♪ 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 are the most famous physical therapists
on the Internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Someone was just telling me, Brad, that I need to wait
until you finish your last sentence there, that I've been
cutting you off- - Well I've heard that comment
about 327 times (Bob laughing)
in the last five years, but I didn't wanna say anything.
- I waited. I waited, so.
(Brad chuckling)
And by the way, we also got the comment, Brad,
that we're using "lay" and "lie" wrong, and-
- These English majors, - Yeah, I know.
- I'm glad we got English majors watching
- When you lay something you place it.
And when we lie down, (tapping)
we don't say lay down, we lie down.
- Let's get on with the program, Bob.
- All right. Today, Brad,
we're gonna talk about top seven peripheral neuropathy
relief methods for feet at home that you can do.
- Sure.
- So this is a common problem,
20 million people in the United States have it.
- Ah. It's not uncommon to have two or three patients
with this at the same time.
- Oh, I would say many more than that, even.
I'd say a lot of our patients have it.
- Well, I mean all in one day - Right, right.
- It's a very common thing.
- It is very common, and what you're gonna see
is burning, tingling, numbness, weakness...
- Balance problems. - Balance problems,
because you're getting the weakness in the ankles,
which play a large role in balance.
- Right, and then they can't- the proprioception,
they don't feel where their foot is going.
- Proprioception is a sense of where your foot is at
without looking at it, and that goes away.
I guess the first thing to say
beyond what we we're gonna show you to do at home,
you really want to have this checked out medically.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause there's so many reasons that can be causing
the peripheral neuropathy that they may be able to reverse.
- Yeah.
- You know, there's toxins in your system.
There may be a medication that's causing it.
Now, if it's your diabetes,
obviously you wanna try to control the diabetes
so that has less of an effect.
Heavy alcohol consumption.
Brad, you're in trouble. - Yeah.
(Bob laughing)
I'm starting to feel tingling in the feet already.
- Kidney, autoimmune, again, I just wanna make sure
that medically first you have it all checked out.
- And by the way, Brad.
if you are new to our channel- - Oh, yes,
I did notice some people out there.
- Please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on how to stay healthy, fit, pain free,
and we upload every day.
Subscription button here or here
and also wander over to Facebook.
Brad and I are not very likable, but like us,
because then we'll feel like we're likable.
- Right. And it works good for our therapy.
- Yeah. (chuckles) All right.
So let's start off with the first one, Brad.
One of the things that, again,
as the foot starts to get weak from neuropathy,
it starts to get tight, often in the ankle.
And then it gets even more pain because it's tight.
So the first thing we wanna make sure
is that you're keeping the motion in the ankle.
- And not only that,
when that muscle in your calf muscle gets tight,
you have more of a chance to trip
because you don't dorsiflex,
or bring the toes up when you walk, so you may
trip on that crack in the cement, or-
- Excellent point, Brad.
- There you go. Thank you.
- All right. So here we go.
- I'm trying to make up to Brad for cutting him off.
(laughing)
- I'm used to it, Bob. I can take it.
All right. Here we go.
So you can use a nice stretch out strap like this,
which works really well, but you wanna stretch that.
If you don't have one of these, you can just take a belt
- Or a sheet. - or a towel,
Bob like sheets, I like towels.
Try both. See what you like better.
But you're gonna stretch, the whole idea
is to stretch it out like this.
Feel that stretch. - Know what else works Brad?
A dog leash. (tapping)
They said there's a lot of dog leashes like this.
- Oh, sure! Sure.
- A lot of people have dogs.
- I never thought of that.
(Bob laughing)
I was thinking of something else, Bob.
- Apparently you were. - So you'll do this
two or three times a day where
you're stretching out these- - Kind of a pressure on,
pressure off, or a sustained stretch.
Would you recommend, Brad?
- Right. Yeah. A nice thing about this,
if you have a grip problem, you can just go like this.
You don't even need finger strength.
You can just pull with your hand.
- Yeah. It works out really well like that.
In case you have some neuropathy in your hands too.
- Exactly.
- All right. Next one, you're gonna want to just make sure
throughout the day that you're keeping range of motion
in the ankle. So why don't you show...
You want to come down here Lonnie,
and Brad maybe can show a side view
and I'll show a front view.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] So if you just wanna sit on the stool, Brad.
- [Brad] Well I'm not- - [Bob] We're gonna do this
seated first. - [Brad] Oh, I see.
- [Bob] So you're just gonna do ankle pumps,
like this. (shoes tapping)
- [Brad] Toe taps, you got some music going,
get the ankles working.
- [Bob] That's right. And then you can also do heel taps.
- [Brad] Right, so you work the ankle in both directions.
- [Bob] And then you're gonna do circles. Oo.
So keeping things moving,
try and get a little circulation going in there,
getting all the circulation working (indistinct),
and then you can go the opposite direction.
- [Brad] I always think about putting a piece of chalk
on my big toe and I'm drawing circles on a chalkboard.
- [Bob] Sure, and you've... - [Brad] That's just the way
I think about it. - [Bob] also done the alphabet
with it, right? - [Brad] Sure. You bet.
- [Bob] And then you can also do these standing,
but you gotta make sure that you have enough balance
to do this, you might have to hold onto a countertop,
but you can do the toe raises and the heel raises.
(wheels scraping)
- [Bob] If you've got a walker handy,
that's something nice to hold onto.
- [Brad] Oh yeah.
- [Bob] I'll get that out of the way.
- [Brad] Thank you.
- All right. So that's number two.
You're gonna keep the range of motion in there.
Number three, we have a product by Thermotex.
This is "Far Infrared" product.
And what we like about this...
This penetrates a lot deeper than heat. Heat will penetrate.
If you take any form of heat, moist heat, radiant heat,
it's gonna penetrate about two to three millimeters.
Well, this penetrates up to 60 millimeters,
which is 2.36 inches, which is quite far isn't it, Brad.
- Right. Yeah, I mean, the the hot packs
will feel warm, but they're not going very deep.
This feels warm and it goes deep.
- Yeah. And the concern with hot packs, even,
is with the neuropathy, you could actually
get burned pretty easily.
- Yeah. If you fall with the hot pack on,
especially those electric ones.
- Yeah. So this is the Platinum model,
and we'll have a link below.
It's got three panels, and the hard side is the side
that goes towards the body or towards the foot.
- [Brad] And you can tell, 'cause right now,
my foot feels very pleasantly warm right now.
- [Bob] Yeah. This has been heating up.
It takes about 10 minutes to heat up
and then you can keep it on.
The thing is, (Velcro tearing)
you can keep it on like 45 minutes.
You actually can keep it on longer than that,
but if you wanna start to get some therapeutic levels,
get up to about 45 minutes.
- The reason the Platinum is nice,
you can only do one foot at a time,
but you can use it all over the body then too.
We've had a video on this where you can use
a shoulder, elbow, hand.
- [Both] Back, neck. Yeah.
- But there- - It-
- [Bob] Oh, go ahead, Brad.
- [Brad] Feels good. (chuckling)
- [Bob] So, it works really well for this,
it's gonna penetrate really deep,
and hopefully give you some relief.
I just saw a picture today, Brad, it was interesting.
I saw a picture of a foot with push pins in it
and it was symbolizing neuropathy,
how bad it is. - Oh, I see.
- [Bob] It had a whole bunch of push pins in it.
- [Brad] So there wasn't really pushpins, it was-
- No, it was a model, yeah. - Yeah. Okay.
- Now, the method, if you're going to use this
on a continual basis, I would maybe recommend getting
what they call the big shoe or the slipper,
or I don't know, they have a lot of different names for it.
- It's designed just for the foot.
- Just for this.
And the reason I like this, Brad, is first off,
it does have an extra pad in there,
'cause again, the heating pads are on the bottom
for the Far Infrared,
and so if your foot is a little bit sensitive to heat,
this'll protect it.
Let's say you're at the office or you come home,
you slip your shoes off, and you slip your feet in,
and you're off and running.
I mean, the switch here is just an on off switch,
and it goes to the same temperature each time.
And again, it penetrates really well,
so it's such an easy one to use for neuropathy.
That's why I was really attracted to this idea,
Brad, of using this.
- [Brad] Yeah, it works well.
I can just see in the recliner, reclining back,
as a matter of fact, I got an ankle patient
I'm thinking I'm using this for.
- [Bob] Yeah, Brad and I just had a discussion
about this patient you have that we're gonna try this on,
'cause he's got arthritis,
and he's to the point of almost having surgery, right?
- Right, right, so we're gonna see if we can postpone that,
'cause he's only 35. It's a long story.
- But you can use this also for someone who has
poor circulation, or plantar fasciitis,
arthritis, all these things.
But again, with the neuropathy,
I know how neuropathy is Brad,
it's a daily issue that you're battling with.
- Yep, it's not on and off.
- So after you've used this,
hopefully it'll make it easier for you to do some walking,
which is number four.
And I know what they're saying right out there.
They're yelling at me, Brad, and they're saying,
"How do I walk, when there's so much pain!"
But that's the problem, isn't it.
You need to keep walking because that's gonna get
more circulation to the area,
and it's also gonna give off the endorphins,
which often help with pain relief.
So the idea might be to heat things up first
and then go out and try some walking.
- Right, it's like warming up the car engine
before you take a drive, you shouldn't go out on a cold day
and just take off, they gotta get it warmed up,
get things moving, get the juices moving.
- If you live in Minnesota and Wisconsin,
you understand that analogy real quick, easy.
Now the other thing is don't hesitate to use a walking aid,
take some of the stress off.
Now a walking aid might be just as little as a cane,
or what's nice about these four wheel walkers,
and this is a nice one by Hugo, by the way,
we showed this a long time ago,
remember that Brad? - Right.
- This one converts to a wheelchair.
It's got little leg rests on here.
But it also is just a walker.
And what what's nice about this, Brad,
is if you get too much pain and you need a break,
you just go ahead and lock the brakes and you sit down
and give yourself the break.
- We've had many patients that are in this situation
and either know that-
here's another walker. - Another version.
Not quite as fancy, but it works out really nice.
They all have the hand breaks,
which you need to know how to use well.
- A lot of 'em yeah. With cardiac problems too.
You can only go so far.
Both of our parents...
have become very familiar with these, unfortunately.
So, number five, it's gonna be very important for you
to get a good amount of sleep.
And again, I know what people are saying.
"Well, it hurts at night, so it's keeping me awake."
So you wanna make sure you're doing everything else
to make sure that that's not hindering your sleep.
You know, they talk about limiting your caffeine,
which you have to do quite early in the day,
'cause caffeine can bother you.
I mean, if you take it after 12 even, a lot of the times.
Keep the room cool, don't watch electronic devices
right before you go to bed, and all that.
- I mean, this might be a good idea to use this
before you go to bed to get the circulation up
and you got things started,
as opposed to going to bed with cold feet.
- That's a good idea. Yeah, it is.
You can't go to sleep with it on, but you can definitely
warm it up, you're right.
- And you can't walk with it on either, Bob.
- No. (laughing) - You could try to bunny hop.
- Even though it is the big shoe.
(both laughing) All right. Number six.
I haven't, but you've had patients mention this,
and I've had patients use this in a form,
topical lidocaine or capsaicin.
It tends to work for people who have maybe a little more
localized pain rather than the large diffuse pain,
because it's such a large area to cover.
- It's one of those things you know,
I don't think there's anything to lose by it,
except for some money that you pay for it.
If it's over the counter,
give it a try and see how it works.
Everyone responds. I've had people say they love it.
- Oh did you? - Yeah.
- It's worth a try then.
- Right, if there's no harm to be done,
you know, give it a try.
- And the last thing we're gonna mention is a TENS unit.
Transcutaneous electrical neuromuscular stimulation.
- It's a mouthful.
- So this is just a small unit,
has electrodes that come out and you put it on the feet.
- It won't cover the whole area, it's only gonna cover
between the electrodes where you put them,
well maybe a little more than that.
And then you got the wires to deal with,
and a place to put this.
So for some people, perhaps it'll work.
I have not used it with anybody.
- I haven't used it with neuropathy.
I've used it with other chronic pain situations,
and sometimes it works really well for that.
The theory is that it cuts off the pain pathways.
- Now they make these so cheap that,
if you bought one and you tried it and it didn't work,
you're not out hundreds of dollars like you used to be.
You'd get them for- - Yeah. It used to be almost
a thousand dollars. Ridiculous.
Anyway, that's the seven and remember,
Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Except...
a broken heart.
But we're working on it. - We're working on it,
we're gonna try. - Maybe they could
get one of these to wrap around the chest.
- That would be nice.
Wrap it around the heart.
- Let me try this. (Velcro rips)
Keep your camera rolling, Lonnie.
We gotta see if it works - Thanks for watching,
Cut it off, cut it off.
Cut this guy off. - I think it's working, Bob!
I'm feeling better. (chuckling)
- All right...