I like to think that osteopathy is a partnership approach to solving problems with both the Osteopath and the patient being involved in the process. So it’s always nice to hear that a patient has acted on their own initiative.

I’ve recently been treating a patient with a painful shoulder and she’s been making steady progress but I was surprised when she came to clinic and announced that she’d solved her shoulder problem by getting her hair cut short! She went on to explain that since a young child she had always had the unconscious habit of twiddling her hair with her right hand. When she wasn’t thinking about it whilst just sitting watching TV she’d fall in to the habit of fiddling with her hair.

It makes sense that when osteopaths start treating a patient with a particular problem not only do they have to come up with an idea as to what they are treating in the form of a diagnosis but we also like to think beyond that to figure out what caused the problem in the first place and what aggravates it. Most patients are looking for pain relief or better movement but unless the potential cause of the problem is identified it’ll happen again and again.

In the case of shoulder problems classic aggravating factors might be carrying a heavy shoulder bag, holding a young baby repeatedly over one shoulder or using a computer mouse for long hours. Of course an aggravating factor that I’ll now bear in mind is having long hair and twiddling it!

The thing is that with a lot of the aggravating factors that are associated with using the arm we have to remember that arms are quite heavy things. If you lift your arm above your head for a while it’s fine but leave it there for any length of time and things are going to ache and complain under the weight of the arm itself even if it’s not holding on to anything. So when folk sit at their busy, cluttered desk in front of the computer holding on to the mouse, unless the arm or wrist is resting on the desk the arm and the shoulder are going to get tired and they’re going tighten up and ache. And the same goes if you’re sitting in front of the TV twiddling your hair!