How To Decompress Lower Back

What Are Some Spinal Decompression Exercises And Stretches That I Can Do At Home

There are exercises which can work on the premise of spinal decompression and help give you relief of your lower back. However, it is very important to note that these exercises are guides and you should always consult a healthcare professional before commencing them. Furthermore, if the exercises are not indicated they may increase your pain levels, so please be sure to make sure these are suitable for you.

How To Find The Right Size Exercise Ball

An exercise ball, also known as a yoga ball, balance ball, or stability ball, is a great tool that many people love using for at-home exercises. Before doing any exercises with an exercise ball, make sure that you have found the right size for your body to ensure safety and effectiveness.

You can size your ball by sitting on it with your feet flat on the ground and your knees at a 90 degree angle. If your hips are level with your knees, your ball is the right size. If your hips are above your knees, the ball is too big. Likewise, if your hips fall below your knees, the ball is too small.

What Causes A Compressed Nerve

A few common causes for lumbar pinched nerves are:

1. Repetitive motion

2. Holding the body in one position for long periods .

Read: Can a Bulging Disc Heal on Its Own?

4. Arthritis of the spine.

But when we look at these causes through the holistic approach, we see that all of these causes have the same root cause: muscle Imbalances.

The important thing to understand is that a pinched nerve, or Sciatica, is not a condition or a disease.

Its just a symptom of something else.

Much like coughing is a symptom of pneumonia. If you want to stop the coughing, the smart way to go is to cure pneumonia, not just swallow coughing syrup.

Well get to that later, and see how to reverse it easily and at home.

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Reason #: Doing The Wrong Stretches

Did you know that stretching your lower-back is exactly the OPPOSITE of what people with back pain or spinal compression should be doing?

Most people assume that the pain you experience in your lower-back can be alleviated by stretching it. In fact, this is exactly what you should NOT be doing.

Want to decompress your spine? Get off your feet. Lay down.

The problem with doing the forward fold , is that this is exactly what youre already doing when youre sitting at your desk.

Bad Posture when sitting, bad Posture when stretching

The answer to successfully decompressing your spine, then, is to do exercises that stretch your spine in ways that do NOT mimic sitting with poor posture.

Note: This is exactly why not all yoga can be helpful for office workers. There are too many forward folds, and not enough posture-restoring exercises. For a yoga workout to be effective for office workers, it needs to use exercises aimed at undoing the stress of sitting at a desk, restoring posture, and getting our bodies back to our natural postures.

And that brings us to the next section the blog:

Can Back Decompression Hurt Your Back

Though back traction is simply a gentle stretch of the spine, it can go wrong and cause more damage if you dont know how to do it, which device to use, or your condition falls into the contraindicated list .

1. Consult with your physician before attempting any kind of back traction at home.

2. Back traction should be stopped immediately if you feel extra pain and discomfort.

3. Back traction at home should not be performed if you have the following conditions: Unstable spine, tumor, fracture, abdominal aortic aneurysm, advanced osteoarthritis, severe spondylolisthesis, fresh disc surgery, and metal implants on the spine.

4. While using a back stretcher machine, it is important to align the spine first. Do not twist the spine while doing traction.

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Spinal Decompression Harness Best For Sciatica

Sit and Decompress helpful for Sciatica

• Treatment time 3 minutes and 1 more minute every week
• Traction type stand-up spine stretcher

Sit and Decompress is the top-selling spinal decompression harness on the market, and claims to increase the space between your spinal discs by 20% instantly .

The harness takes advantage of the strong pull of gravity along with your body weight to hold your upper body in place while decompressing your mid and lower back in only 3 minutes daily.

This device is very easy to assemble and use, and according to customer reviews, many times immediate pain relief is felt after only one treatment.

If it doesnt work for you, the company allows for 60-days money-back guarantee.

The harness comes in 4 sizes, make sure you measure your chest before you pick a size theres a good chart on the Sit and Decompress Amazon page HERE.

Spine Mobility Exercises For Spinal Decompression

The following exercises directly address the spine. You can go step by step through each exercise, or follow along to a video tutorial / follow-along routine below.

1. Happy Baby

Technique points:

• Keep your back as flat as possible
• Tighten your abs.
• Pull your knees toward your shoulders and squeeze your hip flexors.

Target areas: Low-back, Inner-thighs/adductors, Hamstrings

You should feel:

• Keep butt down and back near heels.
• Keep your back as flat as possible .
• Engage abs to help lengthen spine.

Target Areas: Low-back, mid-back, hips, shoulders

You should feel:

• Stretching through the low-back and mid-back.
• Stretching through the chest and shoulders.
• Engagement through the abdominal area.

Recommended reps & duration: 45-90 seconds, 1-2 reps, can do 1-3x dailyModifications: Use block if your head does not rest on the ground.

Childs Pose Standard Position

Childs Pose Modification

Use the above exercises on a daily basis if youd like! They each help to decompress your spine and get rid of back pain, but using them on their own wont solve the issue for good.

If this first group of stretches doesnt help, then you might need to target a different area of your spine. Most people have low-back related spinal compression, but its possible that yours is caused in the mid and upper-back. Thats why this next set of exercises focuses on the mid-back , neck , and shoulders.

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Decompress Spine By Hanging

Instructions:

• Hang off a bar above your head height
• Allow your body to completely relax.
• You can keep your feet lightly rested on the floor.
• Hold for 30 seconds.
• To increase the stretch: Apply weights to your ankles.
• Note: Do not attempt this exercise if you have issues in your upper limb, shoulder or neck.

And Thats It For The Exercises As Well As This Blog

Spinal compression is mainly a direct result of our sedentary lifestyle, combined with a lack of posture-restoring and recovery-focused exercise.

You can use certain exercises to decompress your spine and get rid of back pain, as well as incorporate a more comprehensive approach to your exercise in order to prevent spinal compression and back pain from occurring in the first place.

Thank you for reading this blog! If you enjoyed it or have something to add, I encourage you to leave a comment in the description below.

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Why Would Spinal Decompression Work When Chiropractic Physical Therapy And Traction Have Failed

While traction, physical therapy, inversion tables and manipulation may reduce disc pressures to as low as 40 mm Hg, only spinal decompression has been shown to achieve negative pressures within the spine. It has been clinically proven that spinal decompression creates negative pressures as low as -110 mm Hg3 within the injured disc during the treatment session. 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. This typically includes muscle guarding and muscle spasms. Spinal Decompression bypasses this response by slowly pulling on the spine and relaxing the back over an extended period of time, allowing the discs to be repositioned without tension and without setting off muscle guarding and spasms. It is important for patients to make sure that they are treated on a high quality spinal decompression table by a physician with years of experience and not an imitation spinal decompression table to ensure best results.

Stretches To Improve Hip Flexibility For Spinal Decompression & Back Pain Relief

We might tend to think of the body as individualized compartments, but in reality, your body is totally interconnected. One area affects the other. If there is tightness, weakness, or inactivity in one part of your body, it will affect many other parts of your body.

These exercises increase the flexibility of the hips, which reduces pressure on the lower-back, helping to decompress your spine.

More so than just targeting the hips at random, Ive specifically selected these exercises because they also help with posture. Poor posture is a major factor in spinal compression, so its important that we do exercises that help us practice GOOD posture, instead of reinforcing bad posture.

Doing these exercises helps to eliminate pain, discomfort, or tightness in the low-back. After doing these, you will be able to move and exercise without pain in your back.

1. Low Lunge/High lunge

• Keep your low-back neutral. Bend back knee as needed to achieve this.
• Lightly squeeze legs toward one another.
• Maintain upright posture by lifting ribs away from hips.

Target Areas: Hip flexors glutes, core, and thighs

You should feel:

• Stretching in your hip flexors the front of your back hip.
• Engagement through your abs, hips, and thighs.
• Length through your lower-back .

Recommended reps & duration: 45 90 seconds, 1-3x dailyModification: Bend your back knee is your lower-back is pinched or arching.

Low Lunge

Figure Four Pose Modification On Wall

3. Reclined Strap Stretches

You should feel:

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Why Do People Have Spinal Decompression Therapy

Your spine provides support for your body. It consists of bones called vertebrae, with ligaments and spinal disks that keep it flexible. Your spinal column provides a nerve pathway that runs down the middle of these bones, ligaments and disks.

Spine injuries or degeneration to your spine can cause pain. You might feel pain from compression in your spine that puts pressure on your spinal cord or nerves. Spinal decompression seeks to relieve the pressure to ease the pain.

What Is Spinal Decompression Therapy

Spinal decompression therapy, also known as non-surgical spinal decompression, is a practice that utilizes spinal decompression tables to relieve pain by creating a scenario in which bulging or herniated disc tissue is able to move back into place and heal, alleviating the pain this condition causes.

Spinal decompression therapy aims to help patients who suffer from debilitating pain due to bulging, degenerating, or herniated discs. It can also be used for the pain management and treatment of many causes of sciatica, injured or diseased spinal nerve roots, and worn spinal joints.

The therapy itself works to stretch the spine, using a spinal decompression table or other device, in order to create negative pressure and space within the disc to allow disc fluid to move back into place. This creates an environment in which the disc can receive more nutrients and therefore heal itself more quickly and effectively. The ultimate goal of spinal decompression therapy is to relieve the patients chronic back, arm, neck, and/or leg pain, and to heal the source of said pain.

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Pelvic And Lower Back Pain After Strenuous Work

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The 10 Best Back Traction Home Devices

Back traction, also known as non-surgical spinal decompression, is one of the most popular therapies in chiropractors and physical therapists clinics.

Why?

Because it works .

However, in 2022 you can have your own highly effective and safe spinal decompression device at home for a fraction of the cost. This is what we are here to help you with!

This post contains affiliate links.

Though back decompression home devices are not widely supported in scientific studies, theyve been used as a drug-free and relatively fast method to relieve back and neck pain for decades.

In 2022, you can do spinal decompression at home safely and effectively for a fraction of the cost and whenever you need it to quickly relieve muscle back pain, Sciatica, bulging disc pain, pinched nerves, and degenerative disc disease.

Here youll find the 10 BEST ways to decompress your spine through home back traction devices.

In a hurry?

See our comparison table first, below, and keep reading to see our spinal decompression devices reviews:

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Avoids Spinal Disc Problems

It has been proven by studies that spinal decompression methods are more effective ways to heal disc problems than traditional traction treatments.

Be it a herniated disc or a disc injury due to any degenerative disease, spinal decompression is beneficial for all these problems. This is because it increases the blood circulation to the spine and helps the dislocated spines to regain back their original position.

Are There Any Side Effects To The Treatment

Most patients do not experience any major side effects. The most common side effect is a dull, achy soreness for the first week or two as the body becomes accustomed to being stretched and decompressed. Spinal decompression stretches muscles in a lengthening direction which the body is generally not used to. Because of this patients may experience a dull, achy soreness that they often describe as it feels like I just worked out for the first time in a long time. Very rarely do patients have an increase in the pain that they came in with.Patients with acute, severe disc herniations may experience some pain during the first week or two until the herniation retracts back in taking pressure off of the nerves. Acute disc herniation patients tend to experience more up and down types of relief from their pain for the first 2 weeks as an acute disc herniation can be slightly unpredictable. Regardless of the mild soreness experienced in the first week or two, most patients experience 50% relief or more of their pain around the end of the second week.Overall Spinal Decompression Therapy is considered safe and comfortable. The system has emergency stop switches for both the patient and the operator. These switches terminate the treatment immediately if a patient experiences any increase in pain or discomfort during the treatment thereby avoiding most injuries.

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Drhos Spinal Decompression Belt

This decompression belt is a very interesting device as it claims to have clinical grade traction. It comes in two sizes, size A for 25-41 waists and size B for 42-55 waists. Via patient experience it has been shown to be very bulky, overheats and is not all that comfortable. Once again the size disparities really do not seem as though this device is the best to use for spinal decompression at home. It is very important to note that if you are going to be using a belt or brace that it is always best to have a custom fit and be fitted by a healthcare provider. This is one device you should think twice about before purchasing.

It is very important to note that not all devices are for everyone and you should always use a fine tooth comb when looking into products, especially when it comes to your health. Once again it is always important to consult with your healthcare professional before purchasing or using any medical devices.

Focus On Your Breathing

Intertwined with posture, and something we do all day that has the power to reduce back pain, is breathing.

The muscles you use to breathe are connected to the five vertebrae between your rib cage and pelvis, so carefully controlled breathing will ease tension in these muscles and help to fix any spinal misalignment.

• READ: 12 Of The Best Back Pain Relief Products And Remedies

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How To Decompress Spine While Sleeping

Most of the time that we are awake, we keep our spines in a vertically aligned position. This puts pressure on our spine by continuously working against gravity.

Due to this reason, the strain can cause our spine to become compressed. This pressure can stress out our spinal cord and the muscles associated with it.

Nonsurgical spinal decompression is a particular technique to move the spine in order to get rid of its pain. This method involves stretching of the spine in a sustained manner to relieve its pain. It mostly involves switching between different positions to decompress the spine.

Following this noninvasive decompression, any spine that might have been herniated will regain its position removing pressure from the nerves that may have been compressed.

This further helps to increase the flow of oxygen, water, and nutrient-rich fluid to the spine for its rapid healing.

Experts from around the globe have drafted numerous ways that can be beneficial for spinal decompression while you are in your sleeping position. These methods can help to treat:

• Sciatica which refers to the pain going from the lower back right up to the leg
• Disc herniation or degenerative disk disease
• swollen spinal joints

Following are some of the benefits of spinal decompression.