Inversion Table for Scoliosis: Does It Help, and Is It Safe?

What the Research Says About Inversion Tables for Scoliosis

The short version: there is almost nothing, and what exists does not test an inversion table.

No Study of an Inversion Table in Scoliosis Was Found

We searched EuropePMC, a database that indexes PubMed and more, for inversion tables and scoliosis, for inversion therapy and scoliosis, and for gravity traction in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. We found no clinical study of a gravity inversion table in people with scoliosis, at any age.

The Nearest Result: One Patient and a Different Device

The closest paper was a case report published in 2026 about one 12-year-old girl with low back pain and a 40° thoracolumbar curve. She was treated with a program that combined postural correction training, muscle balance training, “three-dimensional spinal traction” and spinal manipulation. After 50 sessions over 32 weeks, her Cobb angle, the standard X-ray measure of a scoliosis curve, fell by 7° in the thoracic region and 17° in the lumbosacral region, and her back pain was much reduced (Mao, 2026).

Three limits make this useless as evidence for an inversion table:

• It is one patient, with no comparison group, so it cannot tell you how often this result happens.
• Four treatments were given at once, so nobody can say how much, if any, of the change came from the traction.
• The device was not an inversion table. Three-dimensional spinal traction is a clinical, multi-axis device. Hanging by your ankles at home is something else.

We include it only to show where the search ended.

A Large Review of Scoliosis Treatments Does Not List Traction

A network meta-analysis published in 2025 pooled 54 randomized trials with 3,984 participants on conservative treatment for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. Three combinations showed short-term improvement in Cobb angle, with moderate certainty: a brace plus scoliosis-specific exercise, manual therapy plus scoliosis-specific exercise, and manual therapy plus mind-body exercise (Ren, 2025). Bracing alone could help prevent progression. Traction does not appear among the treatments found effective in the abstract.

A limit on our side: we read the abstract, not the full paper. We can’t tell you whether any of the 54 trials tested traction and it simply showed no effect, or whether none tested it at all. What we can say is that traction is not on the list of what worked.

The Scoliosis Guidelines Do Not Mention Inversion

SOSORT, the international society focused on conservative scoliosis treatment, published guidelines in 2016 (in print in 2018) with 68 recommendations on bracing, exercise, other treatments, breathing, sport and assessment in growing children (Negrini, 2018). We read the full text. The word “inversion” does not appear once.

“Traction” appears twice. One mention is a cited trial in which every patient, in both groups, received “electrical stimulation on the lateral surface of the body, traction, and postural training,” while only the experimental group added scoliosis-specific exercises (Negrini, 2018). The difference between the groups came from the exercise, not the traction. The other mention is the title of a 1978 paper in the reference list, with no discussion in the text.

So SOSORT neither recommends inversion tables nor warns against them. It has no published position.

The Scoliosis Research Society Mentions Only Surgical Traction

The Scoliosis Research Society’s position statements mention traction only in a surgical context: as halo gravity traction, a surgical-setting treatment for severe spinal deformity in young children discussed alongside casting and surgery, and as a traction X-ray taken before an operation. In the society’s own words, when treatment is delayed, larger curves may need riskier surgery “or prolonged treatments such as halo gravity traction. Thus, we know young children with severe spinal deformity benefit from early treatment with casting and surgery” (SRS, 2026). Inversion does not appear on the society’s index of informational and position statements at all, and none of the statements listed there addresses inversion tables or traction at home.

That is a statement about what the society has listed on that page, not proof that the SRS has never commented on inversion anywhere. But halo gravity traction belongs to the specialist care of children with severe deformity, and it tells you nothing about hanging from your ankles at home. Neither SOSORT nor the SRS has put its name to inversion.

Safety Risks That Apply With or Without Scoliosis

A curve is not the only thing to weigh. Some risks apply to every user.

Falls Land You on Your Head

A 2021 report described three people with cervical spinal cord injuries after falling from inversion tables. The authors compare the mechanism to a shallow-water diving injury: “once the ankle power is lost or it slips, the user will land on top of their head,” and “falls from 1 or 2 feet high are by no means negligible” (Jung, 2021). It is a three-case report, so it can’t tell you how often this happens. It does tell you what a fall looks like, which is a good reason to think hard about a spine you already need to protect.

Blood Pressure Goes Up

In a 1986 trial of 60 healthy women aged 20 to 30, two minutes of inversion raised both systolic and diastolic blood pressure significantly compared with standing, and the authors wrote that “hypertensive individuals may need to avoid its use” (Haskvitz, 1986). The sample was young and healthy, and the abstract gives no mmHg figure. The rest of the short-term effects, from headaches to dizziness, are on our page about inversion table side effects.

Most Tables Are Not Medical Devices

The FDA’s device reporting database includes serious injuries from inversion table therapy, among them spinal cord injury, fractures and death. But the FDA only regulates the tables whose makers claim a medical use, and most makers do not (Kassay, 2023). A table sold for general fitness has not been reviewed for use in any spinal condition, scoliosis included.