What is osteopathic medicine? Why I chose DO | from a second year osteopathic medical student

we can treat back pain using our hands because we get this extra training i love that osteopathic medicine focuses on the body's innate ability to heal itself so we need to focus on the root cause of the illness and focus on all these different factors of a person a person isn't just their abdominal pain or their headache it's talking about treating the root of the disease and finding the root illness hi my name is rachel and i'm a second year medical student in the u.s i make videos about balance my life in medical school and also about military medicine and today i'm going to be doing a video on why i chose dio um why i'm so excited to be an osteopathic physician and why i'm so glad that i chose geo so i'm going to talk about the four tenets of osteopathic medicine kind of what osteopathic medicine stands for and why it aligns with me best and i'm also going to be just barely scratching the surface on the difference between do and md this video is not all-encompassing although i am going to talk about kind of like how they're similar and a little bit different but essentially if you are a do or an md you are a licensed practice practicing physician in the u.s and you can diagnose treat symptoms and treat patients and do the same things essentially you just have different titles after your name so let's get into it so i thought that i would start off with barebone definition kind of of each um do an md allopathic versus osteopathic medicine so if you are going to be a do and have the letters do after your name then you are going to be an osteopathic physician and osteopathic physician osteopathic physicians can practice in any specialty that they want to although our education and training is slightly more centered around primary care and i will touch on that so it seems compared to mds that osteopathic physicians go into more primary care roles um and then if you are an allopathic physician or you go to an allopathic medical school then you are going to have md after your name and essentially um when i were to subscribe in the emergency department i worked with both md's and dios they were both emergency medicine physicians and um they both had the same exact role um it just was whether or not i was going to be with an md or a do that day and they were the physician that i followed and they treated the patients so i'm going to just give some quick bare bones definitions and i'm going to tell you the websites um that i'm reading these off of and then i'm going to link them below just so you can check um so i'm on the nih national cancer institute cancer.gov along line and for allopathic medicine it says a system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals such as nurses pharmacists and therapists therapists treat symptoms and diseases using drugs radiation or surgery and now i'm going to check the american osteopathic association's website and it says what is osteopathic medicine a distinct branch of medicine in the u.s osteopathic medicine emphasizes the interrelated unity of all systems in the body each working with the other to heal in times of illness do's are fully licensed physicians who practice their unique whole person approach in every medical specialty do's look beyond your symptoms to understand how lifestyle and environmental factors impact your well-being and complete extensive postgraduate and clinical training before becoming fully licensed physicians so basically mds and do's are the same we just get a little bit slightly different training and emphasis when it comes to our medical school education and what i mean by that is we take the exact same classes we have the same licensing exams essentially except if you're a do it's going to be called comlex and if you're an md it's going to be called usmle although does can take the usmle and many do when they're applying for residency so they can have the usmle next to their md counterparts and it's kind of an easy way to compare because it is a different like metric system for do's on the complex compared to the usmle the scoring system so for do's the differences in our training that's kind of what i was referencing is that while we are doing our um our pre-clinical training and i'm assuming this is going to happen in the clinical years we do get extra emphasis on the whole lifestyle aspect of a patient and treating their whole treating them as a person that is a thing like in my lectures throughout medical school and even in my physical diagnosis class um you know considering the patient and looking at them as a whole not just saying like they have abdominal pain um you know it would be more like what is going on in their life do they have any psychological things happening um are they very anxious stressed out have they been eating things that might be causing them to have abdominal pain um is there anything else going on with like other organs around the area you know and the emphasis with osteopathic medicine and what do medical schools like to say is that there is a more holistic approach to medicine and i will say that i believe there is based on my training but i've obviously only gone to an osteopathic medical school but i do think my medical school does a good job in kind of integrating that and having us focus on the full person aspect and all the parts of them and not just viewing them as a symptom but i do think that all physicians should be looking at patients as a whole whether or not they're an md or a do you know you don't just look at one person and say well you have chest pain okay i'm just gonna like treat the chest pain you know you should be obviously treating the chest pain especially if it's emergent but then finding out why the chest pain is happening if there's extra anxiety if there's like obviously if it's a lifestyle thing not getting exercise and all of those things and really focusing on that and another part about osteopathic medicine is it's all about prevention too so prevention and lifestyle and those things play a huge role which is why i really love why that's really emphasized and you know as i said earlier all physicians should be emphasizing exercise and a good diet and i'm not saying that md my md counterparts and practicing mds do not do that because they do and they should um all physicians should do that but we do get extra emphasis and extra you know training with this um to make sure that we're saying this to patients so i did want to touch on a few points so why am i so glad that i chose do and that i chose this path well i truly believe and want to support um the body and i have so much respect for in the way that it has all these mechanisms and things that it does to heal us and i really want to just support that and help my patients do that and do the same thing i also really believe that food and exercise are medicine and i really want to preach that to my patients um i just love the preventative aspect and how that can just you know preaching preventative medicine and having preventative counseling and really um doing that myself so my patients can see that i'm doing that and then hopefully that inspires them to do that you know eat healthy and move their body and try to increase their cardiovascular health by maybe just even walking for 20 minutes a day i think that's amazing and um i think that it can save patients so much money if we really stress that instead of them potentially developing diabetes and then having to pay for insulin and having to pay for medication go in for doctor's appointments have to see extra doctors i really think that's so important and i want to do that and i want to continue to take care of myself and my health despite the fact that it is very hard in medical school sometimes um another reason that i'm so glad that i chose geo is because although western medicine is amazing and there are medications that are actually like life-saving that can like decrease heart rate in a time of like cardiac arrest and like so many different ways that western medicine is amazing um you know it can't heal everything and i love that osteopathic medicine focuses on the body's innate ability to heal itself and as i already said like the body has so many amazing things that it does to heal itself so the fact that we're really focusing on that and just taking advantage of the tools that we already have you know i have so much respect for my body after learning about all the amazing things like extra in medical school then like i already knew about like all the biochemical processes and just like the anatomy and physiology is like actually crazy the evolution of our bodies it's just like so we can thrive and do well and survive it's incredible um and i just really like the extra behavioral social psychological spiritual and religious aspects of a person's life that is embodied into osteopathic medicine and it's a consideration that like we need to it's something we need to take into consideration as we are osteopathic physicians as i'm learning this and you know it plays into patients healing so i'm it's such a huge part of it you know if they have a support system if they have religion to fall back on if they have something they can believe in something that can get them through their illness or sickness that really will affect their mind and if their mind is right and they have a good mindset and they think they can get through this and they can do it and they have that family support system or just like spiritual or religious support system in their heads then there is going to be different outcomes for patients if they don't have that unfortunately because if they don't then it is going to affect their mind body and spirit and it could affect their disease outcome and um their prognosis potentially so i just love those different parts of osteopathic medicine and like obviously i'm in medical school and i'm trying my best to stay balanced in medical school my health is very important to me and while it is hard sometimes and i do definitely have a sweet tooth and i definitely practice balance in the sense where like there are some days i don't go to the gym and some days where i just feel really lazy or like eat more than i should or have too much candy or too much sugar that's fine if i'm not doing that every single day and i do really want to respect my body and move my body and i know that actually the benefits of exercise it helps me so much with studying it's a great break for me it's a way for me to turn off my mind and then get back into it and feel energized and feel those endorphins and like the natural amazing things that exercise does for your body and mind um so i just think you know it really aligns with myself and my principles and my youtube channel obviously that's what my youtube channel is about and i really am trying my best to practice this balance and to embody the osteopathic principles and tendons in my life every day and obviously um omt which is osteopathic manipulative treatment or omn osteopathic manipulative medicine it's called that's like our extra lab that we get extra hands-on training there's five classes for it opp one through five it's also called opp which or osteopathic principles and practice um opp omm omt like basically same thing except omt is like the actual like treatment opp we say like opp class anyway obviously we get extra training in opp which is i'm going to explain later um right after this what that is and what that does exactly but that's just another benefit to going to do school it's just another thing that i have in my bag in my toolbox that i can use for patients and it's extremely non-invasive and um obviously it's not pills so it's not like it's something that i need to get approved by insurance so i think that's amazing that it's a cheaper safer like potentially obviously it depends on the patient and if they have anything going on but it's just another way that we can treat the human body and take advantage of what the human body already does by using our hands and using omt so now i'm going to explain a little bit about omt right now and one thing that's a huge thing that i haven't even brought up is osteopathic manipulative treatment so this is when we learn about um we use our our knowledge of anatomy and then we use our knowledge of the bones and the system and the musculoskeletal system and the biomechanics of that to use our hands to treat patients and treat somatic dysfunctions in patients without being extremely invasive you know we can treat back pain which is literally like one of the number one reasons why people go to the doctor and millions of people suffer from back pain every year and obviously it causes a lot of problems like dependence on drugs and things like that and it really affects people's quality of life so we can treat back pain using our hands because we get this extra training and osteopath osteopathic manipulative medicine and if you watched my last vlog um when i it was the one that said i had four exams in five days i was preparing for my opp4 practical and written exam and so we take um the comlex as i said and the reason why the comlax is different from the usmle is because the complex has extra quest questions on this osteopathic manipulative medicine and the treatments and how the body works and all of that so there's three different are basically three different parts of your back the cervical part the thoracic part and the lumbar part so we basically learn how to treat somatic dysfunctions from all of them for example if i was going to diagnose um the thoracic a somatic dysfunction in the thoracic vertebra um so the vertebra are just the different little parts of your spine basically i'm not trying to get too intense with um all of the medical lingo then i would basically um put my fingers on the transverse processes see which one is more posterior say that the right transverse process is more posterior that means that your um and say we're at t3 and it's in aligned with the spinous process the transverse processes um and the right one is more posterior that means that your t3 could potentially be rotated right and side bent left um and that would be if it's a neutral type one dysfunction um i'm not gonna get too into it and then i would i could use potential muscle energy counter strain or hvla technique to treat your back um so there's so many things that omt can do um you can take advantage of the lymphatic system which is basically the system in your body to like get all of the gunk out of your body and it goes to your thoracic duct and the right lymphatic drug duct and that's kind of how you like flush things out and flush the toxins you know it's kind of been treading on tick tock to like do things like this and really get the lymph out of your face and get that extra inflammation out of your face um so we kind of learn techniques like the lymphatic effleurage technique and there's just so many things that we learn with omt we also learn about the sympathetics and parasympathetics so basically um you may have heard like your flight or fights your flight or fight system so your sympathetics are your fight or flight system and this is like when your heart rate is going to go up and you're anxious and you have to like be on and focusing on what's happening because you're in danger versus your parasympathetics is your resting digest system so the oh in omt we learn about how to inhibit and stimulate the sympathetics and the parasympathetics for different things and it's very interesting and honestly most disease processes come from an increase in the sympathetic system and that would make sense because usually when something's happening like if you're having a heart attack or there is a disease process there is inflammation in your body your body is kind of like going and it's working hard to get this um to fight this disease process or to alert you about what's going on in your body if you're having a heart attack because it's gonna increase your heart rate it's gonna you know make you um make your eyes dilate so you can see exactly what's in front of you it's going to prevent you from going to the bathroom so you're not going to pee you're going to be filling up your bladder but you're not going to pee you're going to pee when you're relaxed you know it all kind of makes sense when you think about it so with your sympathetics it's going to decrease your motility decrease the secretions that's why you would get dry mouth it's going to vasoconstrict your arteries so that means that it's going to be able to your body is able to pump blood faster to your central part to your heart and lungs and what it really needs and then less to the extremities and then also constrict your sphincters so if you have too much sympathetics going on you could have constipation inflammatory bowel disease ibs so you would treat these symptoms by increasing the parasympathetic so increasing rest and digest to um really like be able to go to the bathroom basically and then um you would decrease the sympathetic so you could do this by doing mesenteric lifts or an abdominal pump or you could also do sacral rocking to stimulate pans for less than 30 seconds so that probably doesn't make sense to anyone but those are just some things that you can do with omt so there are actually four tenets of osteopathic medicine so basically four things that kind of like define osteopathic medicine or help um describe it and so number one the body is a unit the person is a unit of body mind and spirit number two the body is capable of self-regulation self-healing and health maintenance number 3 structure and function are reciprocally interrelated number 4 rational treatment is based upon an understanding of the basic principles of body unity self-regulation and the interrelationship of structure and function so basically osteopathic medicine is really focused around um the function of the body and making the body work to its optimal way that it can because our body has so many amazing mechanisms and ways to take care of ourselves and alert us something's wrong um you know fight disease and let us know if something's going on so we can help fight disease and take something to help it or do something to help it so i really love how that's really ingrained in the osteopathic tenants and i just love how the body mind and spirit is really interrelated because i just think like mental health is such a like so closely tight knit with physical health it directly um affects it it's just like a direct relationship and also the spiritual element of like your spirituality and you don't have to be spiritual or anything but everyone is spiritual to some degree whether they're religious um if they believe in this x y z you know so i really love how that's also a consideration here i did start rambling a little bit in different parts of this video but that's just honestly because i am really excited that i am going to be an osteopathic physician and i'm honestly so glad that i chose to be a do um because it just aligns with my principles it's talking about treating the root of the disease and finding the root illness and i know all of us have gone to the doctors and felt dismissed and felt like the doctor put just just prescribed us a prescription and try to get us out the door and honestly that is not the way patients should be treated but we also need to consider the fact that it's not 100 the doctor's fault because they are probably overworked and they probably have to see four patients in an hour which is absolutely insane to do a history and physical and full exam on someone and really get to know them and what the root of their illness is it is very hard to do and then do that charting and then go and see the next patient that's completely different so i do kind of understand that to a sense but we have to do our best as physicians to find the root cause of the illness and osteopathic medicine really does that we are reminded of that whenever we're learning about things and that is completely like continuously emphasized in our class that we need to focus on the root cause of the illness and focus on all these different factors of a person a person isn't just their abdominal pain or their headache and honestly there are amazing treatments using omt for headaches and abdominal pain and basically everything if you have not looked into do school if you're interested in going to medical school um or osteopathic medical school um versus allopathic medical school then you really should look into it and please let me know if you have any questions about osteopathic medicine i'll do my best to answer them and this is in no way hating and saying that does are better than mds in no way saying that i'm just saying i'm so glad with my decision because there is these slight little differences um between them but they are still both amazing practicing physicians that help patients every day and this was kind of just my little input on it um so if you made it to the end of this video i really appreciate you and thank you so much and let me know if you have any questions and let me know if you are looking to see anything else on my youtube channel but thank you so much for watching and i hope that you have an amazing day

Channel: Rachel

Views: 12,319

Keywords: osteopathic medicine, do medical school, medical school, medical student, osteopathic medical school, what is osteopathic medicine, why do, choose do, rachel pray

Id: JwUfMuLRgFk

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021