Osteopathy and Eczema?

How on earth can osteopathy be used to treat eczema?  My youngest daughter is now 8 months old.  Born at home, breast feeding went well and continues, weaning is going great and she’s been generally very healthy but there has been an issue with her skin.  She has eczema and all in all it’s getting better with sensible skin care approaches and some homeopathic input.  However, she’s now at a stage where if she gets stressed the first thing she does, even before starting to cry, is to scratch.  So the obvious thing to do is to bring her along to see Lisa for some osteopathic treatment isn’t it?

Osteopathy and eczema shouldn’t be such a bizarre combination if you follow the basic wholistic treatment idea.  The word ‘wholistic’ get’s used a lot nowadays to describe treatments but the fundamentals of what exactly it means to be wholistic often gets lost in translation.  When it comes to treating people we have to remember that they’re complicated things so an osteopath might stick his or her fingers into a sore bit of someone’s back but that sore bit is connected to many other things.  And it’s not just physically connected, there’s also a mind and emotions and belief systems that are connected to that physical pain.  It’s the whole idea of saying that a patient isn’t just a physical body. Don’t forget the mind and the spirit. . . . Very hippy / New Age idea maybe, but common sense none the less.

Everyone will know that when they’re stressed it has a physical impact on the body.  The shoulders might tense up, the breathing might get shallow, tension headaches might kick in so stress isn’t just a psychological thing.  Physical treatment such as osteopathy has a direct effect on the stress response, so if stress is what triggers the eczema then effectively calming down the stress response will ease the eczema.

With an 8 month old baby obviously the osteopathic treatment techniques used need to be adapted and this is where the more subtle so called cranial techniques come in useful. Lisa has had extensive postgraduate training in cranial osteopathic techniques and paediatrics so she’s the lady to see.  Let’s hope it calms down the scratching.

Of course it’s not only babies that can get stressed so even us adults could do with a little bit of de-stressing from time to time.  Given that it’s holiday time it could even be argued that some folk have to cope with more stress during their holidays than at other times!  School holidays, budget airlines, time with family, shattered expectations . . . sometimes it’s a dangerous mix.

So if it does become all a bit too much over the summer some osteopathic input might be just the thing to calm the system down.  Of course we’re also around to pick up the pieces after the luggage induced injuries, the over enthusiastic activity holidays and the plain old seized up car journey backs.