♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet. - In our opinion of course,
Bob. - This video's called
what is TENS, Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation
and how does it work.
Brad, why don't you start by showing
just a typical TENS unit.
What it usually is composed it.
- So, you have the what I call, the handset
or delivers the E-Stim, the power,
and then a wire.
- A lead or a wire. - Yep, going to the electrode.
And this is called a one channel,
you can hook this up to two channels,
so there would be two leads coming out
to two sets of electrodes.
And that's optional.
- Yep, that's a basic unit.
I wanna show you how does TENS work.
So I'm gonna use this diagram here.
And one of the theories is that,
it's called the gate theory.
And what you do is, you're flooding the nervous system.
Well, let's talk about first,
what pain does when it happens.
Lets say you hit your finger.
Like Brad does when he's nailing
or hammering a nail, right? - Yeah, yeah,
that sends a lot pain to my brain.
- So it sends a pain signal up the nerve,
all the way to the brain.
So the TENS unit, what is simply does,
is it cuts off that pain path.
Or it floods it so it doesn't feel it as much.
You've mentioned before, Brad, how you run water over
your hand or rub your hand.
- Right, you know, so if you burn your finger,
you put it under cold running water, it feels better.
Its an analogy, it's not-- - Yeah, you're flooding
the system again so that it reduces the ability
to the pain signals to reach the brain.
- Sure. - So the other thing
it does, the TENS unit, it actually stimulates
some of your natural pain relievers.
Like endorphins. - Right.
- And what's nice about that is you get a little bit
of carry over, like even after the TENS unit is taken off,
you might have that pain relief continue
for another hour or two. - Exactly.
- The thing about TENS, I'll talk about the research
a little bit, Brad. - Sure.
- So, TENS is very helpful with what they call
acute pain, that's pain that comes up, you know,
abruptly and is usually short lived.
It's also very helpful with post operative pain.
So after you've had surgery, very, very helpful with that.
The research is a little mixed on chronic pain.
And that's too bad because I know a lot of you
probably are here because you have chronic pain.
However, Brad and I find, I don't know,
I guess as a rule of thumb, maybe 50 to 60%
of the people seem to get relief from it.
Even with chronic pain, in our world.
- Yeah, I've never really-- It's hard to say,
it's not a formal study, it's anecdotal.
- Yeah, I can think of one person
right off the top of my head.
It's because he's my uncle, he has chronic pain
for, he's 90 years old right now.
But he didn't start using one until he was like in his 60's.
And he had the injury when he was in his 30's.
- Oh sure. - So he lived
with this chronic pain, he started using TENS unit
and it was one of the only things that
was successful for him.
- And what's nice about TENS unit,
is it's much less expensive, much less invasive,
and less harmful than any of the opioids
or any of those strong medications
you're gonna be on. - Right.
- Really not any big side effects to speak of.
I mean sometimes people get a little irritated
underneath the pads.
And they maybe need hypoallergenic pads.
But, really there's a couple precautions too
that you wanna read before you buy a unit.
You can go onto the, I guess this is where
we should probably mention, Brad,
because there's hundreds of units out in the market
and Brad and I have, we probably have tried 10, 15 unit.
- Sure. - You know.
We decided we're gonna endorse just one.
We're gonna endorse iReliev.
The reason we're picking them is one,
their units are FDA cleared,
they're medical grade, they're powerful.
But they really have great instructions.
And that's the one thing we've found out
a lot of them were lacking.
Brad, do you wanna just talk about the instructions
real quick. - Yeah they give,
you know, you can get the comprehensive instructions
that goes through in detail.
And they have a booklet in there.
But then they do have the quick start guide
right here. - Like a cheat sheet.
- Yep and you can go through it very quickly.
And it's one of those things.
You take your time and go through it.
We do have some videos on how to use these.
- Yeah, we're gonna demonstrate each one
of the iReliev ones, but we obviously can't demonstrate
all the other ones out there. - Right.
- You know, do your research.
Choose the one you like.
But, we're gonna be focused basically on this type,
but that's still, the information's still gonna help you
no matter which one you use.
- Right, right.
So, as far as the option of using pain pills.
Opioid pain pills and this.
These are much cheaper, no side effects.
You can't guarantee that these are gonna be helpful for you.
I guess-- - But even they,
even if they reduce your amount of pain pill usage,
that's a positive also. - Sure, right.
Yep, we've had a number of comments from viewers
in the past saying-- - Yep, they had
good luck with it. - Yep,
they're happy with theirs. - Alright,
thanks for watching. - You bet.