The Schroth Method

According to their website the Schroth Method helps patients to:

  • Halt curve progression
  • Reduce pain
  • Increase vital capacity
  • At least partly reverse abnormal curvatures
  • Improve posture and appearance
  • Maintain improved posture lifelong
  • Avoid surgery

For me this was the holy grail of ultimate goals.  But can it deliver what it promises? As with all things there are those who believe in Schroth and those who don’t.  Those who have tried it and found it works and those who tried it and it didn’t.  There are no guarantees. But my philosophy is simple here: that it is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all.  And I seriously believe that we won’t fail.

Schroth is “a physio-therapeutic treatment system which uses isometric and other exercises to strengthen or lengthen asymmetrical muscles in a scoliotic body” ie you have very specific exercises to bring balance to the muscles in the spine – stretching / lengthening those that have become shortened and shortening those that have become over stretched. The exercises make sense from a structural engineering perspective (my husband’s an engineer and understood it all much faster than me!) and when you see the exercises being done you can understand the requirement to lengthen some muscles, shorten others and overall to rebalance the muscles. Ultimately our long term goal is to make my son’s back muscles work hard as he grows so that the curve is held where it is and cannot progress further.

So the decision to use the Schroth Method has now been made.  The decision as to which therapist to use was much harder.  This is not because there are lots of trained Schroth therapists to choose from working in the UK – believe me there aren’t!  You essentially have two options and neither of them is cheap and neither is currently available on the NHS.  I say ‘currently’ as I live in hope that perhaps one day in the future this treatment may be more widely available.

Option 1: A Schroth Clinic

There are a limited number of clinics in the UK offering an intensive 3 or 4 week programme of Schroth therapy.  They usually require attendance for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Some offer just 4 week courses.  Some offer a split approach of 2 weeks, then a break and then the final 2 weeks.  The results they show on their websites are impressive and I know from one mother I have spoken to that her daughter grew 5cm in height after attending a four week course.  This family now has wall bars fitted in their living room and her daughter exercises every day.

Option 2: Work with a Schroth Practitioner in your own home:

This is the option that we have chosen, working at home for 2 intensive days with a lady called Deborah Turnbull.  For me the great advantage of this approach is that Debs is able to assess your child in their home environment looking at how they watch TV, eat dinner, lie on a sofa, sleep in bed and much more.  And she has advised that it is correcting their posture at these times that is so important.  After all, the average teenager spends 9 hours a day in bed and more at the weekends if you let them!!

She will evaluate Chris and then develop a tailor-made set of exercises to suit his curve.

You can find out more about Deborah Turnbull on her website: www.scoliosisuk.co.uk