How Your Scoliosis Is Affected By Your Brain

Your brain has a map of your body called the sensory map. This map helps inform your brain where it is in space. Since its neurons are densely interconnected to your brain’s motor map, the sensory map is a key part of what instructs your body how to move. The maps are composed of each portion of your body, arms, legs, finger, head, feet, back, etcetera, and the information from them fit together like complex pieces of puzzles that help your brain navigate through your environment.

If a piece of the puzzle in the sensory map is “missing” then the body cannot accurately determine its position and it becomes prone to distortions, such as scoliosis.

A disturbance in sensory motor awareness is one of the most common factors that can drive a scoliosis to progress. In other words, the brain does not have an accurate map of where segments of the body are located in space. To put it even more plainly, it’s as if you are missing a key piece in the map of your body in your brain.

One of the most common things that I hear from the parents of my adolescent scoliosis patients is that they are always telling their child to sit up straight, to which their child replies, “But I AM sitting up straight!” That’s because, in their brain, the map is telling them they are sitting up straight when in reality they are tilted over. This phenomenon is a direct manifestation of a lack of sensory awareness in scoliosis.

Because of this missing piece, the brain cannot properly direct posture, movements, and corrections. The distortion in body perception results in mal-positioning of the body, eventually causing mal-adaptations to positional imbalances. These adaptations cause disorganization of the posture leading to scoliosis curvature progression. This is known as the Vicious Cycle of Scoliosis.

Improving Your Sensory Motor Function in Scoliosis

Postural collapse of the spine is usually the source of pain for progressing scoliosis patients. Helping them develop a more accurate body brain map prevents their spine from further collapse and the spine is then able to support a more upright position.

As the brain adapts to new and improved information, it begins instructing muscles around the spine to adapt to a “new normal” resulting in postural adjustments that better support the spine.

A Lack of Sensory-Motor Awareness in Scoliosis can be a major factor in the progression of the condition and should be addressed in conservative treatment.

Therapies For Scoliosis That Help Improve Sensory-Motor Awareness

We can also see signs that the brain has developed a “new normal” in its sensory-motor awareness when a patient is first fitted with a SpineCor brace. Postural corrections provided by the dynamic brace helps patients’ bodies move toward a more midline position, and they often notice an immediate shift in their brain’s perception of their body. Patients notice that movements, such as walking, are somehow different. This is because their brain has not yet caught-up to the shift in their posture, but in short order, the brain realizes it must “recalibrate” its map to the new position.

In readjustment processes, lengthening and strengthening the specific muscles that had adaptively shortened and weakened due to the scoliosis begin to function more correctly in the newly adopted, more central position.

Knowing what your body needs to do and your body actually doing those things are often two completely different things. That’s why scoliosis specific exercises, like Nu-Schroth, are an important piece of any scoliosis rehabilitation program.

In order to get your body to react in a way that better supports the upright posture of your scoliotic spine, you need to do things that make it happen without thinking about it. Nu-Schroth helps you identify the weakened muscles and teaches you how to activate them more fully to reduce your scoliosis. Through dynamic activities integration, corrections to your nervous system become automatic.

Over time, these new and improved postural and movement patterns can become permanent in the brain, thus allowing the body to reduce distortion caused by lack of sensory motor awareness permanently. Postural and movement patterns can have a profoundly positive impact on your scoliosis.

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It’s been well documented in the research literature that scoliosis has a strong genetic component. In fact, there is even a diagnostic test called Scolioscore that can identify the specific genes that are responsible for for scoliosis, but research studies on monozygotic (identical) twins with scoliosis show that often have varying degrees of curvature. In some cases, one may have a scoliosis and the other does not.

So if scoliosis is a genetic condition and both siblings have identical DNA why would one’s scoliosis get worse and not the other?

This question has puzzled doctors for decades. Although the answer is not entirely clear yet, modern medicine has found some very significant clues as to what drives one person’s scoliosis to progressively curve and not the others. While clearly genetics plays a role in many cases of scoliosis, it seems that other factors can contribute greatly to the progression of a scoliosis. The Science of Epigenetics is starting to shed light on why some scoliosis progress while others do not. Scoliosis examines the other factors.

What is Epigenetics

Epigenetics is the study of why inherited genes are expressed in some people and not others. It examines why the long-term alterations in the DNA’s transcriptional potential of a cell that are not always inherited.

Here is a great video by Paul Anderson who does avery good job of explaining the complexities of Epigenetics in an understandable manner.

Genetic Causes of Scoliosis

While the exact cause of the triggering factor in the onset of scoliosis remains somewhat of a mystery, a lot is known about the initiating factors. In most cases of scoliosis there is a genetic link that is caused the onset due to an aberration in the portion of the HOX genes called the HOX protiens that are called enhances are responsible for the expression or repression of genes.

When the abnormality in this gene is triggered it can result in a temporary imbalance of growth the plate on one side of the vertebra compared to the other.. This uneven growth from one side of a vertebra causing a slight wedging at that level, which leads to an imbalance of the spine causing that vertebra to be shifted laterally while also rotating away from the side of the defect.

Scoliosis occurs most commonly in pre-adolescent and teenage girls between the ages of 9 and 15 just before or right at the time of puberty when there is a major growth spurt and a significant hormonal shift that usher in profound changes to the body. The changing in hormones also appear to temporarily trigger the genes on one side of a particular vertebra to out pace the growth of the other side.

Genetics vs Epigenetics in Scoliosis

The Debate on Nature vs. Nurture

The studies on scoliosis in identical twins demonstrates that genetics alone cannot be not be solely responsible for it’s progression.

Other studies of certain sub-populations with no genetic connections can have a much higher incidents of scoliosis than the general population. Groups of people such as dancers and gymnasts have a much higher incidents of scoliosis than the general population. Some estimates indicate the incidents can be upwards of 10 times higher than in the rest of the population! This extreme deviation from the norm clearly indicates that there are other factors at play that are driving these particular particular sub-populations to have a much higher incidents of scoliosis.

Research studies have shown that girls who are participating in sports at a high level (i.e.: training for the Olympic Team or studying to be a Prima Ballerina) often have a delay in onset of menses that is contributed to reductions in sex hormones. It is theorized that this intensive physical activity signals the brain that the environmental conditions are too challenging to allow the females body to begin entering into a reproductive mode, thus delaying the onset of menses. Similar delays can be seen in malnourished girls as well as girls with anorexia.

Hormonal Imbalances Alone Are Not Likely the Sole Cause of Progression

When Struck By Puberty What Drives The Growth On One Side To Really Take Off, While The Other Side Does Not?

If hormones alone were the only initiating factor in scoliosis that would still not explain why the growth plate on one side of a vertebra would take off with rapid growth while the other one lagged behind.

Hormones are transported by blood thus do not have a propensity to be limited to only one side of the body and not the other. The only system of the body that has a separate dual system that could impact the body differently on the right and left is the nervous system.

How Could The Nervous System Trigger Imbalances in Bone Growth in the spine?

To this we must turn to the science of >Neuroskeletal Biology for an explanation. Most people tend to think that bone growth is regulated primarily by genetics (parental influences) and to a lesser extent by nutrition, but research in this relatively new field of scientific study is showing that the nervous system is also responsible for modulating bone growth. The mechanism at play is through the brain center called the hypothalamus that directs the bone growth through the right and left side branches of the autonomic nervous system. The two branches of the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic) can he likened to the gas pedal and brake on your car. In order to drive safely you need to properly apply both the gas (sympathetic) and the brake (parasympathetic).

It appears that both bone growth and remodeling are both influenced greatly by the brain. Sympathetic stimulation appears to stimulate osetoblastic activity and the parasympathetic stimulates osteoclastic activity. Imbalances in stimulation from right to left could explain why one side of the vertebra would grow more rapidly on one side as compared to the other.

Other studies suggest that in the scoliosis population there is a predominance in sympathetic stimulation. Although more research is needed, if this is indeed found to be a major driving factor in the development of scoliosis then this could lead to therapeutic interventions that could be prevent the onset.

Reducing Epigenetic Influences

Reducing other environmental factors that have a known negative impact on scoliosis progression could help reduce epigenetic influences.

Helping the spine move towards a more centered and balanced position can reduce the postural loads and lessen the proprioceptive load to the brain, thus reducing compensatory aberrant movements in the body that could trigger epigenetic changes. Such treatments as the dynamic SpineCor brace and Nu-Schroth work towards this end.

The nervous system also has a “righting mechanism” that demands the eyes stay at a horizontal level at all times. The postural muscles at the base of the skull will involuntarily move your head into position to maintain that horizontal balance. When something causes a disturbance of that balance they nervous system will make adjustments in the posture of the spine to accommodate the imbalances. This adaptation process by itself can cause the onset of a scoliosis.

Some of the promising areas of treatment that can greatly influence the epigenetics in scoliosis includes Stereotactic Cervical Alignment SCALE Method (aka – Altas Orthogonal), Vestibular Rehabilitation and Craniofacial Dentistry are all treatments that can have a beneficial effect on these types of mal-adaptations and thus, help reduce the neurological contribution to a scoliosis and possibly reducing its epigenetics effects.