An Alternative Prospective on Scoliosis

We all know someone who has scoliosis. Chances are it is a girl or a woman who developed it around puberty. This idiopathic (unknown cause) form is more common than congenital forms.

Treating the twist usually involves one of three approaches. The least invasive is exercise or physical therapy, the next requires braces, and the last resort is surgery, which can be insertion of a Harrington rod in the spine.

To understand the consequences of these approaches, we must understand what is pulling the vertebrae out of alignment. The skeleton sits in a web of soft tissue and the 600 plus muscles are just a part of this web. No one knows exactly why the soft tissue begins to pull unevenly on the vertebrae creating scoliosis.

A new twist on treatment

Rather than attempting to pull the spine back in place with tightening other soft tissue through exercise and bracing or inserting a steel rod, it is best to determine what is pulling the vertebrae out of place and release those tightened muscles.

Particularly when the young adolescent is first developing scoliosis, the body is amenable to letting go of its tension. Sheets of connective (fascial) tissue hold everything together and travel beyond individual muscles. This means that tension or imbalance in the legs will affect the back, first by causing an uneven base for the spine, then also from the uneven pull.

Not only is releasing the soft tissue strain the least invasive approach, it can be the most sustainable. If the strain is gone, then the chance of the curve returning is gone; just like patching a crack in a wall first by leveling the foundation allows the patch to last.

Twenty years ago,  a physician referred  a middle age woman to me for Rolfing who developed scoliosis as a teenager. She came back for her fourth session telling me an x-ray her doc took showed an improvement. After her tenth session, I took a set of Polaroid-pictures to compare to her before photos. She was standing straight. Yes, if you looked closely you could see a small curve, but with clothes on she looked straighter than most.  Upon viewing her before and after photos, she found it hard to believe she was really straight after all those years of suffering with scoliosis. Working with the soft tissue causes for skeletal misalignment oftentimes is one of the best solutions for the correction of this condition.

Owen Marcus, MA Certified Advance Rolfer, www.align.org, 265.8440.

Related posts:

1. How to Change Your Posture Image via Wikipedia Who told you how to strand straight?...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tagged as: Back and Spine, Muscle, Musculoskeletal Disorders, Vertebral column