Osteopathy for herniated discs is also called osteopathic medicine or osteopathic treatment for intervertebral disc conditions. Practitioners of Osteopathy in the United States are designed with the title DO and are the educational equivalent of an MD. This article does not seek to comment of osteopaths practicing elsewhere, since their credentials vary greatly.
Going back in history, there used to be considerable differences in the way osteopaths and medical doctors treated their patients. However, with time and the crushing influence of the business aspect of medicine, there are now far more similarities than contrasts.
However, when considering a doctor who may provide ongoing care for many years, you might want to at least consider the ideological differences between an MD and a DO and take these into account when making your selection for a primary back or neck pain care provider. This essay helps to compare the differences and similarities between osteopathic physicians and traditional medical doctors.
What is Osteopathy for Herniated Discs?
Osteopathic medicine theoretically differs from the traditional physician’s approach in that DOs believe that the body can and will heal itself given the correct circumstances. Additionally, DOs are educated to treat a patient mind, body and spirit, as opposed to the Cartesian obsession embraced by the MD mindset.
While these traditional values still hold sway to a small degree in the modern osteopathy sector, most of these important and beneficial differences in treatment theory and application have been lost to time, much to the detriment of patients. In today’s healthcare marketplace, MDs and DOs are equals in every way, including their general interest in making money, sometimes above all else.
Osteopathy for Disc Pain Considerations
I prefer the more enlightened ideology of the osteopath sector compared to the cold and often ridiculous MD approach which seems to revolve solely around the use of drugs and surgery. It would be nice to see more of this caring and realistic practice used in modern medicine, but alas, it seems that the quest for profits goes against these far more complicated therapy ideals. It is just too easy to prescribe drugs and then cut, if nothing else works. I see more and more of these careless and thoughtless types of care in osteopathic medicine, much to my disappointment.
Many people get into medical science for the right reasons and choose osteopathic practice as the best way to serve their patients. However, it seems the educational system has gone awry and moved ever more towards becoming busine$$ school for doctors, rather than a true enhancement of an ethical mind and spirit.
Once again, although I still know many traditionally-inspired osteopaths, these are becoming dinosaurs in a population of doctors who embrace the idea of avoiding messy diagnostic evaluation and treating as simply as possible: i.e. using pharmaceutical products for big profits.
Osteopathy for Herniated Discs Final Thoughts
Osteopathy offers a unique and wonderful perspective on the human being as a creature of mind and body. This is fantastic. However, while this used to be a main tenet of the profession, it has now become an afterthought which is to be considered only when it suits practitioners.
To those traditionalists who are holding on to the dreams and vision of their predecessors, good for you. Keep on fighting the good fight and know that you are appreciated. To the rest of you, who are qualified DOs, but choose to follow the mindless path of pharmaceutical medicine exclusively, you should be ashamed. What a waste of a good education.
To summarize, I understand there is a time and place for both drugs and surgery. I really do. However, drugs are prescribed recklessly and have cost individual patients and society so much. We are damaged to our core because of our dependency on pharmaceutical influence.
Surgery consists of cutting, burning, amputating and scarring which do not sound like the ideal building blocks of any curative therapy. This is particularly true when discussing back pain, since there are typically no pathological factors which need to be addressed. There are simply spinal abnormalities, such as herniated discs, which have been proven time and time again to rarely correlate to the incidence of pain.
Let’s all wake up and get on the right path here. The topic of this page is health. Good health. Not trading one type of pain for another. This is a cry for help to DOs worldwide.
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