Proven Non-Surgical Treatment for Back and Neck Pain

Spinal Decompression Therapy(also known more simply as Spinal Decompression or SD), is a non-surgical therapy proven to treat back pain and sciatica caused by bulging, herniated, and degenerative discs or facet syndrome. Even post-surgical patients and those suffering from stenosis(a narrowing of the spinal canal) have reported significant pain relief from SD treatments. Over a series of relaxing treatment sessions, patients experience powerful pain reduction and healing. Many patients even notice an improvement in their symptoms after the first few treatments.

Spinal Decompression, not to be confused with traction, gently lengthens and decompresses the spine, creating negative pressures within the discs. This reversal of pressure creates an intradiscal vacuum that not only takes pressure off of pinched nerves, but helps to reposition bulging discs and pull extruded disc material back into place.

Simultaneously, spinal experts believe nutrients, oxygen and fluids are drawn into the disc to create a revitalized environment conducive to healing. By bringing disc pressures to negative levels, many experts surmise that SD stimulates the body's repair mechanism, providing the building blocks needed to mend injured and degenerated discs.

How Spinal Decompression Works

High intradiscal pressures cause discs to bulge out and press painfully on nerve roots. They also make for a compressed anaerobic environment unsuitable for healing. SD produces negative pressures within the disc, creating a vacuum effect which may help to repair injured discs and surrounding tissues. This vacuum has also been shown to aid in the retraction of escaped cushioning gel from herniated discs.

When Negative Is a Positive

Much like gauging the air pressure in a car tire, scientists have been able to use pressure sensors to measure the various pressures put on spinal discs while lifting, standing, sitting, lying down, undergoing traction and during SD therapy. Like other pressures found in the body such as blood pressure, intradiscal pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury(mmHg). While traction, physical therapy, and manipulation may reduce disc pressures to as low as 40 mmHg, only SD has been shown to achieve negative pressures as low as -160 mmHG within the injured disc during the treatment session.

Traction Is Not Decompression

With traction, weights are added one by one to the end of the traction bed, which, in turn, adds tension to a harness secured around the patient's pelvis, lengthening the spine. The intention is to relieve pressure, but the linear force of this traction can produce spasming which may lead to greater injury. Studies confirm that the benefits of traction come from simply immobilizing the spine. In fact, the Quebec Task Force ruled in 1996 that traction was not an effective treatment for chronic herniated discs; the results are not long-lasting and cannot produce negative pressures in the disc. Like traction, SD also lengthens and exerts tension upon the spine. However, the approach is far different, producing vastly superior results.

Fooling the Back Into Relaxing

Normally, pulls exerted on the spine trigger sensory receptors in the back to tighten the muscles surrounding the vertebrae and discs in an effort to protect them from injury - a mechanism in the body known as the proprioceptor response. SD bypasses this response by gently pulling on the spine and relaxing the back over an extended period of time, allowing the spine to be repositioned without tension and without setting off the "lock down" proprioceptor response.