Hi again,
Happy new year to everybody! :)
What a coincidence to speak about abdominal tensions right after Christmas and New Year's meals!..
I had this young girl (20 years old) who came one day to me with chronic abdominal tensions and constipation problems (during 2 years). The symptoms were most often starting after meals (1-2 hours after eating).
The anamnesis (or medical interrogation) discovered a food intoxication 2 years ago with antibiotics treatment. Everything was fine before that, never had any stomach problems...
She got quite ill during a month after this intoxication, then got better for a while (1-2 months) and after that: abdominal tensions, swollen stomach, pain and constipation were happening every single days!
Evaluating such a patient is difficult. Stomach problems can have many different origins!
An osteopath will start global! There are 3 major poles that need to be assessed:
1) the mechanic pole
2) the chemistry pole
3) the psychology pole
As I was speaking with her, I quickly eliminated the psychological pole. Nothing I her dialog or behavior leaded me in a suspicious relation with food or any addictions.
Then I started the mechanics approach by evaluating her pelvis, hips and lumbar spine mobility. I also checked her abdomen and found some tensions in the region of the colon and on the Toldt's fascia. This fascia has some relations with the lumbar spine and therefore, a low back problem can affect the colon and vice versa.
For the first session, I decided to focus on this mechanic pole. I adjusted her pelvis and her sacrum, released her diaphragm which can, when tensed, induce abdominal tensions.
I also worked directly on her colon and on this Toldt's fascia to improve their mobility and functions.
I saw Josephine one week after to check what was the evolution and to continue her treatment.
When she came back, things were unfortunately still bad.
She told me that, the day after the session she was feeling better but symptoms quickly came back as they were before.
This indicated me that I treated the symptoms and not the cause!
It is the same as having a discs prolapse and getting a massage: you might feel better during a few hours after the massage but obviously, the pain will quickly come back!
So after her feedback, I knew I had to go and check the chemistry pole.
For the second session, we spent quite some time speaking about her food habits, her diet and its potential impact on her stomach.
My suspicion was that, 2 years ago, after this food intoxication some wrong population of bacteria took over her colon. They grew and took the place of the good bacteria.
The aim was then to reduce and try to eliminate these bad bacteria.
One simple way to do this: stop feeding them!
For your information:
Good bacteria:
- Bifidobacteria
- lactic acid bacteria
Bad bacteria:
- Staphylococcus
- clostridium perfringens
- E.coli (toxic strain)
An easy way to reduce a population of bad bacteria is to private them from their food (in this case: SUGAR) and by sugar I mean, not only the sweet things but all sources of carbohydrates.
You can read a bit more about this in this section of my website.
Josephine played the game and for 4 weeks, she eliminated all kind of carbohydrates from her everyday's meals.
After around a week she came back to the clinic, 3/4 of the symptoms were already gone and I mobilized again her digestive system, lumbar spine and pelvis to help with the residual tensions.
We decided, after this 3rd treatment, to wait 3 more weeks with this strict diet.
After that time, she had almost no more symptoms. We spoke about how to slowly reintroduce carbohydrates again in her food and what she had to be careful with. (high carbs level, food associations, snacks...) Maybe I will speak about this in another future blog post!
I thought this example was good to illustrate how holistic osteopathy can be. Many people think that osteopaths treat only with manipulations (and that's what we do 90% of the time) but to be really holistic, these chemistry (and psychology) poles need to sometimes to be evaluated!
I am not a food expert or nutritionist but I have some knowledge about how nutrition can affect (positively or negatively) your health and your organism.
Please feel free to write me your questions or book a time with me if you want me to assess and help you with your symptoms.
Thanks for reading and have a nice day! :)