What Spinal Decompression Can and Cannot Fix

What Spinal Decompression Genuinely Helps 

Decompression is designed to relieve a disc under pressure that’s bothering a nerve. The following are conditions that it can help treat: 

• Herniated and bulging discs. Lowering the pressure in the disc helps it retract off the nerve it is pressing on. 
• Sciatica. Shooting leg pain is usually caused by a lumbar disc. The disc pinches the sciatic nerve at L4, L5, or L5-S1. 
• Pinched nerves in the neck or back, along with numbness and tingling in the arm or leg. 
• Degenerative disc disease where the vacuum effect draws water and nutrients back into a disc that has dried out. But it’s only ideal if there’s still disc height left to work with. 
• Neck pain from cervical disc compression. 

What Spinal Decompression Can’t Fix 

Decompression isn’t a therapy for all disc-related problems. For instance, it can’t correct scoliosis. The decompression table can’t straighten a spinal curve. It’s the truth that some chiropractic clinics aren’t too honest about. It also can’t rebuild a disc that has fully collapsed to bone-on-bone. This is the reason our chiropractor, Dr. Hoa Nguyen, recommends that patients undergo X-rays first before treatment. Patients with spinal fractures, severe instability, and other certain conditions should not undergo this therapy. This is the reason a screening exam is necessary to find out whether your condition can be fixed by spinal decompression or not. 

Will It Make You Taller? 

It may make you taller temporarily. Decompressing your spine restores a little of the height your discs surrender to gravity each day. This is the reason you’re a bit taller in the morning than at night. Or why astronauts are taller after returning to Earth after months of being in space. Their spines simply settle back down, so they are quite shorter again. 

Unfortunately, the extra height is not permanent. The discs will just recompress when it resumes its shift. No table or belt can change it. Here at Dallas Spine Center, we don’t sell spinal decompression as a height program. The lasting change that this therapy can do is to stop the disc from pinching the nerve that has been causing you pain. It won’t add inches to your height. 

What About DIY: Hangs, Belts, and Inversion Tables? 

Dead hangs, decompression belts, and inversion tables may have a similar concept. That is, it stretches a compressed spine. It will help you feel good. But there are limits. Your grip gives out long before a disc changes. A belt can’t target your spinal level. And an inversion table applies the same stretch to every structure at once. None of these methods involve calculating a pull based on your body weight. They also don’t cycle the way the research describes. Plus, they don’t require undergoing an MRI to know if you need more stretching. 

If your back feels tight, you can stretch away. If a disc is pinching a nerve, then you should get the real decompression version. You can start by reading our plain-English guide to know how it works. Then you can see how the full protocol runs on our spinal decompression page.