this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Asklemmy
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What about osteopaths?
I was not familiar with this term and had to look it up. From my brief search, it also seems like snake oil, and I don't know why someone would not go to a real physical therapist instead.
Not saying anything about the source, but https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/osteopathic-medicine
I absolutely had a PT after a car accident that used spinal manipulation and it seemed to help. She also had me using elastic bands for stretching and hydrotherapy, so there's that
Fair, I do have a number of MD DO consultants. The initial look I had was not within the DO licensing.
the difference (so i'm told) is that DOs are trained to take a more holistic, full-body approach to diagnostics and treatment rather than only focusing on one set of symptoms/treatment. They also do their residencies and internships alongside MDs.
My PCP is a DO. It works for me as my body is still relatively young. (late 30's) I also don't have many issues that would require more intensive/specialized treatment that I don't already have a specialist for.
DO are real doctors. Rarer than MDs because there are less schools but totally real docs. My Mom with 30 years nursing experience says their training is basically identical, but DOs are generally nicer.
It depends on the country. Everywhere but the US, I believe, osteopaths are witch doctors on the same level as chiropractors. In the US, they were originally like that, but their professional organization basically pushed it into being a real medical degree.
Now they go to the same length schooling as MD's, and take the same exams as far as I know.
The core of the whole discipline, osteopathy, is a pseudoscience, though. While they are usually competent doctors they still have that core of pseudoscience. They like to market themselves as more "holistic", but that's usually a good dogwhistle term to let you know information not supported by science is going to follow. They bring up that they are the same as MDs, but with additional training in osteopathy, but that can't be true because the schooling is the same length, so to fit in the pseudoscience, they get less science.
The real reason why we have DO's is that we don't have capacity in our country to educate enough MDs, so we have this weird parallel system.