Spinal decompression Spinal decompression helps relieve back pain and promotes an optimal healing environment for bulging, degenerating, or herniated discs. This is a non-surgical treatment that can take pressure off the neural elements of your spine.

Your spine provides support for your body and consists of bones called vertebrae. The ligaments and spinal disks keep it flexible. Your spinal column provides a nerve pathway that runs down the middle of these bones, ligaments and disks.

Spinal injuries or degeneration (wear and tear) to your spine can cause pain. You might feel pain from compression in your spine that puts pressure on your spinal cord or nerves. Spinal decompression seeks to relieve the pressure to ease the pain.

What conditions can spinal decompression treat?

Some common reasons you might seek spinal decompression treatment include:

• Bulging disks, when a cushion between vertebrae bulges out.
• Degenerative disks, when the cushion between vertebrae starts wearing out.
• Herniated disks, when part of a disk pushes on a nerve.
• Pinched nerves, when a nerve gets pinched (compressed), causing numbness, pain or tingling.
• Sciatica, damage to your sciatic nerve.
• Spinal stenosis, narrowing of spaces in your spine due to bone spurs or bulging or herniated disks.