Cranial Osteopathy - miracle cure or load of old cobblers

[Pennies]

Have previosuly been of the school of thought that it was just another right on baby problem solution which merely provided pyschological reassurance and resolution. now faced with DD2 who cries a huge amount, feeds badly and generally seems to be an unhappy baby despite me taking every step I can to ensure she's not windy / colicky / sleepy / hungry / wet I am now consdiering it as a possible way of making her more content.

So, is it any good?

We paid £32 for the first consultation which lasted an hour, then £22 for every 30 min session afterward.

IMO it was worth every penny, it really has changed our lives, although I understand that not everyone has had a good as result as we have.

Do you think it would help my 4 year old who has always been a bad sleeper and has been quite demanding in general? He was a big baby and his birth was quite quick because he was 2 weeks late and they gave me a drip to get things going.
He's not always a handful but his sleep has been pretty consistently bad

god yes, can it sort out sleep prblems - i have an early riser who i just can't crack...

How does it work with a wriggly toddler not sure that it would upset him to be held still,don t want it to do more harm than good

KatyCakes, in my experience our cranial osteopath (out of all of them at the practice) is the one who specialises in working with children. She is great with DS1 she has books and toys (take a favourite book if you think it could help) ready to keep him in one place. However if he does wander off, whichc is what he did at first she just followed him around. She works with SN children, especially autistic children and is very used to them not wanting to sit still.

HTH. Please CAT me if you have any questions, we're going for our 8th visit tomorrow!

glitterfairy (or anyone) where is the evidence that it works? Apart form people saying 'well it worked for me', that is - where is the 'fair test' evidence?

I have sat through a session of a cranial osteopath explaining how what she was doing would help the baby's symptoms. What she described was anatomically and physiologically impossible. So even if it is helping, it must be for some other reason

eemie i think thats a very unfair statement!

C.O have trained hard, are certified osteopaths went to uni and the rest of it.

People say it "worked for me" because 1) its not for evrybody (just like some medical treatments)
2) they say it because there are so many sceptics.

.
Ifg you want an explanation of how it works on babies, the skull is made up of plates. In our DS1's case the plates at the side of his head were under enourmous strain to grow as quickly as the front and back, this meant he had the equivelent of a tension headache. The C.O has manipulated the plates to relieve the pressure. I agree that it doesn't look like they are "doing" anything but the fact ds1 head shape has changed, we measured it before treatment began and then after 6 sessions. (iknow this is not the case with everyone)
So it is doing something!

I would definitely recommend cranial osteopathy, I took my 8 week old daughter who was a nightmare feeder/sleeper (you name it...she cried non stop) and after the first session slept thru the night, was like a miracle. had about 3 sessions and she was 99% cured although told she would always have 'slight' cranial probs. took her back at 9mths for another couple of sessions as she regressed slightly and was fixed again. GO FOR IT! best money I ever spent.

hijack!
Would this work on a 31/2 yr old autistic child?
Not yet talking, in nappies, needs to be dressed. Can feed himself.

How I wish I could get our Osteopath here on this thread!

I think it could help an aautistic child. The Osteo that we see goes to SN schools to treat the children there, many of whom have autism.

Well worth a try.

I highly recommend it I had a very long difficult labour, everything was attempted before an eventual caesarian and from the moment my daughter came into the world she was very uncomfortable lying on her back and for the first 8wks just screamed and couldnt bear to be anywhere but on me, she also had pressure marks above her eye which were very red and angry. I read (sceptically) about Cranial Osteopathy and after 8wks of practically no sleep I was ready to try anything. The Osteopath was really gentle and friendly and from just lightly touching the base of her neck up to the top of her head announced that she was very knotted and tight. Anyway my daughter had about 8 sessions at around £25 a session (not cheap) but miraculously she began to settle, the screaming stopped and the pressure marks above her eye simply disappeared. She is now a happy and very bright 18mth old but I wouldnt hesitate in taking her back in for a check up if the pressure marks were to return.

Has anyone had any experience of CO helping older children get dry at night?

DD1 is 5 and still not dry, took her to see the osteopath yesterday because she turns in her right foot when she walks and Osteo said she would do some CO to try to help with the night dryness issue as well as treating her hip (was causing the foot prob).

Anyone got previous on this?

I don't know for certain about children with Autism but I did read an article about a child who displayed what they thought at the time were symptoms of Autism and later on ADHD. The little boy in question used to sit under a desk with his hands over ears at school and wouldnt mix with other children. I believe he had mixture of Osteopathy and Chiropractic treatment, it turned out that he had been in constant pain since birth and his behaviour was how he coped with it - apparently changed his life around. I would certainly recommend a check up, some specialists recommend that all babies should have a check up with Cranial Osteopath as we underestimate the stress that babies deal with in labour.

Have a read on Quackwatch as well.

I took DS when he was a baby. It didn't help with the colic but it made him poo every time. 40 quid a poo, not bad.

I was talking with an Osteopath friend on Saturday. He is quite disheartened about his new profession. Basically, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Whether it does or not is hard to predict and the mechanisms underlying it are not well known. All else is just BS.

I just want to argue, before its written off as BS in your words, if we had not had C.O our only other option was to take DS to Great Ormond Street Hospital, have them take off his skull, yes really take off his skull and re shape it to make his head a better more rounded shape. However, thanks to C.O we haven't had to go down that route, and we haven't had to worry about DS not talking and the fact he was in pain for the best part of a year (so much so that he banged his head to distract himself from the pain)

My second argument is that nothing is 100% workable with everybody! Even the basic example of peniciilin.. that doesn't work for everybody, but people don't go around calling it BS!

I'm sorry to hear that your ostepath friend is dis-heartened, but you can't help everybody with one thing.. what a bloody different place the world would be!

Hard Science post - do put fingers in ears and shout 'lalala' if you're a) a firm believer or b) utterly convinced it's all pants.

I?m reasonably convinced of the benefits of this for immediately-post-birth trauma, particularly after a difficult delivery, but the usefulness of it to older children perplexes me slightly.

I put my science hat on and had a look in the peer-reviewed literature in academic journals, and there seems to be very little hard data there. I?m an evidence-based medicine sort of girl and like my trials randomized and controlled and my confidence intervals small.
The only paper that came anywhere close to modelling that was a study about ear infections in Oklahoma - abstract is reproduced below because I?m not sure if you need a subscription to view the full text

The Use of Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment as Adjuvant Therapy in Children With Recurrent Acute Otitis Media
Mills et al, Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2003;157:861-866
Objective To study effects of osteopathic manipulative treatment as an adjuvant therapy to routine pediatric care in children with recurrent acute otitis media (AOM).
Study Design Patients 6 months to 6 years old with 3 episodes of AOM in the previous 6 months, or 4 in the previous year, who were not already surgical candidates were placed randomly into 2 groups: one receiving routine pediatric care, the other receiving routine care plus osteopathic manipulative treatment. Both groups received an equal number of study encounters to monitor behavior and obtain tympanograms. Clinical status was monitored with review of pediatric records. The pediatrician was blinded to patient group and study outcomes, and the osteopathic physician was blinded to patient clinical course.
Main Outcome Measures We monitored frequency of episodes of AOM, antibiotic use, surgical interventions, various behaviors, and tympanometric and audiometric performance.
Results A total of 57 patients, 25 intervention patients and 32 control patients, met criteria and completed the study. Adjusting for the baseline frequency before study entry, intervention patients had fewer episodes of AOM (mean group difference per month, -0.14 [95% confidence interval, -0.27 to 0.00]; P= .04), fewer surgical procedures (intervention patients, 1; control patients, 8; P= .03), and more mean surgery-free months (intervention patients, 6.00; control patients, 5.25; P= .01). Baseline and final tympanograms obtained by the audiologist showed an increased frequency of more normal tympanogram types in the intervention group, with an adjusted mean group difference of 0.55 (95% confidence interval, 0.08 to 1.02; P= .02). No adverse reactions were reported.
Conclusions The results of this study suggest a potential benefit of osteopathic manipulative treatment as adjuvant therapy in children with recurrent AOM; it may prevent or decrease surgical intervention or antibiotic overuse.

The editorial in the same issue of the journal found the following seriousweaknesses_ in the methods of the study: Groups didn?t seem to be truly randomised ? kids chosen to be ?treated? were older and sicker than ?control? kids.
Parents weren?t blinded, so the ones in the control group knew their kids were missing out on something and many of them dropped out of the study to seek ?better? treatment.
There was no placebo control, so there was no proof that it wasn?t just the extra attention from a professional that helped rather than the actual manipulation.
The editor concluded that the manipulation was beneficial, but that the study did not determine whether this was because it merely reassured the parents, thus lessening their demands for antibiotics and/or surgery, or because it actually helped the child.

I appreciate this study was in the US where the healthcare system is very different to here (and parent pressure may be more of an issue), and I?m thrilled to hear that cranial osteoptahy gave so many of you good results. A lot more work still needs to be done to understand exactly why and how it affects the patients for whom it does work, which in turn may help us to determine the best way to help patients refactory to therapy.
End of hard science
Normal service has now resumed, thank you for your attention.

My son, now 3 has a bowel disease (hirschprungs) that means part of his bowel didn't work from birth and he had a colostomy. We were recommended a cranial osteopath which we thought was a bit bizarre, but in his first session he did a big fart. not much to most mums you may think, but he had never farted before and all that time (3 months) the air had been trapped between his colostomy and his botty. Don't know how it worked, the guy was just gently touching his neck and back.
The same guy kindly came to visit us in hospital just after a big op. My boy was still quite drowsy with the anaesthetic, but the session bought him right out bubbly and bouncy, far quicker than after any other op.
Well this may not be a proper sceintific trial, but I would consider a fart pretty good physical evidence!
Later my boy had glue ear, the same guy thought it had gotten too severe for treatment to work and recomended us to get gromits - he didn't try and make us take sessions that would be useless. He did however think he could help after the gromits were in to keep things clear...must make an appointment actually.

A week after one session, DD2 is MUCH more settled. She still has her days and nights mixed up (she's 7 weeks old, after all), but there's no more of that horribly anxious cry, trapped wind, and colic.

When she goes down at night, it's for 5-7 hours of settled sleep, before she was stirring the entire time.

I firmly believe in it and went to a 2-day training course in Cranio Sacro Therapy so that I could help my family at home using the diagnostic techniques of Dr. John Upledger. We go to see our Doctor twice a year for a "check-up", but for colds, etc, I use the techniques I learned in my class.

I was just gonna type all my cranio sacral experience and how I think its great when I saw grumpyfrumpy's name!!! How have WE not crossed before!!!!

Pennies - I just saw your post about not being sure if it is colic or not...we had a slightly different experience, Baby Jess wouldn't go to sleep in her cot at night and I ended up sleeping with her on my chest in the spare room which basically meant that i didn't sleep. Our midwife recommended the osteopathy route but also recommended a book by what she called the original baby whisperer - The happiest baby on the block or Baby Bliss by Dr Harvey Karp(it's been republished under the 2nd name in the UK). I was doubtful on both approaches but went with the book as a first option, Dr K uses a 5s principle to calming babies (Swaddling, Swinging, Side, Ssshhing and Suckling) and it worked - the reason for adding this is that when I read your post I thought of one part in the book where one lady described how her baby cried and wouldn't feed when put to the breast but she tried the 5's and it worked for her. The theory is all about how to calm and if you follow the s's it can switch on a calming mechanism that helps them concentrate on what they are meant to be doing rather than being over stimulated by everything else around them. It worked for us, the first night that I tried to put Baby Jess down in her cot using the 5's she went from 10 to 2 and then through to 6, from constant crying, this was amazing, she is now going 10 to 3 and then through to 7 when I have to wake her to get DS to school but she has also been known to sleep through and she's only 3 weeks! It was the best £6.99 I've spent so may be worth a try if you haven't got an appointment yet or are waiting for your appointment, it's very american but makes alot of sense and explains exactly how to do each stage of the s's and the theory as to why it works as well.

Good luck!

mumatuks, can tyou give the details of your osteo who treats kids with autism? thanks!

Hello, I don't post much but wanted to contribute to this thread because I'm a big fan of CO. In my experience, it works a treat on babies who've had difficult deliveries. My DS was all twisted up after an OP birth and ventouse, but as a 1st-time mum it took me a while to spot this, till I realised at 2-3 months that he always lay with his head twisted to one side. Osteo had that sorted in one session then moved on to other things and eased him up no end. He is still (aged 9) a very bad sleeper, scrunched up and very hard to wind down and I take him for occasional un-scrunching sessions - went on Tuesday and he slept like a lamb that night, different child. Less obvious results on DD with colic but it did ease it intermittently. I know it works on me because I use it for my bad back regularly and I can feel that, which gives me confidence whenever I feel doubt! It can be hard to believe because it is such subtle treatment that you cannot see them doing anything, so you have to feel very comfortable with your osteo and their skills, but you do feel the results. It is well worth a try with the right one. Good luck.

Just wanted to post about the experience we had with my nephew. He was a nightmare baby - don't know how my sister coped. By the age of 3 he was given the diagnosis that he was deaf, autistic and 'retarded intelligence', and that he would need special school & would probably never be able to lead an independent life. He screamed all the time, heartbreaking screams, and wasn't learning to talk at all, even at 3. Back then not many people had heard of CO (this is about 12 years ago), but an aunt heard about it, my sister took my nephew along. The change was really amazing after a few sessions of CO. He turned out not to be deaf at all - he just didn't respond to sounds because he was in so much pain as a tot. He still has mild Aspergers so doesn't socialise too well, but he's not severely autistic as per the original diagnosis. And he got 6 grade As in his mock GCSE's so he's clearly not 'retarded'! Once he started learning to talk he told his Mum that when younger he had a constant pain, and that he'd believed there were little men with hammers in his head all the time. Poor little mite. So from his experience it does have long term benefits. Nothing else helped him at all - doctors were just going to write him off completely.

I have previously posted on how this cured my 5 year olds sleep probs after 3 treatments - let me know if you can't find the threads when searching

A quick precis - she was a ventouse delivery and apparently the problem was due to the assisted delivery - has slept perfectly ever since - we go for the odd top-up session usually if she has a fall and knocks her head as the sleep problems have reappeared occasionally after a fall/knock

hth