This is a place where you can’t expect to find fluorescent lighting or white linoleum typical for almost every doctor’s office. What you can expect is classical music, a lot of books on the shelves, and a padded exam table.
Osteopathic doctors like Dr. Daniel Shadoan start their examination by placing their hands on the shoulders of their patients. While the patient is breathing they ask various questions about the patient’s health like about certain pain in the back, problems with the knees, etc.
Dr. Daniel Shadoan is a DO or osteopathic doctor-physician. These professionals perform treatments that are known as osteopathic manual manipulation.
Osteopathic doctors are very similar to MDs because they are fully licensed, they can prescribe drugs and they can also perform surgeries.
However, their education is based on a different philosophy and that’s why they have a different approach.
DOs are integrative doctors and as such they always tend to support the patients in their efforts to improve their health by practicing non-invasive (or least invasive) measures at the beginning of the treatment.
The main difference in their education and training is the fact that they are focused on the body’s structure and the effects this structure has on our health.
This specific medical field was developed after the development of manual manipulation, a therapy that was designed to improve the circulation of blood, air, lymphatic and other similar bodily fluids to improve the self-healing properties of the body and to improve the work of the brain, internal organs, and muscles and joints.
Physicians who work with manual manipulation, like Dr. Shadoan, claim that they can support the body in its efforts to return to a healthy state by working on the bones and tissues. This is a long-term process, but there is more than one good reason why people should give it a try.
The fact is that the number of osteopathic doctors who work in the American healthcare system is constantly increasing. The number of traditional physicians is declining and these professionals are replacing them.
According to some statistics, about 25% of medical students in the United States are following a DO program and in the past 10 years, their number has increased rapidly. For example, in 1970 there were about 14.000 DOs in the United States while experts predict that there will be about 100.000 DOs in 2016.
Read more here: http://www.prevention.com/health/osteopathic-doctors