Business Innovators Radio - Spotlight on Scoliosis

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Scoliosis is a sideways curvature of the spine that is most often diagnosed in childhood. The condition can range from mild to severe and can worsen over time. The curvature can be painful in some cases; for others, it might limit mobility, flexibility, and function. The good news is that scoliosis can be addressed at any age through specific chiropractic care. And even better – most children respond extremely well to care and show significant spinal improvements!Tune episode is a Spotlight on Scoliosis. Dr. Dan and Angela will discuss what it means if you’re told you have scoliosis and what you can do about it. They’ll also share ways to tell if you or a little loved one in your life should have their spine checked for sideways curvatures. The information they’ll share could be your key to correction.To learn more about this and other hot health topics, follow us on social media and subscribe to our WTH podcast. If you have a specific health question or would like to find out if we can help you with a personal health challenge, check out our office page or contact us at 412-369-0400/ [e-mail]. As always, our mission is to help you Get Healthy and Stay Healthy for a Lifetime! What the Health?!https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/what-the-health/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/spotlight-on-scoliosis

Welcome to What the Health, where anything health is fair game as we tackle the trends and bust the myths about health and wellness. Here are your hosts, Dr. Dan and Angela Toro. And welcome to another episode of What the Health I am, Dr. Dan, here with my co-host. Angela, welcome back, guys. Do our little disclaimer here. As you guys know, we're here for informational purposes only, in no way offering individualized medical advice. Always talk to your trusted health care provider. before making changes to your routine.

Although on this one, I would say, Dr. Dan, should be your trusted health care provider because today we are talking about something that everyone, you know, whoever went through elementary school or middle school, is very familiar with, which is the scoliosis check. Scoliosis.

I don't even think we came up with a fun title for this one. But, yeah, we'll just jump right in. So the best way to diagnose scoliosis is just bend over and look at your spine, right? I'm right now. Let's first define this. And Angela is absolutely right. If there's one thing that I would consider myself somewhat of an expert in, it's the spine.

Which your patient should be happy to hear. Yeah, patients should be happy to hear. So if you're listening, thank you. But yes, I do consider myself somewhat of an expert in that area. But when we talk about scoliosis, we're primarily talking about structure. So when you look at the spine straight on, okay, from the back or from the front, whichever way you want to look at it. But when you're looking at the spine, front to back, back to front,

it should be straight from top to bottom. So the head should be directly over the neck. Neck should be directly over the thoracic, which is the middle of the spine where all the ribs attach. And then that should be directly over the lumbar spine, which is your lower back, which should be directly over your tailbone and hips. So with that being said, when you look at your spine from the side, you should have some curvature.

When I say, oh, yeah, your spine should be curved. depends on what direction you're looking at. If you look at the spine from the side, there should actually be three healthy curves to it. You should have a forward curve in the neck, a backward curve in the middle of the back, and then another forward curve in the low back. And those curves actually help develop the shock absorption of the spine.

And it also helps to then protect that spinal cord, which is, you know, we talk about all the time, is an extension of the brain. Okay. So you've got the brain and the spinal cord which is part of your central nervous system, you know, again, which controls and coordinates all the messaging and communication within the body. So it's kind of important, right? So we're really talking about just, you know, looking from that front to back or back to front direction.

And a scoliosis is a structural dysfunction where the spine, whether it's in a little bit in the neck, They're commonly found in the neck in the upper back or the middle of the back. You get a sideways curvature. So the spine, instead of being straight from top to bottom, it starts to deviate either to the left or the right. And in 80% of the time, okay, of scoliosis cases, okay? So 80% of all scoliosis cases are considered idiopathic, meaning they have no idea. why it happens. So

when we look at this, if we don't know why it happens, can't really prevent it. Yeah, it's hard to prevent it, right? But interestingly enough, I have some theories as a, again, as we are looking at this.

But let's get, before we go there, let's get into, you know, how is it checked right now? When you, when you go into your, you know, your nurse at school and they do these choliosis, I don't even know if they still do it. I don't know. That's literally all I think about is

it was always a gym class. Yeah, right. It's like, all right, you know. Stand up straight. Okay, no, bend it over. Yeah. But interestingly enough, well, that'll be another point I get to here.

But yeah, so, you know, the nurse was, you know, the nurse or other healthcare practitioner, you know, you'd stand, you'd go behind a curtain. I hope they were a nurse. Nurse or other healthcare professional, right? Yeah.

Joe Schmo. Whoever was available that. day. Okay. You go behind the curtain and you flip your shirt up over your head and then they'd look at you straight up and down and then they'd have you slowly bend forward and they'd see how does the spine look whenever you are straight and then bending forward. So in severe cases of scoliosis, yes, you can see, you know, pretty significant deviation of the ribs, you can see curvature of the spine, height of the shoulders, you know, deviation of their head. hip alignment, you know, one, one glute muscle is sitting way back or forward.

So, but that's in more severe cases of scoliosis. Now, to be considered, you know, a mild scoliosis case is, you know, anything up to really like 25 degrees, okay, which even 25 degrees, if you look at an x-ray, is fairly substantial. Yeah. But that's actually considered in the actual textbook definition, a mild scoliosis is 25 degrees or less. So 0 to 25 degrees would be considered mild. Those are the cases, you know, that, again, in young children, you know, as their spine is developing, see, the spine doesn't hit maturity, okay? The skeletal system, you know, spine being included in that, doesn't hit full maturity until about 20 to 24 years of age.

That's when, you know, and again, it depends on male, female, you know, lots of many different factors there. But on average, 20 to 24 years of age, that's when the spine is fully matured. ligaments have stopped growing, muscles have gained their tension, the joints, the bones themselves have stopped growing. And so we've kind of hit this mature phase of like that's the structure of the spine. But in that developmental process from zero and time you're born all the way up until that spinal maturity process, you're growing, you're developing, you're adapting, you're changing. That is when we can get the really the greatest amount of change in those scoliosis or curvature cases. And, you know, we do a very specific X-ray analysis of looking at how are the hips and the tailbones rotated. Because many times these scoliosis are coming from the foundation and something is off in the tailbone or the hips.

How it got like that? Well, we can go down a whole path of like, oh, and just take a look at, you know, my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and bounces on a trampoline and falls down on her butt, smacks her head off of the grand countertop. It's like, you know, go into this myriad of, you know, brutal physical trauma. traumas that all these kids go to. I was thinking about the night we were at the table and she three times. Three times hit her head on the same spot of the table. I'm like, it's the same height

it has to change. She's not any playing at the table with the dog or you know doing something and then boom, boom, boom, you know, three times in a row within like a 10 minute timeframe. It's like, oh, well, I'm going to have to look at that. But yeah, so that's, you know, I know I'm going to go back to B.J. Palmer, the, has a famous quote,

Right? I get made fun of all the time because I misquote it, but I think I have it in my head today. Yours is better. BJ Palmer talks, had a quote that as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Okay? See, I did. So if you go outside, you have like a little stapling tree that's starting to grow. And you go out and just, you know, maybe like tie it down so there's a little bend in it. Then that tree, there's forces in there.

mechanical forces on the bark and on the trunk that the tree will actually grow with a bend in it. And actually it'll start to grow sideways for a little while and then it'll start to write itself and go back because it compensates. The same thing, the same amazing thing happens in the spine. So if you have, you know, let's say you have a slip and a fall and you know, let me land on your butt. Well, the body self-adjusts all the time, right? We all get out of bed in the morning sometimes. We reach up and, you know, get a little hopper. prick or, you know, oh, what was that? It's like, the body self-adjusts all the time, and this

happens all the time. We've all picked a kid up and, you know, maybe felt the, you know, their arms, you know, pop or, you know, their spine, you make a little pop or sound. Like, kids are, you know, they're noisy because there are a lot of cartilage growing around those bones. So the body, you know, shifts and moves because we're adaptable. And when you get to that point in another point in a minute, I should be writing all these points of them to be down, But the times when it doesn't get corrected, it's not able to self-adjust. Well, now you have a misalignment, or a lock where the spine, it gets stuck. And so now because it's not moving properly, now the body continues to grow with this lock

or this misalignment or subluxation in it. And so if the hips are, you know, kinked, you know, misdirected, left or right, or upper, down. Now all of a sudden, the body adapts to that. So maybe it's going to start growing sideways a little bit. You start developing this curvature. But again, because the body is incredibly adaptable, it may grow to the right for a little bit, but then it's going to compensate. And so up above will start to go back to the left because it's trying to get back to the center. The body will always try and keep the head over the hips. That's how it grows and develops, called the writing reflex. So if your spine starts to go a little bit sideways, it's not going to

to continue to have you grow that way because then your head would fall over. So it writes itself and that's where you start to get these curvatures in the spine. So finally, you think about it. So that's the stuff that with the analysis that we do, we can look at, you know, misalignment of the hips and the tailboat because a lot of times these scoliosis, they, they start in the foundation, you know, just like if the foundation in your house cracks or it's off, well, you can start. to get cracks in the wall or the chimney on the completely opposite end of the house because the foundation is off. And so the same idea, we look at the foundation, you know, the tailbone and the hips is where the weight from your upper body is transferred down to the legs. So it's a very

important area that force needs to be shifted from top to bottom and bottom up in order to keep a healthy, you know, walk and ambulate and move yourself around. So we look at that and we start to, we can start to monitor that. And so, you know, rather than going, you know, to, and checking with the school nurse or, you know, just having those, those visual assessments are good, but it's really only going to catch those severe scoliosis cases. You know, the ones that 25 to 40 degrees, that's considered a moderate scoliosis in the medical world, moderate scoliosis. And that's actually, you know, the medicine will just monitor that. And they really, you know, they might recommend some, you know, just some core strengthening, you know, physical therapy, but they're really just going to

monitor it. If you start hitting 45 degrees or above, now you're actually considered a surgical case because, you know, the long-term impacts, what happens is if you have that 40 degrees of curvature, that can start impacting your rib cage. Depending on where the scoliosis is, if it starts, you know, in, you know, closing down the rib cage, because if you think of a curvature, you've got a convex side and a concave side, okay? Think of a spoon, right? the side of the spoon that you put your food in or you soup in, that's the concave side, and then the underside of that spoon is the convex side. So same thing with scoliosis.

If you've got the sideways curvature, you've got a convex side, which is the outside of the curve. You have a concave side, which is the inside of the curve. So if you're above 40 degrees, you can actually start to compress some of those organs, such as heart and lungs, and you can affect heart and lung function there if it's left too long. Now, again, it doesn't mean you're absolutely going to have surgery above 45 degrees. Again, it depends on monitoring. I have a couple patients that I work with that are very close to that. But again, we monitor every, you know, if we know that you have a moderate to severe borderline scoliosis,

we monitor every six months to see how it's adapting and changing. And we have seen that this one girl that we're working with has kind of stayed in that, you know, 35 to 40 degree range, you know, over the last, you know, six to 12 months that we've been working with her. So that is something that when we align the hips, we might not get a complete change in structural correction there. But the big key component going back to the school analysis is they're only going to catch those more severe cases. Which at that point, you're basically trying to stop it from progressing any further. Correct. Correct. Yeah. So the progression, uh, so the progression, uh, you know, to worsening, but then they're going to miss all of these, you know, mild cases,

you know, that could be 25 degrees or below. So it really comes down to, and the other thing that's the big point I wanted to bring up. There's something called a structural versus a functional scoliosis. And what that means is structural means that it's pretty solidified, meaning that depending on which way you bend and move, the spine is kind of fused in that position. and that's important because every bone, you know, 24 movable bones in their spine should move, okay? They should bend, twist, and rotate, you know, with respect to the segment above and below. But in a structural scoliosis, it kind of has fused in that curvature.

Those are usually associated with like later stages, stage diseases, you know, that are usually go along with other, you know, joint dysfunctions. But when we're looking at kids, many times these scoliosis and kids, are functional. And what that means is if they're standing straight up and down, yeah, it's there. The scoliosis is the curvature is present. But then as soon as they start to bend forward, that scoliosis will actually start to straighten out because the joints are functioning properly. They are actually unwinding the curvature and coming back to more of a neutral position as they bend forward. That's a good sign, okay? Because the spine is moving very appropriate.

So even though in a static standing position, you have this curvature, as you start to bend forward, it'll unwind itself. And that's where the motion X-ray assessment comes into play. And that's why, you know, sometimes if you have someone who doesn't know what they're looking at or isn't very well trained in this, you know, you could have someone that might be just on the borderline of a mile to moderate scoliosis curvature. But then as soon as they start to bend forward, boom, it goes away. They're like, oh, yeah, you're good. It's like, well, those are things that we can monitor and assess. And then again, that's where the motion x-ray comes into play as well, because not just are we looking at you in static,

but we're also having you bend and rotate. And many times, you know, with the kids that we work with, if we, you know, maybe see a scoliosis, but then we have them do some positional, you know, mechanical, biomechanical movements and their spine is moving appropriately. Well, once we get their hips balanced, we're okay with that curvature being there because that's obviously the adaptation in terms of a stress point that the body wanted to be in. So we're happy working with that.

And again, there's other factors that we're looking at. We're looking at neurological factors with the infrared thermal scan. You know, we're looking at, you know, posture. We're looking at strains. We're looking at several different factors. But there's several points that we're putting together to, you know, get us the best outcome. So rather than, you know, immediately jumping to, you know, surgery, if someone is, you know, 40 degrees or above, it's like, you know, let's see what we can do to help strengthen the system to make sure that, you know, we don't have to, you know, rush to that surgery. Yeah.

Because if you've seen those, you can just Google scoliosis surgeries and you'll get images. And, you know, sometimes it's just, you're just butcher, you know, you're fused because they have to go several segments above the curvature and several segments below. And they put these, you know, it was called Harrington Rod surgery. and they'll put a rod on one side and a rod on the other and they forcibly straighten that spine out. The challenge with that is, yeah, now structurally you have a straight spine. Like we just said, now you just took away the motion. Now you fuse your body. You fuse those segments and they're no longer moving.

Well, motion is key to, you know, to make sure that you have appropriate, not just movement of your body, but also movement of the spinal cord within the spine. Okay. There's a reason that the spine can move. You know, and that's, again, to adapt us, but that motion of the spine, there's a lot of stimulation neurologically that, you know, stimulates messages up into the brain

when you move a joint. It's called proprioception. The easiest way to think of proprioception I talk about when people close their eyes, put your hand above your head. Close your eyes, put your hand above your head, and wave it around. Well, guess what?

you know what your hand is doing because of proprioception. Okay. So there's messages in those joints and the small muscles surrounding the joints that are sending messages up to the cerebellum and the brain that are saying, hey, this is where your joint is in space. And that's what when a joint is moving appropriately, it has the best level of proprioception, a healthy level of proprioception. So it knows where it is. when you fuse a joint like that, you really inhibit, you know, proprioception. Well, guess what? Proproception works hand in hand with another property called nociception.

And nocception is not a pain signal, but it's the precursor to a pain signal. Okay. So if proporeoception is at a healthy level, noception stays low. And basically, a good, healthy, movable joint is not going to be uncomfortable. As soon as you block that motion and proprioception comes down, now the message of nociception starts to rise. And too much, now that alone is not going to be painful, but too much nociception, once it reaches a certain threshold and you reach the boiling point, now the brain will start sending and communicating a pain message like, hey, this joint, this area is not moving. And now because it's not moving well, well now it's going to start to become achy or pinchy or pain. And those are all messages that our body, you know, again, can relate to.

And that's why, you know, that's why a lot of times people feel so good after, you know, immediately or a couple days after an adjustment because their spine is moving so much more freely. You know, and that's why if people come in with, you know, maybe like a, you know, they've stovved a finger or they twisted an ankle and it's like, you know, boom, we can immediately do an adjustment. adjustment, unlock the joint, and it's like, they're walking out of it. They're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe how much better that's moving. So, um, so in summary, because I already went into probably a lot more detail than we need, but, you know, in summary, we're not just looking at structural, even though that is very important with this scoliosis, um, but we're also looking at functional. How is the spine moving within that curvature? And there are cases that it might be

moving just fine and you know and we can continue to keep it monitor and keep it that way you know with good healthy adjusting and again the earlier you get your spine checked you know just like the earlier you start brushing your teeth yeah you know less chance for cavities well the earlier you get your spine check get it moving and aligned appropriately you know the easier it is to keep it that way and that's why I just find it so silly that you know people not silly but like people ask all the time well why would you see kids because again have you watched what Yeah. You watch what they just did for an hour and a half.

If adults, yeah, if adults hits their heads and fell as often as children today. Oh my gosh, we wouldn't be able to move. We'd all be in hospital beds. But, but yeah,

I mean, you just watch kids, you know, bed and move around. And that's what I always ask people back. It's like, when do you take your child to the dentist? When their teeth start popping through,

so usually between ages of two and three, you know, they're going to the dentist. When you take them to a doctor for a wellness check. Yeah, I mean, again, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, you know, and again, your medical doctor, they know a lot of different time. They know a little bit about so many different diseases. Yeah. But when we're looking at, you know, the spine, you know, your chiropractors are really, you

know, the experts of spinal alignment and motion. So, and that's, we've talked about this in so many other podcasts and it's essentially the experts of what we do. It's like, you know, the importance of your spine, not just being well aligned, but well moving. functioning, that's what we look at day in and day out and are the experts at helping you get to that good, healthy alignment and motion. And so, you know, the intimate relationship between that spine and that ultimately your brain and nervous system, which is the master coordinating communication system in the body, because those two are so intimately related, when we work on a spine

from a very early age and we keep it that way, then you have a much greater chance of getting healthy or staying healthy, right? What's our, what's our quote in the office? It's much easier to raise healthy kids than recover, you know, sick adults. So, so hopefully that was beneficial. There is some research, you know, with this specific method of analysis that I use in the Pierce results system in terms of the analysis that we do for scoliosis and the results that we have gotten. So I could probably leave a link to those, or at least the summary of those. I don't think I can post the whole article because it's on a, membership-based website, but I could leave the link to the summary of those articles on this

podcast. We do have a lot of information on our website as well. Yes, we do. Absolutely. Not just scoliosis, but I mean, if you go, yeah, if you haven't been on our website, we have, if you go under, you know, your health and it lists all these different conditions. And again, we link, you know, how chiropractic can help with that. And it's, you know, that.

And ultimately, you know, we're talking about scoliosis, which is directly affecting the spine, that seems like, you know, you can't undo the surgery. So, you know, it always makes sense to start with the thing that's less invasive and see if you can get the results that you're looking for and function the way. Yeah, we've helped a lot of people with, like you said, with some pretty, you know, significant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's corrected 100%. But again, maybe it's gone from severe to moderate or moderate to mild. Or even just maybe they're just their next moving better.

You know, maybe they're just, again, other things that have now that have compensated are now functioning better. And that's, you know, so if you have, so if you've only ever gotten your child checked at the school scoliosis check, then, you know, I would encourage you if you have any concerns or just are looking to, you know, roll out like, hey, is this, you know, is this a problem? Could this become a problem? You know, hey, I'm just interested in making sure my child is as healthy as possible. or myself, you know, I was diagnosed with a scoliosis and I still deal with problems. Like, you're just looking to get as healthy as possible and make sure that your spine is as strong as possible,

then, you know, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a method of analysis that's going to be more involved in terms of making sure that we can, you know, get that spine moving and aligned as best as we can. So I encourage you to check it out. And as always, you know, like Angela said, check out the website, Toro T-U-R-O, Family Chiropractic.com. and again reach out directly if you have any questions for us.

So yeah, we were joking at the beginning like, oh, how much was Angela going to talk today? Nice. Maybe I could have done this one myself. But thanks for hanging out, Angela. I'm happy to hang out. There's been episodes on the training stuff where I'm like, oh, I'm just going to sit here and let her talk because she's doing a great job. Hopefully she was thinking the same about that today. No.

All right. Thank you guys for tuning in. See you next time. You've been listening to What the Health? With Dr. Dan and Angela Toro, brought to you by Toro family chiropractic. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.com.