Dr. Ryan Hetland here at River Heights Health and Injury Clinic; I wanted to tell you about spinal disc decompression and just the amazing benefits it does for you.

One question I get a lot, I think I got it 7 or 8 times last week was, "What about inversion tables?" So if you're watching TV or looking online, they try to sell you these things that invert you upside down. You lock your ankles in and you lean back and you go upside down.

So the concept there is you're hanging from your ankles way up here, you're having anti-gravity effect on your ankles, your knees, into the hip joints, through the S.I. joints, before you even get to the disc, and you're just anti-gravity of the whole spine. It's really just the upside down stretch. That's basically what inversion does.

If you have vertigo, dizziness, if you have bad herniated disc where you can't straighten yourself up, it's a hazard to get on and off that thing and I've had people get injured trying to just use it. So, if you have a significant disc injury and you're in an acute state, so meaning you're in a lot of pain, I wouldn't recommend using that at all; I don't think it's that beneficial.

The key to any disc problem and this is why we use spinal disc decompression and that is what Lina's on right here. I'll explain that to you in a minute, but the key to any disc issue is the degeneration that starts or a disc herniation or bulge and what happens most of the time is the disc gets locked and it doesn't move. And that lack of movement causes the disc inside to dehydrate. And when it dehydrates, you get degenerative disc disease, you get bulging of disc, and eventually, you get disc herniations.

So how do you fix it? You need to unlock the disc so it's moving, so you restore normal motion to it, which will allow the disc to pump fluid in and out of it. And so spinal disc decompression-what Lina's on right now-we have her set up here to pull. This is her first time on it. How does it feel Lina?

Lena: Good so far.

Dr. Hetland: Pretty good so far?

So you can see-come over here-you can see the table that actually gets moved a good 3 to 4 inches apart here. And what that's doing is this is holding her upper body in place, the bottom is stretching and pulling by the set-up here mechanism at a strategic amount of pull, so you can see over here it's pulling 50 pounds of pressure and what it's going to do is, eventually, it's going to pump the disc.

It's going to pull it 50 and it's going to let her down to 35; pull her to 50, let her down to 35, and that's going to not only stretch the disc, it's going to stretch all the muscles and tissues around it and it's going to bring pump to the disc, which is going to rehydrate, and that's what is going to eventually heal a disc bulge, a disc herniation as long as the two things are being met: the disc is unlocked with a good chiropractic adjustment and you're pumping the disc and you're not doing anything between treatments to mess it up-bending forward, twisting, lifting, a lot of the repetitive things-and that's for another video that I've talked about what you can or what you shouldn't do, but this explains the difference primarily between inversion, which is an upside down stretch, and dangerous for you if you have back problems, and spinal disc decompression, which is a program and table that strategically adds a pump to the disc.

So any questions about this let me know. I hope this was valuable for you. Have a great day.