What’s This Research About?

Yoga is often recommended for people who are experiencing or rehabbing from
musculoskeletal conditions, including scoliosis. Actually, yoga is recommended
for just about every ailment, and rightfully so. Yoga is awesome and makes you
feel good. But so do other types of exercise. So, what is it about yoga that is
particularly good for scoliosis?

The researchers suggest that most of the exercise-based interventions or manual
therapy treatments (as opposed to bracing or surgery) focus on stretching rather
than strengthening. They propose that the spine will bend away from the weaker
side, producing concavity toward the stronger side. So rather than stretching the
tight side, you should strengthen the long side.

Based on this suggested mechanism, I’d have liked to see a more robust introduction
section. But the literature review is pretty weak in this study. They said research
was inconclusive and cited 14 references to that single sentence. One of them
was a 2012 Cochrane Review so I looked that up. It also said the research is
inconclusive, partially because of the poor quality of published research
(only 2 studies actually met their inclusions standards). Those researchers
determined there was no argument for or against physical activity for scoliosis.

About The Author

mm

Jules Mitchell

Please login to access this page.
Register
Already a member? Log in here