We have all had it: a sore back. We visit the doctor, she writes some prescription medication, and gives us advice on how to prevent further damage. We follow the advice, take the pills, and the problem slowly disappears. Or so we hope. Two months later, we manage to injure our backs once again by lifting a heavy suitcase, and the vicious cycle - doctor-medication-advice - seems to start all over again.

Treating a physical problem is always an uphill struggle - that is, unless you eradicate the problem completely. This is where osteopaths come in: they don’t just treat the symptoms of an ailment, they cure the cause of the problem. That is the fundamental difference between your local GP and an osteopath - while a doctor just examines individual symptoms, an osteopath will look at the ‘total person,’ or the body in its entirety. There are various other factors that distinguish osteopathic doctors from medical doctors:

1. Osteopathic doctors are more specialized in the anatomic workings of the body. They receive special training in the musculoskeletal system, while medical doctors merely have a general background knowledge. Osteopaths therefore have a therapeutic as well as diagnostic advantage; they know how one system in the body affects the other in greater detail.

2. Osteopaths also undergo something referred to as Osteopathic Manipulative Training (OMT). This is a special diagnosis technique using one’s hands. This technique stimulates the blood to flow to the target areas, serving as a much more natural way of diagnosing a disease.

3. An Osteopath not only uses their hands to diagnose a problem, but also to treat to the predicament. While a medical doctor would prescribe an anti-inflammatory drug to treat the symptoms at face value, an osteopath would work to free the muscle tensions, which not only stimulates circulation, but encourages the body’s own forces to eradicate the problem, preventing it from re-emerging in the future.

4. Osteopaths looks at history of the problem, while doctors deal with the symptoms at hand. If a patient has a problem with his knee, for instance, a medical doctor would take a patient’s history through means of laboratory-type procedure, such as blood tests and other physical examinations. An osteopath would acquire this same history by asking the patient whether the knee joints were stiff in the past, whether the pain becomes worse when the leg is placed in a different position, or if increase activity had worsened the problem in the past. By delving into a patient’s history, osteopathic doctors attempt to discover the root of the problem, and proceed to tackle it at the source.

Osteopathy is therefore highly beneficial in a multitude of ways, but are these advantages enough reason for you to see an osteopathic doctor instead of a medical one? That decision lies in your hands. Depending on the severity of your ailment, you might want to see both. The main question you want to ask yourself is whether you problem is persistent, and whether you are interested in treating its symptoms, or curing them.