Dr. Mosier Hosts Spinal Decompression Workshop

On Monday, August 25, the Mosier Family Chiropractic office was packed with local residents eager to learn about Spinal Decompression. Dr. Chris Mosier recently acquired two decompression tables for the Mosier Chiropractic office here in Salem, so he decided to hold a workshop in his secondary office location located at 301 E. Market St. across the street from the main office building.

Dr. Chris Mosier

Dr. Mosier opened his office in Salem in April of 2017 after graduating graduate school in 2016 and working in a different chiropractic office for a year.

Monday night’s workshop was open to his clients as well as anyone else interested in learning about the health benefits of using a spinal decompression table. The evening began with brief testimonials from some of the clients present.

“So, about two years ago, I was showing a maintenance guy how to access the roof,” said an individual named Ryan. “I ended up losing my footing and went through the ceiling. I got caught by conduit and was just hanging there. The maintenance guy tried to pull me up, but he came down with me. I was able to hold on to him and get him down, but he broke two ribs in the process. I was able to get to a ladder and safely get down, but that’s where my pain came from. Dr. Mosier was able to start doing these treatments, and now my pain is gone. I’ve not felt it at all.”

“That is awesome,” replied Dr. Mosier. “Because you’re 34, but I’ll tell you all, Ryan has the spine of someone much older.”

“Okay, so tonight we’re going to talk about decompression,” began Ellen Mosier. “One good way to get started with that is to actually learn the anatomy of what we’re going to be discussing. If you don’t know the anatomy and how it all goes together, you’re going to have a harder time getting to that end point of the evening… We are going to talk about what decompression is, who can receive it, why we do it, and why we would recommend it for somebody. We’ll also discuss when you would know if you need decompression, where you can receive it, and how to get started.”

Ellen then began a demonstration involving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The peanut butter portion of the sandwich represented the fibrous tissue between the discs in your spine. This tissue helps to keep everything in place as well as help with shock absorption. The jelly, which Ellen placed in the center of the sandwich as opposed to spreading it across the bread like she did with the peanut butter, represents the spinal disc that sits in the center of the fibrous tissue. To simulate some kind of injury or trauma, Chris and Ellen then smashed the sandwich to the point that jelly was spilling out the sides of the bread.

Ellen Mosier

Ellen Mosier

“So, if you can imagine what I’m getting at is that this disc between your two vertebrae is all together when you’re in good health,” continued Ellen. “However, when you start feeling that pain bilaterally down your legs or even one sided, you’ve then experienced a disc problem… We offer massage therapy services to help with the bracing of our muscles because when something isn’t right, they tend to brace and protect the area. Then we do our cold laser therapy that gets deeper than a massage therapist can. So, we offer [treatments] for those tendons and ligaments which are what, Doc?”

“Avascular after the age of 20,” replied Dr. Mosier.

“And that means no blood supply,” said Ellen. “So, that’s really important to keep in mind as we discuss decompression tonight.”

“This is why kids and babies respond so fast when they get adjusted, but it takes more time for all of us adults,” added Dr. Mosier. “What does blood do? It nourishes and takes away waste. Say you get a paper cut on your hand, you bleed and coagulate, and then it heals. Now, what’s my point in saying discs, ligaments and tendons are avascular once you’re an adult?”

“You heal poorly,” said one man from the crowd.

“Yes, absolutely,” Dr. Mosier replied. “With that in mind, we want to put motion back into the system… Your disc is supposed to be thick and juicy as opposed to thin and small, but over time, what happens? They become thin and small. When we talk about decompression, we’re talking about increasing the volume.

“I want to talk about the lungs for a second,” he stated as he grabbed a glass container with two balloons inside that resemble a pair of lungs. “How do you get air into your lungs? I’m going to apply this to decompression. So, this thing is your diaphragm (he motioned to a third balloon that acted as a seal for the bottom of the glass container). As it flexes down, air goes in [to the lungs]. Let’s talk about pressure gradient. When this goes down, the volume in this case increases. Pressure inside the balloons goes down, so ambient air fills the lungs. When you increase that volume, the pressure gradient goes down, and the nucleus pulposus sucks back in. Now, we can actually rehydrate the disc even though it is avascular. We can actually start to heal because of how a decompression table opens up and closes.

“I have a model here,” he continued as he pulled out a model of a spine. “These connecting points are called facet joints. These are articulations much like the articulations of a door frame. So, what I do as a chiropractor is I adjust these facet joints allowing the disc to indirectly be able to move and allow fluid to get back into the disc.

“Last month when we did this workshop, one of our construction guys came in and started decompression, and his results were amazing,” he said. “Jay is his name, and his crew pretty much consisted of him and one other guy. They could only handle so many jobs, right? Well, now that he’s feeling better, he can move faster and actually get more done. He now has two crews, and he’s able to function at a higher level. That’s the biggest thing for me and Ellen. I want to help people become healthier versions of themselves via the spine so that they become more productive at work and more present at home.”

Ellen then began to speak on the different spinal conditions that tend to crop up including degenerative disc, bulging disc, herniated disc, and osteophyte formation which is a buildup of calcium.

“There are three Ts to a subluxation: trauma, thoughts, and toxins,” said Ellen. “Trauma would include your auto cases or falling out of a tree as a child. Thoughts are a little bit different. Our mental health is important, and it does play into how our body responds to things and how it keeps healthy or not healthy. Toxins are anything that you breathe in or ingest. Those are the things that bring us to these conditions. When it comes to being on the decompression table, the only person we would say absolutely not to would be someone who is expecting simply because it would be uncomfortable for a mom and her baby. That answers the ‘who would be able to receive this?’ question.”

“When we think of trauma, we think of car accidents, but you should also think about the positions we’re in,” added Dr. Mosier. “Like someone that works at a computer all day or a pastor studying his Bible all the time for instance. You lose that curve in your neck while in positions like that. This is a breeding ground for allowing those abnormal curves to develop.”

Dr. Mosier then went on to tell how they have been able to actually straighten the curves in the spine caused by scoliosis.

“And I’ve mentioned that construction guy,” he added. “He’s been a patient for a really long time, and he did really well. We would take his pain and bring it back down, and then it would come back again. Now, with the decompression, his adjustments last so much longer.

“I’m going to pick on Bill for a minute,” he continued. “He is a chicken farmer, and he has to pick up the dead birds and pick up the eggs. So, there’s a lot of bending and it causes a lot of back issues. He would come in and I’d give him adjustments, bring the pain down, then he’d work and it would bring the pain back up. Well, after his first decompression session he got on the phone and said, ‘I’m literally pain free for the first time in 30 years.’”

“Moving onto the ‘Why?’ Why do we have discs and joints? Why does our spine move?” asked Dr. Mosier.

“Because we don’t want to walk around like broomsticks,” laughed someone in the crowd.

Dr. Mosier and Ellen then started to discuss what they call a “wobble disc” which is a cushion-like device that you sit on. The intended use is for you to rock, or “wobble,” back and forth in different directions in order to loosen up the back and spine in preparation for the adjustment.

“When you use the wobble disc, it’s important to know how to use it,” explained Ellen. “When you go to do this, you make Cs with your body. So, forward, backward, and side to side… The important thing is, once you go one way, you have to go the other way.”

In a funny turn of events, Dr. Mosier sang a short jingle in order for people to easily remember how to use a wobble disc at home:

“You wobble to the left, you wobble to the right, you wobble wobble wobble ‘til you sit up right!”

“So, I’m sharing stories and it’s fun and we’re laughing, but I want to make sure we get to the science,” said Dr. Mosier. “We mentioned blood earlier. The reason we have it is for nutrients and metabolic waste. So, let’s talk about inhibition. Because there is no blood flow to the nucleus pulposus, we have to get nutrients in and metabolic waste out. Otherwise, we’ll have necrosis, which is dead tissue. The wobble disc exercise helps with that, decompression does that.”

“When do you know that you or someone else you know would be a good candidate for spinal decompression?” asked Ellen. “It’s a lot easier to pinpoint those things with symptoms. So, maybe you’ve got a pain or an ache that won’t go away, or you get up in the morning and say, ‘oh, there it is!’ but it kind of works itself out throughout the day as you move around. But then the next morning, it’s back. Those are very good key symptoms that a person would be a good candidate for decompression. You would also know from any kind of imaging that you may have. We do not have an MRI unit at our office, but MRIs are fantastic at showing the tissue damage that is going on alongside your spinal deterioration. So, if you have those images, you are welcome to bring those in with you because then Dr. Mosier can take a look at that.”

“However, X-rays are going to tell us a lot as well,” added Dr. Mosier. “We are the only office within 50-60 miles with actual decompression tables. Most offices have traction tables. Traction tables are ⅓ of the price, but a lot of these outfits charge the same amount. So, I could have bought cheaper tables and charged people anywhere between $120 and $250 per session, the more reasonable being the $120 of course. But we don’t even charge that because we’re going to make up for it in volume. We want to get as many people out of the surgery realm as possible, and my hope for you guys – now that you’ve learned from this – is that you’re going to share it with other people. I want you to experience decompression, and I want you to tell others.”

“Will this help people that have already had spinal fusions?” asked a man in the crowd.

“Yes, that’s a great question,” said Dr. Mosier. “I’m not going to pull on the fused vertebrae because you simply can’t. Say you have L4 and L5 fused, then L5-S1 and L3 and L4 are going to deteriorate much faster. It’s like taking a basketball team and removing one of the players. You’re going to have to work that much harder. We’ve actually worked with Ron on his spine, and it’s just awesome.”

Dr. Mosier then continued by explaining how they target specific vertebrae on the decompression table.

“It’s super simple. It’s the angles,” he said. “So, for the neck, if you keep the table flat, it’ll be targeting C1, C2 and C3. As you go up via the angles, you go higher and higher. An 18 degree angle will target the C7-T1 disc.”

“The higher your feet go in the air, the higher segment we will be targeting if that makes sense,” Ellen added.

An important distinction between traction tables and actual decompression tables is that the traction tables simply pull on everything (muscles, ligaments, tendons, etc.), but decompression tables are designed to specifically only target the vertebrae.

“Our whole focus is getting people to avoid unnecessary spine surgery and giving them their lives back. I think the biggest thing is just word of mouth and sharing testimonials. These people that were in this room are going to get amazing results, and then they’re going to tell other people.

“Ellen used to have migraines,” continued Dr. Mosier. “They were so bad that she would have a migraine more often than not. She had multiple each week. I’ve you’ve ever had a migraine, it just shuts you down. The light bothers you, sound bothers you, all those things. She was miserable. She went to a neurologist and got an MRI done. She didn’t have any tumors or infections in the brain, and so they couldn’t figure out what was going on. The neurologist said, ‘you’re going to have to deal with this for the rest of your life.’ I was watching her cry herself to sleep because she’s suffering with these migraines and really seeing no hope. That’s kind of how I started this talk tonight: empower, inspire, hope. We want to give people hope, right? Because she had no hope.

“Fast forward a little bit, someone suggested chiropractic, which I knew nothing about, but we went and saw this chiropractor named Dr. Morrow,” concluded Dr. Mosier. “He took an X-ray of her and saw this reversal in her neck. He started adjusting her, and the migraines dissipated. That chiropractor gave me my wife back, and that made me want to do that for other people. That’s why we are so passionate about this. You don’t know what people are dealing with at home, and you don’t fully grasp how the subluxation and misalignment of their spine is truly affecting them. That’s really where my passion began, but it continues to grow.”