Scoliosis can be a painful, scary and seemingly hopeless health condition to endure. It’s not entirely uncommon for scoliosis to cause partial paralysis and back surgery has a relatively low success rate in comparison to what surgery can do for other parts of the body. While chiropractic care is no guaranteed cure for every case of scoliosis, it can do a lot of good and should be the first line of defense.
If detected early in its development, the chances of controlling the problem are very good. Some sufferers who identified and addressed their scoliosis in the early stages have reported the scoliosis being cured completely after less than a year of regular chiropractic treatment and therapy. The signs of scoliosis can include a ‘rib hump’, caused by protruding ribs thanks to an uneven spine, or shoulders that aren’t level. Many scoliosis clinics are conducted free of charge, so if scoliosis is suspected, there’s no excuse to not get a professional diagnosis as soon as possible.
The alternatives to chiropractic care as a counter-scoliosis measure include spinal fusion or the Milwaukee Brace. The brace is uncomfortable and does nothing to correct the curves, it merely stabilizes the patient. The brace also limits mobility, so it’s seen as more of a temporary fix than any kind of permanent solution. Spinal fusion surgery is the very last resort. Spinal fusion is an uncomfortable process involving taking splinters from other bones on the patient’s body, or a donor’s bones and applying them between vertebrae so that the two vertebrae eventually grow into a single bone. For obvious reasons, if successful, spinal fusion will demand drastic changes in the patient’s lifestyle and may be nearly as immobilizing as the scoliosis itself. Surgery will also have to be accompanied by medicine and intensive therapy. If unsuccessful, it may cause intense pain or paralysis.
Chiropractic care, on the other hand, has shown to cause at least some significant improvement and curve reduction in about 70% of scoliosis sufferers and it has been shown to completely cure about 15% of them. That means that fifteen out of one hundred scoliosis sufferers may be able to rid themselves of the problem in less than a year’s time thanks to chiropractic care and seven out of ten will at least see their condition improve to the point where they won’t have to worry about expensive, time consuming surgery and the risks involved. These latter sufferers may not be completely rid of their scoliosis, but thanks to chiropractic care, will at least find the condition becoming somewhat manageable.