Visit the scoliosis web page of Charlie Kornberg, a musculoskeletal physiotherapist, for information on what causes scoliosis and the different treatments available, including the benefits of physiotherapy for spinal curvature treatment.

A great web site with lots of information on scoliosis and alternative therapies, including yoga, is Scoliosis World. The site also has a message board and a chat room. Any type of information you could possibly want on scoliosis can be found on this site. It has a lot of links to sites for both conventional treatments and alternative treatments. My favorite part is their reader polls. Check them out to see if other people with scoliosis share your related symptoms and also to see what types of treatments work best for people with scoliosis, based on polls of people who actually have scoliosis. The polls include a lot of questions on surgery, the efficacy of chiropractic care (including the Copes program), and conditions often linked to the disorder such as irritable bowel syndrome and bleeding problems. The results are quite interesting. Also be sure to check out their nonsurgical alternatives page, Alternative Treatments.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Guidelines: Screening for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis has a very good critique of the different kinds of treatment for scoliosis and their efficacy. I highly recommend that everyone with an interest in the disorder read the article posted at this web site. The medical professionals who wrote this article, instead of just accepting conventional medical dogma that bracing and surgery are the only treatment options "proven" to work, seemed to really have combed through the medical literature trying to find actual studies to support these claims. The results may surprise you, as this site questions whether surgery and braces have been scientifically proven to be beneficial in the long term for scoliosis treatment, especially when the risks and complications have been factored in.  

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted is true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.  Orville Wright

This is a great site to read because it has new and fresh information about the efficacy of the different kinds of treatment. Most of the scoliosis web sites on the Internet are written by chiropractors, who have a vested interest in chiropractic care for scoliosis treatment, or orthopedists, who have a vested monetary interest in braces and surgery for scoliosis treatment. So this is one of the few sites around written by medical professionals who do not seem to have a financial interest in promoting one kind of treatment over another and have really taken an objective look at the disorder.

A good article on scoliosis with lots of information on the various treatments, including braces, surgery and exercise therapy comes from The International Council on Active Aging web site, called "Scoliosis". This is another article I recommend that everyone with the disorder should read. You can tell from the way it was written and the recent studies that it references that the authors really went out and combed the medical research literature for scoliosis studies--and did not just recite the status quo about braces and surgery. It has excellent information on the risks and complications from surgery, which you aren't likely to find on many orthopedists' web sites. It also covers the recently uncovered links to scoliosis and osteoporosis, and includes a reference to the recent research study that recommends that all children with scoliosis have bone density testing due to the high rate of osteopenia risk found in children with spinal curvature.

Google's Directory of Scoliosis Links - a human edited directory of scoliosis web sites. It has mostly conventional views of scoliosis, but because it is edited it eliminates a lot of the sites with just advertising and no real content. Another good human edited directory of links on spinal curvature may be found at Spinaldisorders.com.

Standing Up to Bad Posture has information on--you guessed it--improving your posture. The article makes the case that yoga can help improve your posture, and perhaps even your scoliosis.

For more useful information on improving your posture, see the site: www.alexandertechnique.com. Posture training was once a staple of scoliosis prevention and treatment. One of my older medical books noted that gondoliers used to get curved spines from being tilted to one side all of the time in the course of their work. Perhaps the old medical textbooks were right all along, as a recent study from Hong Kong showed promising results in scoliosis treatment using posture training.

A very logical medical site on Adult Scoliosis notes that exercise should be tried first, then bracing, and then surgery, if all of the conservative treatments have failed. I like this site because even though it is written by orthopedists, it acknowledges the role of exercise therapy for scoliosis as a first line treatment. It also discusses when bracing and surgery should be considered, and notes that surgery should "only be considered after careful review of all non-surgical options and failure of the 'conservative' treatment approaches. Only very rarely is surgery an emergency or first treatment." I like this approach. It makes a lot of sense to me. You can always have surgery if braces or surgery don't work, but once you have rods, screws or your spine fused, there is no going back. Your spine will have been surgically altered forever.

www.scoliosislife.net - A place to live with scoliosis. Discussions, information, humor, resources, stories, and more. Also see the other sections of this web site listed below for more scoliosis information.

 

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health. Hippocrates c. 460 - 377 B.C.

Pages With Scoliosis Information Within This Web Site:

Scoliosis - Can Diet and Exercise Help?

Scoliosis Exercises - Part I - books with exercises that helped correct my scoliosis.

Scoliosis Exercises - Part II

FAQ on Scoliosis Treatments - Part I - questions from my email.

FAQ Part II

FAQ Part III

Scoliosis Causes

How Exercise Helped My Scoliosis

Scoliosis Treatment - Alternative Methods

Visit my connective tissue disorder home page and use my search feature for more information on pectus excavatum, scoliosis, connective tissue disorders and related topics.  

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