How Osteopaths help concussion symptoms ease away
Concussion can be a very serious and debilitating injury, yet a high proportion of people who receive a concussion do not get any treatment for it. Here at Concussion Recovery in Wellington we provide expert concussion assessment and treatment.
Osteopathy can be highly effective in aiding recovery from concussion, and we are pushing for it to be incorporated into the standard ACC treatment plan for these injuries. Current standard treatment on ACC often consists solely of continued assessment to gauge progress.
To give you an example, I recently had a 13yr old male patient present to me following a double concussion playing rugby. The second concussion had been one month prior to me seeing him, and over the past month he had been suffering from constant headaches, dizziness and nausea, and vomiting if he over-exerted.
He was unable to do more than three periods in his school day before his symptoms got to the point he could not continue.
He had been assessed at a concussion clinic who were monitoring his progress, but no treatment had been done other than prescribing painkillers to help with the headaches.
The pain was not only in the upper back and neck but also up into the whole head with a feeling of dizziness and nausea.
We met for three gentle osteopathic treatment sessions over the course of the first ten days:
After the first osteopathic assessment and treatment, he was feeling significantly better.
The nausea was completely gone after the second osteopathic treatment, and the headache was nearly completely gone after the third, to the point he had stopped taking any painkillers.
Shortly after this, he was able to return to school full-time, and I continued to see the patient for a few weeks, to ensure a complete and full recovery In any head injury, but concussion particularly, there is a large amount of trauma delivered to the tissues of the head and neck. This often leads to an imbalanced tightening of these tissues, which in turn causes compression of the sensitive tissues of the head and spine, and restriction of blood supply, venous drainage and CSF fluid flow through these structures. This can cause a variety of symptoms, including headaches, nausea, dizziness and pain.
Osteopathy, and in particular Cranial Osteopathy, works in a gentle and non-invasive manner to gently mobilise the connective tissues and muscles around the head and neck in order to reduce this compression and restore normal fluid flow and drainage.
Written by Dr Melanie Young, Registered Osteopath. For more information see here.
