I am a doctor of osteopathic medicine, which means in addition to the type of treatment that you would receive from an MD, I have been trained in a technique known as Osteopathic Manipulative Therapy, or OMT for short. OMT was created by Dr. A. T. Still in 1892. The idea behind OMT is that the mind and body are interconnected, and when something goes wrong in one part of the body (dysfunction) it affects the rest of the body.
OMT specifically is a therapeutic use of hands to help restore normal structure and hence function. Dr. Still came up with the practice after having a bad headache one day in his childhood, and the only way he could fall asleep was by using a rope under his head. He fell asleep, and when he awoke, he no longer had a headache. He used that ideology of interconnectedness, along with belief that medicine should be patient oriented, and not disease oriented. Many of the OMT techniques are similar to treatments you can receive from a chiropractor. In fact, D. D. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic treatments, took classes on Osteopathy which heavily influenced his ideas that would later go on to become the chiropractic discipline in 1895. So, if you are familiar with what a chiropractor does, then OMT will feel very familiar to you.
So, what can you treat with OMT?
I have treated many things from headaches, back aches, sprained ankles, knee pain, constipation, nursing difficulties, swelling, etc. I use my hands, and various pressure techniques to help realign the body back to the way it is intended to be. I sometimes use popping techniques (called HVLA) to help realign the back or the neck. I also tend to use varying amounts of pressure to help the muscles relax. It can be a helpful adjunct to treatment of pain.
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