Decompressing the Spine with an Inversion Table Workout

Video Transcript

"Welcome to Expert Village my name is Dr. Ed Riffel. One of the many benefits of doing inversion is decompressing the spine. This was done years ago by Hippocrates who is the father modern western medicine. He would tie people to a ladder and then a couple people would turn them upside down and they would rack the spine, trying to open the spinal disc and un-pinch the nerves. So this has been done for centuries. Until recently, we've come out with apparatus for safety so even people who are not experienced or aren't confidant to hang upside down by some shoe clips, you can still do it. This is a model of the spine. This is the back part, the head. This is the neck part, or called the cervical spine. This is the back part, or called the thoracic spine. This is the lumbar spine or the low back. Then you have the sacrum which has been named as a sacred bone. Then you have the two Ilium, the sacroiliacs, located right here. When we decompress the spine we want to get the primary and the secondary curves back into position. The secondary curves come forward, the primary curve comes backward, and then the secondary comes forward. A lordosis in the lumber, a kyphosis in the thoracic, and a lordosis in the neck part. We want to get that all lined up when we decompress this will fall in place."