Bangor osteopath Maeve McGowan changes people's lives on a daily basis with her holistic approach to treating patients. Maeve uses the complementary therapy osteopathy to treat ailments ranging from back pain to respiratory problems. Osteopathy is an approach to healthcare that emphasises the role of the musculoskeletal system in health and disease. The therapy uses a range of manual and physical treatment interventions.
Maeve said: "Osteopathy is a distinctive and complete system of health care. Basically it is a treatment of muscularity conditions and treats things like back pain, head aches, neck pains, sports injuries, joint pain, rheumatic pain, arthritis, IBS, asthma through a variety of techniques, mainly manual. I treat babies and children as well".
The practitioner says osteopathy offers a "specific" diagnosis that treats the "whole" person not just the ailment. "What I found is that our diagnosis of back problems is very good and if you diagnose it properly it’s much easier to treat", said Maeve. “So our diagnosis is very specific. With that you treat the back and the whole person. As part of the treatment I give exercises, nutritional advice and change their lifestyle depending on how they got their back pain or head aches. In my experience if you treat the person as a whole you can treat them appropriately”.
Maeve treats a lot of people with recurring head and neck pain and finds after talking to them their lifestyle is often a factor. She said: "Headaches is a really common one. Somebody comes in with head aches or neck pains that they have had for years. I access them and by taking their case history you can find if they sit at a desk all day, or that their desk or work space isn’t correct, or that they are sleeping on three pillows at night and it's too high for them. They are just on the go all day every day and don’t do any exercise. What I would do is work out how they could change their work space to make it more efficient for them, change they way they sleep so their neck isn’t in a bad position all night and get them to do neck and breathing exercises to reduce any stress. Then the head aches go away. Mostly it is something simple like that and it happens quite a lot. Other things that cause it is if you fall on the arches of your foot, or if you are on your feet every day and you are walking, walking, walking, there is pressure on your foot. If you reduce that then the headaches will go away".
Maeve feels the NHS should offer complementary therapies to patients so they can get another treatment perspective. She said: "I think it is vital because physios can only do so much and there is still a real lull on how to treat a patient.
Seeing it from somebody else’s perspective - not just an exercise based one and not just your basic muscular condition - but looking at the body as a whole, and with our training you have to look at everything, you have to look at their nutrition, their diet, their work space, and you really do a whole package for one person. We treat the whole body".
And Get Well UK isn't the first time Maeve has worked with local doctors. "I worked in Dublin alongside GPs", she said. "It worked really, really well because they just didn’t know what to do with back pain. Even for advice to see what they should do with their patient or even send their patient to us".