I trained in modern medicine and to date still belief in it. I also belief that the body has an innate ability to stay healthy until something happens to disrupt its equilibrium...invading organisms such as bacteria or viruses, environmental toxins, trauma, hormonal deficiencies, poor dietary choices, inactivity all create disequilibrium and result in illness.
Hormones intrigued me. The intricacies of how different organs far apart interacted with one another through the hormonal network was fascinating. Imbalances (disequilibrium) in our hormones caused an array of bodily dysfunctions and recreating a state of equilibrium in our hormonal milieu has the potential of reversing illnesses. But hormones are but one of the many bodily systems in a state of equilibrium.
I chanced on Anti-Aging Medicine and Functional Medicine as i was plagued by a self induced illness called obesity, My beloved mom passed away of cancer and my dad of diabetes and heart disease. I believed that prevention is better than cure and the key was getting back into equilibrium. Changing my lifestyle, my diet and optimising my hormones worked wonders and i had to share it with others like me, hence my in-depth studies an training in the field of Anti-Aging and Functional Medicine.
Apart from Anti-Aging and Functional Medicine, I have always been intrigued with the musculoskeletal system although i knew orthopedic surgery was not a specialty for me. I always had a gift of being able to feel and identify a part of the musculoskeletal system that is out of place, asymmetrical or dysfuntional. I have always believed in soft tissue therapy for relief pain and dysfunction but as a doctor I had little tools besides giving pain meds to patients with musculoskeletal dysfunction. I would refer patients for physiotherapy and although it helps, it was just not getting the results I expected.
A twist of fate brought me to osteopathy. My wife slipped and fell while going down the staircase. She suffered an injury to the right sacroiliac joint and couldn't even lift her leg without feeling excruciating pain. Pain medications did not alleviate the pain. I did not know of any osteopaths in Malaysia but we went to a chiropractor for help and the treatments helped her tremendously.
A few weeks later I was involved in a 100 meter dash during my son's sports day where parents were asked to participate. At the start of the sprint I slipped and tumbled to the tarmac but quickly got up and continued to run to complete the race. Right after the race I started to feel something wrong. My left shoulder was extremely painful and i felt the shoulder had separated. Little did i know that the fall caused subluxations in my cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine as well. I visited the chiropractor that helped my wife but somehow, despite his excellent attempts to help me, nothing really worked. The cervical spine was set but returned to the abnormal position shortly after. Similarly, the lumbar spine correction only lasted a short while to the point where i was having sciatic pain to the toes of my feet. I also had numbness radiating from my midback, across the right side of my chest and to the front each time I carried something more than 5kgs on my right. He was not able to set the thoracic spine at all despite many visits.
I got intrigued as to why I wasn't getting better and started looking into it. I started looking at other methods of treatment and found osteopathy and the discovery is life changing.
Osteopathy is a natural medicine which aims to restore function in the body by treating the causes of pain and imbalance. To achieve this goal the Osteopathic Manual Practitioner relies on his/her thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, the quality and finesse of his/her palpation and works with the position, mobility and quality of the tissues and not merely realigning joints. The techniques are very gentle and include non manipulative techniques such as muscle energy, counterstrain, positional release, soft tissue therapy, cranial and visceral osteopathy which makes the practice of osteopathy very comprehensive. Bringing the human body back to equilibrium has allowed me to make a big difference in my patients' lives and i hope to continue doing so for the years to come.
