Braving the Winter With Scoliosis
Freezing cold winter can be extremely hard on bodies with scoliosis or spinal fusions. Unfortunately, living in cold conditions is really bad for people with scoliosis. My best advice would be to live somewhere warm, where it doesn’t get extremely wintry. But I do know that’s not always an option for everyone, so if you do have to live in colder conditions, I wanted to give you some of my best tips for surviving winter with scoliosis.
Make Sure You Have a Good Shoveling Technique
We all know that one of the biggest winter chores is shoveling snow (if you live somewhere where it snows, that is).
Even in our everyday lives with scoliosis, we need to pay attention while doing things like sweeping and vacuuming — because these activities require a specific posture and attention to your curves. These motions are rotational and repetitive, just as shoveling is.
If you find yourself shoveling this winter, the best thing to do is keep yourself square to the shovel. I advise my patients to do the “push and drag” technique to minimize rotation. When doing this, you’re standing behind the shovel and are only pushing to the side where you’re scooping the snow.
Another option is to stand square to the shovel, and then turning your feet when you need to dump it off to one side. The goal here is to avoid planting your feet and keeping them in one spot when you turn to shovel snow off to the side.
Walking on Ice
Cold weather + moisture = ice, and ice is not a friend of those with scoliosis or spinal fusions. Falls can cause compression and other fractures and can lead to muscle contusions as well. So as best as we can, it’s important to avoid falling.
Which, when you’re walking on icy streets, can be difficult. To avoid falls, you don’t want to walk heel to toe. Instead, you want to walk on the balls of your feet or the toes to the heels. This gives you better control over your balance, versus walking flat-footed or heel to toe.
Practicing Balance
I have so many clients who are probably cracking up at this heading. I LOVE to have people continuously practicing their balance. Why? Because it’s a muscle, just like any other muscle in the body.
If you stop practicing balance activities, your balance will decline over time. Just like if you go lift weights and then stop, you’ll lose the muscle tone you developed.
The main point of practicing balance is that it will teach your body how to fall out of balance without completely falling down on the ground. You develop moving patterns that will automatically help you re-center yourself if you fall out of balance, instead of letting you fall right onto the ground.
It’s inevitable that you’re going to fall at some points in life. But learning how to fall out of balance and then restore that balance will give you more of a chance of overcoming a fall.
Wear Warm Clothes
This is essential during the wintertime for anyone and everyone. But when you have scoliosis or a spinal fusion and you’re wearing thinner clothing, your body is going to naturally tense up. This will increase your chances of having a back spasm.
It also can lead to leaking or urinary incontinence. A lot of time, people don’t understand why going out in the cold might cause them to lose their bladder control. But this is actually a really common thing! When we’re cold, we tend to grip all the muscles in our body, including those in our pelvic floor [ link to Mary’s episode]. This is what leads to losing control over your bladder.
Warm Up in the Morning
On a cold morning, it’s so natural to want to bundle up, grab a cup of coffee, and sit down on the couch. But warming up your body is important before you head into your day. You can even do things like rocking your knees back and forth or bringing your knees to your chest — all while in bed!
Those are my 5 best tips for braving the winter with scoliosis! I would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to leave a comment below!
