I have the privilege of being able to take a break from my residency and volunteer for the US Forest Service a few times a year.\u00a0 I help lead a trail clearing crew in the Red River Gorge Geologic Area in central Kentucky.\u00a0 While on an outing a few years back I got to just observe running water in Nature.\u00a0 It starts high and works its way downstream, picking up and carrying particulate matter as it goes.\u00a0 Waters power and earth changing potential amazes me to this day.\u00a0 Water picks up and redeposit sediment as it flows.\u00a0 As long as the water moves with enough velocity, the sediment stays suspended.\u00a0 When it slows down enough, such as at an eddy or obstruction, its sediment load falls out of solution and settles to the streambed.\u00a0 In this way, the earth\u2019s surface is shaped.<\/p>\n
I began to wonder if perhaps the body\u2019s fluids works like water in the stream, depositing \u201csediment\u201d when they slow down.\u00a0 I have had a few patients who have either active gout or a history of it and I began to test my sediment hypothesis \u2013 the \u201csediment\u201d in this case being uric acid crystals.\u00a0 I selected my patients who had symptoms in their feet to test my theory.\u00a0 My reasoning being that the feet are the longest distance from the heart, have the \u201cslowest\u201d blood (furthest away from the pump) and thus should have the greatest amount of \u201csediment\u201d.\u00a0 What I found was that every patient\u2019s feet had somatic dysfunction and the tissue felt boggy.\u00a0 Their joints did not move well at all.\u00a0 It certainly felt like \u201csediment\u201d deposition.<\/p>\n
I decided to treat the feet of these patients osteopathically to see if the gout symptoms would resolve with increased blood flow.\u00a0 I used indirect myofascial treatment so I did not cause cavitations in the joints by forceful movements (high velocity) that may break up the uric acid crystals.\u00a0 What I found was that in every case, treatments brought improvement and, in many cases, total relief.\u00a0 It certainly seemed like their \u201csediment\u201d or at least the effects of it cleared up.\u00a0 Many of the patients were able to reduce or eliminate their medications for gout.\u00a0 They were encouraged to continue treatment periodically and were instructed in how to self-treat between visits.\u00a0 The results thus far are very encouraging.\u00a0 I look forward to continuing to apply this variation on Dr. Still\u2019s \u201crole of the artery\u201d principle to the gout and other conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have the privilege of being able to take a break from my residency and volunteer for the US Forest Service a few times a year.\u00a0 I help lead a trail clearing crew in the Red River Gorge Geologic Area in central Kentucky.\u00a0 While on an outing a few years back I got to just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":634,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-650","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":831,"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/650\/revisions\/831"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/osteopathicvision.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}