Decompression device gets ailing exercise enthusiast back on the move.
Since retiring from her job as an operations manager for the US Postal Service a few years ago, Janice Walters has been through a very healthy transformation. She’s gone from being a workaholic to being a workoutaholic.
“That pretty much sums it up because when I was working, I was working 80 hours a week,” Janice acknowledges. “It was 24/7 because I was committed to doing a good job, but my life was just eat, sleep and work; that was it.
“The spinal decompression treatments worked wonders for me.” – Janice
“Since I retired, however, I’ve learned to take care of myself, and not only have I lost 60 pounds since then, I don’t have high blood pressure or high cholesterol either. There probably aren’t a lot of 59-year-olds who can say that about themselves.”
Janice attributes her weight loss and low BP and cholesterol levels to her almost-daily workout routine. That regimen is built primarily around CrossFit training and rucking, which is walking while wearing a weighted backpack or rucksack.
Janice got into rucking last summer after severe pain in her left hip forced her to abandon a large portion of her CrossFit routine. The pain, Janice says, stems from many years ago, when she was involved in a number of automobile accidents.
“Most of those happened back in the 1990s, but overall I was rear-ended six times, including three times in a three-month span,” she details. “Some of the accidents were very minor, but two were very, very bad.
“I’ve always had a lot of neck issues because of those accidents, but my hip was never that bad. I was always able to ignore it, but the more I exercised and got into my regular workout routine, I started to feel it more and more .”
Pain wasn’t the only byproduct of Janice’s left hip issue. She learned during her supervised workouts that the problem also caused some damage to her posture and robbed her of a significant amount of strength in her left leg.
“One of my coaches kept saying, You’re lopsided, Janice reveals. “And anytime we did anything isometric, one side of my body was much stronger than the other. I could do certain things on one leg, but I couldn’t do them on the other leg at all.”
With the limitations mounting from her hip and lack of strength, Janice decided to seek medical help. She didn’t even need to leave the gym to find a provider, though.
During her workouts, Janice came to know Jeremy M. Gordon, DC, of DeLand Chiropractic & Spinal Decompression. After learning of Janice’s hip issues, Dr. Gordon invited her to the practice and soon began to treat her.
Those treatments began conservatively with standard chiropractic adjustments, which helped. When her hip pain persisted, however, Dr. Gordon ordered an MRI to determine the true nature of the problem.
The MRI revealed that damage to Janice’s back was the cause of her hip pain. In addition to scoliosis, which is a sideways curvature of the spine, Janice had several bulging discs that were pressuring nerves in her back and triggering the hip pain.
Treatment That Works
To rectify the latter problem, Dr. Gordon recommended spinal decompression, a drug-free, nonsurgical therapy that can be used to treat bulging, herniated or protruding spinal discs, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, neuropathy in the arms or legs, and postsurgical neck or back pain.
At DeLand Chiropractic & Spinal Decompression, spinal decompression treatments are delivered through a device called the DRX9000™, which is engineered to alleviate pain associated with sciatica, stenosis, and bulging or herniated discs.
“If you want the best results for your patients, you need the best equipment. That’s why we utilize the DRX9000 decompression system,” Dr. Gordon explains. “It’s unequaled in design and clinical results.”
A typical session begins with the patient getting comfortable on the decompression table. The DRX9000 then creates a very gentle decompressive force on the patient’s damaged discs. This reduces pressure on the discs, which helps retract some of the disc material into its natural position, alleviating the pain and rehydrating the injured disc.
The DRX9000 can be used to treat cervical and lumbar injuries through a program typically comprised of 24 appointments across 10 weeks. Each visit lasts about an hour, with the first 10 designed to determine the patient’s likely response.
“We start by treating patients five days a week for two weeks, and our goal is to see a 50 percent improvement in function and pain in those first 10 visits,” Dr. Gordon educates. “If we see that improvement, we continue with the remaining 14 treatments.”
DeLand Chiropractic & Spinal Decompression has charted the results of patients receiving its spinal decompression therapy for more than a decade and determined that its standard course of treatment is highly effective.
“After tracking hundreds of patients, I am very proud to report that our patient satisfaction rate exceeds 80 percent,” Dr. Gordon proclaims. “That’s a much higher satisfaction rate than invasive surgery.”
Decompression is normally followed by cold therapy and/or electrical muscle stimulation to restore proper muscle tone, decrease inflammation and maximize the effects of the treatment.
Back at It
Janice began receiving spinal decompression treatments at DeLand Chiropractic & Spinal Decompression last July. After two weeks she was already experiencing positive effects.
“It was amazing how much of a difference it made, how much better I felt,” she says. “But then my recovery had to be delayed a bit because I had to undergo surgery for an unrelated issue, and that pushed everything back.”
Following surgery, Janice resumed DRX9000 treatments in August. Just as before, she began to feel improvement after two weeks. Since then she has completed the entire course of 24 treatments and has seldom, if ever, felt better. In addition to alleviating her hip pain, Janice has resumed her active workout schedule.
“I feel great,” Janice enthuses. “And I’m doing all my workouts again. Between CrossFit, rucking and riding a bike, I’m probably working out in some fashion about two hours each day. The spinal decompression treatments worked wonders for me.
“All the people at DeLand Chiropractic & Spinal Decompression are terrific. Dr. Gordon is just great, and the whole staff there is phenomenal. They really do great work.
“I’m so happy with what they’ve done for me that I’ve already recommended them to some people at the post office that I still see. I recommend them to anybody. Everyone there is just exceptional.”
