People who are suffering from back pain commonly complain of having a pinched nerve, or some feeling of tightness in the area where it hurts. This tightness is usually attributed to holding your body to a bad position while sleeping, a poor posture due to sitting down in front of a desk while working, or it could be an injury from a sport or any other physical activity.
Many believe that the reasons mentioned above are the causes for their bodies being misaligned, especially the spine, which in turn would cause the back pain. Based on this reasoning, one of the things that people have thought of in order to keep the pain away would be to fix the alignment of the spine through various techniques.
One of the methods that people have come up with to be able to fix this would be through Spinal Decompression therapy.
What is Spinal Decompression? Simply put, spinal decompression therapy is a technique where in medical equipment are used in order to “decompress the spine”. This decompression would help align the body so that the pressure that is being applied on the nerves would be able to lessen and blood and oxygen would be able to flow better in the area.
How is Spinal Decompression Accomplished? There are actually various ways for people to get spinal decompression treatment. Examples of which would be Inversion Therapy, manual distraction, and mechanical pelvic traction. Let us look at each of these examples and see how they decompress your spine.
Inversion Therapy: Inversion therapy involves hanging a person upside down or at an inverted angle with the intention of bringing about therapeutic benefits all over the body, know more, especially your back. They would use either inversion beds or hanging boots to be able to hang you upside down.
The main thrust of inversion therapy is that it would use gravity while you are upside down, to counter the effects of gravity when you are standing normally.
Manual Distraction: Manual distraction is a therapy where your spine is decompressed manually. This means a therapist would use his fingers to pull the spine into its proper positions.
Note that in the hands of an expert, manual distraction may be very effective for your back pain. However, if you encounter someone who is not as skilled, then it may not be good enough and may even cause some complications.
Mechanical Pelvic Traction: This is the most common form of spinal decompression that is being done today. Someone who will do mechanical pelvic traction can expect to a couple of harnesses – one for your chest and one for your hips, The other end of these harnesses would then be attached to machines which would then try to pull it apart.
This is usually computerized, and the strength of the pull is determined by your body weight as well as the number of visits that you have previously done.
Is it effective? Many who have undergone Spinal Decompression therapy have reportedly felt immediate results. They say that they have experienced fewer back pains and are generally able to move better.
With that said, some people are still scared to participate in such an activity because the spine is so critical. For these people, they may be better off with doing other activities that do not apply direct pressure or strain on their spines.