{"id":4639,"date":"2021-11-03T22:30:42","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T21:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/article-in-stern-after-covid-19-osteopaths-aim-to-alleviate-olfactory-disorders-with-a-new-therapeutic-approach\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T10:02:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T09:02:21","slug":"article-in-stern-after-covid-19-osteopaths-aim-to-alleviate-olfactory-disorders-with-a-new-therapeutic-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/article-in-stern-after-covid-19-osteopaths-aim-to-alleviate-olfactory-disorders-with-a-new-therapeutic-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"Article in Stern: After Covid-19: Osteopaths aim to alleviate olfactory disorders with a new therapeutic approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

As reported in the article in Stern, osteopath Dr. Oliver Wirtz stated that osteopathic approaches could alleviate olfactory disorders after Covid-19.  (Article stern.de 19\/10\/2021 \/ 18:55) After Covid-19: Osteopaths want to alleviate smell disorders with a new therapeutic approach<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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First of all, it is certainly an interesting question whether osteopathy can help with Long Covid-19. Personal experience of successful treatments by individual osteopaths is the first step. For this reason, I am pleased about Wirtz\u2019s positive treatment outcomes and the reporting on them. It is now necessary to investigate in studies whether these individual experiences are merely anecdotal in nature or whether osteopaths can actually contribute to the treatment of Long Covid.<\/p>\n

I consider Wirtz\u2019s assessment that the smell disorder is primarily due to tension in the dural system to be too reductionist. Perhaps\u2014accidentally\u2014much more was also \u201ctreated\u201d with the hands than was originally consciously intended. Many mechanisms of action have by no means been conclusively investigated. From my perspective, in addition to dural treatment as recommended by Wirtz, this should also include mobilisation of the lamina cribrosa of the ethmoid bone, treatment of the entire nasal region, the gliding capacity of the olfactory nerve (Liem 2020), the arterial supply to the nose, as well as lymphatic treatment of the nasal region, the deep neck, the brain and the head (Liem 2017, drainage of the brain), and\u2014depending on the patient\u2014further osteopathic interventions. This is how we treated patients in our practice, and I achieved good results with smell disorders after Covid illness. However, this working hypothesis would also need to be further investigated scientifically. It is quite possible that osteopathy, as part of a multidisciplinary treatment approach, can make its contribution to Long Covid, as also postulated by a publication by Marin et al. 2021, 2022) and calling for further biological and clinical research.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, at the present time we should not make exaggerated claims about treatment outcomes. The following errors should be avoided: misinterpretations, cherry-picking of information in narrative reviews, and a lack of methodological rigour, as Draper-Rodi et al. (2021) write with regard to publications on osteopathic treatment of Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Around 50 million people died from the Spanish flu (influenza) at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, 2,445 osteopaths treated 110,122 influenza patients with osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT).   These showed a significantly lower morbidity and mortality rate compared to patients treated with the standard medical care at the time. Even if these results should be interpreted with caution, as the scientific standards of that era showed deficiencies in the standardization of research methods and criteria, in my opinion, there would have been sufficient evidence to assume that osteopathy could also help in the treatment of Covid-19, which would justify an investigation of this assumption. (Baroni et al. 2021, see LiemHealthBlog<\/a>, Liem 2020 (Article), Stenta et al 2020, Martinez, Reddig 2020, Thibault et al 2020) (see LiemHealthBlog<\/a>) This could have been investigated particularly during the period when no vaccines were available, which unfortunately did not happen, not even in the USA, where many osteopaths work in hospitals. Baroni F, Mancini D, Tuscano SC, et al. Osteopathic manipulative treatment and the Spanish flu: a historical literature review. J Osteopath Med<\/i>. 2021;121(2):181-190 Draper-Rodi J, Vaucher P, Thomson OP. The importance of rigour in the reporting of evidence for osteopathic care in Covid-19 papers.  Explore (NY)<\/i>. 2021;17(3):184-185. Liem T. OMT in the treatment of infectious diseases at the beginning of the 20th century: With notes from current research and treatment modalities, Osteopathische Medizin 2020; 21 (2), 4-9. Liem T. Praxis der Kraniosakralen Osteopathie, 2020; 4th revised and expanded edition, Thieme, Stuttgart. Liem T. Update on brain drainage and osteopathic treatment approaches, Osteopathische Medizin 2017; 18 (2), 22\u201327. Marin T, Maxel X, Robin A, Stubbe L. Evidence-based assessment of potential therapeutic effects of adjunct osteopathic medicine for multidisciplinary care of acute and convalescent COVID-19 patients.  Explore (NY)<\/i>. 2021;17(2):141-147. Marin T, Maxel X, Robin A, Stubbe L. Evidence-based assessment of potential therapeutic effects of adjunct osteopathic medicine for multidisciplinary care of acute and convalescent COVID-19 patients. Explore (NY). 2021 Mar-Apr;17(2):141-147. Martinez E, Redding D. Osteopathic Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2020 Jul 13. Stenta ME. Buying Time: Using OMM to Potentially Reduce the Demand for Mechanical Ventilation in Patients With COVID-19. J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2020 May 18. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As reported in the article in Stern, osteopath Dr. Oliver Wirtz stated that osteopathic approaches could alleviate olfactory disorders after Covid-19. (Article stern.de 19.10.2021 \/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"Osteopathy for olfactory disorders after Covid-19","_seopress_titles_desc":"Osteopath Dr Oliver Wirtz explains in Stern how osteopathic approaches can specifically alleviate post-viral anosmia after Covid-19.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"themenbereich":[],"class_list":["post-4639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-osteopathic-research-clinic"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5412,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions\/5412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4639"},{"taxonomy":"themenbereich","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosomatic-osteopathy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/themenbereich?post=4639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}