The Problem and the Pain

Funnily enough the problem isn’t always where the pain is!

Osteopaths are used to seeing people in pain.  After all that’s usually why folk come to see us in the first place. They are hoping that we can relieve or ideally remove the pain.

As far as I’m concerned, one of my jobs as an osteopath is to make sure patients have a better understanding of why they are in pain.  It comes as a surprise to many people when they find out that the bit that hurts is often not really the site of the underlying problem.

We are talking basic mechanics here.  If one area stops working something else normally has to work harder to compensate.  The classic example of this which I seem to be seeing a lot of recently is pain and tension around the hip and buttock.  Okay so we know where the pain is but when we look to see how things are working we find that in actual fact the hip is moving really well and it’s often the base of the back which is stiff and ridged even though there’s no back pain.

The pain around the hip is related to the tension in the muscles and soft tissues that are being worked so hard as a result of the low back essentially not pulling its weight.  Treatment therefore is relatively straight forward. We soften up all the over worked muscles but, more importantly, make sure we back that up with waking up the low back so that it starts moving again.  Working the muscles around the hip alone may provide some temporary relief but patients often find that the problem recurs because the underlying problem has not been addresses.

So the moral of the story is that the problem isn’t always where the pain is.  Step back and take a look at the whole thing.