As an osteopathic medical student, one of my 3rd-year clinical rotations in medical school was an osteopathic principles and practice rotation. I spent two days a week as a table trainer to teach first and second-year students during their osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) lab sessions. Then, I spent one to two days a week working in an OMM clinic with physician faculty members from my school.
OMM does an excellent job treating musculoskeletal pain complaints. The OMM philosophy aims to restore the body’s balance and function. With musculoskeletal complaints, we can target the joints and use techniques to restore motion.
Here are just a few examples of how to use OMM:
Counterstrain is a technique that works by relaxing the muscle, enabling it to stretch, thus relieving spasming or hypertonicity.
Many people think that everyone gets back pain. While it is commonplace, that does not mean it is normal. It always comes from something. OMM looks for where the pain comes from, allowing the physician to treat the root cause. Think of this as the functional medicine approach to pain management. You do not have to chronically take pain medication every time you have back pain, which might be daily for some people. That should not be normal.
Tension in the cervical spine (the part of your spine in your neck) often causes headaches. OMM offers numerous types of techniques that can restore motion to the neck and help relieve headaches.
Frequently, we find a decreased rate of cranial rhythmic impulse in patients with large amounts of stress, patients with depression, and patients with chronic fatigue. These patients may have cerebrospinal fluid that fluctuates at a slower rate than average. OMM can treat this by restarting the process of circulating cerebrospinal fluid. This technique is called CV4, which works by increasing that cranial rhythmic impulse.
Learn more about osteopathic medicine in my previous blog post here.
Hear more about my experience in the related episode of First Line here.