Thursday, January 8, 2009

Turning things upside down

My back is healing really nicely but still no real exercise, but I'm hoping the doctor will let me start using the stationery bike tomorrow and maybe start walking 1 mile on the track.

In the meantime, I have decided not to do decompression. The doctor doesn't think I need it either. Instead I bought an inversion table. Did some research on the Internet first and found that inversion therapy uses your own body weight as a natural form of traction. "Inversion elongates the spine by increasing the space between the vertebrae, relieving the pressure on discs, ligaments and nerve roots. Less pressure means less back pain."

It also helps improve circulation and accelerates the cleansing of blood and lymph fludis, reduces pain in overworked muscles, improves balance, strengthens ligaments and lots more.

I have had to start slowly both in time and degree of inversion. No starting upside down for me. I could barely go past level before I started to feel a little motion sick. I get motion sick pretty easily. The good news is inversion therapy may help that, too.

So I've been doing it for 5 nights now. I'm up to 10 minutes (that's all you need) at about maybe 30 or 40 degress. Apparently you don't have to do full inversion (90 degrees) to get the benefits. In fact, 60 degrees is enough.

So far so good. I really like it. My mid back was sore this evening and after 10 minutes on my inversion table, I felt much better.

Let's hope the doctor is ready to let me start exercising tomorrow. I feel good.

1 comment:

J. Baxter said...

Wow. If you could loan me a little desire to run/exercise, I'd give you as much of that good old no-run feeling as you could take.

I've got simply loads of it. All I have to do is think about running and I'm ready for a nap. People like you really are inspiring to lazy bones like me!