Is degenerative disc disease really a disease?
Not in the way most people hear it.
Here's the research that reframes it. Brinjikji and colleagues gathered 33 imaging studies covering 3,110 people with no back pain whatsoever, and disc degeneration showed up in 37% of the 20-year-olds and 96% of the 80-year-olds. Annular fissures, small tears in the disc's outer ring, climbed from 19% to 29% across the same span. Their read, published in 2015: many of these findings are probably just part of getting older, with no tie to pain.
So the "disease" part is mostly a label. It doesn't make your pain less real. It means the scan alone can't explain it.
What degenerative disc pain tends to feel like
The exam at Mecham Chiropractic looks for the same behavior it looks for with any disc: a back that gets angrier with long sitting or driving, pain that slips below the knee, bending forward or standing up out of a seat that feels like a negotiation, and flare-ups that calm down and come back.
Picture a bluebird powder day up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Every run felt great. The ride back down the canyon, and climbing out of the car at the bottom, didn't.
Facet joints, the sacroiliac joint and plain muscle strain can hurt too, and decompression wasn't built for any of them. If the leg is the loudest part, the sciatica and pinched nerve page fits better; if your report says bulge, see bulging disc treatment.
Why decompression gets considered for worn discs
Degenerative disc disease is one of the conditions Excite Medical names for the DRX9000, and University of Utah Health lists it among the reasons for decompression therapy. The table is simple to describe: a harness at the pelvis, a computer-controlled pull, and a cycle that relaxes and reapplies the force so the back muscles don't brace against it.
Whether that pull does anything lasting for a worn disc is the open question. The FDA's 2006 clearance classed it as powered traction equipment, which says what it is, not that it works; the explainer on the FDA-cleared DRX9000 goes further.
Can decompression restore disc height? The evidence, with its limits
Disc height is where decompression's most interesting finding lives, so it deserves a careful look.
In 2010, Christian Apfel's team published a retrospective look at 30 patients, 21 women and 9 men averaging 65 years old, who each had 22 DRX9000 sessions over 6 weeks with a CT scan before and after. Average disc height went from 7.5 mm to 8.8 mm. Pain dropped from 6.2 to 1.6 on a 0–10 scale.
Encouraging, on paper. Now the limits, and they're big ones.
- No control group. Nobody got a sham or a different treatment, so there's no way to separate the table's effect from time.
- The link between height and pain was modest, a correlation of r = 0.36.
- It was retrospective, looking back at existing records rather than setting up a trial in advance.
- Sponsorship ran through NEMA Research on behalf of Axiom Worldwide, the table's maker at the time.
The authors name the missing control group themselves, which is to their credit. What the study can't tell you is whether the extra millimeter or so came from the table.
Zoom out and the picture gets less friendly. Macario and Pergolizzi's 2006 review of prospective trials published from 1975 to October 2005 concluded that decompression by motorized traction for chronic discogenic low back pain "remains unproven," and the 2013 Cochrane review by Wegner and colleagues, covering 32 trials, found traction had little or no effect on pain or function.
Our position, for what it's worth: disc height on a CT is a measurement, and how you feel walking to the car is the outcome. Mecham Chiropractic's checkpoint is built around the second one. If treatments 8 to 12 pass without a meaningful change, the plan gets another look, and the full review of whether decompression works explains why that checkpoint exists.
Will it get worse without treatment?
Nobody can promise you an answer for your spine, and we won't pretend to. What the research offers is a snapshot across ages, not a forecast: in that same review of people without back pain, disc bulges turned up in 30% of 20-year-olds and 84% of 80-year-olds, and protrusions in 29% and 43%. Older spines showed more change, and none of those people had pain.
Who shouldn't have decompression
A few things rule it out completely: a fractured or unstable spine, any fusion hardware, cancer active in the spine, osteoporosis that's too advanced, pregnancy and an aortic aneurysm. Dr. Cody Mecham checks each of these before any table time.
Losing control of your bladder or bowels means the emergency room, right now, whatever your MRI says about degeneration. It can mean cauda equina syndrome. A leg that's getting weaker over days also needs a physician, and it needs one before decompression, not after.
What care looks like at Mecham Chiropractic
Dr. Cody Mecham starts with a history, an orthopedic exam and a look at relevant imaging, and with worn discs part of that imaging conversation is what not to over-read.
If the discs look like the pain source, expect somewhere between 20 and 30 visits spread across 8 to 12 weeks, each about 20 to 30 minutes, with chiropractic care and advice on movement and positions working alongside the table. Mild soreness the day after an early visit happens. Real pain during one doesn't get pushed through; it ends the session, and what a spinal decompression session is actually like has the details.
Mention the canyon days, too. They're part of the history.
Cost and insurance
Decompression itself usually isn't covered: Medicare has declined to pay for it since 1997, Aetna lists it as experimental or unproven, and University of Utah Health Plans calls it investigational. The 2020 FairWarning investigation put a full DRX9000 course at about $3,500, so read spinal decompression costs in Salt Lake City and how Utah plans handle decompression before you commit.