According to the World Health Organization, over 619 million people suffer from lower back pain, nearly 7.5% of the world’s population. There are many conditions that can cause pain in your lower back, but most lower back pain is caused by gravity, old age, sports or by simply being overweight. The wear and tear on the spine can cause the discs, the soft padding between the boney vertebrae, to thin. When the padding gets thin the vertebrae become painful, as they get close.

They can even impinge nerves causing such painful conditions as Sciatica.

Many people do not realize that there are simple solutions to most lower back pain. The most popular and simple solution to garden variety low back pain is to reverse the process of compressing the vertebrae. This reversal, or pulling apart of the vertebrae is called decompression.

No one knows when decompression was invented, but anecdotally it has been around for hundreds or even thousands of years. There have not been many formal studies examining the issue of why decompression works, but it is believed there is little motivation to put time into the endeavor when prevailing methods of treating back pain are so much more profitable. These more profitable alternatives are popular, but costly. Alternatives such as surgery have a poor success and satisfaction rate, and surgery results in a patient’s loss of work and income. Pain relief drugs can be problematic, unsuccessful and often lead to addiction. Spinal injection effectiveness can vary widely and presents risks, as a needle is placed close to the actual spinal cord. Not only are alternatives to spinal decompression more costly, most are more invasive and risky.

Not all back pain can be helped by simple spinal decompression, but why should a patient attend long and expensive chiropractic or doctor visits or face the risks and expense of the above alternative back pain relief procedures when for most kinds of nagging lower back pain spinal decompression may be all that is necessary.

It’s not surprising that those in the medical professions would not recommend pain relief products outside of their own disciplines, but the medical profession needs to take notice of these pain relief alternatives if their patients’ health and well being are truly their priority.