Recommend me an osteopath in Aberdeen

Quartz · 28 May 2017 at 15:35

I need the services of one to fix my lower back.

dowie · 28 May 2017 at 15:52

Why not see a proper medical professional instead - like a sports medicine consultant or a Physio?

footman · 28 May 2017 at 16:03

There's nothing wrong with consulting a Registered Osteopath for a back problem.
The NHS don't seem to have anything against them
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Osteopathy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

dowie · 28 May 2017 at 16:08

footman said:
The NHS don't seem to have anything against them

The NHS also run homeopathic hospitals... it doesn't mean that homeopathy actually works or does anything but rather the NHS seemingly doesn't mind wasting a relatively small portion of their funds on nonsense if there is demand for it from patients

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...ropractors-back-pain-whose-spine-is-it-anyway

Lying down wearing only my underwear in an osteopath’s front room, I was waiting expectantly for the back-popping to begin. Instead, to my toe-curling horror, he started lightly fingering my head and telling me he was channelling energy through the plates of my skull. With his touch, apparently, he’d reset my “internal rhythms” and cure my pain. I didn’t think my back could get much stiffer. It turns out I was wrong. With this unsolicited venture into a wacky branch of both osteopathy and chiropractic came a question I should have asked a long time ago: how much of these professions is scientifically legitimate and how much, as others have asked before me, is bogus?

I got an answer I was secretly not expecting. “Even in the case of low-back pain where the claims are most plausible,” says David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at UCL and outspoken critic of pseudo-medicine, “there is little reason to believe that manipulation works. People get better at much the same rate regardless of treatment.”

Manipulation, or manual therapy, the joint-thrusting treatment both professions are best known for, has been tested for low-back pain with apparently positive results, but the studies have been largely panned for being too small or of poor quality. When all studies are pooled and analysed together, the procedure flops, coughing and spluttering, just short of the finish line. Analyses show low-to-medium evidence of short-term effectiveness, and – importantly – that the procedure is no better than any other treatment, including placebos.

Odd, given that the idea seems so logical. Manual therapy from both professions is even included in the 2009 Nice (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines for low-back pain, which are undergoing revision and due to be published at the end of next year. However, the NHS Choices website says “some uses of chiropractic treatments are based on ideas and an ‘evidence base’ not recognised by the majority of independent scientists” and “the use of osteopathy isn’t always based on scientific evidence”. Colquhoun suspects that “chiropractic and osteopathy will have a less lenient assessment [from Nice] this time around. I hope logical thinking and common sense will win out.”

Bottom line is that there are doctors who specialise in this area and physiotherapists so why not see proper medical professional?

Participant · 28 May 2017 at 16:34

Quartz said:
I need the services of one to fix my lower back.

I can give you free advice. It's probably musculoskeletal, so lose some weight and do back exercises religiously for the rest of your life and you'll be grand.

Incredible diagnosis from only the information in the OP right?!

Quartz · 28 May 2017 at 17:39

dowie said:
Bottom line is that there are doctors who specialise in this area and physiotherapists so why not see proper medical professional?

Because a professional qualified osteopath is completely unlike the one in your quote. I have been to several over the years and their techniques do work.

malolo · 28 May 2017 at 17:42

No idea about osteopaths because I wouldn't use one, but I can recommend The Wallace Practice for physio.

Roland Butter · 28 May 2017 at 18:05

There's Dr. O. Mebak in Lintibert Terrace, Dyce.

He's very good.

Dis86 · 28 May 2017 at 18:16

Quartz said:
Because a professional qualified osteopath is completely unlike the one in your quote. I have been to several over the years and their techniques do work.

Clearly not or you wouldn't be seeing one again!

dowie · 28 May 2017 at 18:19

Quartz said:
Because a professional qualified osteopath is completely unlike the one in your quote. I have been to several over the years and their techniques do work.

So the journalist just made that up then?

Granted not all of them are full on cranial osteopathy quacks but the point still remains - what is the point of them when you can go and see a proper medical professional?

As for your anecdotal experience - it is worthless, someone who swears by homeopathy could easily make the same claim too - presumably you're unaware of the placebo effect?

novaenough · 28 May 2017 at 21:26

Colin Ross is who I use:
http://colinrossosteopath.co.uk/

Quartz · 28 May 2017 at 22:21

dowie said:
Granted not all of them are full on cranial osteopathy quacks but the point still remains - what is the point of them when you can go and see a proper medical professional?

Because the ones I've seen are indeed properly qualified medical professionals.

Quartz · 28 May 2017 at 22:27

novaenough said:
Colin Ross is who I use:
http://colinrossosteopath.co.uk/

Thanks. His website doesn't list his qualifications, which is worrying.

dowie · 28 May 2017 at 22:34

Quartz said:
Because the ones I've seen are indeed properly qualified medical professionals.

unlikely - osteopathy is 'alternative medicine'

(Unless the people you've seen also have medical degrees or are physiotherapists... but then if they had proper medical credentials they'd probably be advertising them over their 'alternative medicine' ones.)

novaenough · 28 May 2017 at 22:47

Quartz said:
Thanks. His website doesn't list his qualifications, which is worrying.

I'm sure there was a list of qualifications on his business card but that's long gone now!
A couple of my friends recommended him and I went to see him to try and sort out my lower back. That was 20 years ago and I have to say I was delighted after my first session, haven't needed to go for a good few years now thankfully.

Quartz · 28 May 2017 at 22:52

dowie said:
unlikely - osteopathy is 'alternative medicine'

Are you - like the author in the linked article above - mixing osteopaths with chiropractors? Because the two are very different. Chiropractors are indeed purveyors of woo.

dowie · 28 May 2017 at 22:57

They're not that different - no I'm not mixing them up, I'm aware both exist and both are alternative medicine practitioners. Chiropractors might well be bigger quacks but both are 'alternative' and the fact that Physios exist mean those two alternatives are pretty much pointless.

Dis86 · 28 May 2017 at 23:00

Quartz said:
Are you - like the author in the linked article above - mixing osteopaths with chiropractors? Because the two are very different. Chiropractors are indeed purveyors of woo.

"Osteopathy is a type of alternative medicine, also called pseudomedicine"

"A 2011 systematic review on osteopathic style manipulation, "failed to produce compelling evidence" for efficacy in treating musculoskeletal pain"

Wikipedia.

"the use of osteopathy isn't always based on scientific evidence." - NHS

"Lack of evidence of effectiveness aside, perhaps most damning – and surprising for anybody who has paid for the treatment – is that nobody can explain how manipulation would theoretically work, even the practitioners." - The guardian

What you need is a Dr or a physiotherapist.

Glaucus · 28 May 2017 at 23:05

lol why would you want to be treated by shrills, when there's actually educated people using peer research techniques.

Dis86 has it bang on.
go to your doc and get referred to your musculoskeletal dr who will then actually try and find what's wrong.

Quartz · 28 May 2017 at 23:05

In your perusal of Wikipedia perhaps you forgot this bit:

The practice of osteopathy has a long history in the United Kingdom. The first school of osteopathy was established in London in 1917 by John Martin Littlejohn a pupil of A. T. Still, who had been Dean of The Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine. After many years of existing outside the mainstream of health care provision, the osteopathic profession in the UK was accorded formal recognition by Parliament in 1993 by the Osteopaths Act.[66] This legislation now provides the profession of osteopathy the same legal framework of statutory self-regulation as other healthcare professions such as medicine and dentistry.

The General Osteopathic Council (GOsC) regulates the practice of osteopathy under the terms of the Osteopaths Act 1993. Under British law, an osteopath must be registered with the GOsC to practice in the United Kingdom.[67] The General Osteopathic Council has a statutory duty to promote, develop and regulate the profession of osteopathy in the UK. It fulfills its duty to protect the interests of the public by ensuring that all osteopaths maintain high standards of safety, competence and professional conduct throughout their professional lives. In order to be registered with the General Osteopathic Council an osteopath must hold a recognized qualification that meets the standards as set out by law in the GOsC's Standard of Practice.[68] This Act provides for "protection of title" A person who, whether expressly or implication describes him- or herself as an osteopath, osteopathic practitioner, osteopathic physician, osteopathist, osteotherapist, or any kind of osteopath is guilty of an offence unless they are registered as an osteopath. There are currently more than five thousand osteopaths registered in the UK.[69]

Osteopathic medicine is regulated by the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC) under the terms of the Osteopaths Act 1993 and statement from the GMC. Practising osteopaths will usually have a B.S. or M.Sc. in osteopathy. Accelerated courses leading to accreditation are available for those with an M.D. and physiotherapists.[70] The London College of Osteopathic Medicine,[71] teaches osteopathy only to those who are already physicians.