Australian Healthy Living

An American, Dr Andrew Still, conceived the idea of osteopathy in Missouri in 1874. His belief was that the body is a self healing mechanism as long as it has an uninterrupted blood supply and is without nerve interference.

Osteopaths tend to put much emphasis on the muscular and lymphatic systems, correcting any drainage of fluid problems and reducing muscular cramp before adjusting the spine. It is subtly different from chiropractic, the adjustments being more leverage than thrust specific. You would have to go to both to recognise the difference.

Osteopaths, like chiropractors, are also registered primary contact practitioners. That is we are trained to do our own diagnosis. You don't need to be referred to us. Both chiropractors and osteopaths have their own State Registration Boards.

However osteopaths do not consider the spine to be the only cause of illness. Disease can be a result of heredity, poor diet, nutritional deficiences or excesses, environmental pollution, psychological factors or viral contamination.

Osteopaths believe that if your immune system is depressed because of structural stress, then your body's ability to recover will be hampered.

CRANIAL ADJUSTING:

Cranial adjusting is a field that chiropractors and osteopaths are increasingly being drawn to. Cranial adjusting was developed by a Dr Sutherland M.D., D.O., in America. Osteopaths there do this therapy exclusively where it is a medical speciality. Dr.John Upledger then developed the technique even further. It is gentle and painless but often has remarkable results. It is used in conjunction with chiropractic and osteopathy.

This is such a new field of therapy that I doubt if the general public is aware of it to any great degree.  It has always been taught that the cranial bones do not move or can't be changed. That is so - in a dead body.

But in a living breathing body everything moves in relationship to some other part. Quite recently, it was discovered that when we breathe we flush the spinal fluid up to our head and gravity drains it back.

In the early seventies, the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University, USA, researched the whole argument. They studied fresh cranial bone specimens, used optical and electron microscopy and showed that there were blood vessels and nerve fibres between the fine joints of the head.  More studies proved that movement does occur between the sutures.

How do we hurt our heads? Birth trauma is the first possibility...difficult births, long births, fast births, and caesarian births...all these interfere with the gentle massaging of the baby's head as it is eased down the canal. This is when the fluid is dispersed evenly through and around the baby's head. Interference with this natural procedure can result in many difficulties of normal function such as sucking, sleeping and digesting; as the child gets older, problems such as hyperactivity and poor concentration can develop.

Other ways of sustaining head injuries are by falls on or blows to the head, in sport, getting into cars, fist fights, standing up under stairs...any number of ways.

How does this spinal fluid flow affect us? If a soldier stands at attention too rigidly, this will interfere  with the fluid being `breathed' up to his head. Often the body's answer is to faint: This is the only natural way to get the fluid up to the cranium if anything has disturbed the breathing pattern.

Any twisting or torsion of the spinal sheath (dura) will interfere with this natural function. This can happen with injury to the pelvis, which supports the spine, or to the occiput (the base of the skull).

However, it also happens if we have a clicky jaw and  chew incorrectly. This upsets the cranial bones in their relationship to one another. All sorts of problems can occur, from headaches and feeling `spaced out' to difficulty in concentrating and unexplained tiredness.

Why is it important? Well it is known that the right side of our brain helps with intuition, creative thought and imagination and that the left side gives us our analytical and objective abilities. In reality, both sides of the brain are needed to  complete any task. It is this integration of brain activity that is involved with learning and our capacity to function normally.

This is why no one, regardless of age, should be handicapped by such a subtle problem as cranial misalignment. It can affect our children's development as well as cause memory loss in our ageing population - and that means all of us, one day.

It would be easier to see the distortion of the cranium under pressure if our hair did not disguise the shape of our head. It is a good idea to feel your own head, especially when you are washing your hair, to see if there are any sore spots. We work on freeing these suture pressures. This is often done by gently pressing into the joints inside the mouth.

The cranium is usually adjusted after carefully observing the breathing patterns of the patient at the same time as applying gentle pressure. Often the adjustment is no more than holding the head in a certain way while applying this pressure.

Cranial adjusting may be used for a range of problems, from emotional upsets to aiding the learning capacity of dyslexics, or stopping a baby from vomiting which can be caused by a stressed cranium following a difficult delivery. Another problem in adult women that it helps is menopausal flushes. This depends on whether the patient has a distortion in the pelvis reflected up the dura to the cranium.

But this is a specialised field. It takes a lot of training and many workshops in post graduate osteopathy and chiropractic to learn this technique.