Dr. Jeff Langmaid demonstrates the Vertetrac, a lightweight device that applies spinal traction while you stand and move, rather than lying down. Unlike traditional recumbent traction, this active approach decompresses the spine during exercise, potentially improving outcomes for disc problems and sciatica.
Hi, I'm Dr. Jeff Langmaid with the evidence based chiropractor. And if you have struggled with disc issues, sciatica radiculopathy, if any of those things ring a bell, you might have heard that a spinal traction device might be a great solution to your issues. Well, today I wanted to highlight what I consider to be the future of spinal traction. It's functional spinal traction, which means it's traction on the move. So we're gonna discuss a little bit of what traction is, how metatrac traction is different, and the benefits of why functional traction might be better than the traditional traction you've thought of. First is when you might be asking yourself, what is traction? Well, traction is non surgical decompression of the spine. That sounds super technical, but here's where we get down to when we look at a model like this. These are the vertebra, or the bones in your low back. In this case, the disc sits in between and the spinal cord and the nerve roots pass out the sides. Those are the nerves that travel into your buttocks and legs from your low back. That's why if you have a low back issue, you might experience pain, numbness or tingling that travels down into your legs, into your toes, into your ankle, or into your thighs because there's a pinch or a compression on the nerve root. The goal of traction is to literally give space to that nerve root. If a nerve root is crunched down. Well, what we want to do is open up the hole or the intervertebral foramen. We want to open up the hole where the nerve's traveling out by providing some traction, some pull that enables the nerve to operate in a more functional, a more healthy, and a more pain free capacity. So anytime we talk about traction, when there's a pinch, we want to ensure that we are distracting or decompressing the spine to relieve the symptom. Now, one of the challenges with traditional traction is that you have to be recumbent. And what that means is you're lying down. And many of us don't live our lives lying down. We live our lives upright and on the move. And that's also what we're trying to do, is to stay as active as possible. So metatrack and the vertatrac are, in my opinion, the future of functional spinal traction. This is a device right here. This is their lumbar device, and it sits around your stomach just like this. And this is the part that goes onto your low back. Well, what makes this device so different is, is that you're able to provide traction. You can see with these small levers right here, you can provide traction to the vertebra. You can see those bars going up and you can think every time that there's a pump right there. And every time you see that bar rising in the middle, that's providing beautiful decompression to the pinched nerve in your low back. So you can see this device is very lightweight, it's low profile. You could wear it under or on top of your street clothes. And the beauty of it as well is this device you can use sitting, you can use standing, you can use doing all of the functional rehab exercises, treadmill, walking around the block. It's actually encouraged that you utilize this when you're upright and on the move. So as opposed to having to be lying down somewhere, as opposed to some big machine with a whole bunch of components to it, you have a very simple, simple, but a very elegant and very powerful way to get decompressive force, spinal traction into your lumbar spine while retaining the opportunity to move around. This provides not only potentially better clinical results, it's a heck of a lot more comfortable and it gives you the opportunity to rehab at a level never before seen. When you're able to have active traction, feel better, and do some of those rehabilitative exercises, that is a super powerful combination on the road to relief. So while I have found traction to be extremely beneficial in my practice, I can say one of the hindrances has always been that a patient's not moving around and it's never felt right to me. Utilizing the VertaTrack, specifically this MediTrack device right here, it gives you the opportunity again to be functional. It gives you the opportunity to be on the move, and it also gives you the opportunity to provide a tremendous amount of, of decompression. So even if you are somebody who has severe symptomatology, you have a lot of pain, traction such as the Verte Track can really provide a tremendous amount of relief. So if you have not checked out vertictrack by meditrack, we'll be sure to drop those links down below. And if you are struggling again with radiculopathy, disc issues, compressive pathology, as we like to say in the medical and healthcare world, be sure to ask your doctor about whether spinal traction might be right for you and specifically whether traction on the move might be the best option for you to find relief. Thank you so much for watching this video on the evidence based chiropractor channel. If you don't want to miss a single thing. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can get notifications of every video we put out. And we put out new content each and every week, so be sure to subscribe today.
