♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp,
physical therapist
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist
- The most famous physical therapists
on internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- The title of today's program, Brad is,
"Will a Night Splint/Brace Help Your Planter Fasciitis"?
We review three braces.
- There you go.
- So, all right, what we have here,
this is one we actually did before.
You don't know that, but my mic wasn't working again
which Brad again, I think sabotaged it.
It was your mic maybe?
Maybe it was yours.
- One way or another,
it's gonna be a better quality film.
We're getting better all the time,
after a few years, you know.
- So the first thing we wanna talk about today,
what is plantar fasciitis?
We went to the bottom of Napoleon's foot here
to, to describe what plantar fasciitis actually is.
So we're looking at the bottom of his foot
and there's actually a band that runs from the calcaneus,
which is your heel, all the way into the toes.
Actually you can see there's the band is here
but here it actually become strands
that go into the toes.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] And it's important to understand that
because when we're doing stretches,
which is what you're gonna wanna do,
this band has become damaged in some form,
maybe some micro tears.
- [Brad] I'm sacrificing the bottom of my foot
to show what it looks like on a real human.
- [Bob] I think it's more likely that you're sacrificing
that marker, Brad.
I think that's just become deteriorated in acid.
(laughter)
- [Brad] One way or another.
- [Bob] So he's showing the band on the bottom
of his foot
and that again gets stretched
and it gets maybe torn
and we needed to allow it to heal.
And, and while it's healing
you normally wanna do a little bit of stretching on it.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] So, and quite often when you have the pain
it's gonna be real specific,
a lot of times right in this,
on, on the edge of the calcaneus
or the bone right there.
- [Brad] Right where that red spot is,
that's typically the hot spot
where that fascia connects into there.
- [Bob] But again, show, I'm gonna show you this
because one of the stretches we have people do
is we actually stretch the toes back like that
and see how that stretches this band?
I dunno if you can see that or not,
but this band is stretching, it's getting taught.
So, so the, the purpose of,
you know, our talk today is about braces.
So first off, should you even use a brace?
And I looked up, I saw quite a few studies,
- Sure
- at least four that supported the benefit
of using a brace at night,
- Yeah.
- or a splint.
- A night splint.
- Night splint is what we're talking about.
But in almost every case, what they recommended
is that you also do the stretches and stuff along with it.
- Right.
- So, do you wanna say a little bit about
why you need the night splint?
Because particularly, if in the morning you wake up
and you put weight in your foot
and you get this,
'Oh, that hurts',
and then after a while it kind of stretches out
and it's not so painful.
If that's your symptoms, one of your symptoms,
a night splint will likely be very advantageous for you.
- So yeah, in theory, what had happened is,
what we're thinking would happen,
is that at night it started to heal.
- Yep.
- It started to lay down some scar tissue
but your foot was down like this.
So it healed in a tightened fashion.
- Right.
- And as soon can,
- Can you zoom in on that Lonnie?
- So as soon as you stood on it in the morning,
you, you put a huge stretch on it
and you tore it open again.
So you're starting all over again.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] It has to heal again.
So if we put you in a night splint
and we have a just a gentle stretch on the foot
all night long,
then when you wake up in the morning
you're already to go, it's already stretched out.
- [Brad] Right. It's healing.
- [Bob] It's healing in a length in the position
- [Brad] Perfectly.
- [Bob] Okay. I said, it perfectly.
- [Brad] You did, matter of fact, we should do something
and quote that and get it in history.
But we're looking for a neutral position.
Right Bob?
- There you go.
- Kinda like what this,
- Has done.
- Right.
Right. This actually is a night splint.
- Yeah. So let's, we got three braces from BraceAbility.
But before we do that, Brad, we, we didn't even do this yet.
- We didn't?
- We didn't allow people to come in
and be part of our family.
- Well, yeah, it is cold out there today.
- It's the largest physical therapy family
on the internet.
- It is.
- By the way, if you are new to our channel
please take a second to subscribe to us
and become part of our family.
We provide videos on stay healthy, fit, pain free.
And we upload every day, also go over to Facebook
and become part of our family there
because Brad and I as children were not liked.
And we're trying to turn things around.
- This family thing was something new.
- Yeah. I don't know.
I thought it
- Works out.
You know, I don't know if people
wanna be part of the family or not.
The fam.
- Well, let's start.
Do you mind if I start with this brace, Brad?
I wanna make sure I got the name right here.
So this is a planter fasciitis soft night sock.
Now I like the idea of this because it's lightweight.
It might be a little warm because it
it does cover your whole foot up.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] But it's lightweight.
It's not gonna be bulky when I'm laying down at night.
You know I can,
I can lay,
I can put my foot on top of the other foot.
It's not gonna, you know, have a sharp edge
that's gonna bother me.
- [Brad] Right, right.
- [Bob] You know, I can move it around.
It does have a little bit of a, a soul on it.
So you can still walk on it at night.
My only criticism of this,
and it does work,
it absolutely does work.
Because you wanna have, you know, part
of the device where it does pull the toe up just slightly.
And that's what this does.
It's this, this one does take a lot of adjusting,
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] to get it right.
And the first critical step
is this strap right here,
this one that goes around the ankle.
This has to be very, very snug.
If this isn't snug, this strap starts to pull like this
and it doesn't hold a shoe up or the toe up very well.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] So you gotta spend some time.
You get this wrapped like this
and then you bring it around like this
and then you really snug this uptight
and bring that around.
I think this would've almost been better Brad,
if this was up here.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- [Bob] And this was going from here.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- [Bob] Does that make sense?
- [Brad] Gives a little bit more leverage on that pull.
You know what I'm saying?
To get that pull up,
- [Bob] Right
- [Brad] wouldn't take as much force.
- [Bob] Exactly.
So now you can see, this is, there's no gap here
but what the other thing is
you have to adjust this strap
and there's a little bit of a Velcro piece
on here that does that.
Let's see if I can figure it out again.
Yeah. Here it is.
(velcro tearing)
So this is made like this.
So there's Velcro on each side of this, like this.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- It's kind of like the, you know, crocodile mouth.
- Yeah. So I wanna make this strap a little shorter
so that I have room to pull my leg up like this.
So I just put a fold in it, like this,
a fold.
And then he puts that on there, like that.
- [Brad] You know, I've seen other velcro systems
work similar to this for adjustability.
- [Bob] Yeah. Except you put it on wrong, Brad.
- [Brad] Oh, I flipped it up?
- [Bob] Yeah. Upside down.
- [Brad] Yeah. I had put the, the part that goes down here.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] Is there a male and a female part of Velcro?
You know that like, you know
you talk about male and female parts of pipes.
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] We don't know that do we?
- [Bob] I think there might be,
but so anyway, now it's all set.
And I'm pulling like this and this does a good job.
It's pulling my toe up really well.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- [Bob] And you know what?
I did a good job.
It is, it is gaping a little bit here, but not, not bad.
This actually,
the thing is you wanna get a stretch
but not so much that it keeps you awake at night.
- [Brad] That's the other thing.
- [Bob] And you'll have to determine that,
what that's gonna be.
My wife had very good results with this, by the way.
I mean, that's where I can give a personal testimonial.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] She, she was having plantar fasciitis
for a long time
and we were doing all the treatments,
all the therapy treatments,
getting a little bit better.
We got a boot and she got better.
Like, I mean, it was tremendously fast.
I mean, it was amazing.
- Within days or weeks?
- Days!
- Days. Okay.
- Yeah. And then she was back to running.
- Tell them that Bob.
- Oh, within days.
I mean, so, but I, I don't expect
that it's gonna happen to everybody like that.
But so I, I like the sock.
You just gotta really spend the time
in getting it adjusted.
- Sure.
- And once you get that right
you can see it works out quite well actually.
I've got it pulled up really well.
- Right.
- Do you wanna hand me my clipboard here, Brad?
I wanna just give you the price on this.
So this is the plantar fasciitis soft night sock.
We'll have links to these below.
- Yep.
It goes for $34.99.
So,
I know they sell a lot of these.
- Sure.
- All right, do you wanna go into this one, Brad?
- Yeah.
- This is one is the Brace Ability
sleeping stretch boot for plantar fascitis.
- [Brad] So this one, as opposed to that,
has a hard plastic shell if you will.
I mean, there's no sharp edges.
Everything is, is smooth and whatnot.
It's a little more cumbersome
but it really does do a nice job
of holding your foot in that neutral position.
And then they put,
which I haven't seen this on any other boot like this,
they have a wedge in here
that you can put in
just at your toe level,
so you get a little bit of toe extension.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] They said to assimilate what this does.
- [Bob] They said, this gives an extra five degrees.
- [Brad] Okay.
- [Bob] But you can also adjust these straps to pull up up.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] And he'll show that.
This will also pull the foot up.
- [Brad] So we're gonna pull like that.
- [Bob] So now you're getting a stretch that way.
And you're also getting a stretch with the wedge.
- [Brad] Now you probably didn't see
a great deal of of movement when I did that,
but I certainly felt it
on my calf muscle as well on the bottom of my foot.
So that is nice to have that.
That would be too tight.
I'm sure I would not wanna sleep like that.
I would back off a little bit right there.
And then they have these quick disconnect straps right here.
- [Bob] Now I would guess
that this one would be a little bit cooler
because you know, you have open area here.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] Wouldn't you say, Brad?
- [Brad] Right. It's it's just a little,
you know, if it, if you're rolling around a lot
and it might get, I dunno if it would get tangled up
in the covers or not,
but when you get up in the morning
and you feel so much better when you stand up
it's gonna be worth it.
And if you, you're not gonna wear it
for weeks on end anyways, just as a matter a short term.
- [Bob] It is, this one is more bulky
and you know, you could, you know,
go up against the other leg
and it might give you a little bit of trouble.
But I, I like this one.
I think this one really works well.
I mean, I think it really does the job.
- Right?
It definitely puts the foot
in the right position, very securely.
And it's not, it's not heavy, you know
- No. And that one is $27.99.
So it's a little less expensive.
The last one here is called the BraceAbility.
Dorsal Night Splint.
Dorsal means the top of the foot
for you lay people.
- [Brad] Yep.
- [Bob] And this one,
we're, we're gonna be a little bit negative
on this one.
We, you know, we understand what they were trying to do
but the problem with this one, it,
it doesn't pull the toes up.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] It pulls the foot up and it, you know,
but it doesn't give a stretch on the toes.
So we would not recommend this one.
We, we would,
this is fine for foot drop or something like that.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] Works fine for that.
I can see where it's, you know, be very comfortable.
Because you know, it's not gonna rub against the legs
and stuff like that.
- [Brad] It just doesn't pull the ankle up as far
and it doesn't pull the toe at all.
- [Bob] Right. Right.
- [Brad] So, and we feel that getting that toe extension is,
that stretch is important
to get this Plantar Fascitis under control.
- BraceAbility is a good company.
They make good quality products.
We've always liked what they've done.
So you know, if you, if you're having some plantar fasciitis
I, I'd definitely give them a look-see.
- A "look-see"?
- Yeah, there we go.
- That's a Minnesotan thing I think.
(laughter)
- All right.
Thanks everybody for watching.