- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most
famous physical therapists on the internet.
Oh, in our opinion of course, Bob.
- Right Brad.
Today we're gonna talk about how to get rid of scar tissue,
especially hardened scar tissue.
Although maybe it's a little deceiving
because we're not really gonna get rid of it.
We're gonna try to help soften it up
and maybe make it a little bit less noticeable.
- So we're talking about scar tissue
after a surgery and incision.
- Exactly.
And a lot of times, well especially like
after a knee replacement, the scar tissue.
The case we have here,
a patient has volunteered to come in.
Can you believe that?
- No.
- And he tore the end of this bicep right off.
- Right, and the tendon there,
that connects to the bone right in this area.
- And it was surgically repaired
and he has a pretty decent scar
so he volunteered to come in,
but you can do this on any scar,
any scar on the body.
And we're showing you two techniques,
one that takes two hands.
So if you're doing it on your leg, you can do it that way.
And one that you can do with one hand.
So you've got them all covered.
- For sure.
So one of the things that you can do to yourself
with the one hand, but two hands,
- It has to be a part of the body where
you can get to it.
- Reach, right, so let's carry on.
- Let's go to it.
Hi, I'm here with Eric
who has graciously agreed to jump of camera
even though he has only been our patient for one day.
And the reason I wanted Eric to be here is, as you can see,
he's got a pretty good, what they call hypertrophic, scar.
And that means it's just,
it just a little bit of excessive scarring.
It's not great.
You know, it's not terrible,
but I think you had mentioned Eric,
that this didn't close up right away?
- It had been closed up
and right after they removed the staples,
I was active and it split open.
- It split open.
So, and you know, when everything splits open
it's gonna heal up.
And so that, that made a little bit of a bigger scar there,
is what what happened.
Now a lot of people, you know,
what we're trying to do is break up this scar tissue.
It's a little bit hardened.
And, and even a lot of times it'll lighten
if you do some of the massage on it.
So that's what we're trying to do here.
- What do you mean lighten?
- Lighten in color?
- Oh, okay.
- You know, I don't think, you don't get rid of scars
but you can certainly make them less apparent.
- Sure.
- And some people have pain in their scars
because it's, the scar's bound down on the skin.
And so we wanna make sure
that you don't have any pain with that either.
- I just wanted to point out,
I think that view of the camera,
let go once Bob, actually,
I think you can see this bump right here at the scar,
and that's all scar tissue bound up
and it's not muscle or anything like that.
- That's what I'm guessing too.
- Yeh and that's what, erm,
- That's what we're seeing.
- So I was thinking what we're gonna do is get rid of that.
- So yeh, you break up the scar tissue
and you might actually feel some popping and snapping
in there when we're doing this
but it it'll actually help the blood flow,
the arteries to grow back into that area
as we break it up.
So now, if your scar is on your knee,
you can do this first technique.
And if it's not on your knee,
you're gonna have to use the second technique.
So the first technique, and we did a little bit
of this yesterday, Eric,
you actually hold one part of the scar
and then pull away from it, like this.
And you were painful, was it in this direction?
- Yeh, a little bit.
- Nothing terrible, but I might
be partly pulling the hairs too,
but then you weren't as bad going this way.
I'm placing my finger down and pulling with the other one.
Is that as bad or not?
- Not as bad.
- So we actually work in the direction that it hurts.
- Oh, great.
(laughs)
Us physical therapists,
or was it physical terrorists, right?
We love giving pain.
But especially this lumpy spot here,
we're gonna wanna pull on that.
I'm anchoring and pulling,
anchoring and pulling,
anchoring and pulling.
And you can do this like three to five minutes
a couple times a day if you want.
Now, in your case, Eric,
where you won't be able to do this yourself,
you can actually take your thumb and your fore finger
and you can kind of work on twisting it like this.
I dunno if you can catch that?
So I'm, I'm twisting like that with my fingers,
twisting over the scar,
you can also go back and forth like this, across the scar.
Anything to get that scar moving.
It really, really helps.
It really helps to break it up.
- So are you pushing down into a muscle?
- Yeh, I'm pushing down into the muscle somewhat
but it's, it's a surface thing.
The scar is more on the surface here so,
I don't know how uncomfortable that is
or how you're doing Eric.
- It's alright.
- He's a tough guy.
But some people, you know,
they like to put like a massage lotion down first.
I don't like to do that.
My hand gets too slippery, I think with it.
Some people, and I don't know enough about this,
about scars, but some people put cocoa butter on it
and some other type of things on it
when they're trying to treat it.
So yeh, you can also, you know,
do the two fingers like this,
but either way you wanna work that entire scar length.
And especially, this actually feels like it's even softened
up a little bit right now, Eric.
- So one finger goes one way and the other finger
goes the other way.
- Or you're twisting like that.
Or you anchor and pull,
anchor and pull.
- Is that pretty clear?
That anchor and pull?
- Anchor, pull.
Anchor pull.
I'm just gonna show it on the camera there.
Well thanks Eric, for coming in.
- You're welcome.
- And hopefully we can get that scar.
I think it already looks better.
- So what are you planning for like frequency
and when you're gonna see him?
- Well, we're seeing Eric for other reasons
due to his surgery,
but we're gonna see you two or three times a week
and we're gonna work on that scar every time he comes in.
- But he can do this daily?
- He can do it daily in addition.
- A couple, three times a day?
- Yep.
- So you got your homework cut out for you?
- Yeh.
- All right, thanks a lot.