For 5 to 10 percent of Americans, scoliosis is a daily fact of life.

A chronic, genetic disease, it appears in teenagers, particularly girls, in early adolescence. The characteristic symptom of scoliosis is curvature of the spine, where rather than growing straight, the spine will rotate in on itself. There are few options to successfully treat this disease, and the two most common require a heavy metal brace or drastic surgery. But for two Lancaster County teens, a local doctor gave them another option for treating their scoliosis — an option that has changed their lives.

Dr. Clayton Stitzel, founder of the Lancaster Spinal Health Center, near Lititz, is not your average chiropractor. Stitzel's passion is finding better ways to treat scoliosis.

"This disease picked a fight with the wrong guy," Stitzel said.

Together with several other scoliosis specialists, Stitzel founded the CLEAR Institute, a nonprofit organization which has a mission to research and implement new techniques for treating the disease.

"We got together as a group of doctors who formed the CLEAR Institute and really examined how limited and how poor the success rate was in curve treatment options," Stitzel explained. "We were able to look and recognize that the current treatments for scoliosis — bracing and surgery — are failing the patient by and large."

No one knows this better than one of Stitzel's current patients, Brooke Zubeck.

When Brooke, 17, a senior at Donegal High School, was in fourth grade she was diagnosed with scoliosis. She was told she would have to wear a heavy metal body brace to try and correct the curvature. The brace itself was painful.

"After you take it off you're very stiff and sore, because you're being held in that position for hours," she said. During the heat of the summer she had to wear a wool sock beneath the brace "because the metal bars and stuff will chafe your skin."

And she had to wear jeans that were two sizes too big to fit over the brace, making the jeans big everywhere else on her body and ill-fitting.

 "Changing in the locker rooms in school was terrible," she said.

Brooke tried several different types of braces that were supposed to help straighten her spine, yet her scoliosis continued to get worse despite the bracing.

"The brace was used to keep it the same. It didn't correct the curvature at all," she said.

Her mother, Sherri Zubeck, agreed. "The brace wasn't used to cure her scoliosis," Sherri said. "In fact, the curvature continued to progress despite the bracing. Every time we went back to see the doctor for X-rays her curvature was getting more significant. In 2009, right before we came here, she was looking at major surgery," Sherri said.

Surgery to correct scoliosis is a major operation and consists of inserting metal implants into a patient's spine to keep it straight.

Upset, Brooke turned to the Internet for other options. She found Stitzel and the alternative therapy he offers as a way for her to avoid surgery.

"I was real excited," Brooke said. "I wanted to do it right away."

Next Brooke had to convince her mom.

"I was a real skeptic. And poor Clayton had a hard sell with me," Sherri said. "Who knew? (Stitzel's therapy) proved me wrong."

What makes Stitzel's therapy unique and different from other treatments for scoliosis is that it goes beyond treating spinal curvature and targets the underlying cause of the disease.

"Scoliosis is often characterized as the spinal curvature," Stitzel explained. "But in actuality, it's really primarily a neurological condition and hormonal condition that causes spinal curvature. So spinal curvature is actually the primary symptom, not the condition itself."

Previous attempts to treat scoliosis focused on straightening the spine. They addressed the symptom of the disease, they didn't treat the underlying cause.

Doctors have discovered that scoliosis and the resulting spinal curvature appear to be caused by what Stitzel calls a "feedback problem." In a person without scoliosis, the brain automatically knows which muscles need to be engaged to hold the spine straight. In somebody who has scoliosis, these "automatic postural control centers" in the brain do not seem to receive the muscle feedback they need to straighten the spine. The breakthrough that makes Stitzel's therapy effective, he said, is that it uses this property to focus on re-training the brain to strengthen and use the postural control muscles.

"It's a whole different process. And based off that new process, our application is completely different. It's all about relocation and training the automatic postural control centers that will ultimately lead you to a reduced curvature that can be maintained because the brain learns how to maintain it," Stitzel said.

"We're at the point now where we're getting very consistent reductions in curvature and patients are, in most cases, holding those reductions and able to hold it through adolescence and adulthood," he said.

Stitzel said that results can depend on a lot of factors, but "on average a patient will achieve 30 to 50 percent reduction in four to six months."

Patients achieve this reduction through a number of physical exercises, training with weights and working out in the Scoliosis Traction Chair — Stitzel's own invention.

Anna Summers, 14, a freshman at Warwick High School, was diagnosed with mild scoliosis. At the time, she and her family were told to do nothing and see if it got any worse.

Rather than wait and take a chance, they found Stitzel and enrolled Anna in therapy.

"I was kind of scared that (my scoliosis) was gonna get really bad and that the treatment was going to hurt," Anna said. "But once I did all the treatment it didn't hurt. It was fun to come here and see everybody and everything."

"The Scoliosis Traction Chair essentially gives the patient the ability to work out, if you would — to relocate in a scoliosis-free environment," Stitzel said.

The patient is strapped into the chair and then pressure from straps and braces can be adjusted to straighten their spine.

"If we're able to X-ray them while they're in the chair, and we've done this, you can see that their scoliosis is almost completely reduced three-dimensionally," Stitzel claimed. "So we basically are able to put the spine the way we want it to be three-dimensionally and then the patient is able to work out in resistance, so we're training the muscles."

In addition to visits to the clinic, Brooke and Anna practice exercises every day at home, both with weights and on their own Scoliosis Traction Chairs.

"It wasn't hard; you just had to remember to do it," Anna said.

"I mean you have to be dedicated to the program and practice every day," Brooke said, "because if you didn't you could potentially lose progress."

Brooke's scoliosis was a success story. Thanks to Stitzel's therapy she went from nearly a surgery-level, 50-degree spinal curvature to 18 degrees mild scoliosis and avoided the life-altering surgery. Stitzel believes her curvature can further be reduced to the point where she would be not able to be diagnosed as having scoliosis.

And Anna is "scoliosis free" and not able to be diagnosed under the term "scoliosis."

At his center in Lititz, Stitzel serves not only patients from the local area, but patients from around the world, from locations such as Australia, the Philippines and Singapore.

"When he said I had scoliosis, to me, it didn't look like look like I had scoliosis," Anna said. "But then when you put it on the X-ray, I could tell the curvature and there was a big difference when my final X-ray was out." Now her spine is "pretty straight," she said.

Stitzel said that when it comes to treating scoliosis, there are more options for teens and parents than ever before. His clinic now offers a genetic test, the ScoliScore, to help patients diagnose their scoliosis before it becomes severe.

"It turns out that there is a unique sequence of genetics that is common in all patients with severe scoliosis," Stitzel said.

Anna underwent the genetic testing. "He had a little cup and he was like, 'Anna, you have to spit in the cup.' That took a while," she laughed. This sample was sent to a lab and analyzed. Surprisingly for Stitzel and Anna's family, her test results revealed that she was at a low risk for developing scoliosis. However, because of a family history of scoliosis, her parents decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

Coupled with his therapy, Stitzel believes the genetic testing can lead to a huge breakthrough in scoliosis treatment. If patients with severe scoliosis can be diagnosed and begin therapy before symptoms of the disease appear, the spinal curvature can be prevented from occurring.

"'Cure' isn't a word you throw around lightly," Stitzel said. "So I'm not saying we have a cure, I'm saying we have an effective treatment that may be able to head the condition off particularly in its early stages, when we're not playing catch-up."

He said the biggest problem he sees in the scoliosis cases that he treats is that there is "a lack of urgency" until spinal curvature gets so bad that the only option left is surgery. The genetic testing combined with his therapy gives patients another option.

"Early-stage intervention is by far and away the best opportunity a patient has to stay ahead of the curve," Stitzel said.

Despite being an initial skeptic, Sherri Zubeck is now overwhelmingly supportive of Stitzel's therapy.

"It's made a tremendous, tremendous difference in the quality of (Brooke's) life," Sherri said.

"I have a little brother, for instance," Brooke said. "And before if I would pick him up and carry him it would really hurt my back. And I now can (pick him up), and he's even older now and heavier."

 And, her mom added, Brooke is now stronger and more confident.

To learn more about Stitzel's therapy, genetic testing and how to check for scoliosis, visit The Lancaster Spinal Health Center's website, www.lancasterspinalhealthce.../ or Stitzel's scoliosis website http://treatingscoliosis.com.