Massively off-topic today, on the curious (maybe) effects of osteopathy

I’ve been having neck pain, off and on, for the past ten years.

We’re talking about the sort of neck pain that turns into a tension headache, where you find yourself laying on the ground, unable to find any position that isn’t Chinese-water-torture painful.  Two days, three days, of just hoping for a lesser headache.

It’s not my style to complain (aside from my sister – and now you, nobody ever heard this story before the blog).  I’d gone to a few doctors, they found a cracked vertebrae, commented on posture, but nothing conclusive.  Too much abuse, I figured, a clumsy nerd who likes skiing and motorbikes and doing risky things far more than his reflexes can afford him.

And it was an occasional problem, anyway.  Weeks, months would go by with everything being all right.  More gym also, less chance of suicide-thoughts-inducing headache days.

And when I stopped working in an office, the incidence rate went down to a handful of times a year.

So whatever.  What’s my point, you say.

When I was trying to improve my eyesight, I tried it all.  Vitamins, Bates, Eastern randomness.  I met a lot of levels of bogusness, and a certain variety of individual who seems drawn to just that.  Privately I think of them as massively attention seeking hypochondriacs, who I suspect make up the illness or condition just to justify the treatment.  Maybe not fair, but I certainly found that it wasn’t worth trusting the glowing reviews of these various voodoo methods:

“Omg, this Chinese herbalist acupuncture healer, amaaaaazing.  My electromagnetic sensitive Peruvian meteorite condition, it’s cured!  Praise be to the Emerald birth stone toe chakra!”

But we can’t let personal judgments get in the way of exploring all options.  So I did all of the weirdo things related to myopia cure talk, along with following the thread of science, and old timey Russian optometrist ideas about glasses causing myopia, and the dynamic eye, and the rest of what you already know.

What I learned is what I’d suspected (while trying to avoid excessive confirmation bias).  A lot of modern medicine favors profit and symptom treatment, and there is no quick fix from the voodoo herbalist.

Or is there.

No, there isn’t.  So when I went to the osteopathy shop the other day to have them fix my neck, I had exceedingly low expectations.  But lately the neck pain has been getting out of control (this Internet project is not helping), a friend strongly recommended it, and it was just down the street from me anyway.   So, why not.

I went, with my neck having that tension feeling that always precedes a few days of of less than fun headaches.

A short Thai woman, fluent in English, curt and to the point, tells me to lay on the massage table.  This, after a brief examination of my posture, which mostly included not much talk and just some grunts and pokes on her part.  I wasn’t impressed so far, with the level of accompanying convincing why-my-stuff-works rhetoric.

And all it turned out to be was a 45 minute painful massage.  Totally anticlimactic, the whole thing.

I left the place, relieved by some 60 USD, my neck still having that nagging feeling that makes me cancel all meetings for a few days.

I rode home.

And then the headache never came.  Curt Thai woman had said it would take a few days to take effect.  It might work, it might take some repeat visits (where have we heard that story), she said.  But no headache ever materialized.

So then it was off to the airport, economy seat cramped flight, a long train ride.  No headache.  Hotel with overly soft bed.  No headache.  Sitting in various coffee shops most days …. no headache.  Slightly unusual, I’m thinking, though that could just be luck.

So I decided to push that luck.  I can’t sit on a couch and work.  Something about that posture that is 100% effective in making a few days headache hell.  So I find a couch.  Three hours answering e-mails.  Do work in bed.  Even sitting slightly forward at a desk, which used to be a huge no-no, nothing.

No headache.  Really very unusual.

Is osteopathy some actually working voodoo magic?  Did a 45 minute massage indeed undo whatever thing that’s been making me have to sit all careful all the time?  (she says a massive car accident that I had admitted to,which caused the cracked vertebrae, was probably the start of it all)

Who knows.  We’ll see, early to tell, it seems a little too good to be likely.

And if it does work, how much more awesome of a gig is that, over myopia control?   Here I am having to tell you to change habits and take years and years of focal stimulus and watching out for strain.  Me actually not helping you, rather telling you to learn to help yourself.  Meanwhile Thai curt woman gets to be so much more magically impressive, mumbling and grumbling and poking at muscles and then an hour later saying, hey you go home now, all fixed.

If you have crazy neck pains and tension headaches, try out an osteopathy session, and report back.  If you happen by Bangkok, try the Osteopathy Centre and curt Thai woman.  Tell me the sleight-of-hand trick, the placebo effect, how there isn’t some holistic health thing out there that requires no years of diligent effort on our part.

Happy Sunday also, no neck pain!

Cheers,

-Jake