Osteopathy and Pediatrics

Pediatric osteopathy deals with newborn, child and adolescent population’s health.

After experiencing a strong growth over the last decades, pediatric osteopathy can now find increasingly vaster grounds on which to collaborate with hospital institutions, first of all the management of premature infants in collaboration with neonatologists and the rest of the neonatal intensive care staff.

Pediatric osteopathy aims at ensuring proper growth and sensorimotor, visceral and cognitive development of our children, by resolving restrictions and alterations that may arise from problems experienced by the mother during pregnancy, from a complicated delivery, from lactation failure or accidents and complications occurred during childhood.

Thanks to epigenetics and to the theory for which the origin of health and disease depends on development (DOHaD), we now know how fetal, neonatal and child health are crucial to adults’ good health. Pediatric osteopathy, taking care of children, therefore, aims at preventing pathological conditions that could occur later in life.

Moreover, since the neurosciences show how the development of affectivity and cognitive abilities is closely linked to sensorimotor development – the mind is “embodied” in the body -, pediatric osteopathy interventions aiming at releasing children’s involuntary movements (eg, breathing) and their voluntary ones from tissue restrictions using fascial, craniosacral, visceral or manipulative techniques can have important repercussions on the development of children’s intellectual, emotional and behavioral abilities.