Article 05

Brace supports moms' calls to 'sit up!

November 14, 2006
Brace supports moms' calls to 'sit up!'
By Rod Walker
rwalker@clarionledger.com

Greg Jenson/The Clarion-Ledger

Levon Carter doesn't find herself slouching as much these days. Her Scapula Stabilizing System (S3) brace won't let her.  "It holds you in place," said Carter, a Brandon resident. "It gets your attention to straighten back up."

The S3 brace, a full upper body garment with elastic straps, is designed to improve posture, reduce pain and increase range of motion.

"It basically brings you back into scapula retraction, which in laymen's term is good posture," said Alan Whitfield, physical therapist at the Mississippi Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center Therapy Center. "It doesn't let you roll your shoulders forward.

The brace, which has been on the market for about 18 months, corrects posture by re-educating the area around the shoulder and spine.
"When properly placed across the shoulder area, it helps an individual develop better posture so that it in turn strengthens the muscles that create a better foundation for the shoulder to move," said John Tillery of Byram, a former head athletic trainer of Mississippi College who is now a sales rep for H&H Orthopedic. "You want to have a good foundation for shoulder and elbow function, and the scapula (shoulder blade) is that foundation. If you have a good shoulder blade foundation, then you have a good foundation for the rest of the upper arm to work off of."

The brace is used to help recover from injuries associated with rotator cuff tears or tendonitis, shoulder instability, cervical neck pain and mid-back spasm type pains.

"But anybody who has really poor posture can get some use out of it as well," Whitfield said. "It basically pulls you up into that posture that your mama told you to get in years ago."

Carter, who underwent rotator cuff surgery in August, has noticed improvement since wearing the brace - and even when she's not wearing it.
"Even when I don't have it on and I catch myself on the computer slouching over, I pull myself back now," Carter said. "I'll say to myself, 'OK, I don't need to be sitting like that.' When you have it on and you're slouching, it kind of hurts because it pulls on you. It gets your attention to straighten back up."
Tillery estimates 70 percent of users, like Carter, are in the general population, while the other 30 percent are athletes.

In fact, part of the clinical trials for the device were done in the Philadelphia Phillies organization to test improvement in shoulder strength.

"Oftentimes, athletes neglect to condition the muscles that are around the bottom part of the shoulder blade," said Tillery. "And also people who have shoulder injuries, whether they are overhead laborers or clerical personnel, those muscles on the bottom part of the shoulder blade begin to not function properly."

According to a study by the U.S. Department of Health, nine of 10 people in the United States eventually will seek help for back pain. Also, increased computer usage in the workplace has led to a large increase of people suffering from poor posture.

"It's a dynamic training brace, so you wear it while you're moving to help those muscles re-educate themselves," Tillery said. "It could be cooking, driving or computer work, but you need to be doing some type of activity."

The brace, only available with a medical prescription, costs $650.

"It's well worth it," said Carter. "When they first told me about it, I had no idea what they were talking about, and I wasn't so sure at first. But it has really helped."