Inversion therapy is a type of treatment intended to take the pressure off your spine by forcing you upside down. This takes gravity off your spine and can help ease back pain as well as compressed vertebrae. While using an inversion table will not make your spine grow, it can elongate it and improve flexibility.
Inversion Tables
Inversion therapy is a form of treatment that's been around since 400 B.C. It places traction on the spine by inverting your body, or turning you upside down, to relieve pressure on your spine. This can relieve some back pain and improve posture. In some cases, the patient is literally hung upside by boots strapped to a bar or by hanging their knees over a bar. However, the inversion table offers a much more gradual treatment, since you can be tipped backward slowly and into a less drastic angle. Even as much as a 15-degree tilt can be beneficial. While on the table and inverted, you are often encouraged to perform exercises such as torso twists and crunches to improve flexibility and strength.
Spine
The anatomy of the spine is important to understand to comprehend how inversion tables work. The spine connects your skull to your body and runs all the way down your back. It supports your upper body and allows you to bend, twist and stand straight. The vertebrae run along the column of the spine, providing it with flexibility. Discs cushion each vertebrae from one another. And sometimes these discs get compressed, causing pain and limited mobility.
Treatment Benefits
Using inversion table treatments can relieve pain. By taking the gravity off your spine, or reversing its pull, compressed discs are relieved and the pressure is taken off the surrounding muscles and ligaments. This stretches your back and can act as a form of physical therapy. By performing exercises on the inversion table, you get a cardiovascular workout and build up strength. In some cases, this can help you move more fluidly since gravity isn't pulling down on your spine. It can also help you stand up straighter, making it look as though you've grown taller. Using an inversion table can't cure back conditions or make your spine grow, but it can act as a temporary pain reliever when combined with other treatments.
Warning
The use of an inversion table to take the pressure off your spine and improve your posture is not for everyone. Your treatments should be performed under the care of a medical professional, first of all, but those with heart conditions, hypertension, eye pressure disorders, back injuries or who are pregnant, should not be inverted under any circumstances.
