In April 2020 I herniated my L5-S1 disc. About 5 millimeters. I was 35 years old and I had already been a chiropractor for 10 years, so I tried every single thing I knew how to do. Nothing worked.
I bought a decompression table out of desperation. Five to eight weeks later I was pain free.
Listen, that is the whole reason I do what I do now. Today I want to take the curtain off non-surgical spinal decompression. What it is, how it was developed, what the research actually says, and how we use it every day on real patients in Walnut Creek.
What is non-surgical spinal decompression?
Non-surgical spinal decompression is a computer-controlled treatment that gently separates the vertebrae to take pressure off an injured disc. The table pulls, senses how your body responds, and adjusts in real time. That feedback loop is what separates it from every other form of pulling on a spine.
The technology was developed by a physician named Dr. Allan Dyer. His breakthrough was not the pulling. Anybody can pull on a spine. His breakthrough was the feedback system. The table reads the patient’s response and backs off before the muscles fight back.
That matters more than people realize. Your back is protective. If you yank on it, the muscles guard, they spasm, and you get nowhere. A decompression table works with that reflex instead of against it. You lay down, we strap you in at the pelvis and the chest, and the table does the work in a slow accordion cycle of pull and relax.
Is decompression the same as traction or an inversion table?
No. Traction is a straight pull with no feedback and no oscillation. An inversion table is just hanging upside down. Neither one gives you controlled, targeted, measured pressure at a specific spinal level, which is the entire point of decompression.
This is the number one thing people get confused about. Someone will tell me they already tried decompression, and when I ask what they were on, it was an inversion table in their garage. That is hanging. There is no oscillation, there is no control, there is no targeting. That is why people spasm on them.
How does spinal decompression actually heal a disc?
A disc does not have its own blood supply. It has to pull oxygen, water, and nutrients in from the surrounding tissue through movement and pressure change. Decompression creates negative pressure inside the disc, around 40 millimeters of mercury, and that pulls the good stuff in and pushes inflammation out.
Think of a disc like a jelly-filled donut. The outer part, the annulus, is the dough. The inside, the nucleus, is the jelly. When that jelly pushes out and lands on a nerve, that is your herniation, and that is your leg pain.
The research calls what happens on the table a reverse vacuum effect. We open the space up, and everything that has been waiting to get in gets in. Everything that has been trapped in there, all that inflammation, gets moved out. That exchange is what starts actual healing instead of just masking pain.
Forty millimeters of mercury is our target in the treatment protocol for a reason. That is where the research suggests you start seeing real shifts. Not just relief in the moment, but changes on imaging. Pre and post MRIs show increased disc space and a reduction in the size of the bulge. That reduction is the whole game, because the bulge is what is causing the back pain and the leg pain in the first place.
I have my own published data on this. In our peer-reviewed paper we followed 4 patients and documented disc reductions of 9%, 27%, 30%, and 78% in under 4 months. All 4 were 100% pain free. Not one of them had surgery.
Why do discs break down in the first place?
Compression. Most of us sit all day, and sitting puts the highest pressure per square inch on your discs of any position. Without movement, the disc cannot exchange nutrients, so it slowly dries out and degenerates.
This is not a mystery disease. It is a pressure problem that builds over time. A few weeks of it is nothing. A few months of it starts to add up. A few decades of it and now you have a serious chronic condition sitting on top of a nerve.
Desk jobs made this worse. The pandemic made it dramatically worse. When people stopped commuting, stopped walking through an office, stopped moving at all, we saw a wave of patients with back pain that had nothing to do with an injury. They just sat.
Here is the simplest advice I can give you and it costs nothing. Get up every 20 to 30 minutes and walk. That is it. Movement is what lubricates the disc and keeps the oxygen and blood supply cycling in and out. If you are sitting for four straight hours, you are running your discs at the highest pressure per square inch they will ever see, for hours at a time.
What conditions does the research say spinal decompression helps?
There are close to 100 published research papers on non-surgical spinal decompression. The majority document improvement in low back pain and radiating leg pain, with specific findings in herniated disc, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, facet arthritis, sciatica, and scoliosis.
Radiculopathy is the medical word, and it just means pain that refers down your leg, front or back. That is the one that scares people the most, because it does not feel like a back problem. Your back can feel fine and your calf is on fire.
What the research consistently suggests is a six to eight week course of treatment. Not one visit. Not three visits. Six to eight weeks of consistent, correctly-dosed decompression. That is what the literature is built on and that is what we hold ourselves to.
How long does spinal decompression take to work?
Six to eight weeks is the standard course. Most patients start noticing changes well before the end of that window, but the structural change on a post-MRI takes the full program.
I tell every patient the same thing. You did not get here in a week and you are not getting out in a week. Your disc took years to get to this point. We are asking tissue with almost no blood supply to rebuild itself, and that is a slow biological process.
Will you be completely pain free? Maybe. Plenty of our patients are. What I can tell you is that the research suggests you will be a whole lot better, and my job is to give you a real shot at that without an operating room.
Two people with the same herniation should not be on the same table settings
Decompression tables are precision instruments. The angle, the weight, and the oscillation all have to be set for your specific disc at your specific level. Same machine, wrong settings, and you get nothing. Or worse, you flare up.
These tables are Ferraris. They are incredible machines. But if you do not know how to drive stick, you crash it. That is the honest truth about this industry, and it is why two patients can go to two different offices with the same MRI and get completely different results.
There are three dials. Number one is angle. We can raise or lower the legs to change where the pull lands in your spine, and we adjust it in 2.5 degree increments based on your disc type and your comfort. Number two is weight. The textbook says 50% of body weight and I think that is flawed and way too aggressive. We start low and we build. Number three is oscillation, the pull-and-relax cycle. That is the piece traction does not have.
This is exactly why we want an MRI before we start. The MRI tells us what level, what type, and how big. A herniation at L4-L5 does not get treated the same as one at L5-S1. We take that information and we set the table to target your disc, specifically. That is not marketing. That is the difference between a program and a machine.
What happens after the disc starts coming back in?
Decompression takes the pressure off. Stabilization is what keeps it off. Once the bulge starts reducing, we hammer the area with whole body vibration to wake up the small postural muscles that hold your spine in position.
We use power plates in the office. They vibrate at 50 revolutions per second, and what that does is fire up the intrinsic muscles. Intrinsic just means the muscles that work without you thinking about them. My bicep does not move unless I tell it to. My postural muscles are working right now, holding me upright, and I am not thinking about them at all.
Those are the muscles that failed you. If we get the disc back where it belongs and then hand you back the same weak support system that let it herniate in the first place, we have not finished the job. Decompression plus stabilization is the formula. That is how we help people with herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, facet arthritis, and pinched nerves actually hold their results.
Where can you get non-surgical spinal decompression in Walnut Creek?
Our center in Walnut Creek runs 13 DOC decompression tables and has performed more than 50,000 decompression treatments. Patients come to us from across the East Bay and Contra Costa County, and some fly in from other parts of the world.
When I started, I had one table. I fixed my own back with the program I developed, and it worked so well that I built the entire practice around it. Now we treat around 300 patients a week and we serve Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Danville, and the greater Bay Area.
The reason I am so loud about this is that about 25% of the patients in my program have already had spinal surgery. They had the jelly removed and nobody ever addressed the pressure that pushed it out. I do not want you to be that patient if there is a real alternative on the table for you.
Quick questions, straight answers
Does spinal decompression hurt?
It should not. The table works in a slow pull-and-relax cycle rather than a constant yank, and we start conservative on weight and build from there. Most patients describe it as a stretch, and a lot of them fall asleep on the table. If it hurts, the settings are wrong.
Do I need an MRI before starting spinal decompression?
Yes, and I would be skeptical of any office that says otherwise. The MRI tells us the level, the type, and the size of your disc problem, and that is what we use to set the angle on the table. Without it, we are guessing.
Is spinal decompression the same as an inversion table?
No. An inversion table is passive hanging with no oscillation, no measured pressure, and no ability to target a specific spinal level. That lack of control is why so many people spasm on them.
Can a herniated disc heal without surgery?
In many cases, yes. Pre and post MRI imaging shows disc bulges reducing in size after a course of decompression, and our published research documented reductions of 9% to 78% in under 4 months with no surgery. It is not a guarantee for every disc, which is why the evaluation comes first.
Where can I get spinal decompression near Walnut Creek?
Dudum Chiropractic in Walnut Creek is one of the largest single-location decompression centers in the country, serving patients throughout the East Bay. Call (925) 300-3302 to find out whether you are a candidate.
You have options
If you’re dealing with back pain and want to find out whether you’re a candidate for spinal decompression, contact us at Dudum Chiropractic in Walnut Creek or call (925) 300-3302. You deserve relief without spinal surgery.
I’m Dr. JD Dudum. This is Back At It with Dr. Decompression.