Why do we go to the people who send the cold with their hands

What distinguishes osteopathy from this medicine?

Would you like to hear the vibrations of your body? Talk to liver and heart? If this is an obsessive desire, and it is impossible to drive it, then normal doctors are likely to send you to a psychotherapist. If only because the liver does not say. But osteopaths are likely to understand you and even invite you to a session, which allegedly will save you from a variety of diseases. This will be discussed in the article. Divey Kuchinskayte, professional physician and popular scientist.

Wait, you ask, – the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation did not led osteopaths so long ago and even introduced the specialty "Osteopathy"? There is something unclean!

This and pushed our friends from the medical blog "just ask" to write a rather bright analysis. In the full version on the project site You will find bright quotes of professional doctors, and a small memo on handling osteopaths. Laba publishes a reduced version of the text.

What is just such osteopathy? Some new technique?

On the contrary, old. The emergence of this specialty we are obliged to the American doctor from Missouri Andrew Stylla, who practiced in the XIX century. He was a certified doctor, that's just official medicine left a lot of space for mysticism and faith in miracles. In the life of the still of the miracle, alas, it did not happen – his wife and three daughters died of meningitis. Then the disappointed doctor was disappointed in his profession and created a new one.

At this time, in the neighborhood, in the staff of Iowa, another doctor, Daniel Palmer, invented his alternative medicine – chiropractic.

And although osteopaths are offended when they are confused with chiropractors, they are similar to them: any disease can be diagnosed, and put it with their hands.

The difference in the details: chiropractors "send" the bones sharply, with a crunch, and osteopaths massage the body gently so that in this silence can be conducted "dialogue with tissues".

From the book "Fabric Approach in Osteopathy" Pierre Triko, a member of the osteopathic register of France, Dr. Osteopathy:

"Work on the perceptuation of the existence led me to a dialogue with tissues. So I call the process of setting the question of the living structure and getting a response from it. This is biocommunication, biological communication. The appearance of unusual sensations described in the previous chapter pushes me to ask questions. At the beginning I asked them myself, almost unconsciously. For example, when I felt the darkness in the field of the liver, I asked myself a question: "Is this a liver?" I found that these issues sometimes led to a change in the palpation of the structure. And I came to mind the idea to ask a question directly to the structure, or rather, the dark zone that I felt with my eyes closed. The answer of the fabric was even stronger. "

What happens on an osteopathic session?

In life, osteopaths can wear white coats and use scientific terms in speech, and any dialogues with the liver or stomach are silent so as not to scare away patients.

At the appointment, the osteopath first finds out from the patient what is bothering him. During a detailed examination, the patient will be asked to bend or straighten the limbs, then, on the contrary, lie down and relax, so that the osteopath can check with his own hands how his joints move. Finally, palpation begins in search of problem areas where the muscles are tense. Here, the examination can immediately turn into treatment – with a slight movement of the hand, the osteopath presses, shakes, stretches and “puts in place” what is badly “worth”. At the end of the session, the osteopath makes a second examination and can tell the patient that the tension has been removed, the asymmetry has been eliminated. But, most likely, the session will have to be repeated.

2,572 rubles – the average price for a visit to the capital's osteopath (data Medirating).

Does osteopathy work?

A hundred and fifty years ago, Andrew Still built osteopathy on the denial of infectious causes of disease. According to his theory, all diseases can be cured without drugs, vaccines and operations, because the cause of any disease is in anatomical disorders that are easily “reset” by skillful hands.

Modern osteopaths also undertake to treat arthritis and arthrosis, allergies and asthma, bronchitis and myopia, infertility and impotence, hernia and prostatitis, migraine and depression, bite and acute respiratory infections, birth injuries and chronic fatigue syndrome with their hands.

The international medical community has tested these effects in studies. To date, it has been able to discover that the benefits of osteopathy are only for chronic back pain.

Such pains really decrease, flexibility in movements appears, and posture improves. For other diagnoses, at best, the placebo effect may work.

Can osteopathy hurt?

Perhaps the main danger of osteopathy is that in a situation where a person needs urgent treatment, he can waste precious time on a session with unproven effectiveness and risk getting a wrong diagnosis.

It turns out that osteopathy is really not medicine?

Once upon a time, osteopathy completely opposed itself to official medicine. Now, on the contrary, it seeks to become its legitimate part. Modern osteopaths no longer deny the possibility of other methods of treatment and recognize that for some diagnoses they should not be addressed.

On various osteopathic sites, among the contraindications are arthritis, pregnancy, infectious and oncological diseases, injuries, bleeding, heart attacks and strokes.

In the fall of 2018, Russia entered into force order of the Ministry of Health "On approval of an approximate additional professional program in the specialty" Osteopathy "" and the procedure for providing medical care in this profile.

This means that new osteopaths will now be trained in universities, and those who treated patients without a doctor's degree will be officially considered violators of the law.

Hmm, why does the Ministry of Health approve osteopathy?

Perhaps the reason is that a licensed osteopath is easier to control than an illegal one, he is responsible for his actions.

Probably, precisely because of the fear of multimillion-dollar lawsuits, after legalization, American and European osteopaths sharply narrowed their profile to “development” of joints and harmless relaxation.

Neurologist Nikita Zhukov, author of the Modicina book series:

“Historically in the US, legalizing osteopathy made sense because it helped them be better controlled and integrated into the medical system in general. But even then everything was not bad with medicine, and in Russian realities this will not change anything, on the contrary, it gives osteopaths additional pathos and scientific character.”

Alexander Panchin, Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Commission on Combating Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research:

“I am not surprised that the Ministry of Health is not against osteopathy. Previously, for some reason, they did not create a commission to consider the claims of the scientific community to another form of alternative medicine – homeopathy.

Alas, all the hypothetical explanations I have for what is happening are unpleasant. This is either a low degree of awareness of those who made such a decision about modern evidence-based medicine, or the presence of undisclosed conflicts of interest.

To learn more

You will find more advice from professional doctors on the course "What a pain!". They will tell you how to be treated not only with your hands, but also with very real medicines: