Choosing an Osteopath

Osteopaths use a variety of treatments to ensure the correct alignment of your back and muscles, easing muscle tension to restore your body's natural self-healing abilities. Osteopathy eases pain, reduces swelling and improves mobility with gentle, manual techniques - massage to relax stiff muscles, stretching to mobilise joints, and manipulation to restore easy movement. Osteopathy does not involve surgery or the use of drugs.

Osteopathy treatment is provided by understanding the cause (or causes) of your condition and speeding recovery by removing obstacles to the self-healing process which functions more effectively when there is less strain on muscles and joints. Osteopaths improve the body's ability to heal conditions such as back pain or sports injuries through a variety of stretching, mobilizing and manipulative techniques. With added exercises and health advice, Osteopaths help to reduce the symptoms and improve your health and quality of life.

An Osteopath is often the most effective first line of treatment in correcting problems caused by back pain and sports injury. For acute patients, visiting an Osteopath quickly averts the possibility of conditions becoming chronic. The focus on redressing underlying disturbances in the musculo- skeletal system helps to speed recovery and relieve pain whilst minimising dependency on drugs, and reducing the prospect of extreme measures such as surgery.

In 2000, the House of Lords Select Committee on Complementary and Alternative Medicine placed Osteopathy in the top five therapies in terms of regulation, education and research. Many GPs now refer patients to Osteopaths for musculo-skeletal problems, especially lower back pain, a mark of the increasing standing in which Osteopathy is held, and a reflection of the quality of training and regulation to which all Osteopaths are subject.

How we recommend individual Osteopaths

The Osteopath Appointment Line takes special care to ensure that the Osteopaths we recommend deliver excellent care. We use the best source of information available - patient feedback - to ensure that we are recommending Osteopaths who deliver high levels of satisfaction. This feedback process is backed-up by our Guarantee which means that we refund the initial consultation fee of any patient not satisfied with the Osteopath we recommend.

In addition, Osteopaths are only eligible for referral from the Osteopath Appointment Line if there are no complaints about them currently lodged with the General Osteopathic Council.

The content of this page is informed by feedback from practices in Kent and also a practitioner in Birmingham. Further input was received from osteopathic practitioners in Croydon and clinics in Bromley. Finally a contribution was made by osteopaths in the Nottingham area