♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapist on the internet
- In our opinion of course, Bob,
- Today we're showing how to use a TENS unit
after stroke, with multiple sclerosis,
fibromyalgia, C-R-P-S,
we'll tell you what that is in a second, and RSD.
CRPS, complex regional pain syndrome.
We figure out that if you have it,
you probably know what it is.
- Know the acronym
- Know the acronym, yeah.
- Reflex sympathetic dystrophy is actually
the old term for CRPS, right?
- They just they gave it a new name.
- It advanced it, yep.
So basically, Brad and I have been using TENS units
for years,
me, it's been 30 years.
- Yeah, I'm a little bit behind Bob, about 25.
- We've tried dozens and dozens of units.
All of them really were fine, all of them did well.
Some of the units, depending on the company,
had really poor instructions.
- Yeah.
- And so what we decided after a bit here is
that we're going to endorse just one brand.
And we decided we're going to endorse the iReliev
because they really have their act together.
Their units are really good, they're compact, powerful.
They actually have a range of prices.
So it's less expensive if you want to not spend as much
and more expensive if you want like wireless.
- Right.
- And so we show you step by step,
how to use some of the units in other videos.
So to get to those videos, this is what you do.
You go to bobandbrad.com.
- Our website.
- Our website, go to the program section,
where we have free programs.
By the way, we have free programs
on plantar fasciitis and sciatica,
I got to put a plug in for that, Brad.
- Right, and each program has a list of videos specific
to that diagnosis, and it saves you a lot of time
on getting to what you need for your health.
So we have videos under the TENS section that are,
one is for the 1313, that's a lower price model.
- Yeah, right here.
Then we have the 8080, which is kind of a mid range...
- This one. - Yeah, model.
And then we have the 5050,
which is actually a wireless model.
- No wires to deal with.
- Yeah, and that's kind of the Cadillac,
right, is that what you'd say?
- I would assume eventually they all get that way,
I don't know how long that'll take.
- It'll be common.
So if you want if you got a TENS unit from somebody else,
I'm sorry, we can't help you
'cause there's so different, each one,
that we can show you how to use that one.
- How to use the actual unit itself.
But as far as pad placement...
- We can make some recommendations.
- Right the pad placement,
if you want to call them rules or how you do it,
it's the same for any TENS unit.
- Yeah, we'll talk about pad placement in just a minute.
Right now, we're going to just give you
a few general rules, first.
With any type of pad you generally want
to clean the skin with soap and water.
It takes the oils of the skin off
and the oils can interfere with the conduction, eventually,
especially after you use the pads time and time again.
- So here we got some pads
and the pads come on usually
a clear plastic saver, if you will.
You always save your pads on there.
It helps keep them clean and organized.
- Yeah, you want to put the pads back
on the plastic as soon as you're done.
If you have hair over the area that you want to place
the pads, I'd recommend you shave because,
one, it doesn't feel that great to pull the pads off,
but, two, it won't conduct as well.
- Right and the pads actually last longer
because they pull the hair off, and they stick on the pads
and it's it's just much nicer to shave it off clean.
- If your pads are starting to wear out,
one thing that we recommend is you take
a little bit of water and you put it on the pad,
and, yeah on this surface,
and get a little wet then let it dry again
and you'll find out it sticks again better
and that'll work for a while.
But you can buy the pads separately,
you don't have to buy another unit.
- Right.
And if you want, iReliev actually has an electric pad club.
So that if you're finding that TENS works for you
and using it every day of your life,
you can buy pads at a less expensive price.
- Yeah, it's very simple, they have a very efficient system.
- Yeah.
So the other thing we want to
mention specifically about it,
if you've had stroke or maybe you're having some
other issues along with multiple sclerosis,
maybe you're getting a little bit of dementia
and your judgment is not as good,
obviously we're going to recommend
that you see a professional.
- Right.
- You know, a physical therapist, chiropractor or whatever,
before you start using this because you don't want
to do some things that will actually harm your
or, you know, give you some injury.
- For example, if you had a stroke
and you have arm pain,
sometimes along with the symptoms of a stroke is numbness,
or you're not going to be able
to feel it or the feedback.
So you might be turning the unit way up to a high level.
And it normal for the person before their stroke,
it would be way too much.
But then with a stroke because of
the nervous problems and damage,
it's too much and it's just not safe.
- Yeah, and also after you've had a stroke,
a lot of times people have what we call increased tone.
So like their arm may want to go into this flexed position.
Again, you need to have a therapist to go over
that with you to say, "Is the TENS unit gonna be helpful,
"is it something that's gonna work for you?"
And like I said, if the person has a little bit
of dementia or their thinking is not quite straight,
they might like "What are you doing to me?
"Why are you putting this on me,
"and why are you shocking me?"
- Right.
So we want you to be very careful.
Now, the case with fibromyalgia and CRPS,
that's probably a little bit less the case there.
No matter where you're going to do it,
let's say you're going to put one
on your knee and maybe one on your elbow,
we have videos that specifically show you how to do that,
we've got every body part that we've done.
And what we've done is we showed you how
to do two pads for one channel.
And we showed how to do four pads for two channels.
- For a larger area of pain.
Particularly like you know,
fibromyalgia may may work that way.
- Right, so you might want to vary
from day to day or from hour to hour,
or whatever you want to do.
- So when you go onto our website
and get to the TENS section,
there'll be a list of videos to see.
I don't know if there's about 10 or 15 of them,
for TENS, or is it more?
- Oh, more that, I think?
- Actually, there is more,
but you don't have to look through every one.
- Yeah, you'll just see all the titles.
- Right.
- And just look for the one that you want.
- Right if you want back.
- Yeah.
- Pad placement for the back, you go to that one.
It's about a 10 minute, five to 10 minute long video.
- So we're sorry that we don't provide all that in one video
but to try to go over every body part in one video,
we'd be here for a couple of hours.
- And he'd be falling asleep.
- Waiting for the part that you want to see.
- So hopefully that's helpful.
We always like your comments,
put them in the comment section below,
and we can get some feedback from you.
But check out, again, bobandbrad.com,
go to the program section, go to TENS.
- That's right.
- Thanks for watching.
- All right, thank you.