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.