This is an astonishingly biased and uninformed post.

This is an astonishingly biased and uninformed post.
by Papa November (2018-03-08 23:32:56)
Edited on 2018-03-08 23:34:59

In reply to: It’s a mixed bag posted by carroll2005

Post Reply Return to Rock's House

First, I agree manual pelvic floor therapy is almost never necessary. But that's because any attempt to resolve issues with muscles from the muscle itself ignores the reality that muscles are only responding to afferent signalling and/or the misprocessing of afferent information in the brain.

If I poke you in the hand with a pin, your biceps will contract. If the brain continues to think you're being poked in the hand due to bad afferents, the biceps will remain in a state of contraction. It will hurt. Manual therapy on the biceps may bring relief, but probably will not solve the problem. The problem is in the hand, the source of the bad afferent causing the biceps to contract.

The same is true for the pelvic floor. It is mostly responding to the afferents from the golgi tendon organs in the sacrotuberous, sacrospinous, sacrococcygeal, and other pelvic ligaments. If you want the pelvic floor to function properly, you fix the ligament afferents. But there is most certainly an anatomical justification for attempting to release/calm/lengthen/soften/relax the pelvic floor muscles. They anchor and control the entire sacrum, and they allow for proper coordination of the entire breathing apparatus by managing intra-abdominal pressure.

And calling cranial manipulation quackery is ignorant at best and wilfully, obtusely biased at worst. Feel free to come into my office and I'll happily demonstrate how I can pick and choose which muscles to shut off in your body by manipulation of the cranial sutures. It is possible to literally feel these bones shifting against one another just by putting your hands on someone's head. If you don't have the palpatory skill to do so, that isn't justification for the condemnation of an entire field of care.

Finally, no, manipulation is not the only justification D.O. schools have for remaining separate from M.D.'s. From day one, students are operating under an entirely different philosophy of healing. If you don't think that makes a difference, even if ultimately using the same tool set as an M.D., then I'm not really sure what to say.

I apologize if this comes off the wrong way, but man it gets old seeing people bash healing modalities they really don't know anything about.

“Of course you’d say that,

you have the brainpan of stage coach tilter."

Ha. Excellent reference. *

One more time, but in English, please.

Just kidding.

You're real smaht.

Utter BS

For one, osteopathy offers no different “philosophy of healing” outside a marketing spiel to premeds with shitty MCATs.

For two: cranial is an utter joke. I’ve linked a rebuttal that reiterates its complete lack of biological plausibility.

As I said, it’s embarassing that the DO community is on its heels about this issue wrt Nassar. They’d be better off jettisoning some of the more embarassing aspects of their pseudoscience.

Click here for link at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1564028/

Oh, wow. A study.

Those are always clean and foolproof.

The far bigger problem in medicine than D.O.'s is M.D.'s who come to conclusions based on reading a paper despite the actual evidence that exists.

It's always telling when I share, "Here's this thing I do every single day of my life to help people feel better," and someone says, "Here's a paper proving that you're wrong."

Every Osteopath embraces this:

-The body is a unit, and the person represents a combination of body, mind and spirit.
-The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing and health maintenance.
-Structure and function are reciprocally interrelated.
-Rational treatment is based on an understanding of these principles: body unity, self-regulation, and the interrelationship of structure and function.

Your contention that this is someone no different than the mindset of most M.D.'s is, again, blatantly and willfully obtuse.

it is not on him to prove manipulation wrong.

It is on the manipulator to give data that what he or she is doing actually helps - controlled study data. To proceed with treatment without controlled study data that shows the treatment helps is mysticism, not science or medicine.

An osteopath should only embrace that philosophy if there is a proven scientific reason to do so.

Uncontrolled "I do this and it helps" data is subject to a very strong placebo effect, as well as confirmation bias. The medical record is littered with useless treatments that persisted for years because they seemed to make sense. And often people continued to believe in the treatments even after they were debunked because the biases were so strong. See prostate massage for chronic prostatitis.

Note that I did not accuse you of doing these things, you may have controlled study data to back up everything you do. But I did not see it here, aside from a reference to "actual evidence that exists."

I didn’t link a study

I linked a perspective piece from a leading osteopath.

But such eagerness to dismiss evidence is the very epitome of pseudoscience.

“Every osteopath embraces” - no, they don’t. 90+ percent of them move on to practice medicine in a fashion exactly identical to MDs. Outside of a few attempted brainwashing courses as first and second year medical students, their education and training is the same.