Intervertebral Disc (Spinal) Decompression Therapy - IDD Therapy - In Essex (Chigwell & Hornchurch Clinics)

Not All Back Pain Is the Same — And Not All Practitioners Treat It the Same Way

If you’ve been told you have a disc bulge, herniation or nerve irritation, it’s important to understand something:

General back pain care and specialist disc care are not the same thing.

General Physio or Chiropractor

For simple mechanical back or neck pain — stiffness, minor flare-ups, postural strain — a general physio or chiropractor is often appropriate.

They focus on improving joint movement, reducing muscle tension and restoring mobility. Many cases respond well to manual therapy and exercise over a few weeks.

That works well for routine musculoskeletal pain.

But confirmed disc injuries are different.

Spinal Disc Specialist

A disc injury involves altered spinal loading, internal disc pressure changes, and often nerve root irritation. Treating this correctly requires more than just “loosening things up.”

It requires:

• A clear understanding of disc biomechanics

• Accurate interpretation of MRI findings

• Knowledge of directional loading strategies

• Structured, staged rehabilitation

• The ability to recognise when decompression, shockwave or advanced modalities may be appropriate

• And equally important — knowing what not to do

This is why a spinal disc specialist operates differently.

Just as you wouldn’t see a general practitioner for complex cardiac disease, disc pathology benefits from focused, condition-specific expertise.

Why This Matters

Disc injuries are highly load-sensitive. The wrong exercises, the wrong manual technique, or the wrong progression can aggravate symptoms and prolong recovery.

The right approach reduces pressure on the disc, calms nerve irritation and progressively restores strength and resilience.

That precision is what specialist care is about.

If you’ve already seen a general physio or chiropractor and initially improved, but your symptoms have now plateaued — or the pain simply isn’t resolving — that’s often a sign you’ve reached the limits of general care.

At that point, it may be appropriate to consult a practitioner who works specifically with spinal disc injuries.

Disc-related pain can be load-sensitive and nerve-driven. If the underlying disc mechanics haven’t been properly addressed, symptoms can linger despite good-quality general treatment.

When progress stalls, the question isn’t “more of the same?”
It’s whether the diagnosis and strategy need to shift.

As the joints are distracted, pressure is taken off the disc, joints and nerves. The targeted spinal segment is gently mobilised to create pressure differentials to help improve a flow of fluid and nutrients into the disc space.

These fluids and nutrients help with healing and repair and the gentle, oscillating movement helps the joints to become lubricated and to move more freely.

Where a disc is pressing on a nerve and causing pain, this mobilisation may help the body to retract a bulging disc and thus remove or reduce the pressure and therefore relieve pain.

Our goal is to help the body move freely. Whilst we can do this with our hands most of the time, IDD Therapy gently stretches tight muscles and stiff ligaments in a manner which is not possible with the hands alone.

Working the soft tissues with the SPINA machine helps the body move more freely and as you get more mobility in the spine, this helps the body’s natural healing mechanisms.

IDD treatment is gentle and safe. There are built-in safety features and the aim is for you to remain as relaxed as possible; many patients actually go to sleep although we prefer that they remain awake so that they can feel the full effects of the treatment.

Each treatment on the SPINA machine lasts approximately 25 minutes; this is the time needed to work the spinal structures adequately to help bring about the physiological changes we are seeking.

Before treatment we apply infrared heat to the area to increase blood flow into the soft tissues. After treatment we apply cold packs to reduce post treatment inflammation and encourage improved collagen formation within healing discs.

If you have had back or neck pain for a while certain segments of your spine may be stiff or tight, this can impede circulation and healing capacity. At the same time certain “core” muscles that support the spinal column are likely to have “switched off”.

Most patients report some decrease in pain after the first handful of sessions. Generally, substantial improvement is obtained by the second week of treatment (or after 10 to 15 sessions). Long term improvement in the health of the disc takes little longer depending on the grade of the disc injury.

Most IDD appointments take between 30 and 45 minutes and the optimum frequency is between 2 and 4 sessions per week.

Proper patient selection is vital to good outcomes, not everyone is suitable for IDD therapy, the inclusion and exclusion criteria is set out below.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Pain because of herniated and bulging lumbar or cervical discs that is more than four weeks old
• Recurring pain from a failed back surgery that is more than 6 months old.
• Persisting pain from degenerated disc not improving after four weeks of conventional treatment.
• Patients available for 6 weeks of treatment protocol.
• Patient at least 18 years old.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Appliances like pedicle screws and rods
• Pregnancy
• Prior lumbar fusion less than 6 months old
• Metastatic cancer
• Extreme osteoporosis (DEXA scan Z score less than -2.5)
• Spondylolisthesis grade 2 or above
• Compression fracture of lumbar spine below L-1 (recent).
• Pars defect.
• Pathologic aortic aneurysm.
• Abdominal or pelvic cancer.
• Disc infections.
• Severe peripheral neuropathy.
• Hemiplegia, paraplegia, or cognitive dysfunction.

Almost all patients do not experience any serious side effects, some transient mild discomfort and or stiffness and very occasionally muscle spasm can be experienced for a brief period following the initial few sessions of treatment but this almost always settles as the sessions are progressed.

Decompression at specific segments is attained using a specific angles of pull. The unique decompression effects of IDD Therapy are achieved via a slow pull that is generated with a sinusoidal wave form of incremental pulling force up to the top target pressure of each pulling cycle, then (patented) oscillatory pulling forces during the each top target pressure phase of each cycle, this minimises the possibility of muscle spasm and maximising the pumping and decompressive effects on the disc. No other spinal decompression or traction therapy is licensed to achieve the same effects.

No, so long as you do not have any of the contraindications to, Spinal Decompression is completely safe and comfortable. The IDD system has emergency stop switches for both the operator and the patient. These switches (a requirement of the FDA) end the treatment immediately thereby preventing any injuries.

Traditional traction can be for some conditions due to herniated discs or disc degeneration. However, Traction also risks triggering the body’s normal response to stretching by creating painful muscle spasms that worsen the pain in affected area.Traction does not involve the precise targeting of vertebral segments, variation in pulling angles, forces, oscillation and biofeedback that are a feature of IDD Therapy. The comparison would be like comparing the first generation of mobile phones with the latest smart phone. IDD Therapy involves much more advanced technology than tradition traction or inversion therapy. Traction and inversion tables, at best, can lower the intradiscal pressure from a +90 to a +30 mmHg. Spinal Decompression is clinically proven to decrease the intradiscal pressure to between a -150 to -200 mmHg, thereby creating a negative pressure or vacuum effect which over a course of sessions maximises the chance of reducing disc protrusions and improving circulation and therefore healing of the injured disc. Research has shown traditional traction to be around 50% effective, whereas studies show IDD Therapy Spinal Decompression to be effective in 70% to 90% of cases (that are appropriate for IDD Therapy).

Apart from operations such as spinal fusion or disc replacement surgery that involve metal work in the spine, in most cases Spinal Decompression treatment is not contra-indicated for patients who have undergone spinal surgery. A lot of patients have found success with IDD Spinal Decompression Therapy after a failed back surgery.

Shealy CN, Borgmeyer V. Am J Pain Manag. 1997;7:63-65.
→ 86% of disc patients and 75% of facet arthrosis patients achieved good–excellent outcomes with decompression vs traction.

Eyerman EL. J Neuroimaging. 1998;8(2).
→ Showed that simple pelvic traction produced inconsistent relief, highlighting the need for more advanced decompression methods (such as IDD Therapy).

Schimmel JJ, et al. Eur Spine J. 2009;18(12):1843-1850.
→ RCT found no benefit for generic traction, but this study is often (incorrectly) cited by some against IDD; however it tested traction, not IDD that uses computer controlled pulling forces, angles, high, low and (patented) oscillatory pulling forces.

Schimmel JJ, de Kleuver M, Horsting PP, Spruit M, Jacobs WC, van Limbeek J.
No effect of traction in patients with low back pain: a single centre, single-blind randomized controlled trial of Intervertebral Differential Dynamics (IDD) Therapy. Eur Spine J. 2009;18(12):1843-1850.
→ RCT reported no benefit in non-specific low back pain without radicular symptoms — However the background to this study was to establish IDD in Europe, the European IDD distributor sought out a partner clinic to conduct a study, the Sint Maartenskliniek in Holland is a well renowned clinic and they were interested to do the study. The outcomes were not what had been hoped for but the key thing about this paper is that the patient group was non-specific low back pain without radicular pain. i.e. non sensically, they they excluded patients with disc issues that were pressing on nerves, the main thing that IDD therapy is intended to help,so the study was bound to fail!

Shealy CN, Koladia N, Wesemann MM. Am J Pain Manag. 2005;15(3):93-97.
→ 76% reduction in pain maintained at 1 year, with continued improvement after treatment ended.

McClure D, Farris B. Eur Musculoskelet Rev. 2006;45-48.
→ Reported 79–92% success rates, including surgical candidates, with MRI-documented disc rehydration.

Schaufele MK, Newsome M. Phys Med Rehab Kuror. 2011;21:34-40.
→ Independent review concluding IDD is a safe, non-invasive option for lumbar discogenic pain syndromes.

Cholewicki J, Lee AS, Reeves NP, Calle EA. Trunk muscle response to various protocols of lumbar traction. Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2009;34(6):E248-E255.
→ Demonstrated that conventional traction often triggers paraspinal muscle reflex contraction, which can actually increase intradiscal pressure instead of reducing it. Why it matters: This is useful to contrast IDD Therapy vs. generic traction. IDD’s computer-controlled sinusoidal waveforms and targeted vertebral isolation are specifically designed to overcome this reflex problem, making it mechanistically distinct from “old-style” traction.