hey everybody it's doctor jo, and today i'm going to show you how to use a tens ems
unit for knee pain relief. so let's get started.
and before we get started, if you haven't already
make sure and click on the subscribe button down there because it helps my channel grow. so i'm
gonna use the iReliev wireless ems tens unit for this, and i'll talk about a little bit more
later. let's jump on into relieving knee pain with tens and ems. so tens stands for transcutaneous
electrical nerve stimulation, and this is mainly for pain control. this is not trying to get the
muscle stronger. this is to kind of relieve that pain help increase the circulation for healing.
ems is electrical muscle stimulation, and sometimes it has different names depending on
the units. um the ones we use in the clinic is a neuromuscular electrical stimulation device,
but it's really just you're trying to get the muscle to work again. you're retraining it.
but these are not going to bulk up your muscles. if you're looking to bulk up muscles, it never
is really going to be able to contract the muscle more than you can yourself, so this is really for
a retraining purpose if you've had an injury or if you've had a surgery and and you're approved
by your doctor at this physical therapist to use it, that helps retrain that muscle that's maybe
kind of shut off or not quite activating like it's supposed to after that surgery or that injury. and
a lot of times it's the quad, so um i'm going to focus on the ems portion of strengthening,
but i'll show you a little bit about the tm uh the the tens the for the pain control as well.
so with the ems going on the quad muscle, if you were in a clinic we'd probably be a little more
specific maybe trying to get the medial quad or the lateral quad, depending on what it is. in in
the full technical world, they take little probes to find exactly where those muscle activations are
and then put the electrodes on it. you want to be a little more specific within ems versus the tens,
but you don't have to be right on. you can do a little trial and error where you put it on
if you're not quite getting that contraction you need, and you're getting to a point where
the the electrical stimulation is just hurting, you're still not contracting,
i would say turn it off and then just move it around a little bit in a couple different places,
and you might hit that right spot. so what i want to show you is with the iReliev tens ems wireless
unit, and some of my favorite things about this is the biggest one is that it's wireless. so
it's not going to do anything crazy different than a traditional tens ems unit, but there's no wires
that are all over the place. so it makes it super functional especially with the tens unit because
if you want to put it on for that pain control and then continue to do stuff throughout your day,
you can do that. so i really like the wireless component. i also like that they have these big
pads on here. so if i'm trying to get that quad, sometimes with the smaller ones you could you can
use two to get to the spots, but see they have these here so it covers a large area. so you're
really going to get that nice contraction. it also has 14 different programs on it,
so it has for pain relief, arthritis pain, and muscle conditioning or recovery is what i would
more likely call it. and it's also rechargeable so you don't have to keep getting batteries. you you
can charge it in a wall and then uh keep using it. so it makes it really nice. so if i want
to strengthen my quad here, so if you've had an injury or surgery you might not see it contract.
you might go i'm contracting it and not much is happening like that. so i would put this a little
bit more on the inside. like i said you might have to play around with it a little bit, but
that that middle the medial quad which is your vmo is the one i like personally to try and activate.
so when you're starting this make sure you turn what they would call their pod part on, um and
then turn this on. so you can see that it has the wireless activation, that means that they're
connected because it won't really let you do a whole lot until they connect. if i was going to do
a quad set where i'm trying to activate my muscle, but i'm using this to help it, most the time i'd
take like a rolled up towel or a pool noodle just to put under it because you might not have
a whole lot of squeeze, and that's going to help you push down to help activate that quad muscle.
so i'm going to use just the first ems setting because that one is the one that i personally like
to get the contraction the best, but again when there's different settings, everyone's different.
you know mine what works best for me, might not work best for you, so i always say you know just
try it or take it when you go to physical therapy and have your physical therapist help you figure
out which one is the best for you. so once you get it on and you get everything set,
you can set the timer here and then the intensity then i'm just going to start taking it up. so
it blinks when you're setting it and then once you have everything set, it's not blinking more,
and that's when you can start doing the the increasing the intensity. so what i'm going
to do is i'm just going to start increasing it first i usually say pretty quickly until i
start feeling something because sometimes if your muscle is kind of weak and it's not activating,
you might not feel anything right away. you want it to be strong almost to the verge
of not comfortable, but you want to start getting a contraction. so see i'm not doing anything,
and i'm going to keep bumping it up a little bit, and now i'm starting to get a little bit of
a contraction. and you can see when it lets go it kind of jumps down away. but i usually tell people
go till you're like i don't want it to go anymore, and then really try and go one or two more. so
you're really getting that contraction. and if you're using it as an exercise, while
i'm contracting i'm pushing down into that quad set. i'm trying to activate it, and then when it
stops i stop. and then i'm going back in. i'm not lifting that heel, i'm keeping the heel down and
i'm trying to push everything into it. so since this is really helping retrain the muscle too,
a lot of times you don't have to go any more than five maybe eight minutes. i wouldn't go
for the ems much longer than that because you're you're gonna fatigue that muscle. that's okay,
it's okay to fatigue the muscle, but you really want to make sure that you're not over
fatiguing that muscle. so once you get all that done, if you're just looking maybe more for
tens, then you can either use the one channel or you can use two channels because with iReliev,
it actually comes with another pod where you can maybe spread it out a little bit.
you don't have to, but sometimes if the whole knee is hurting, you might want to do one on top here,
and then one below so you're kind of getting that whole area. you don't really want to put
it on bony areas. you want to give it a little bit more on the muscular areas the meaty areas,
but you can just do one. so maybe my pain is still up here around in the quad tendon area, or just in
the quad muscle itself. so i would then change the setting to the tens and then once i get to that,
i would just start slowly taking up. and you can see it blinks a little bit when i when i take
it up. so you can see that it's going now with the tens for pain control. it really shouldn't
make that that sustained contraction. it might flutter. the muscle might flutter a little bit,
but usually with the tens most of the time you don't want to see a contraction because this is
for pain control. you want to be comfortable. you want to calm everything back down, get that
inflammation out by increasing the circulation, and this is to make you feel good. so again run
through the settings when you have your tens unit because what might feel good for me,
and what i feel like is the best for me, might not be the best for you. so you might have a therapist
say i want you to use this specific setting which is fine, but in what i usually tell my patients is
go through each setting and just pick the one that you feel is best because that's what it's for,
it's for pain control. so for this one again like i said you shouldn't really have that contraction.
if it if it contracts a little bit like some of them like the acupuncture setting it's going to
do a little bouncing, and you're going to get a little contraction, but as long as it's not
holding that contraction. you don't want that hold in there. so a little bit of flutter is okay. so
this one you can do a little bit longer. i usually recommend anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, really
just depending on what you're working on. so if you have a wired unit which iReliev also has,
for the tens you can have four electrodes versus the wireless two electrodes would be in one pad.
so this would be one channel, two electrodes. this would be one channel and this would be one
channel. so two channels with four electrodes. and so it sounds a little bit confusing,
but usually with the wireless ones you have your two electrodes that are kind of connected together
which would be one channel. so if you have it wired, often for the tens unit not for the ems
you would have four electrodes so you can do it a couple different ways because you can just use
two electrodes, which would be one channel, or the two channels for four. the biggest thing to know
with the four electrodes is if you're doing that tens and you want to get maybe the whole knee,
your whole knee is bothering you. each channel has the two electrodes, and you want them to cross.
so there'd be the here and then here. and so you don't want them really to go this way, you don't
want them go this way, you want those currents to cross each other, really to get the whole um knee
covered. if you don't that's okay, it's not gonna make it not work or anything, but it's just gonna
not get as much of a benefit if you don't cross it. so you want to make sure and cross it. so
for example, let's say these two electrodes were channel number one. i would want to put it here
and then cross over to the other side. and this would these two electrodes would be channel two.
so then i would cross it here and then here. so again these two would be talking to each other,
and these two would be talking to each other. so you have that cross pattern just to get the
most benefit out of the tens current going on. so if you're using these wired ones for ems,
then you would just usually want to use the two electrodes which is one channel. so kind of like
again this is the big one channel of the two electrodes where i just place
on top here. this time i'd still have the one channel with two electrodes, but i'd probably
fit it more, if i'm looking to get that that medial quad in there, i place it here
and then maybe right here. some people would place it more this way. you could do it that way,
but again you might want to just play around with it a little bit because you want to follow that
muscle belly or the fibers so they're contracting that whole muscle belly together. so that's kind
of how you want to work and again sometimes, i might have it on and it's not feeling quite right,
so i'd pause it and then maybe i'd have to move it even a little bit more outwards to get it.
or maybe move this one a little bit more in and then that one even further in to get that
contraction. so it is kind of a learning curve because everyone's so different,
but again once you find the spots that work for you, then you know you can go back to those spots
while you're retraining that muscle. so if you're interested in purchasing the unit, make sure
and click on the link up there. and remember be safe, have fun, and i hope you feel better soon.