Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

FAO Dr. McIntire - interesting muscle study results

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #31
    Originally posted by scoliosisfamily View Post
    One thing though: if there's ever a study being done in the future that has to do with muscular damage due to fusion, I'm volunteering! My kids would too: they hate seeing me in pain, and they hate seeing I can't do the things I love to do....
    Hi. So sorry your family was hit so hard by scoliosis. Hopefully your children will stay subsurgical and will not have problems.

    As for your curve, why do you have muscle pain? Is the pain in the fused or unfused areas?

    What levels were fused? Have you had a recent evaluation by a surgeon about why you have this pain now?

    Sorry for all the questions. You may want to figure that stuff out as a way to solve the problem. But of course the real answer is get some high quality opinions from one or more top revision surgeons.

    Good luck.
    Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

    No island of sanity.

    Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
    Answer: Medicine


    "We are all African."

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
      Thanks for the excellent comment regarding muscle damage due to fusion.
      Scott,

      How can fusion cause muscle damage years and years after the operation?

      There is something else going on.
      Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

      No island of sanity.

      Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
      Answer: Medicine


      "We are all African."

      Comment


      • #33
        Originally posted by scoliosisfamily View Post
        Now, more and new pain, spasms, sleepless nights, and tears from fear that my kids might have the same future as I have.
        You shouldn't worry about this unless a surgeon gives you reason to worry.

        I am assuming you had a Harrington rod. These days, segmental constructs with pedicle screws and/or hooks are used. This is a significant improvement over Harrington rods. If any of your children ever need surgery, it is very likely they will not have the problems you had. Please ask a surgeon about this specifically... what instrumentation you had, what is being used today, why it is better, etc. etc. etc. I hope this cheers you up some.
        Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

        No island of sanity.

        Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
        Answer: Medicine


        "We are all African."

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
          Yeah that's a good idea Flerc,
          I guess the experts have already tried.
          One step leads to another like a chain of events.
          Consider every possible outcome for every association.
          Look for the most logical answer.
          Find the puzzle piece that fits.
          Thats what I did, but not on paper.
          Yes Scott, surely much of them should have to be done this, but probably much of them, instead to trying first to improve that factor, try to know the cause, that is, a Bottom Up approach instead of Top Down.
          For instance, if you don't know a direct way to improve the low tone, then you look for the cause and conclude that a bad posture is one of the causes, but if you know how to correct the bad posture in a satisfactory and significant way, it has not sense to continues descending in the cause-effect chain.
          Surely, only improving the low muscular tone will not solve the problem, but if the same would be done with all the primary causes, is really very probably that the curve may be reduced in a significant way. All the primary causes should to be attacked together.

          You should to copy a link to your work.

          Comment


          • #35
            Hey Pooka,
            Thanks for your question.
            I wasn't suggesting that scoliosisfamily's fusion in 1992 was the reason why she's experiencing muscle pain now, but moreso maybe the deterioration of it.
            I agree with your comment regarding getting some high quality opinions from one or more top revision surgeons.

            I thought that old instumentation such as Harrington Rod may have been used but I'm not well versed on the dates of when different types of instumentation was phased out and replaced by improved instumentation so I didn't mention it, although I thought it.

            I'm not sure if you hear them speak of scoliosis as being a vicious cycle of assymetrical loading that much anymore now that genetics is the 'In' subject, but I still regard scoliosis as being this way. The reason why I consider scoliosis surgery to be a FIX rather than a CURE comes down mainly to the concept that during surgery, they forcibly derotate and straighten the spine - as opposed to the true concept of reversing it via the exact physical methods by which it progressed in the first place.

            By forcably straightening and derotating the spine, my opinion is that they are fixing the bone component of scoliosis, but not the muscle/ligament component.
            Therefore if and when a fusion begins to fail, or if any other change happens at all - the take up is on muscles that arent 'geared' (not sure thats the right word) to cope with such stress. (I really really am a layman when it comes to surgery stuff though - you'd know a lot more than me)

            Scoliosisfamily, - Pooka's definately right that they have made many improvements to the way they do surgery nowadays, and it's likely that your children won't have to suffer as badly that you have.
            But to me if your pain is getting worse, please don't ignore it.
            Please go and see a specialist to try and find the source of your pain.
            They will be able to assess your situation better and might be able to do something to help.

            Comment


            • #36
              Hey Flerc,
              - Every single piece of the cause and effect chain must be accounted for, you can't skip steps, take shortcuts or cheat.
              I don't think bad posture could be considered a cause.
              If you were to consider bad posture to be a cause of scoliosis (which I dont), then ultimately I'd be looking deeper and thinking more about what was the cause of the bad posture.

              I have a random thought.
              Scoliosisfamily said that her youngest daughter when at 9 with a 19° curve used the spinecor brace, which resulted in a curve reduction to 2°.
              After removing the brace - the scoliosis has again worsened and now at age 12 the curve is just somewhere short of 20°.
              I'm not disputing the curve reduction.

              But I'm thinking a little deeper about the results.
              The fact that the curve again regressed or worsened tells me that although the spine straightened from the brace , the assumed underlying muscle problem wasn't fixed - or an least not completely fixed.
              And so I wonder (and this is a way out there question) if at all its possible that being young and with bones not fully developed that these braces might actually force the undeveloped bones to give a little bit that allows for the assumed curve reduction whilst not actually fixing the underlying the muscle problem - or maybe they do actually help fix the underlying muscle problem somewhat, but the undeveloped bones give a little bit as well and hinder the precise nature of the results...
              Yeah I know I'm rambling... sorry.
              - Scott

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
                Hey Flerc,
                - Every single piece of the cause and effect chain must be accounted for, you can't skip steps, take shortcuts or cheat.
                I don't think bad posture could be considered a cause.
                If you were to consider bad posture to be a cause of scoliosis (which I dont), then ultimately I'd be looking deeper and thinking more about what was the cause of the bad posture.
                Surely you might arrive to the best way to eliminate (or reduce) a cause knowing all her causes primariess and secoundaries), but it could be very difficult.. much time surely is needed.
                Suppose that effectively a tense ligament provokes rotation an you know the way to stretch the ligament enough in a satisfactory way. That is what probably Magec is doing although the cause of the tense ligament is unknown.
                I'm not sure at all that bad posture may leads to low muscular tone (it was only an example) but it has much sense for me.. and low tone leads to a bad posture.. scolisis seems to be full of vicious cycles.. so in fact in the graph, levels might not have much sense..

                Comment


                • #38
                  Hey Flerc,
                  I don't really focus too much on a cause itself, because with my own scoliosis story (unlike most) I saw how the scoliosis started.
                  I've mainly just added up what the biomechanical facts say to try and make sense of that.
                  Rather than think about a cause at all, I tend to think about all the individual biomechanical components and try to make sense of them.
                  Primary components of scoliosis biomechanics and Secondary components of scoliosis biomechanics.
                  For example - Flexion / Extension of the Trunk, Lateral Flexion and Rotation of the Trunk are primary components, whereas things like spinal rotation, rib hump and factors relating to growth are secondary components.

                  If I was to get further into what was the cause...
                  I once had my legs measured after scoliosis was diagnosed and the prominent Dr McPhee (same as my name) said one was 1cm (from memory) longer than the other.
                  I never really totally believed him, but he's the expert, and over the last few yrs I've been seriously considering what he said is possible, maybe even likely.
                  If you read the SRS website - they say scoliosis cannot be caused by a longer leg, and I'd tend to agree with them on that statement - that a longer leg won't in itself cause scoliosis.
                  But what if because of a longer leg you tend to stand on one leg more than the other and thus put more pressure on one side of the spine.
                  And what if because of that you tend to also use one arm more than the other more and more?
                  And what then if you put just the right upward and twisting force on the spine so that a structural incident occurs?
                  Thats what I think may have happened to me - I know this is a lot different to the norm and other experiences - with family history of scoliosis etc - and DNA ideas...
                  I just tend to follow what the facts say and try to make sense of what happened to me at the same time.

                  - Scott
                  Last edited by sjmcphee; 12-26-2011, 10:31 AM.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
                    Scoliosisfamily said that her youngest daughter when at 9 with a 19° curve used the spinecor brace, which resulted in a curve reduction to 2°.
                    That reduction may be in brace and if so is irrelevant.

                    If it was out of brace after at least 48 hours then it is relevant.

                    ETA: If the data are from Montreal then I don't believe the numbers. We have some evidence the in brace numbers are not accurate from that group.
                    Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                    No island of sanity.

                    Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                    Answer: Medicine


                    "We are all African."

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
                      I once had my legs measured after scoliosis was diagnosed and the prominent Dr McPhee (same as my name) said one was 1cm (from memory) longer than the other.
                      If you have a TL curve, your hips may not be even and that might account for the leg length discrepancy.

                      That is, leg length discrepancy might just be a proxy for hip unevenness.
                      Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                      No island of sanity.

                      Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                      Answer: Medicine


                      "We are all African."

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Hey Pooka,
                        It's real funny you say that, because - well, my mums been staying with me a few days over christmas, and I'd never told her the story about the Dr who measured my legs until maybe 2 nights ago.
                        - She said pretty much the same thing - it's not your leg its your hips.
                        Now I pretty much laughed it off and said ok whatever - thinking she hasn't a clue what she's talking about - what does she know about backs
                        (but then quietly taking notice wondering why she said that and wondering if it's at all possible...)
                        *Now I know all you mums will be saying how dare he be so rude to his mum... and getting ready to tear strips off me... please dont lol

                        And then you say the same thing...
                        I'd like to think I have an open mind and am willing to explore anything that is possible, but I never really accepted what the Dr said about my legs until maybe a year or so - after (I cant explain this without refering to my own research)
                        The loading down the midline became divided and spinal rotation began. (The curve patterns was not as evenly balanced anymore) Several times earlier this year - just for a short while or so - hours - it actually felt like one leg was longer than the other - (It wasn't but whatever loading was going on in my lumbar made it seem that way - one leg even seemed to drag just a little during that time.) A while later the load had worked back into the spine and both legs felt normal again.
                        This may seem silly to you guys, but me - I pay attention to the slightest smallest things...and this was a fairly big thing... it was easily noticeable to me.

                        I've always said that my scoliosis started from a structual misalignment within my spine in my mid 20's, very different in the way that scoliosis normally occurs or seems to occur for others.
                        But I've always known too that there was underlying influences somehow, that made that injury possible.
                        I always put it down to overuse of the right side of my body - and in some ways that was what caused it...
                        Only what was the cause of me overusing the right hand side of my body (as compared to my left)
                        There must have been something more to it.
                        - Its not like I felt handicapped either - I just thought that being right handed I was better doing things with my right hand and not as good doing things with my left.
                        I didn't really realise much was wrong except there was one small tell-tale sign I should have paid attention to before my injury.
                        - The seams on my T-shirts.
                        I'd lay my t-shirts out to fold them, or hang them, and see that one seam on one side always sat a little uneven - slightly to the front - like the seam when laid flat was maybe half an inch skewiff.
                        I never really paid a lot of attention to it at the time. I wish I had.

                        Now you're thinking to yourself I already had scoliosis... maybe your right that I already had a smaller curve.
                        But I didn't have any real back problems back then.
                        As for the injury I had - It definately changed the normal function the loading of the back muscles and vertebrae - corrupted it - misaligned it - changed it.
                        That's the one part that was always as clear as day to me.

                        I know you don't believe its possible for such an injury to occur that creates scoliosis Sharon, I respect that.
                        I probably wouldn't either if I was you.
                        Just try not to attack me too much on a personal level for it because it's my scoliosis story.
                        Maybe with good thoughts and comments you can help me to get to the bottom of it.
                        I never explained exactly what and how I did - maybe some other time I will go into it more in depth.

                        Anyhow... So now both you and my mum said my hips...
                        So I'm thinking either theres a full moon tonight (look out the crazies are about) or there must be more to this...
                        I never wanted to go along with what the Dr said about my legs ( But he's the most prominent surgeon in the state )
                        But I would never would have thought that you (Mrs surgery from what I hear) and my mother as well for that matter - would see it any different than a specialist.
                        My personal opinion on it is that I'm just not sure - I know there were definately underlying physical influences before the injury - but what exactly - my leg - my hips?
                        The real cause of my particular scoliosis - that's a question I pretty much put to the side.
                        I'm really more interested in scoliosis biomechanics - the path in which the bad loading followed for my individual curve pattern.
                        This is something I did pay an enormous amount of attention to.
                        I've always wanted to leave those questions until after I got this scoliosis biomechanics out the way, if I ever do.

                        I'll be a little more busy with my websites in the next few days.
                        The one I was building got hacked over christmas - but the old ones are all still ok.
                        This has never happened to me before - I've never even seen a hacked site before.
                        http://www.scoliosisnetwork.com/
                        I wasn't the only one they hacked though.
                        I'm kind of glad it happened now rather than later actually, because I'll pay a lot more attention now to keeping backups off-site (I need to set up cloud storage for my site backups)
                        The weird thing is the software I use is updated all the time - and I have the most updated versions meaning there shouldn't be any security vulnerabilities.
                        It'll only take me a few hours to rebuild it, even without the backups but I'm going to get some more info about the joomla security vulnerability first before I remove the site.
                        So I must consult with the geniuses...
                        - Scott
                        Last edited by sjmcphee; 12-26-2011, 09:37 AM.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
                          you (Mrs surgery from what I hear)
                          I'm Mrs. Evidence. Because surgery has more evidence than any other treatment modality, that is viewed here as me being "Mrs. Surgery." Surgery in this context is only a proxy for evidence. It's a category error.

                          would see it any different than a surgeon.
                          Did your surgeon say the leg length discrepancy was due to different lengths of leg bone? The only way he could know that is if he imaged your legs and carefully measured from the radiographs making sure your hips were even.

                          If he didn't do that then I'm guessing he just say you have a leg length discrepancy and assume you knew it was due to uneven hips due to your TL curve.
                          Last edited by Pooka1; 12-26-2011, 09:54 AM.
                          Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                          No island of sanity.

                          Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                          Answer: Medicine


                          "We are all African."

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Hello Mrs Evidence (lol) -
                            Thanks for correcting me and your input.
                            He measured using like a dressmakers tape thingy - the soft plastic measuring tape.
                            Maybe that's why I never fully believed him - like I needed to see it in an xray myself to believe it.

                            He did seem a little rushed and disinterested - but that's probably because I had a smaller curve - he would have known I wasn't a candidate for surgery and maybe wondered why I was even there.
                            He is one of the old school type surgeons and he was (may still be) the head of orthopedics in my state.
                            I don't think he's known for being a people person, but as far as I know he is good at what he does.
                            He must've been in the scoliosis game for over 35yrs before I walked into his office.

                            All he told me was one leg was a centimetre longer than the other - and he did not elaborate any further, nor have I investigated this any further - so you would definately know more than me about this kind of stuff and of any association with TL curve pattern.
                            I know nothing of this.

                            - Scott
                            Last edited by sjmcphee; 12-26-2011, 10:00 AM.

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Originally posted by sjmcphee View Post
                              He measured using like a dressmakers tape thingy - the soft plastic measuring tape.
                              Based on this comment, I am having trouble believing this was an experienced orthopedic surgeon specializing in spine.

                              From what points on your body did he measure?

                              I had a chiro measure my leg lengths while I was laying on my stomach but I don't remember where the top point of the measurement was. Unless it is accurately at the point of the hip then it is nonsense, something chiros are trained in based on reports I have read of chiro chollege.
                              Sharon, mother of identical twin girls with scoliosis

                              No island of sanity.

                              Question: What do you call alternative medicine that works?
                              Answer: Medicine


                              "We are all African."

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Flerc,
                                Sorry I forgot to reply.
                                You asked if I had any research-like paper written that outlines my scoliosis ideas.
                                I'm sorry, I really don't have anything recent, the last time I put pen to paper with this stuff was 05 or 06, and I dont think I finished it.
                                It's easy to explain things up here at the top side where it really isn't all that difficult for the reader to understand what I mean.
                                The problem is though that if you dig and dig and dig down into this stuff, to try and understand and account for every component all at once in relation to a vicious cycle of loading, your brain literally turns into mush.

                                Honestly, there is just too many things to account for geometrically all at once - I know - I've done it - and I could identify all the components.
                                Basically what I'm trying to say is that I could try, and it would start out great, but eventually the document would decend into a rambling mess.
                                The only way to put my ideas forward in any conclusive manner -ie something that will amount to something - is to create a '3d spine buckling model of an individual curve pattern incorpoating coupling and based on geometrical methods.'
                                You'll get bits of info out of me here and there - I can't help responding to others scoliosis research discussion.
                                Eventually I'll build up a heap of smaller articles like the one I did yesterday and put them on the scoliosisbiomechanics site.

                                - Scott

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X