hi there I'm Coby Langford I'm a registered osteopath in the UK from SootheClinic.com.
if this is the first of my videos that you're watching remember to
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now today's video is for you if you have a disk injury or know someone
who has a disk injury. be that a disc herniation which is just a tear or a
prolapse which is a complete split and complete tear where the jelly inside the
disc comes out and surrounds the nerve. If you want more information on what a
disc injury is and how to recover from it and how to manage it, watch my
playlist on disc injury management which I will put a link to in the box below. But for now
I want to give you some suggestions today because as you know
the discs are like donuts and they
sit in between the vertebrae. the vertebrae are the bones of your spine and
the discs are the squashy bits in between. now when they tear they bulge out they
hit the spinal nerves as they leave the spine. depending at what level
the bulge is, is it will send pain down the nerve. so if you have a disc herniation
in your neck you will get pain in your arms and if it is in your low back
you'll get pain in your legs. this pain can be very painful.
and the only way to get pain relief is
to take the discs off the nerve which is why people often have to lie flat
because they're in any position in which you can get the discs off the nerve and
what's heartbreaking about disc injuries as an
osteopath is that you can't speed up the recovery. it's like a broken bone. A broken bone
takes six weeks to recover to heal and a disc also takes 6 weeks.
that can be dramatically increased if you don't
do the right things
if you don't allow the surface of the desk to touch and remain in contact it
can't it can't regrow. so you do have situations where the disc just
doesn't heal and then you have to have an operation. So I am all about helping
make sure that you do everything you can to make sure that disc heals completely.
now one of the techniques we use as osteopaths, physios, chiropractors and
doctors is traction. we decompress the disc.
you pull two vertebrae away from each other and that
encourages the discs back into the central position. When you're
sitting or standing you're basically putting all your weight down through the
discs and pushing it out. When you do traction which you can either do in a
physio clinic - put you on a machine and pull the vertebrae apart or you can
put yourself on an inversion table where you completely turn yourself upside down
and decompress that way. That's the two methods that are
currently available and obviously and you can only receive physio once or
twice a week. The more often and more frequently you can decompress the
discs, the quicker your discs will heal and the more you will increase the
chance of complete healing. So your options are: Traction at the physio or
the hospital, an inversion table (which many people don't like because sometimes
it can put people's back into spasm).
And then you've got this third option which is a 'decompression
belt'. So in this video I am just going to review
three different belts. I'm just going to have a look at
3 different prices and I'm going to see if it's worth paying a high
price or a low price or adoes it really not matter?
as if by magic I have three decompression belts here!
so we have one here at £39.99
one here at £48.99 and one here at £57.99 Now what's the difference? And should you
bother paying more or shall we go for the cheaper version? I'm going to
start by looking at the cheap one £39.99 - a good price. so let's open it up.
here we go open it up it is basically a a good old back brace
it's just got a Velcro so you can extend it to make it longer.
make sure that you get one that fits your waist size because
that's what's really important. it needs to be a really good fit to have
a decompressive effect.
basically the theory behind these belts is that you pump it full of
air and this will expand like this and and decompress and move the vertebrae apart
from each other giving your disc a break. so I put this one on it's it's
great. it feels comfortable. You just attach this here to it it's very
straightforward. I do like that it's easy to use. you can't be doing with
a complicated design if you've got back pain because you just don't have the
patience or the time for complicated devices. So it's basically just like a bicycle pump
You just pump it up and put it on your
back around your waist and then you pump it up I like this. I think it
does the job. I really do. I think if you're looking for a decompression belt it would do for
you. it wasn't amazing and didn't give a lot of pressure but it I don't have a
disc injury and I think when I do decompression techniques on a
patient you don't have to do very much at all to get pain relief. To get that
disc off off the nerve, we're talking millimeters. so I think this will achieve that.
so this is the next one up... this is
coming in at £48.99. It looks very pretty.
it's silver. it's by the same company and it has the same mechanism to pump up.
It has a good decompression effect now the reason it's more
expensive is because it's got in here a little heat pad. if you saw
my review of the hot and cold pack belt the other day you will know that
I've always wanted to find a belt that would be able to heat up
without putting it in a microwave. this in has a little
battery power here. you plug this in and then you literally just switch it on
and it heats up.
this little packet heats up. now if you weren't an osteopath you'd think that
was great, right? getting heat on your back to relax your muscles, but actually,
for a disc injury sufferer, heat on the discs is the worst thing you can do
because, as I explained earlier, when the disc hits the nerve the nerve inflames.
On the muscles either side of the spine,
maybe here in here, would be great to have a heat pad there
just to relax the muscles a bit but actually over the spine is where
you need ice, because ice is an anti-inflammatory. you want
ice on - ice off - ice on. You don't even do hot and cold
packing for a disc injury. So actually, it's definitely not worth paying £48.99
for this, because what you're paying for is something that
is actually not good for you if you have a disc bulge. now we have the third one which is
£57.99. I really wish I could sit here and say
do not buy the more expensive one
but I actually really like this. mainly because
what really annoyed me about the other one was the pump-action, and I think if
you have back pain, having to pump up the air could actually irritate the disc.
when you have a disc injury, sometimes you can't even lift a kettle
This is electronic. it's a pretty white colour.
if you get this product, do you make
sure you get the right size. These don't come with the extendable pieces so you need
to get small, medium or large. So just check what your waist size is and
do buy the right one otherwise you're going to be really disappointed because
it won't work. So with this one you're just connecting it here like
this. I've already charged this - it charges with this USB cable
Switch it on and then you just press start.
Where's my little spine...
it's just lengthening your spine this way and decompressing those
discs. so you know when I planned to do this
video my plan was to say " this company is just charging you a fortune
for something you don't need". But actually, I like it.
I like the ease of it, I like the fit of it, I like the decompression of it and I
think it is worth paying what's that £20 extra just to not have to pump it up.
Because I want you to be able to do this as much as possible, as
regularly as possible, without stressing about getting a back spasm
Alright I hope that's helped. My intention is just to give you
really brutally honest advice about what will and will not help you and what I
think is worth you investing your time and effort into. Alright my friend, let me
know if this videos helped and if there's anything else you would like me to make videos on
please leave a comment below. Have a fantastic day!
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