What are you trying to diagnose? What findings would you expect to elicit in a perfectly healthy individual? Please don't tell me you're feeling for energies, auras, or other intangible...qualities...
That would be something.
On a side (and related) note, the other day on my family medicine rotation I was paired up at clinic with a DO family doc. We were seeing patients the entire afternoon. We saw a man who had been told he was suffering from "cervical radiculopathy" of some sort. We weren't sure what level the lesion was at. He was complaining of vague neck pain and numbness all over the upper arm. The doc examined him, and then told me he would show me a trick that would improve the patient 50% at least and prevent him from needing surgery, at least for a while. He then proceeded to hold the patient by both sides of the mandible and briskly jerk his head 3 times towards the affected side, holding the position 30 seconds each time to "reset" the nerves (whatever that means). The patient screamed pretty loudly and afterward said his pain was twice as bad. The other attending scheduled imaging studies to be done the next week.
2 weeks later at the end of my rotation, I saw the same patient RTC and examined him. The pain was much worse than before and now the patient had wrist drop! BINGO - we now knew where to find the lesion (MRI of C spine was not yet read officially).
Amazing...OMM served very well as a diagnostic tool by accelerating the progress of the problem and further augmenting the injury. Otherwise, we would have been clueless until the MRI was reported.
I mean people have OMM all the time. Is it placebo? I'm just trying to wrap my mind around DWD I guess.
). I do basic science research on products that can be described as nutriceuticals and I run into this line of thinking all of the time. It is very deceptive and I fall for it myself sometimes. As a scientist, i have to be VERY careful to believe only what I can justify and prove.
