Jonathan the Mountaineer

A fall on a railway station platform left him with a slipped disc and torn calf muscle – a couple of months before he was due to set off for the Yukon with climbing partner Ben.

The pair had both been to the Yukon before, trekking across remote glaciers to find peaks that had never been climbed. At the ages of 56 and 61 respectively, they were due to return for what they were planning as their final expedition.

But Jonathan’s tumble left him in excruciating pain – with no prospect of an early return to the sport he has loved since his days as a teenager in the Lake District. “It was like an electric shock that came from nowhere – and it just wasn’t easing. I didn’t know what I was going to do,” says the outdoor pursuits instructor. “There’s a huge waiting list for physio at the Devonshire Hospital and I really wanted to get fit in time to go away, because it was going to be our last time.”

However, a meeting with Phil Heler at Buxton Osteopathy Clinic brought a solution in the form of IDD Therapy. “It was so reassuring to hear someone say with confidence: ‘I know what’s wrong with you’,” he says. Phil diagnosed a slipped disc in Jonathan’s lower back, which was in turn trapping a nerve and weakening his foot, and suggested a course of IDD Therapy treatment.

And after seven sessions, Jonathan had recovered and was able to resume planning his Alaskan trip.

“IDD Therapy made an enormous difference,” he says. “I had an open mind about it, but now I would certainly recommend it, particularly to sports people. It has delivered everything it promised and allowed me to carry on climbing.”

Jonathan and Ben were flown on to a completely untouched glacier and then skied into the mountains, dragging their equipment on sledges. There they ascended the peaks they had set out to conquer before returning to be picked up.

And despite the original plan, Jonathan isn’t ruling out another return, to claim more of the Yukon’s virgin climbs…

IDD Therapy works by applying computer-controlled forces at precise angles to gently draw targeted spinal segments apart, relieving pressure on discs and trapped nerves and easing muscles and ligaments.