If you suffer from chronic back pain or even occasional back pain, then inversion tables are a God send.  For over a thousand years people have used the benefit of inversion to relieve back pain and even cure it.
What makes them so great?  Drugs are only a short term solution to treating back pain.  Gravity takes over from the time you start to walk upright and compresses the vertebrate together in your back and causes them to put pressure on your spinal nerves.  Inversion takes the pressure off of your vertebrate and spinal discs, to help improve blood flow and ease up with pain and inflammation, thus taking pressure of your spinal nerves.  People report that after a few days to a few months their chronic back pain is gone.  Inversion Tables are also great for keeping your back in shape when used on a regular basis and help prevent the back from re-injury.  It only takes 5 min a day to get the full benefits from an inversion table.  You only need to lay the table back to a point where the head is lower than the feet to start getting the benefit of pressure being relieved off of the vertebrate.  To get the full benefit you only need to have your body at a 45 degree angle with head lower than feet.  Hanging upside down is not necessary.  I have personally been using one for my lower back pain and it has done wonders for me.  After a few weeks I'm able to touch my toes again without any lower back pain.  When looking at the cost of a Chiropractor, Inversion Tables are a great bargain.  
Wade Allen CEP