Congenital scoliosis (CS) is scoliosis already formed by birth. It is a developmental anomaly most likely caused by an insult to an embryo (Mackel et al., 2018). It occurs in 1/1000 infants and in 10 percent of all people with scoliosis (Pahys and Guille, 2018). The deformities of CS are most likely due to environmental […]

Maybe scoliosis is in your head. Katharina Schroth, founder of Schroth therapy for scoliosis wrote “with all scoliotic people the cause probably lies partly in the mental realm” (Schroth, 2007). Recent research studies may confirm her belief. These studies showed that neural activity in the motor association, motor cortex, and the frontal lobe areas of […]

Patients whose MRI’s show spinal disk irregularities often ask me if they will need surgery. Surgery isn’t the first thing you do because an MRI shows a disk bulge. When it is it is often the last option.  Ernst, Stadnik, Peeters, Breucg and Osteaux (2005) reported that 73 percent of 33 subjects without any symptoms […]

Schroth conscious standing posture is a way of standing that helps to correct a patient’s scoliosis by de-rotating and moving their major curve towards a corrected position. Schroth therapists teach postures that help correct curves because patients sit and stand many more hours each day than they do their Schroth exercises.  A recent pilot study […]

Active Spine Physical Therapy recommends that adolescents with scoliosis do Schroth therapy, a physical therapy specific exercise (PSE) for scoliosis in conjunction with Cheneau -Rigo (CR) bracing. The CR brace is a scoliosis correction brace designed to work with Schroth exercises (Rigo & Jelačić, 2017). Recent studies prove that bracing is an effective way to […]

Thoracic hyperkyphosis is a condition where the posterior curve of the upper spine in the measures more than 45 degrees (Feng, Wang, Zhang& Zhou, 2018). The most common kinds of hyperkyphosis are Scheurmann’s, age related, and postural (Bezalel, Levi & Kalichman, 2019; Feng et al., 2018; Roghani, Zavieh, Manshadi, King & Katzman, 2017). According to […]

Adult onset scoliosis is caused by degeneration of the vertebrae that begins with the disintegration of parts of the spinal discs (Garcia-Ramos et al., 2015; Oskouian &Shaffrey, 2006; Wong, Oh, & Gray, 2017). Uneven disk space then leads to loss of vertebral integrity so that the vertebrae become wedge shaped. The wedging in the vertebrae […]

Juvenile idiopathic (unknown origin) scoliosis is scoliosis that occurs in children between the ages of three and nine (Vitale, 2019).  Although it accounts for less than one quarter of scoliosis’s that are idiopathic, seventy percent of children with scoliosis will have curve angles that will increase sufficiently to need treatment (Vitale, 2019).  Research showed that […]

I use a very effective treatment for CRPS called visual mirror imagery (VMI). VMI uses a mirror box to hide the body part with CRPS. The patient then moves the opposite side body part which is placed in front of a mirror on the box. While moving both body part simultaneously, the patient visualizes that […]