Fig. 5.

Effects of varying the bending duration immediately after cessation of load, and then allowing discs to recover unloaded for the remaining 6 weeks. Safranin-O/Fast-green stained sections of 1 week bending (a, b) and 3 week bending (c, d) specimens revealed organized lamellae in both groups. This was evident under brightfield microscopy (a, c) and accentuated when viewed under polarized light microscopy (b, d). Results show that immediate tension was beneficial for preserving architecture throughout the anulus, with slightly superior results for 3 week specimens