Scoliosis brace treatment has been proven to be ineffective and in most cases will cause more harm than good. The entire idea that you can squeeze your body into a rigid piece of plastic and straighten your spine and then hold it here until you are done growing is insane. The spine relies on intrinsic type I posture muscles to hold its position upright in gravity. The brain senses gravity and body position through receptors in your feet, body, eyes, and inner ear canals. This incoming information is then used to send messages to the spinal muscles which create an upright balanced center of gravity so you don’t tip over. By using artificial support to hold your spine more erect you are using a crutch and what you don’t use you lose. If you were to use a wheelchair to get around would your legs get stronger or weaker?

In the world of musculoskeletal healthcare it is a known fact that immobilization of a synovial joint is only recommended for instability and fractures neither of which are present in scoliosis. There are studies demonstrating adverse effects of immobilization including muscle weakness and accelerated degeneration of collagen which makes up the discs, ligaments, and cartilage of your spine. Studies performed comparing non braced patients to braced patients have confirmed that spinal bracing does not alter the natural course of scoliosis progression when genetic scores accompanied the brace studies. High progression risk patients still progressed even with the brace and low progression risk patients didn’t progress even without the brace. The brace makers keep building better braces that demonstrate better correction on x-ray but fail to realize the amount of correction measured while wearing the brace is irrelevant because the principle of immobilization is a failed principle when dealing with a neurological condition of the spine.

Some scoliosis brace treatment involves the concept of night bracing to overcorrect the spine while you are growing. The thought process is based on the etiology model of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis being scoliosis is caused from abnormal wedged growth plates and by reducing pressure on the growth plates on the inside of the curve it will alter the bone and create somewhat of a reversed wedge. This would work accept the wedging is known to be secondary to the scoliosis and not the cause. Once again brace makers are trying to force correction into the spine with very little success. If patients really knew the truth about spinal bracing I don’t think they would wear them. I think the reason patients and doctors are involved in scoliosis brace treatment is because they feel trapped into doing the brace or doing nothing until it reaches surgical threshold. I guess if I had early stage cancer and the option was to bang my head against the wall in hopes to stop its progression being the only option I would probably start smacking my head against a wall.

The simple truth is that scoliosis brace treatment is a failed experiment that keeps resurfacing based on the lack of better alternatives. The time has come for clinicians like myself, to start spreading the news about new innovative approaches for reducing and stabilizing scoliosis rather than allow patients to keep banging their heads against the wall with a age old concept that doesn’t work and subjects children to emotional trauma created from wearing a scoliosis brace.

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