So here is an x-ray of a young lady. Actually, she’s in her early 20s that visited us from Moscow in Russia, and she came in with a 40 degree top thoracic curve and 20 degree lower curve. And after ten days of treatment this went to 30 degrees and this went to 15 degrees. And here is a stress x-ray of the same spine, showing 16 degrees and seven degrees.
What do I mean by stress x-ray? Stress x-ray involves putting the spine with certain weights, whether it’s a shoulder weight or a hip weight or a cantilever which will torque the spine back towards normal. There are many, many different varieties of this that could be used, so we have to find the right, exact set up for each patient. You know, going from 40 degrees to 16 degrees is pretty good for a 24-year-old young lady. And the more severe curves will, in many cases, move down more slowly, but over time they will move down.
We have another patient with a 118 degree curve, and it’s down into the low 90s now. So little by little, it will make a naturally progressive improvement as opposed to trying to force it into a place which is what a brace will do unsuccessfully and surgery, of course, when one has surgery. What’s happening is the spine is fused, metal rods and nuts and bolts are placed inside the spine, and over time the spine becomes brittle, and a brittle spine is much more prone to future problems.
A person gets, for example, rear ended at 15 miles an hour ten years after they have had surgery. There’s a lot of arthritis in the spine. The spine is brittle, and it can cause a lot of problems because the normal curves are no longer available which cause the spine to bend and tilt and do all of the normal things that spines are supposed to.
So it is much healthier over the long-term to slowly and positively correct the spine back to its normal formation.
