When the doctor said "maybe it's from weight gain,"
I believed her.
I went home and started dieting.
Counted calories.
Worked out every day.
Cut carbs.
Drank lots of water.
One month passed.
I lost 5 pounds.
The lump was still there.
Two months.
10 pounds.
The lump was still there.
Three months.
15 pounds.
The lump was still there.
Actually, it was more visible
without the fat covering it anymore.
I went back to the doctor.
"I lost 15 pounds," I said.
"But the lump is exactly the same."
She felt it.
Frowned.
"Let me send you for an MRI."
When the results came back,
she called me into the room.
Opened the image on the screen.
Zoomed in on one area.
"Here," she pointed to two vertebrae.
"C5 and C6.
They're compressed closer together than normal."
I stared.
"And this," she pointed to a faint spot,
"is the nerve being pinched."
"So it's not from fat?" I asked.
"No," she said.
"Weight can make it worse.
But the real problem is pressure.
When the vertebrae compress,
the disc bulges.
It pinches the nerve.
And your body tries to protect that area
by building tissue around it.
That's the lump you're feeling."
I sat there, feeling like I'd been punched.
Three months I'd been trying to lose weight.
Three months wondering "Why isn't my body changing?"
Three months thinking it was my fault.
But now I understood—
it was never my fault.
"So the exercises...?" I asked.
"Exercises help muscles," she said.
"But they can't decompress the spine.
If the vertebrae are still compressed,
the nerve is still pinched,
the pain won't go away.
And the lump will stay."
That night, I lay in bed,
staring at the ceiling.
Three months I'd done everything right.
But I was trying to fix the wrong thing.
I started searching.
"Cervical spine decompression"
"C5-C6 nerve compression"
"How to reduce pressure on vertebrae"
And I kept seeing one term repeated:
Cervical traction.
Controlled neck stretching,
at a specific angle,
to create space between vertebrae.
When space is created:
→ The disc has room to retract
→ The nerve gets released
→ The body stops "building a protective wall"
→ The lump starts to shrink
I read dozens of stories.
"After three weeks, the lump shrank in half.
Weight loss didn't help at all.
But this... this actually worked."
"I did gym 5 days/week for 6 months.
Lump was still there.
Two weeks using this method, it started to soften."
"Doctor told me to lose weight.
I lost 20 pounds.
Nothing changed.
Now I understand why."
One night, I found a forum
where people were sharing about a method.
Not medication.
Not surgery.
Not more exercises.
But a way to create space
so the spine can self-heal.
It combines four things simultaneously:
→ Heat - relaxes muscles before stretching
→ Massage - releases tight points
→ EMS - activates "sleeping" muscles
→ 26-degree traction - exact angle to decompress C5-C6
I tried it.
The first time I lay on it,
I felt something different.
It wasn't just stretching my neck.
I felt it working
right where the lump was.
There was gentle warmth.
There was soft massage.
There was the feeling of muscles contracting then releasing.
And there was a gentle pulling force—
not painful—
but I felt space being created.
After 15 minutes, I stood up.
For the first time in months,
I turned my head.
No pain.
Week 1: Neck pain from 8/10 to 3/10.
Week 2: My husband said:
"You look taller.
Did you get new shoes?"
Week 3: I stood in front of the mirror,
touched my neck.
The lump was softer.
Week 4: I put my hair in a ponytail.
First time in half a year.
Eight weeks later, I went back to the doctor.
She took a new MRI.
When she opened the image,
she was silent for a moment.
"The space between C5 and C6... has improved,"
she said.
"The disc has retracted.
The nerve is no longer compressed."
She looked at me:
"What did you do?"
I told her about the method.
About decompressing the spine.
About creating space for the nerve.
She nodded slowly:
"That makes sense.
You addressed the cause,
not just the symptoms."
Today, four months later,
the lump is 90% gone.
But more importantly:
I realized that
it was never my fault.
Not because I was lazy.
Not because I wasn't trying hard enough.
Not because I didn't lose enough weight.
But because I was trying to fix the wrong thing.
I'm not writing this to make you angry.
I'm writing because I know how many people
are trying to lose weight,
doing exercises,
standing straighter,
doing everything "right"—
But the lump is still there.
And they think it's their fault.
But it's not your fault.
You can't lose weight to
decompress vertebrae.
You can't exercise to
create space for the nerve.
If you want to know more
about how I found this—
I'll leave the link here.
👉 Here’s what actually helped me.
Sometimes, the problem isn't that you're not trying hard enough.
It's that you're trying to fix the wrong thing.