Osteopathy and Arm and Leg Pain

Arm and leg pain and their associated joint pains can be caused by many different factors. Sometimes, pain in your extremities can be caused by an obvious injury. However, surprisingly most arm and leg pain are usually not caused by direct trauma. Instead the pains are often the result of other pains that originate in other parts of your body - far removed from the arms or legs. This pain concept is named 'referred pain' and can be difficult to understand.

Our muscles, joints and bones are all intertwined with one another. This means that an injury or pain in one area can often travel to other parts of the body.

Understanding Referred Pain

As osteopathy is a holistic manual therapy, it's perfect to assess whether the origin of your pain is localised to one particular area, or if it actually originated in a separate area before travelling to your arms and legs.

It can be difficult to recognise pain in your central nervous system. This is often because it is referred to your extremities. You therefore think that 'a sore foot' is a sore foot, when it's actually a sign that another part of your body is experiencing pain. Where some doctors may fail to notice this, osteopaths are acutely aware of this phenomenon and try to locate all connected sources of pain. A pain in your arms or legs may allow your osteopath to uncover and treat pains across your whole body. In such cases, your osteopath is not only helping you rid the pain in your legs and arms, but also the pain in your neck, shoulders and/or other areas of the body. Now that's a good thing.

In the quest to find the true source of your pain, your osteopath not only looks locally, but also centrally. For example, a pain in your neck joints may cause referred pain to your wrist. Logically you would think that your wrist is the sole area that requires treatment. However this would be of little benefit, as the source of your problem is in the neck. Your neck therefore requires treatment, which would then eliminate your wrist pain.

For the source of the pain to be identified, your local joints may also be checked for any joint pain. In most cases, pain in your extremities may be a result of referred pain from various sources in the body.

Your Osteopathic Assessment

During your osteopathic assessment, your osteopath will ask you questions to either confirm the signals your body is indicating, or ask questions to help provide a better understanding of your health across other areas. Your osteopath will ask some routine questions such as whether your pain started after a local injury, if the pain began slowly at a particular spot, or if you noticed pain in the back, neck or the spinal region a few days before your leg and arm pain started. It's important that you answer these questions as honestly as possible. The answers to these questions will help your osteopath understand whether your pain is due to a recent injury or whether the origin of your pain is due to the resurfacing of an old injury. This will also allow your osteopath to understand whether the source of your pain is local or central. To further confirm, your osteopath will perform a physical examination.

Apart from making these observations, your osteopath will also look at the spinal patterns and the nerve relationships to get to the source of any central pain in your body. They will test different parts of your body, especially the areas where you feel the most pain, to look for any kind of muscle tightness or loss of strength.

After a full assessment, your osteopath is best able to diagnose the true origin of your pains and recommend the best course of action.