Can osteopathy help with heart burn?
Acid reflux or heart burn is the predominant symptom of Gastroesophageal Reflux or GERD. It’s estimated that over 20% of the Western world suffer from GERD. It’s a painful and limiting condition that can effect diet, sleep, activity and work. It can lead to more serious conditions such as Barrett’s osophagus.
Sharma and Yadlapati (2021) stated that the pathogenesis of GERD is an interpaly of chemical, mechanical, psychologic, and neurologic mechanisms. Patients often present with impaired esophageal motility and lower esophageal sphincter (LES) dysfunction.
In osteopathy we are interested in the diaphragm muscle as it surrounds the osophagus, phrenic and vagus nerves. Good movement of the diaphragm ensures a change in pressure gradients in the thoracic and abdominal cavities to aid breathing and digestion. A dysfunctional diaphragm can inhibit the lower esophageal sphincter and cause contents to back wash into the osophagus.
In 2019 Eguaras and colleagues performed a randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled trial. They recruited 60 subjects suffering with GERD from a private digestive clinic in Spain. They received two sessions of a single manual osteopathic technique aimed at the patients epigastric area for 5minutes. After just one 5 minute treatment patients symptoms improved by 37.8%.
It must be pointed out that during most osteopathy treatments a variety of techniques are administered so this may lead to better improvements. The researchers had to limit the treatment to one osteopathic technique so they could clearly measure that each patient was receiving the exact same technique for same amount of time..
If you’ve been suffering from heart burn and would like to try osteopathy then please get in touch.
References:
Chen J, Brady P. Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Gastroenterol Nurs. 2019 Jan/Feb;42(1):20-28. doi: 10.1097/SGA.0000000000000359. PMID: 30688703.
Eguaras N, Rodríguez-López ES, Lopez-Dicastillo O, Franco-Sierra MÁ, Ricard F, Oliva-Pascual-Vaca Á. Effects of Osteopathic Visceral Treatment in Patients with Gastroesophageal Reflux: A Randomized Controlled Trial. J Clin Med. 2019 Oct 19;8(10):1738. doi: 10.3390/jcm8101738. PMID: 31635110; PMCID: PMC6832476.
Richter JE, Rubenstein JH. Presentation and Epidemiology of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. Gastroenterology. 2018 Jan;154(2):267-276. doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2017.07.045. Epub 2017 Aug 3. PMID: 28780072; PMCID: PMC5797499.
Sharma P, Yadlapati R. Pathophysiology and treatment options for gastroesophageal reflux disease: looking beyond acid. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2021 Feb;1486(1):3-14. doi: 10.1111/nyas.14501. Epub 2020 Oct 4. PMID: 33015827; PMCID: PMC9792178.