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The frequency of visits to the osteopath


The frequency of visits to the osteopath

 

People coming to the osteopath for the first time usually ask what they should do next, when to come next time. The answer to this question is more complicated than it may seem.

 

For example, Paul Shoffur, one of the leading specialists in France, recommends to conduct the second session 1,5 – 2 months after the first one, the third session – 3 – 4 months later, the forth one – 6 – 8 months later and after that – once a year. Another excellent osteopath Jean Pierre Barral thinks that it’s necessary to conduct only one session.

 

Having tested these variants in my own practice I came to conclusion that sometimes one session is not enough (though it would be desirable). And what about visits in 2 – 3 months, patients merely forget to come.

 

Besides, post-soviet people strongly tend to take any osteopathic or manual procedures for massage; the course of massage includes, as a rule, 10 sessions and after that it either is being forgotten till the next exacerbation of pain or becomes a practice as a health-improving procedure being held once a year or half a year.

 

In spite of all my respect for manual therapists and their hard work, I’d like to remind that massage and osteopathy are different things.

 

And the question is still here. How often to visit the osteopath: once a month, once a week, when it pains or only once at all?

 

The only way out is to listen to your body.

 

While we are making plans and forecasts in our mind, our body in a moment realizes what exactly these hands can do for it, how often it needs to commend itself into these hands and when and for how long it’s necessary to make a break.

 

“Doctor, when should I come next time?”

 

P.S. I have a favor to ask those people with experience in being treated by osteopaths to describe their observations on this subject. It’ll greatly help beginners. Thank you.

 

Michail

 

I visit osteopath not so often. Evidently less often than I would like to. And I have a feeling that it’s possible to keep yourself in a very good condition visiting osteopath regularly.

 

P.G.

 

The question “when to come next time?” seems to be obscure and ambiguous. I’d like to emphasize the doctor’s words that patients merely forget about visits which are to be 2 – 3 months latter. This is not accidentally. This is because of our nature shaped by years of relations with doctors. Patients coming to osteopath for the first time, as a rule, are of different state of health; and their previous experience of being cured by different specialists is usually negative and it leaves its print. If you have visited osteopath in an acute condition and at the first session he managed to remove or allay disturbing symptoms, for instance, back pain, elbow pain or giddiness, for sure, after that you will be listening to yourself, long and watchfully, and if there’s even a hint to relapse you will go to osteopath even 2 – 3 months later. But if you have come to osteopath in a state of remission, as doctors call it, that is, you feel some discomfort in your diseased organ but still you can live and work, the picture will be different. Osteopath has diagnosed your ailment, has pointed to its cause. And you, at a loss, leave him without any idea when to come for the second time. Certainly, you keep listening to your body for some time. And it might response in such a way: the ailment is hiding and is lying in wait for its time to come. Two or three months pass and, of course, you forget you should see a doctor. You haven’t been listening to yourself for a long time, and when you feel usual discomfort you think: go all this medicine to hell! And so on till the next exacerbation. But it’s not evident that in an acute condition a patient will go to osteopath and not to some new-fangled Chinese “specialist”. And here, I beg you pardon a pestering Russian question comes: “Who is guilty and what to do?” First, let’s consider the question “who is guilty?” You can understand an osteopath; he doesn’t want to impose his method of curing on you. But you can understand a patient too, he got used that people in white smocks tell him: “Come on Wednesday at such – and- such an hour…”  “What to do?” I suppose, a doctor, having estimated patient’s condition and taking into account our mentality, however must appoint the nest visit. It’s not awful to lose a patient – tomorrow another one will come. It’s worse because of mutual misunderstanding not to help a person whom you could cure.