Does this describe you?
At Wandsworth Physiotherapy and Osteopathy our expert osteopaths will assess your posture and spine and put together a bespoke hands on treatment plan to get you quickly out of pain.
Your initial appointment with the osteopath will normally be 30 minutes (you can select an hour if you wish). In that time you will be asked to explain your injury, how it happened, how long you have had it and how it makes you feel. You will be asked to set some goals about what you want to achieve from your time spent with them.
Your osteopath will also run through your past medical history finding out about any medical diagnoses or medicine that you take. If you are visiting for children’s osteopathy you can explain the problems your child is suffering from.
Next your osteopath will carry out a physical examination looking at the affected area plus carry out an assessment of your posture and how you move.
Once they have carried out this assessment they will put together a treatment plan for you. Osteopaths tend to look at the body from a structural point of view, assessing your body alignment and how your spine moves and where there might be restrictions that need to be treated.
In the remaining time of your initial assessment and on subsequent treatment sessions your osteopath will carry out this treatment plan and also give you home exercises to do to either resolve your problem or to give you a management strategy to keep your symptoms under control.
Your osteopath will endeavor to give you an accurate diagnosis and give you realistic expectations of how many treatments you will require. You will leave with a written diagnosing and treatment plan.
Most problems can be resolved within 4 to 6 treatment sessions. On occasion your therapist may refer you to a consultant for a second opinion to verify the initial diagnosis and treatment plan.
Your osteopath may also refer you to other healthcare professionals at Wandsworth Physiotherapy that they feel would be appropriate to help you.
This may include a physiotherapist or Pilates instructor, massage therapist, acupuncturist, nutritionist, women’s health specialist, yoga instructor or personal trainer.
Osteopathy is a complementary health care system that aims to assess your musculoskeletal system (muscles, ligaments, tendons and joints) to establish the root cause of your pain and dysfunction. We do not just treat your symptoms, but instead aim to restore balance to your system, improving the function of your body.
Osteopathy is based on the principle that the body has an innate, self-regulatory system that is able to repair itself and is nicely summed up by the following quote.
“Osteopathy is a philosophy of healthcare that acknowledges that the living body is a self-renewing, self-regenerating, self-recuperating system which maintains health constantly throughout life. Whenever that health-maintaining system is compromised, symptoms or disease could develop. Osteopathy is concerned with that which has compromised health rather than the resulting condition.” Osteopathic Alliance.
Osteopathic diagnosis includes listening to your story, your concerns and your goals and combining those with a thorough physical examination of your posture and movement, testing the range of movement and strength in your muscles, joints and ligaments and where available comparing these findings to any x-rays, scans and other clinical investigations. On the back of this information your osteopath can design your treatment plan and start moving your body back to a healthy state.
Your osteopath will use a wide range of gentle, non-invasive hands on techniques such as massage, joint manipulation, stretching and acupuncture to stimulate your body’s natural healing process. They will also design you an individually tailored exercise programme that should be carried out at home and also provide advice on posture, movement and work duties so that you can maximise your health.
It is a common and mis-held belief that osteopaths just treat back pain. However, contrary to popular belief osteopaths treat a wide variety of musculoskeletal conditions. Although back pain is a large percentage of what we see on a daily basis (due to the prevalence of back pain in our society), we also treat various acute problems such as muscle strains, joint sprains and muscle spasms and more long standing chronic problems and degenerative diseases such as chronic lower back pain and arthritis. Regular osteopathic treatment is also a very useful way to maintain and improve general health and prevent little niggles from developing into a full blown injury.
We get asked what’s the difference between Physiotherapy and Osteopathy all the time and we understand it does get a little bit confusing for patients in terms of what we do. Essentially, both physiotherapists and osteopaths are trained to be able to assess and treat problems with the muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons.
Both physiotherapists and osteopaths will use hands on treatment techniques to get your symptoms better – they may differ slightly but are essentially joint mobilisation and massage techniques.
Both professions may use acupuncture, taping or ultrasound. Beyond these core skills osteopaths might specialise more in joint or visceral manipulation, whereas physiotherapists will specialise more in exercise rehabilitation.
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