♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪ (upbeat music ending)
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion,
of course, Bob. - We haven't
filmed for a while, Brad.
I feel a little bit out of sync here.
- Yeah, a couple weeks here. Three.
- All right, top three treatments
for degenerative disc disease.
We're gonna show the exercises first,
and then we'll explain why we do 'em.
Let's get to it. - Degenerative disc disease.
The discs are shrinking,
typically with this, right? - That's right.
- Okay. - Shrunk down.
- All right. - All right.
The first one is we're getting,
this is a great one to do in the morning,
right when you wake up.
- Sure. - Just go ahead
and put your knees up like this,
and you're gonna start rotating your legs back and forth.
- All right. Knees will be touching, gently.
Feet will be touching gently.
Shoulders, stay flat on the bed and you just-
- And sometimes you wanna start off
with just small oscillations, depending on your back.
- It was feeling so good, I wanted to go farther, Bob.
(Bob laughing) (Brad laughing)
- And then, yeah.
Then you can push it to the point
where you can actually give a little stretch
maybe, even on the end.
- See, for me, this way feels good.
When I get over to here, eh.
- Then you shouldn't do that direction.
- Right, we're just gonna work - Yeah.
- in the pain free range.
- Right, stay on the pain free side.
Eventually, maybe you can work
more into the pain. - Sure. You bet.
- And you can do this for five minutes
if you want. - Sure.
- And you can do it more than once a day
if you want. - Yeah.
- All right, next one. That was one.
Number two, just a single knee to chest.
Yep. Pressure on, pressure off.
You could go ahead and do that 10 times on each leg
if you'd like. - Yep.
So I'm gonna abbreviate a little bit, Bob.
We'll just do two or three. - Yeah.
Now you may feel like you're just stretching the hip,
but you are actually pulling up on the back too,
and gapping the back. Right.
- All right, the last one, knees to chest.
Both knees to chest.
Now you might wanna pull one up,
and then pull the other one up if that's too hard on you
to pull both up. - Right, so here,
and use your legs to help.
It's gonna be the same thing.
Pressure on pressure, I'm sorry,
with both of them, Brad.
Pressure on, pressure off.
- I was just thinking, some of my patients
have a hard time getting their knees up.
You can take a towel or a belt and go underneath your knees.
- Sure. - So you can pull,
if you got short arms - Sure.
- to help that out. - Okay. Excellent.
Okay. Why don't you sit up, Brad,
and we'll discuss real quickly.
- I'm pretty comfortable here, Bob.
- I can help you up, old man.
All right, what's happening with degenerative disc disease,
is you got your two, you got your vertebrae,
the bones of the back, and you have the disc
that is in between it.
So something like that.
Now, on a normal disc, it's gonna be a little thicker.
It's gonna provide plenty of space
between the bones, but on a degenerative disc,
it's actually gonna start flattening out,
and degenerating. - So the green
represents the disc.
Vertebra, vertebra here.
- And why is that a problem, Brad,
when that disc starts to lose height?
- Well, what happens is the facet joints that you have,
there's two of 'em between each vertebrae,
they start to get pushed together,
and the mechanics of 'em is not as smooth as it once,
it can be causing pain and arthritis
and other problems along.
You can get a pinched nerve, possibly,
- Exactly. - Lose range of motion.
- There's more stress on the back joints,
- Right. - Because the disc
is not providing the shock absorption that it should.
And so it begins to wear out like arthritis,
develop probably increased likelihood of arthritis.
- Sure. - And by doing
these exercises, you're gapping the joints.
You're opening the joints up.
- Right. - And you're also getting
more nutrition and blood flow into them,
removing toxins, all those good things.
- Should we show 'em
up close? - Sure.
- Lonnie, can you have to tell me
if you can see what we're doing here.
I want a little close up.
Right here. Can you see that?
Where the pen is pointing. - That's one of the joints.
- [Brad] Right there, now when we do,
I'm gonna exaggerate this, but Bob,
- Yep. - can you pull that apart?
So when we do this flexion,
see how there's a gap in that joint right now?
And that's what we're doing.
It may not go this far,
but that the idea is there.
- [Bob] Opening the gap, closing the gap.
Opening the gap,
closing the gap. - Right.
So when that disc is degenerative,
that joint just gets pushed together too hard for too long,
and we need to get some
motion in there. - The other problem is,
as those joints come together,
this hole where the nerve comes out.
- Right there. - That can get smaller
and get pressure on the nerve.
So we're actually trying to gap that joint too,
and make it the hole little bigger.
- Exactly. - It won't stay bigger,
but it'll, it takes some- - Loosen it up.
Sometimes it doesn't take much.
- All right, that's the plan
for DDD, degenerative disc disease,
and if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe,
because we're here to prevent you from having pain, right?
- We're gonna prevent you from having something.
(Bob chuckling)
- All right. Thanks a lot. - Take care.