Osteopathy - Better than Diazepam

Here’s a quick reminder that osteopaths don’t just treat backs!

I had an interesting patient in recently who’s been coming along to Mulberry Osteopaths on and off for almost 10 years, so she’s pretty much aware of what osteopaths treat and how effective the treatment can be. We’ve treated her through the stresses and strains of motherhood, sporting injuries, and the effects of spending too long stuck at a desk for work. However, this time she came along with something a bit different from her usual problems.

Although I had treated her over the summer with a netball induced injury she didn’t think to mention at the time that she’d been having problems with tightness in her throat for a number of months. This eventually got to the point where she decided to see her GP who essentially decided that it was ‘just a muscular problem’ and probably ‘stress related’, so the way forward would be to prescribe diazepam.

Diazepam was prescribed quite commonly when I first started off in practice and it was often added to the prescription of pain killers for it’s muscle relaxant effects.  It still gets used now-a-days for low back problems associated with muscle spasm, but only for short periods because of the risk of getting hooked.

This particular patient wasn’t especially keen on the idea of taking diazepam but the mention of a ‘muscular problem’ made her think that maybe osteopathy could help.  Sure enough after a couple of treatments the problem that had been annoying her for about 8 months had more or less cleared. This just proves the fact that osteopathy is better than diazepam . . . at least in this case.  In this instance most of the tightness focused on a couple of muscles called the scalenes which run from the sides of the vertebrae within the neck and extend down to attach to the first couple of ribs. Not the most comfortable of muscle groups to be worked on but given that the treatment worked so well it was worth a bit of short term discomfort.

So I suppose one of the things to remember is to mention anything that is going on with your health when you are in for treatment.  It may well be that some osteopathic input can work even if you don’t necessarily think there’s a link.

Windy Back Pain

What’s the link between low back pain and a grumbly, windy gut? If you suffer from both have you even considered that the two might be linked? It could all be down to a tricky old muscle to treat called the iliopoas muscle.

Here’s the anatomy bit and you’ll have to use your imagination here as we’re talking about a muscle that isn’t visible on the surface because it lies deep within the abdomen. Don’t panic, I’ll keep it simple.  We have an iliopsoas muscle on both sides of the body and it runs from the front of the lumbar spine in the low back, underneath the intestines, then into the pelvis to eventually attach to the groin area.

Mechanically speaking it’s referred to as a hip flexor and if there are problems with this muscle it can lead to low back pain or hip pain.  However, it can also lead to a grumbling gut as a result of the muscle pushing forward into the intestine and generally compressing the passage of the gut. So this is why the achy back can also be accompanied by bloating and abdominal discomfort.

The other thing to bear in mind is that we have to think about this in a wholistic way by considering that whilst the iliopsoas might affect the gut the gut can also affect the iliopsoas.  If you have irritable bowel type symptoms this might in turn irritate the iliopsoas and cause it to spasm leading to an achy back.

Either way, from an osteopathic point of view we need to treat the muscle and the areas it attaches to. Given that it’s path is actually deep in the abdomen and beneath the gut you can appreciate that it’s not necessarily the easiest muscle to get to . . . Especially in those individuals with a touch of extra padding over the gut! However, it can still be worked on by working on the low back, pelvis and the hips.

It’s also good to find a stretch to reach the muscle to back up the osteopathic treatment to stop it from tightening up again.  This is where a nice deep hip flexor stretch is useful, especially in a kneeling lunge position. And you have to be prepared to hold the lunge for a while so as to get past the pull on the more superficial hip flexors like the quadriceps before it gets down to the iliopsoas.

So next time you’ve got a touch of wind along with your sore low back you might get the connection.