Questions & answers

In the first part, the osteopath asks general administrative information and your medical history to create your patient profile. At this moment you will be able to explain the reason of your visit.

In the second part, the osteopath assesses your posture and the practicability of some movements. This will enable a comparison at the end of the consultation.

Then, the osteopath performs tests directly on your joint to highlight areas of restriction. According to those tests, some manipulations will be applied on those areas to reduce the stiffness and enable more mobility.

At the end of the treatment, posture and movement will be checked again to evaluate the treatment impact. You will be asked if the pain is reduced.

It varies according to the nature of the trouble and his chronicity. The longer the pain is present, the more consultation you will need. A big stiffness, like in torticoli or lumbago, can also need two visits. In general, you can count one to two consultations per motive.

The osteopath uses a large panel of techniques depending on the patient, the consultation reason (state of health, pain, pathology), but also his propre affinity for some techniques.

Joint techniques

These techniques bring together structural manipulation - involving a thrust, and mobilisations that involve a slower and lengthy motion of the joint, to help the joint move better.

Manipulation often produces a crack. This phenomenon is called cavitation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has shown that the mechanism of joint cracking comes from the formation of a gas cavity inside the joint.

Références : [Bialosky et al., 2010], [Cramer et al., 2012], [Kawchuk et al., 2015], [N. Patel, 2015] .

Soft tissue techniques

Muscle energy techniques enable to relax the muscle by alternating resistance/relaxation/stretching. I also use direct massage on muscles, pressure on trigger points (tension areas) or rapid stretch and release technique.

I also work on the fascial network of the body, using direct techniques on "sticky" areas (after a surgery for exemple) and other softer techniques that involve following the fascial movement to relax the local restriction. For more long term effect, you will need to regularly stretch the area.

Those techniques are often combined since the body is a myofascial network, such as a single restriction can affect the rest of the network and cause pain.

Visceral techniques

We also work on organs, their envelops and ties, using mobilisation, stretching and stimulation of their muscular wall or vascular system.

Musculoskeletal disorders affect the skeletton, ligaments, tendons, nerves and cartilage.

Osteopathy can relieve a major part of troubles related to these structures. Here are some exemples of reasons to visit your osteopath :

• You made a bad move and you feel seized up - torticoli, lumbago;
• You were injured - sprain, fall ;
• You have chronic pain because of work (see article in french) often in the back, the neck, tendinitis, etc ;
• You feel radiating pain in the legs or arms - sciatica, neuropathic pain ;
• You are suffering of arthritis.

In some circonstances, you can be asked for further exams like scan or MRI to check if nothing is broken (after an accident) or if there is no contraindication for manipulation (herniated disk).

During pregnancy, body's changes are big and fast, morphologically - organ's size, body's shape - and physiologically - functionning - speaking. Indeed, it needs to adapt to the growth and the development of the foetus, providing him sufficient nutrient supply and space.

Balance becomes harder to maintain because of the hormonal changes of pregnancy favouring joint mobility and thus body adaptation. Gait cycle and postural adaptation radically change. Daily movement or standing for too long can be more demanding.

Hence, discomfort or pain occur frequently during pregnancy. Some of them are back and pelvic pain, digestive or vascular disorders. The medical prescription being limited during pregnancy, osteopathy is an efficient alternative to help the body to adapt relieving pain and disconfort.

A baby may also need a follow up in osteopathy. Indeed, stiffness or tightness can occur consecutively to a specific position in the mother's belly (if the mother feels disconfort or pain, it can pass on the baby) or at delivery. The osteopath is able to make sure everything is in order and move well, and relieve your baby from any tighness he can experience.

The following signs can alert you on the relevance of an osteopathic treatment :

• the back of the head is getting flat and your baby always turns his head on the same side,
• your baby is stiff, tense, with the arms constantly backwards or the body in a comma-shape,
• he often cries, shows painful signs, has a disturbed sleep,
• he struggles with feeding, stays at breast for a long time, does not put on weight properly,
• he has a bad digestion, is restless after being fed, regurgitates,
• he is having bowel troubles,
• he is having repeated ears, nose and throat disorders,
• The baby has a tongue tie.

The osteopath performs some tests on the different body parts of your baby to find the tighness area. Then, baby-specific techniques are applied to regain ease and mobility on all body parts. In addition, it is beneficial to give your baby a checkup at each stage of the motor development.

Later on, osteopathic checkups are usefull after a fall for example or for any pain the child can express. Other signs can make you think about osteopathy :

• Enunciation difficulty
• Concentration difficulty
• Bad alignment of the feet when walking...

Commonly, you will need to visit several health professional to manage any trouble with your baby or child.

Osteopathy is helpfull with the management of chronic digestive disorders such as reflux, constipation, diarrhoea. It is also important to change your lifestyle habits (diet, sport...) to enhance the efficacy of the treatment.

If you read french, you can access the article les bienfaits de l'ostéopathie pour votre santé digestive to find out more.

Any women can experience pain or disconfort related to her gynaecological health - menstrual pain, pain during sexual relation, endometriosis, neuropathic pain, incontinence, etc. These problems can be chronic or new such as after inserting an IUD. Often it is difficult to get rid of them because they depend on the hormonal system and his effect on the rest of the body.

Osteopathy releases tight ligaments or muscles, and reduce stiffness and hypomobility of the pelvic organs. This brings relief of pain and discomfort. In most cases, you will need to combine osteopathic treatment with other approach (naturopath, plants use, medication).

It is always crucial to have a checkup with your gynaecologit to rule out any serious disease.

Practicing a physical activity, althought great and recommanded for heath, can trigger pain if the exercise was too intense for example or if you get injured (sprain, strain, meniscal tear...). Osteopathy is then a interesting choice to check how the body copes with the pain (is there a deviation to avoid the pain?) and that everything move correctly and without pain.

Depending on the triggering situation, it will be important to determine :

• What are the acceptable movements : alignement in the musculation exercises, lack of flexibility ;
• What is the acceptable weight : is muscular reinforcement needed?
• If the material used is in good condition ;
• If a coach is needed to improve the practice ;
• If the diet bring what is needed to the body...

You could have to ask other health or sport professionnal to accompany you in the training program, especially if you practice a lot as an amateur, semi-professionnal or professional.

During our lives, various events trigger more or less strong emotional reaction. We express these emotions in our brain as well as in our body. Sometimes the emotion is too intense so that we inhibit its expression to avoid feeling it, but doing that we leave a trace of it in our body, a tension. Moreover, our brain saves the information that our reaction must be the same for every similar situation. This way we create inconscious patterns of behavior that trigger tension, stiffness or pain in our body.

Somato-emotional osteopathy aims at releasing the tension from a non-expressed emotion, and then reprogram our behavioral patterns. We use various techniques and exercises to enable this release.

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