I’ve noticed that the lower part of my spine curves to the left relative to where the muscles in my lower back are. Also, my right shoulder blade protrudes more than my left should blade. Based on a limited amount of reading, I have self-diagnosed myself as having scoliosis.
Can this be caused by carrying your wallet in your back pocket (something I have done for a long time)?
Also, is this something a chiropractor could fix? What exactly do chiropractors do and (also wallet-related) how much do they cost? (I’ve never been to one.)
No, a chiropractor can’t fix a scoliosis that severe. (There’s a great deal of question as to whether they can fix one at all, but I’ll leave that debate to others.) If you can tell that anatomical landmarks are uneven, it’s a pretty pronounced one, and chiropractors’ adjustments are very small.
Are you having any symptoms? Pain, weakness, tingling, etc.? If not, I really encourage you to do more research before treating it, assuming you’re an adult with full growth*. Many people have “abnormal” curvatures to their spine which don’t affect function. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? You’re likely to set yourself down a course of progressively more aggressive interventions without any benefit.
*If you’re young and haven’t gone through your last growth spurt, then my advice is to see your doctor or one at Shriners Hospitals and see what they have to say. Scoliosis often gets worse as kids grow. My son’s scoliosis was treated at Shriners, and they’re just amazing.
ETA: Oh, missed the wallet question. While it’s possible for a wallet to cause back pain (or more commonly, sciatica), I’d be shocked if it could have that much of an impact on your skeletal anatomy. No, it shouldn’t do that.
Thanks for the really good answer! I am 23 years old. I’m not having any adverse symptoms right now, but my concern is that if I don’t treat it then it could get progressively worse down the road and possibly lead to something much worse. How do regular doctors treat scoliosis and is it effective?
Scoliosis can be treated with braces, exercises, surgery or some combination thereof.
If I was in your shoes I’d concentrate on maintaining a healthy body weight and increase your flexibility and strength. Pilates and yoga, in particular, are good at developing “core” muscles that hold your back together and make it work. Keeping those in good shape will do more than any other thing you can think of to keep symptoms from developing (or at least keep them to a minimum.)
It’s a good idea to be preventative about it, because back pain is much easier to prevent than to treat. But your best preventative is exercise.
I’m 59 and was diagnosed with scoliosis at about 10 years old. At the time it was decided that it was not severe enough to do anything about. One shoulder is lower than another. I couldn’t tell which one it is without looking in a mirror. I do have back problems but don’t attribute this to the scoliosis. Back problems are very common among those of us who walk on only two legs.
When I was in my twenties I was told that keeping a wallet in your back pocket could cause arthritis in your hip so I started keeping it in a front pocket instead. Not sure I believe this but when I move it to my back pocket I find it uncomfortable to sit on.
About twenty years ago I went to a chiropractor who told me that the scoliosis was due to one leg being shorter than the other. It sort of made sense. He gave me an insert to put in one shoe to make up the difference. This made my back problems much worse so I took it out.
In general, chiropractors believe that back and neck problems are due to vertebrae being out of alignment. When they adjust your back it makes a popping sound like when you pop a joint in your finger. They also include other treatments for acute pain that a conventional doctor also does such as application of ice and showing you exercises to prevent future recurrence.
In general, Chiro theory teaches that all disease is due to vertebrae being out of alignment. So many chiropracters will treat diabetes with ‘spinal adjustments’.
Fortunately a lot of chiros restrict themselves to manipulation of the back and neck for treatment of musculo-skeletal back and neck complaints (for which it may or may not work, depending on the study you look at).
And I would not advise anyone to self-diagnose scoliosis. See a doc, as has already been aptly said.
To digress, I learned early on that moving the wallet to the front pocket when visiting the really big city here helped me keep my wallet. My wallet is very easy to sit on. I wish I had your problem.
What did you find out? Did you see a Chiropractor yet? I kind of have same problem I have got a curvature but it doesn’t hurt or anything. I still do pull ups and squats.
Anyone with scoliosis should see a doctor and try to get it treated to whatever extent is reasonably possible.
I began to have lower back pain problems about 15 years ago (at age about 55). One doctor told me that it was just going to get worse as I got older. He was right.
When my wife was 11 her mother married a chiropracter. She had relatively mild scoliosis and he treated her it and by two years later it was corrected. He had before and after X-rays to prove it. But she was young and had not stopped growing and I really doubt he could have done it with someone who was already grown.
He never treated any problems unless they were back-related and always said that most chiros were quacks. He had always hoped that the profession would somehow merge with medicine.
I am not sure what the relation between chiro and osteopathic medicine is. I do know that by the 1950s the osteopathic medical college Hahnemann in Philadelphia had become essentially a standard med school.
Eleven years on, and there’s still no justification for attempting to treat scoliosis with chiropractic adjustments. From the Mayo Clinic:
"Studies indicate that the following treatments for scoliosis are ineffective:
Chiropractic manipulation
Electrical stimulation of muscles
Dietary supplements"
Another source notes:
"As far as evidence-based medicine goes, there’s little if any proof that chiropractic is an effective scoliosis treatment. A 2013 review of studies published in the journal, Scoliosis , looked at a number of case series studies that reported decreased Cobb angles after chiropractic adjustments. But the studies were weak: Most involved adults whose curves were not in danger of progressing, and teen/adolescents whose curves were at low risk of progressing.3
The review authors also suggest that the reported reductions in Cobb angle following the chiropractic adjustments could have well been temporary."
It’s difficult to conceive of any mechanism by which manual adjustment could straighten out a curve in someone’s spinal column. A forceful enough attempt might cause sufficient tissue damage to result in some temporary alteration, but that sounds like an agonizing prospect for the patient.*
*a vivid memory from one of my med school clerkships involves a patient who came in with severe pain from a chiropractic “adjustment” that broke several ribs. It probably made him forget his back pain for awhile though.
What causes scoliosis? I asked a doctor that once.
He was of the (somewhat speculative) opinion that it could be a persistent effect of sub-clinical polio.
Polio has the curious feature that very young children (I think under 6 months, or maybe 6 weeks?) can get polio and recover, and it’s typically no worse than a bad cold. This is “sub-clinical polio”. But a case just slightly worse than that might go unnoticed, but leave a child with slightly weakened muscles. If some of the back muscles are just slightly weakened asymmetrically, this could result in the spine being pulled into a curved shape like that.