OMM Research

I always caveat my passion for OMT by stating that it is a great tool and provide a great use, but that it's not like it will cure cancer or anything. True, it is awesome for musculoskeletal pain, headaches, migraines, pregnancy uncomfortabilities, and even some GI or autonomic problems. Well, I recently had the opportunity to perhaps build on that foundation when I teamed up with Midwestern's OMM department for their Parkinson's research study. I was asked to be one of the clinicians for the study, where I would either perform an experimental treatment or a sham patient, assigned randomly to study participants over a 6 week period. The aim of this study was to see if the use of OMT, specifically Muscle Energy/PNF, could reduce physical symptoms felt from Parkinson's Disease. Muscle Energy uses proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation that targets the golgi tendon organs and muscle spindles and manipulates their normal responses in order to increase flexibility, decrease pain, and increase overall functionality to a given muscle group.

This turned out to be a very cool study indeed! It was awesome interacting with these Parkinson's patients! It was randomly assigned whether of not the would receive real or sham treatments, but those who were sham patients would be given 6 real treatments upon completion of the trial. It was still hard performing the sham treatment to the same person week after week, especially when the would come in and tell me that they felt like they were improving. What can I say? I'm just a darn good sham clinician! The post-trial assessments were just done on Friday, so I am excited to see how the results are! Hopefully good enough to be published, as that does look very good for residency!