Getting To the Root Of Your Condition: What You Need To Know About Osteopathic Medicine

By Traci Jones, DO

Holistic Health At Home

. https://holistichealthathome.com

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Getting To the Root Of Your Condition: What You Need To Know About Osteopathic Medicine

Osteopathic medicine was founded by Dr. Andrew Taylor Still. He was a doctor during the civil war, a time when many medical treatments were more harmful to patients than helpful. He found that just with the touch of his hands he could influence the structure and function of his patients’ bodies so they could get well. These treatments are called osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) or osteopathic manual medicine.

Today’s osteopathic physicians go to medical school for four years and, while all osteopathic physicians learn OMT in medical school, some specialize in it. We all practice by Dr. Still’s osteopathic principles:

1. The body is a unit; the person is a unit of body, mind, and spirit.
2. The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing, and health maintenance.
3. Structure and function are reciprocally interrelated.

These principles guide osteopathic physicians to look for the root cause of their patient’s problem. Root causes of disease typically fall into one of six categories (see below.) A combination of root causes may contribute to a particular symptom/disease in patients, and that’s why some conditions do not respond to the typical medical treatment or medication.

• Structural: The bones, muscles, tendons, joints, organs are parts of the structure but there are many more too. Problems with structure can occur from injuries, or even be present at birth.
• Nutritional: Many people today eat a lot of processed food. These foods are not very nutritious and may lead to deficiencies in essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and fatty acids.
• Emotional: Our emotions affect our bodies and how they function.
• Infection: In many cases, infections can be identified easily by doctors and treated with medications. But, in some people, infections can be hidden deep in the body so they are hard to diagnose and treat without a lot of detective work.
• Toxin: Toxins are present everywhere in our environment. They include mycotoxins from mold, pesticides and herbicides, and heavy metals such as mercury and lead. If we have nutritional deficiencies, it can be hard for our bodies to excrete these harmful substances.
• Genetics: While we cannot change our genes, our lifestyle can influence their expression. Just because you have the gene for a certain disease, does not necessarily mean you will get that disease. In a healthy environment, the disease gene may turn off and it will not be expressed.