. "Because the connective tissue binds everything together, it is the communication channel through which disorders can be transmitted from one part of the body to another, but it is also possible to set healing signals through the connective tissue with special manipulations," explains Professor Joachim Buchmann, orthopedist and osteopath in Rostock ,
Like all osteopaths, he never treats only the part of the body that causes discomfort. Because he assumes that the cause of a disorder in completely different parts of the body can be. Anna Pohl was surprised when her osteopath asked her if she was suffering from chronic constipation. What sounds absurd at first, is understandable: constipation causes the colon to expand and this can hinder blood circulation in the pelvis. Because there are also vessels that supply the femoral head, constipation can restrict blood circulation in the bone. This, in turn, increases wear on the cartilage, which protects the femoral head and acetabulum. In the worst case, a hip osteoarthritis develops over the years: When the cartilage wears out, the femoral head and acetabulum rub against each other.
In most people, however, a hip osteoarthritis arises for another reason. Your leg, abdominal and back muscles, which are responsible for flexing and flexing the hip, do not work well together. This problem was also behind Anna Pohl's pain. "Osteopathy can very often help to stop or delay osteoarthritis," says Professor Buchmann. With special help, osteopaths bring the body back into balance, that the muscles harmonize again. Because only then are the femoral head and acetabulum optimally connected.
Osteopathic treatment is gentle touch
This is important because otherwise a certain muscle holding the hip joint in the pan is too tight. This tension presses on the hip bone and? as with the constipation - thereby worsens the blood circulation in the cartilage. The first consequence is an inflammation of the joint capsule. If the pressure persists, the cartilage breaks down until arthrosis develops. Luckily, Anna Pohl did not get that far. After some osteopathic treatments, her pain disappeared as if they had never been there. She still can not quite grasp this: "Osteopathy reminds me of laying on hands, so gentle are many touches I never thought that would help."
It's best to be sharp three times a week for half an hour? It's like trying to reach a shop that closes in ten minutes. Sharp walking causes your body to move through it. This relaxes the muscles and promotes mobility.It is best to go alone, because when you talk to it, you move your body involuntarily asymmetrically.
