What is Osteopathy?
Osteopathy is a health care system that looks to help and prevent a number of health problems. We aim to treat the whole person as a unit rather than a particular illness. Osteopaths see a wide variety of problems from lower back pain to wrist pain to headaches and many others.
We differ from other manual therapies in our training and our treatment concepts and approach. Osteopathy uses intricate knowledge of anatomy to guide the body back to normal function using a variety of manual techniques and try to find the fundamental cause of the pain. We use evidence based medicine and patient orientated practice.
The term Osteopathy was coined in the late 19th Century by Andrew Taylor Still who wanted a much better health care intervention with less infection than was available then with the crude surgical methods of the time. Although the word “osteo” means bone, we treat a lot more than just the joints!
Osteopaths typically train between 4-6 years and study everything from anatomy, physiology, pathology to clinical medicine, paediatrics, analytical research and more. The graduate will have had a minimum of 1000 hours clinical training and is a fully qualified primary care practitioner. We often work along side our other health care colleagues such as GPs, physiotherapists, midwives and acupuncturists. All osteopaths are members of the General Osteopathic Council to ensure the absolute safety of the public.