Disc herniation is often an extremely painful condition that affects your overall quality of life.
It can make earning a living a constant struggle, and it can keep you on the couch instead of participating in your favorite activities, like playing golf or landscaping your yard.
Fortunately, most chiropractors can effectively treat disc herniation right in the comfort of their own office by using a drop table in their disc herniation treatment plan.
Disc herniation defined
In order to fully comprehend disc herniation, think of what happens when you squeeze a tube of toothpaste. The more pressure you apply, the more toothpaste squirts out of the opening, right?
This is the same type of process that occurs when a disc in your spine herniates. The more pressure that is applied on the disc (the cushion between your vertebrae), the more likely it will crack and the soft gel-like center will ooze out of it, causing you pain and discomfort as a result.
Many situations and events can contribute to disc herniation. For instance, if you carry around too much excess weight, it can cause your discs to weaken, crack, and herniate. Or, if you constantly sit and stand with poor posture, or if you are involved in some sort of personal injury accident, then it can cause herniation, thereby creating a lot of pain.
How does a drop table help?
A drop table is a tool that allows a chiropractor to adjust your spinal column by using gravity to easily put it back into place versus having to apply a lot of force. By realigning your spine, this will relieve the pressure on your herniated disc, stopping the protrusion of the soft center into the surrounding area, which relieves the pain and allows you to move about more freely.
The question a lot of patients have in regard to treating a herniated disc with chiropractic methods, such as with a drop table, is how safe this particular treatment method is. In a study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, researchers looked at several different articles, case reports, and other investigations that involved using spinal manipulations for treatment of disc herniation. What they found is that your risk of making the disc herniation worse by participating in chiropractic care is “less than 1 in 3.7 million.”
Those are pretty good odds. Unless you are playing the lottery, that is.
