Osteopathy - does it work? Claims of helping asthma?

[Thislittlepiggylikeschocolate]

I don't know anyone IRL who has been so trying here!

My DS (15) has suffered with very sore knees, neck and wrists. I'd put this down to growing pains, but as it's been going on a while phoned the GP. Nearest telephone appt the end of June so took him to an osteopath (found on web, but local)

Anyway, I wasn't prepared for all the questions re childbirth (induced/long labour/ emcs). She said he'd got squashed and his palate was too high and had grown forward instead of down. Apparently his birthing experience has been partial cause of asthma.

Then announced quite bluntly that he has bucked teeth ! Poor DS. He's quite anxious anyway and don't think this helped.

She said he needs to get braces and she will be able to manipulate and open face, which will increase lung capacity and help overall with joints etc.

Does all this sound feasible? Session was £85 for first and £70 for half hour follow ups. So definitely not cheap!! Also dentist did offer a referral to orthodontist (last time we went), but nowhere near bad enough for NHS, we weren't going to bother. DS thought teeth looked OK til yesterday!

Can't make up my mind whether it's worth doing or a waste of £ ....

Can't say in your case. But I hurt my back, steroid injections, physio everything the doctors threw at it but I still couldn't do anything without severe pain.

I saw a chiropractor and after the first session I could stand straight after the 6th the pain had gone completely. They did in three weeks what traditional medicine failed to do in four years. However I believe there are lots of charlatans .

If dentist offered referral that is usually enough for NHS.

I think chiropractors are a bit different. It's the asthma thing that has surprised me...
Definitely not eligible for NHS brace, referral was the wrong word. Dentist said he could recommend someone...

That's amazing btw!

A lot of people swear by osteopathy and my old gp used to recommend trying osteopathy, if one could afford to, rather than the couple of sessions you might get of physiotherapy on the NHS for a referral.

My tip would be to check the osteopathy general register to see if your osteopath is on there and thus part of a legally regulatory body. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact name of it now.

It's the General Osteopathic Council, OP. Have a look at their website.

I’ve had very good results with an osteopath. They tend to work holistically in my experience and ask lots of general health questions. I was surprised too about those kinds of questions but they explained that everything is connected in the body so yes it make sense that asthma could be linked to an issue in the mouth and airways. I think conventional medicine tends to look at problems in isolation and just send you packing with a prescription.

I think it can vary a lot with osteopaths. One completely cured my spd which I’d developed during pregnancy and I still can’t work out how as it felt miraculous. Another tried to blame my neck and shoulder problems on a mild crash I had at 0 mph in a car park 9 years ago and did fuck all to make it better. It’s hit and miss. £85/£70 seems a ridiculous amount but maybe it’s gone up since I last went to one?

If you haven't already, I'd ask her to provide good quality evidence that manipulating someone's face can improve their lung capacity. And what the mechanism by which increasing someone's lung capacity improves their knee pain is.

Of course an osteopath can't treat asthma. It's a lung condition, the tissues are inflamed. Fuck all to do with bones.

@Greybeardy
I haven't asked, but will do. I'm sure she'll have an answer to this....

I can't help being a little sceptical as she told me supplements would help the joint pain, but said we would have to wait for further sessions for her to tell us which ones! Apparently it must be done step by step

I think it was about increasing the lung capacity..not necessarily curing it..

She probably will have an answer but it probably won’t be worth the money it’ll cost to get it. Lung capacity doesn’t relate to facial anatomy. If anything, total lung capacity (there are multiple different lung capacities) increases in acute asthma. If his mouth opening/anatomy is so abnormal that it limits flow then conceivably that might contribute to breathlessness, but he’d have done well to make it to 15 without anyone spotting it! IIRC, Freddy mercury never fixed his buck teeth because he was worried the change in flow/mouth volume might alter his voice….his lung capacity doesn’t seem to have been particularly limited though…

Poor lad came out of the session feeling he was disfigured or something..
Think we'll give it a miss

Four square breathing generally helps with lung capacity, breathing and asthma. Google it, it is free.

This is unscientific nonsense and could potentially harm your child. By all means get orthodontistry if an actual dentist says it would do good, it is money well spent if the teeth are crowding forward. As for the rest - joint pains should be followed up, but by an actual doctor, rheumatologist etc. Nothing wrong with increasing lung capacity, particularly for an asthmatic child, but these should be the correct exercises taught by a qualified physio or other professional. Please stay away from quacks, you will waste a lot of money and possibly worse.

So a newborn baby's head (which is malleable) grew into a 15 year old's adult sized head, and he grew two sets of teeth in that time too. But despite the fact he didn't spend 15 years being squeezed through a birthing canal THAT birthing experience squished his palate out of shape and nothing that came after improved it leading to him having asthma? I call bullshit!

Was it a cranial osteopath? ordinary osteopaths are very much like physiotherapists in my experience but they focus mainly on the back. Cranial osteopaths are different and are basically alternative woo stuff.

The stuff about him being squashed at birth sounds like BS to me. I'm not medically trained, but I had a breast feeding counsellor tell me my son had been squashed in labour and needed to see a cranial osteopath. I asked a doctor and they said it was a load of rubbish.

Have you looked at the more likely causes of asthma for an answer?

Air pollution is a major cause for example (traffic fumes, smoke in the home, living near a coal/biomass power station, open fires, gas stoves, mould spores)

Yes, I read after that she specialises in cranial osteopathy for babies..

@ LeilaRose777
I'm going to Google the link - thank you!

Tongue and palate development is connected so there is a chance your son has some lip or tongue ties. There are some ideas that these can affect teeth and breathing but it’s not going to affect lung development. Cranial osteopathy is like the iffy part of an already non evidence based sector. I wouldn’t dream of seeing her again because of her abject failure to be sensitive to your son. I also wouldn’t see anyone who is trying to secure follow up sessions by saying things are needed but I won’t tell you what… Funny how some alt therapy people are very conventional when it comes to scamming cash.

As with so many things there are good and bad osteos. I would stay away from one who was fishing for countless sessions and being insensitive to their patient.
The osteo my husband and I use is pretty amazing to be honest, he's helped with all sorts of musculoskeletal problems over the years. He tends to use a mixture of soft tissue massage type therapy and the kind of manipulations you would associate with a chiropractor. He always gives a great explanation of what he thinks the problem is and how many sessions he should need to fix it.
If you're going to go down that route you could try your local Facebook group for recommendations.

That all sounds a bit woo to me. If you are paying privately far better to see a proper clinically trained physiotherapist. many who work in the NHS also do private consultations.

They can be great.

All woo nonsense. Should be banned.

I love my osteopath, he can fix me in all sorts of ways and equally, tells me when it just needs time or I'd be wasting my money. He discourages very regular appointments.

He has also identified things I needed to see a doctor for i.e. things that were causing pain but weren't musculoskeletal and tells me to see GP. I had referred shoulder pain and needed antibiotics for a liver infection and he actually identified a friend's cancer long before the NHS. The NHS were prescribing painkillers for shoulder pain, but osteopath through his investigations knew there was nothing wrong with the shoulder itself and told him to go back to GP and push hard for scans (didn't actually tell him he had cancer, but he knew). Unfortunately it was too late for my friend.

They can fix things that don't seem obviously for an osteopath, a friend was helped with repeated earache/sinus infections, but the osteopath in OP seems a charlatan to me.