Inversion Therapy

Over the years I've suffered from back pain. Recently the thought entered my head as to if I was loosing leg strength due to the impingement of the sciatic nerve from my back injury. So after a little research, I set out to purchase an inversion table and do a little of my own decompression therapy. Well, my wife put an end to that stating that it was not something that she wanted around the kids. Therefore, of to plan B. I borrowed an inversion table from my buddy Dan. Thanks Dan. And seeing that Dan is probably the only one that reads this blog, here to ya…. My plan is to document what I am doing, feeling and planning to do for inversion therapy. Most days it will be very short, some days, I'll get long winded, sorry for that.



A little background: the injury to my back occurred years ago when I was young and dumb as opposed to be old and dumb now. While water skiing after a couple pops, I took a nasty wipe out that bent my ankles back up to my shoulders. When the pain didn't go away after a few weeks, I started to seek medical advice. Diagnosis was muscle spasms and muscle relaxers were prescribed. After a couple more weeks of no relief, I went to a chiropractor. There he found my lower back, upper back and neck all had issues. So off we went for alignment session 3x a week for 6 weeks. My neck and upper back started to feel better, but my lower back was feeling worse when I walked out of the office then it did when I walked in, so I stopped. I lived with and got used to the pain for years. Finally a medical doctor had a MRI done and that showed a severe herniated disk at L5S1. To avoid surgery I went through a special back pain physical therapy course which finally started to help. To this day, I still do some of the exercises. That was until began to wonder about the loss of strength. This brings us back to date.



Day 1



This morning was not just the beginning of my inversion therapy; it is also the beginning of my training for the summer triathlon season. So, after setting up the inversion table I got on it and flipped to a complete inverted position. There was a instant feeling of relaxation in my lower back, but no change in my neck or upper back. I hung like this for about 5 minutes before I did 10 inverted sit-ups. The sit-ups caused a little muscle sorness in my back so I laid back down and hung inverted for another minute. I then got off the inversion table and got on the treadmill for 35 minutes of intervals. That was 2 minutes walking and 3 minutes running. During the walk my heart rate would drop to about 120 bpm and during the running it would get up to 158 bpm. The intervals got me about 2.5 miles on the rat wheel. I then sat down for a couple minutes to cool down before getting back on the inversion table for another 5 minutes and 10 inverted sit-ups. This time my back did not tighten up during the sit-ups and still no difference in my upper back and neck.



Going forward, the plan in to increase the inversion time by a minute each session and do an addition 5 inverted sit-ups every session. Once I can get to 30 minutes and 50 situps life should be good. The other indicator I am looking for is the ability to crack my back and neck. While training for the bike legs, my neck has been getting stiff and feel like it needs to crack and I haven't been able to crack it to get any relief. Hopefully the decompression during inversion loosens things up and allows more movement. Time will tell.



Disclaimer:



I am by no means a medical professional. Everything I do here, I am doing at my own risk and only to myself. I have discussion this with my doctor and he said I could be an experiment of one. His final words were "Let Pain Be Your Guide" so if I start to hurt more, I'll change things up or stop completely. If you try any of this there are no result guaranteed or implied.