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. 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. As 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 in that period 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 is not only in the upper back and neck but also up into the whole head with feeling of dizziness and nausea.
We met for three treatment sessions over the course of the first ten days:
After one osteopathic treatment, he was feeling significantly better.
The nausea was completely gone after the second session, 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 have continued to see the patient for a few weeks following to try 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 leads to a tightening of these tissues, which in turn causes compression of the head and spine, and restriction of 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 mobilise the connective tissues and muscles around the head and neck in order to reduce this compression and restore normal fluid flow and drainage.
