Starting out. Going to post my progress here.

[Skywalker]

Hello all! I would like to thank Bjorn for creating this website with so much useful info. 

My name's Wojtek and I'm from Poland. I'm 22 years old suffering from PE. I myself have moderate PE about 3-3,5 cm deep. Also I have noticable rib flaring. I think my left side is flared more and it is little bit more sinked in. I can notice it when I'm lying on my back then it's visible that left side rib is at little higher level than the right one. Also left rib is little different than right. It's pretty much more compressed.

Recently I tried to gather as much info about treating condition without surgery. I stumbled across many pages and blogs that claim excercises can correct PE. Still each site lacked some points and Bjorn blog is the only one I found that covers problem as a whole both treating symptoms but also roots of PE. 

While peeking throught the web I found that almost everyone points out that posture is the key to treating PE and therefore must be taken care of as a priority. Also medical sources claims this. Theres physician here in Poland who have taken approach into treating PE without surgery. His main points are that person has to have perfect posture first. Then a person should wear vacuum bell to loosen up sternum area in a pair with a breathing and physical excercises . After that a custom brace is constructed to treat flaring ribs. 

Still his method is pretty expensive for me so I decided to try treating condition myself. I think that with proper excercises (also the ones that Bjorn developed) can loosen up sternum area and lift it up so vacuum bell is not neccesarry (although I think it's great addition to whole treatment). 

Second thing that most sites claim is that you should do breathing excercises which are essential. But noone except Bjorn noticed that it is exhale not inhale that actually lifts up sternum. So its good to concentrate on heavy, full exhaling (which also trains inside abdominal muscles which are helpful to tighten ribs and therefore reduce flaring). 

Physical exercises are pretty similiar to what Bjorn is proposing so it's good to know that persons with different approaches find similiar excercises to work up.

Still I found one approach which might be great addition to Bjorns method (Bjorn I would like to ask you for opinion about this). 

Basically I found one person who claims that he treated his PE with doing rib expansion excercises. He was doing breathing squats, dumb pullovers and rader chest pulls. This allowed him to expand his ribcage in pretty oldschool way which helped to lift sternum aswell. I can provide a link for anyone interested. 

Bjorn pointed also out the important role of diaphragm into development of PE. I was same told by a specialist who assesed me when I had suspected scoliosis in my teens (but I was told my spine is perfectly straight). He told me to do lots of abs workout and that cause of my PE is basically diaphragm who developed incorrectly and therefore caused my PE.

So to sum it up theres a lot of sense what Bjorn and other people are proposing and altought it might be harder and longer path to recovery than surgery, I think its worth a try because theres a lot more benefits than just treating PE. Posture correction might benefit throughout your whole life! 

I'm also thinking about buying posture correction brace. I'm interested in this version: 

I'm posting my recent photos where PE is visible.

From the front:

Front while inhaling (visible ribs and the left looks different than the right which looks more normal)

Right side (looks better than left):

Left side: 

As you can see I'm very skinny and I find hard to gain any mass. I'm also pretty tall at 191cm. 

Thanks for your attention in the next posts I will try to post a plan into my correction. 

[Skywalker]

In this post I will try to write down my treatment plan. I will separate it into things I can do passively and actively. 

PASSIVE: 

1. Start wearing zero drop shoes on daily basis.

2. While sitting and standing I will maintain straight posture, don't slope, keep back, arms and neck straight. 

3. I will sleep without pillow, on my back. 

4. To gain even more correction on posture I will buy and wear correction brace mentioned in above post. Still I'm not sure for how long to wear it. Logically it would be for as long as I can but Bjorn states to wear it only for 2 hours a day. Still I'm not sure why 2 hours is better than 20 hours. 

5. I will try to condition myself into resting on my back, on hard surface. This will be preparation for sleeping routine. 

ACTIVE

Here's my excercises plan: 

So I will try do breathing, chest expansion, stretching and kyphosis excercises each day. They are as follows: 

1. Bjorn breathing excercise posted on his blog. 5mins morning and evening 

2. Normal deep breathing while standing with my hands below the neck to help maintain straight posture. 5 mins morning and evening 

3. Rader chest pulls 10+ repetitions

4. Kyphosis fixer posted by Bjorn.

5. Yoga pose called cobra. 

Then I will include more muscle oriented excercises which I will do with 1 day rest to ensure proper regeneration:

On mondays, wednesdays, fridays. On the weekends I will focus on breathing and stretching mainly to ensure my muscles have time to regenerate. 

1. Warmup to ensure all muscles are prepared. 

2.  Ribcage expansion excercises posted on this site: http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/08/rib-cage-development-george-coates.html ( I might modify dumbell pullovers to Bjorn version.) This will cover also rader chest pulls that day. 

2. Incline pushups 3 sets 10 reps

3. Pushups proposed by Kyo with 2 chairs. 3 sets 10 reps.

4. Bjorn wrestler bridges. 

5. Sternum lifter

6. Kyphosis fixer.

7. Broom twists to activate abs. 

8. Stretching routine to calm down and stretch even more chest. I will do things proposed here on the daily routine: http://hubpages.com/health/Pectus-Excavatum-Repair-Part-2 

This is a rough sketch of my plan. I'm sure I will modify it throughout the time and with gaining more experience. I think this will be a nice starter. Please post any suggestions. Thank you

[Björn Åkerström]

Hi and Welcome!

This looks really intresting. With this complete way to think, I gess there will be reults.

Info that might be helpful in some way is that when I look on your PE, in the photos, it looks almost exactly like my own did, mine was just a Little deeper.

4,5-5cm.

One thing you were wondering about: The 2 hours with the brace is just my minimum recomendation at (what i belive is) the best possible period of the daily cycle but this can of course propably be modified if you find it comfortable. For me it stressed my muscles in the back to much so I had to find this "2 hour balance", that worked best for me.

It was really intereseting to read through your text. It seems like you completely know how to fight PE, that feels great for me to see and read. If you do all this I guess you will see results quite fast. My suggestion is trying to walk quite long distances a few times a week with zero drop, because this works on the posture very effectively. Also Ryo told this in this forum, that it helped him very much, so did it for me, but you may already have planned this?

Look forward to see how things are going, Anything you want to ask? Just do it.

/Björn Å.

[Skywalker]

Hello Björn,

Thanks for your response! When I will get my brace I will see how long I can wear it comfortably. Also I thought about starting to make walks with my back straight. I have even did it yesterday with shoes that I think are zerodrop (my old sneakers, still not sure). Also yesterday was the day to try out your excercises. I tried to understand them and get better technique. Still there's much to learn.

The shoes I already own (fall/winter ones) doesn't have zero drop, even light heel. I have to find zero drop shoes for winter because I won't be walking whole winter in sneakers. 

I've noticed that you didn't update blog in recent months. How's it going for you, did you get improvement (I think your record was like 4-5mm)?

Also thanks for the good words, that's really helpful because I feel kinda lonely with my struggle, that nobody without PE understands. The only person that supports me is my girlfriend.

I really wanted to do something about PE because it strained me for whole life. Couldn't do all the activities because I felt embarassed, even sometimes I received bad comments about my look (but nothing really serious so don't worry). 

[Ihsan Ilicali]

Hi. Thanks to everybody for a such great information.:) I also have PE. And i interested in whether you got any progress or not. It will be better if you upload some pics. Thanks.