Osteopathy is an often overlooked yet highly effective way to detect, treat, and prevent a range of health problems. This is achieved by increasing the mobility in your joints, relieving tension in your muscles, reducing pain (both temporary and chronic), enhancing blood supply to your tissues, and helping your body heal. A common question patients have is how many osteopathy sessions they will need to recover. As you can imagine, given the range of conditions osteopathy can treat, it’s tough to give a ‘one size fits all’ answer to this question.
There are a lot of factors that will influence the speed of your recovery. The main factor is whether the tissue we are working on has been injured, and if so, how bad the injury. Added to that are the usual suspects: your age, diet, how much exercise you get, and how long you’ve been struggling with the issue. The final factors to consider are your goals for treatment and what you’re aiming to achieve. The length of time it takes to treat for pain relief on a healing injury is very different to how many sessions we might expect you to have to deal with a chronic condition permanently.
Some patients only need one or two treatments to achieve the results they need; their own body takes over after this and does the rest of the work. Generally speaking, however, the majority of patients need between four and six osteopathy sessions before they re-establish their body’s natural mobility. In the interim, symptoms tend to reduce more rapidly. On the flip side of course, there are issues that require more sessions if the problem is complex.
Who Decides How Many Osteopathy Sessions I Need?
When you have your first osteopath appointment, your osteopath will assess your needs and put together a treatment plan. At this point they will be able to give you a clear idea of how many osteopathy sessions you’re likely to need to achieve your goals. As you continue through your sessions, your osteopath will regularly assess your progress and keep you updated on whether the original timeline is still realistic – you may find you recover faster than expected, or that more sessions are needed if damage is worse than originally anticipated.
In addition to working with you in your sessions, your osteopath will recommend additional ways to help yourself, such as exercises to perform at home, changes to your diet, and how to use hot or cold packs to speed up your recovery time.
How Often Should You Have Osteopathy Appointments?
Once you’ve established roughly how many appointments you will need, your next question is likely to be how far apart should they be? After all, the closer together they are the sooner you will complete the required number. Unfortunately the body doesn’t work like this; packing your appointments too close together can actually hinder your recovery and make it take longer. Booking appointments less than four days apart can be detrimental, as it doesn’t give your body time to integrate changes that have been made.
That said, it’s optimal not to leave more than two weeks between appointments, in order to ensure your treatments are actively changing your body’s mechanics and creating real progress. If you’re working on a specific issue, having an osteopathy session every three or four weeks isn’t general enough. It can, however, help you to maintain your overall mobility and health, or keep symptoms of a chronic condition at bay. Again, your goals will dictate your needs.
Likewise if you’re looking to ensure your body is fully mobile and supple, want a way to actively prevent injury, or need some stress relief, an osteopathy session every five to six weeks is very beneficial. Having such regular maintenance also means you’re likely to need far less recovery time in the event you are injured.
For more information on how osteopathy can help you and to find out exactly how many sessions you would need to achieve your goals, book an appointment today at our clinic in Northwich.
