DR. WALKER

Osteopathic / Chiropractor

Osteopathic medicine (DO), like some aspects of chiropractic medicine, is a whole body concept, a patient centered approach to medicine dealing with the complexities of the myriad of psychosocial issues that manifests themselves as the patient’s chief complaint. This is not always as the approach of the prototypic allopathic (MD) medicine training. But each has its own advantage. The philosophy is the presenting of the problem as a complex integral of the body’s nerves, muscles, bones, and lymphatic system that is wrapped in a psychosocial envelope and all MUST be considered when treating/ evaluating a patient. In the real medical world, it is impossible to distinguish the Doctor of osteopathic medicine from their allopathic medicine counterpart as they are interchangeable in most of the hospital's day to day business. Many of DO practice less and less of the conventional manipulative therapy after completing residencies (surgery, internal medicine, radiology, neurosurgery) to name a few. That being said, it is worth your health and livelihood to have one of these folks in your medicine cabinet. This is why:

DOs are trained to identify underlying medical and health problems before they manifest as debilitating illness. They are trained to understand that the absence of disease does not imply the presence of good health. They, like the chiropractor are able to perform manual manipulative therapy to address and correct disorders in the body allowing the body to return to its normal function. It is similar to removing large logs in a river to allow it to flow in its normal pattern.

A great example would be a patient presenting with back pain. Conventional medicine would offer you a 10 to 14-day course of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAIDS), which will most assuredly dull the pain but it never addresses the underlying source of the back pain. So, in 14 days you may return with a similar complaint where you might be offered a stronger NSAID like Tramadol to dull the pain even more. Now we know that NSAIDs as a general class has a deleterious effect on your gut microbiome, further limiting your own bodies mechanism from treating itself. So first you have a problem and instead of sending your defense team (gut microbiome) to manage the problem, you have arrested them instead by stunning them with NSAIDs. The training of the DO allows them to still offer you the NSAID if truly needed, however they try to correct the potential structural problem before you leave the office and would perhaps teach you something regarding preventing this problem from returning.

I cannot say enough how much I think having a Osteopathic physician or a Chiropractor in your medicine cabinet is important for your long term health; specifically your back health.