FAQ

Acupuncture can often complement osteopathic treatments.

I believe they can provide value, so I may refer you to them when appropriate.

OMT is a physician-delivered, hands-on medical treatment that uses gentle pressure, stretching, and positioning to improve function and comfort. In infants, I focus on soft-tissue, balanced ligamentous, myofascial, and cranial techniques—no thrusting.

Osteopathic medicine combines the knowledge of a fully licensed physician (DO) with hands-on techniques designed to ease discomfort and support the body’s natural ability to move and function. Many of our Houston patients describe feeling more mobile and energized after sessions.

This is variable depending upon what is being treated and how extensive your treatment needs to be.  Our goal is to bring you to optimal health so that you won’t need to continually return.

According to the AOA, in 2013, 22,176 (36.9%) went into family medicine, 1,134 (1.9%) went into NMM/OMM and family medicine specialties who stress OMT in their practice, 20 (.025%) are Neuromusculoskeletal Med/OMM physicians in Texas. Out of these 20 they will either become a practitioner, consultant, professor, or researcher. 1 of them has a private practice dedicated to only OMM/NMM in Houston who loves working with new families.

9 Years.

Physicians are required to be licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. by the licensing board in each state they wish to practice.

A board certified physician has completed an additional training program in a specialty and has passed a rigorous exam to assess his or her knowledge, skills and experience to provide quality patient care in that specialty.

In my case, I am licensed to practice medicine in Texas, and I have two board certifications. The first one is Family Medicine and the second one is Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine/Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine.

The first visit is an hour long, during which I take an extensive history to understand your unique situation. Then the rest of the time is spent performing osteopathic manipulative treatment. It is best if you wear loose, comfortable clothing for your treatments. Follow-up visits are half an hour.

Osteopathic care at our Houston clinic focuses on non-pharmacological, hands-on approaches. While Dr. Banik is a licensed physician who understands when medication or surgery may be necessary, her clinic emphasizes natural techniques that may reduce reliance on prescriptions or invasive procedures.

The primary differences between an Osteopathic physician and a chiropractor are their levels of training and the scope of their practice. A chiropractor is not a licensed physician and has not completed residency training in a hospital. The scope of chiropractic practice is defined by statute as “including the diagnosing and locating of misaligned or displaced vertebrae and, through manual manipulation and adjustment of the spine and other skeletal structures, treating disorders of the human body. The practice of chiropractic does not include the use of drugs or surgery, or the practice of osteopathy, obstetrics, or any other branch of medicine”.

Chiropractic is primarily concerned with normalizing the alignment of the spine to influence the relationship between the spinal column and the nervous system. Although their techniques have expanded somewhat in recent years to include more gentle techniques, the vast majority of chiropractic adjustments are still of the thrust variety, which you know as “popping and cracking.”

Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine is based upon the principle that the human body possesses self healing/self regulating mechanisms that are the source of true healing. For example, when you get cut, the wound doesn’t just stay open. The body heals itself over a period of days. The Osteopath is trained to discover the treatment plan that these self-healing forces have already designed, in that moment, specifically for that patient. The focus in treatment, therefore, goes beyond simple spinal alignment, to dealing directly with the abnormal body physiology using an array of direct and indirect techniques. This more holistic healthcare perspective, affords the Osteopath a broader spectrum of therapeutic options in addition to thrust techniques that chiropractors use.

YES!! Not as frequently as I would like because I need to travel to see my osteopathic mentor.

While every patient is different, studies have shown pregnant women treated with OMT experienced:

• Decreased low back pain
• Decreased sacroiliac dysfunction (which is a contributor to low back pain and can cause difficulties during the birthing process)
• Decreased carpal tunnel syndrome (you have more blood volume in your system during pregnancy, and this increased fluid can cause pressure in your wrists leading to carpal tunnel syndrome)
• Decreased fluid overload (which means decreased swelling in your feet)
• Decreased blood pressure (which is important because high blood pressure can cause complications during your pregnancy that lead to induction or emergency c-sections)
• Decreased likelihood of a having a preterm delivery
• Decreased duration of labor
• Decreased use of forceps during delivery
• Decreased probability of having meconium-stained amniotic fluid (meconium is your baby’s first poop. When the baby is stressed in the womb, they can sometimes poop in the womb, which is NOT something you want your baby inhaling on its first breath)

While every patient is different, studies have shown newborn children treated with OMT experienced:

• Improved breast-feeding
• Reduction in infantile colic (inconsolable crying)
• Reduction in plagiocephaly (flat spots on baby’s heads, which are more common these days with baby’s being advised to only sleep on their backs)
• Reduction in otitis media (middle ear infections)
• Reduction in torticolis (where the baby’s head prefers to look in one direction only)
• Improved asthma symptoms
• Improved postural symmetry in infants

Yes, I provide a superbill at the end of your visit, which you can then file with your insurance company as an out-of-network provider. After you have met your out-of-network deductible, your insurance company will reimburse you at the rates according to your specific plan.

I like to look at it this way. In most cases when you go to the doctor, you pay your copay at the time of your visit, and then several months later, you get a bill to pay because no insurance company covers everything. In coming to see me, you pay for everything up front, and then you can get reimbursed, and you’ll end up paying about the same amount as if you combined your copay and the bill you’d receive later.

The American Osteopathic Association, also known as the AOA, has a wonderful explanation on their website. You are more than just the sum of your body parts. That’s why DOs practice a “whole person” approach to health care. Instead of just treating your specific symptoms, osteopathic physicians concentrate on treating you as a whole.

The curriculum at osteopathic medical schools consists of four years of academic study. Reflecting osteopathic philosophy, the curriculum emphasizes preventive medicine and comprehensive patient care. Throughout the curriculum, osteopathic medical students learn to use osteopathic principles and osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT for short) to diagnose illness and treat patients with their hands. Osteopathic physicians understand how all the body’s systems are interconnected and how each one affects the others. This special training in the musculoskeletal system allows them to better understand how that system influences the condition of all other body systems. Being able to identify conditions and treat them using OMT encourages your body’s natural tendency toward health and self-healing.

Currently there are more than 80,000 DO’s in the United States.

The short answer is No. You will need to ask your physician if they use this, or you can look them up in the AOA website www.osteopathic.org

When people speak of manual medicine, a lot of them think of only musculoskeletal problems like neck pain, back pain, knee pain, and other joint pains. There are many other medical applications for OMT, some of which include headaches, sinus infections, ear infections, pneumonia, asthma, reflux, constipation, and even assisting your body to recover after surgery.

DOs and MDs are alike in many ways:

Students entering both DO and MD medical colleges typically have already completed four-year bachelor’s degrees with an emphasis on scientific courses.
Both DOs and MDs complete four years of basic medical education. At the end of this you are technically a doctor.

After medical school, both DOs and MDs obtain graduate medical education through internships, residencies and fellowships. This training lasts three to eight years and prepares DOs and MDs to practice a specialty.

Both DOs and MDs can choose to practice in any specialty of medicine—such as pediatrics, family medicine, psychiatry, surgery or ophthalmology, to name a few.
DOs and MDs must pass comparable examinations to obtain state licenses.
DOs and MDs both practice in accredited and licensed health care facilities.
Together, DOs and MDs enhance the state of health care available in the U.S.

D.O. stands for doctor of osteopathic medicine. DOs are complete physicians, fully trained and licensed to prescribe medicine and to perform surgery, as well as enter any other medical specialty.

Yes. Sometimes people have a treatment reaction where they feel some soreness for a day or two afterwards. The best way to deal with this is to make sure you drink plentiful fluids to flush out any toxins that were released during treatment. Sitting in an Epson salt bath also helps reduce the treatment reaction. Not everybody has a treatment reaction; it just depends upon how your body reacts.

The first visit is an hour long, during which I take an extensive history to understand your unique situation and then the rest of the time is spent performing osteopathic manipulative treatment. It is best if you wear loose, comfortable clothing for your treatments. Follow- up visits are half an hour.

This is different from the usual office visit when you go to the doctor. Let me give a story, My husband recently went into a doctor’s appointment and showed up on time, as he is busy. After waiting for 40 minutes he was finally brought back into an exam room, where he was now clearly upset. Then an additional twenty minutes went by where he waited impatiently and had to reschedule a work call. When the doctor did arrive in the room, they spent a grand total of five minutes speaking to him, typed on the computer for five more, handed a prescription to him, and then left. This is in large part due to the current volume-based business model driven by the insurance companies who reimburse the physicians. My husband and I do not believe that quality healthcare can be provided in five or ten minutes. In my opinion this is not the physician’s fault. They typically come out of training with an average of ¼ million dollars in debt that has to be paid back, and they are bound by how insurance companies reimburse them. When removing the insurance company from the equation, I now have the ability to spend a full hour with new patients and thirty minutes on follow ups. I have chosen my current practice model to allow me the time I feel is necessary to deliver quality care to my patients. This means I can see a maximum of 8 new patients per day.

You can choose to do both. You can also choose to do neither. The helmet can reshape the head (not treat torticollis), and PT can stretch the neck muscles. However, neither the helmet nor PT addresses the root causes of plagiocephaly and torticollis. Osteopathic treatment aims to get to the bottom of why plagiocephaly and torticollis happened in the first place, without making you feel guilty or judged, and you can spend less time juggling appointments.

The helmet puts pressure on one part of the head and leaves space for the other part of the head to grow into. Each bone of the skull grows from the center called an ossification center. Helmets, when they’re holding parts of the skull still, can create strains in the individual bones as they’re growing out from the ossification center. Osteopathic treatment avoids creating strains in the bones. Most importantly, osteopathic treatment addresses the root cause of why the head became misshapen in the first place, something the helmet does not do, as well as reshapes the head. The head is a continuum, and osteopathic treatment can also address changes in facial asymmetries, like when one eye is smaller or cheek is bigger or ears are misaligned.

Yes, osteopathic treatment is safe for neonates and children as they grow older. I like to show parents on their hands the type of pressure I would use on their babies to reassure them treatment will not hurt their baby.

The three common things babies experience after treatment are they might poop (because the nerves going to their colon are freed up), they might be hungry/thirsty, and they might be sleepy. Many parents report that their babies slept really well after treatment.

Every child is different. What they present with is unique and the severity can differ from person to person. All these things will determine how quickly the body responds to treatment. I take pictures before and after each treatment. The first set is taken as a baseline. The following pictures are taken to show progress, and the further we go with treatment, the more changes can be seen. Another reason for pictures is when you’re with your baby everyday, it’s harder to see subtle differences. Pictures taken at the visits can be reassuring to parents. Treatment can take several weeks to months, depending on severity.