♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the Internet ♪
- Heehaw.
Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the famous physical therapists on the Internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Carpal tunnel pain.
Is your carpal tunnel pain not improving?
You must see this for an answer.
Possible answer.
- Yes.
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60 seconds of Bob and Brad a day.
- There you go.
That's all some people can really take.
Anyways, Bob, carpal tunnel syndrome,
pain, the symptoms that you typically,
we hear in the clinic.
there's numbness, tingling,
particularly in the hand and the fingers.
- Particularly, usually the thumb and these two fingers
and half of this one. - Right, yup.
- That's the dermatome there.
- Right, of the specific nerve.
And sometimes it will radiate
up into the forearm and what not.
Now if you have self diagnosed yourself
or maybe you went to the doctor and you've been diagnosed
with carpal tunnel syndrome
and so you've been given some exercises.
Maybe you've looked them up on YouTube
and found some good videos.
- Right, like ours (laughs).
In our opinion, of course.
- Yup, and you've been wearing the night splint,
which could be a real popular technique to help it out
for that pain in bed and the tingling and the symptoms.
Or at a computer, maybe another time,
and you maybe get the ergonomic mouse
so that your wrist is in that neutral position.
And you've done a number of things
and it's been a number of weeks.
- Nerve flossing. - Nerve flossing.
- Nerve flossing for the median nerve.
- Yup. - We have a video on that.
- Yup.
And you've done those things
and it's been a week or two or three
and it's not getting better and it's just like,
why isn't it getting better?
I'm doing everything I'm supposed to.
There may be a very, very easy answer.
And this is something I think you can be fairly confident
in doing yourself at home to come up with,
if this is the answer.
- Well, it certainly won't hurt.
It's not gonna make your carpal tunnel worse if--
- Right, right.
People are waiting to find out what it is.
- Okay.
What is it? - Well, Bob.
There is one other little tidbit I do wanna say.
If you have arm pain, there's a possibility
a heart attack can send pain to the arm.
We do read our comments
and there was someone that did have arm pain
and it ended up being a heart attack problem and he--
- Yeah, especially if it's short lived
and it just showed up. - Right.
- Generally arm pain, if it's going on for weeks and weeks,
it become less likely that it's a heart issue.
- Right, right. - It's still possible.
- Well, I just wanted to bring that up.
So anyways, what you're gonna do
is sit in a nice firm chair like this.
- Well, first off, we're assuming here
that maybe the diagnosis was misdiagnosed.
- Right, exactly, so we're--
- So that maybe instead of,
you're not getting an impingement over here,
pressure on the nerve here.
You might actually be getting pressure up in your neck.
- Yup, exactly.
- We wanna find out. - Right.
And this is one thing that if I have someone with neck pain
or carpal tunnel, I always assess both.
during the first initial assessment.
'Cause after you get bit once on that,
you'll always remember.
- Yeah, and neck pain,
especially pressure on a nerve coming from the neck
can absolutely mimic carpal tunnel syndrome.
It can be the exact same nerve even.
- Right, exactly.
Down the hand it goes, even though the problem's up here.
So how do you figure that out?
Now can I get to my chair part?
- Yes. - Okay, so firm chair.
Firm, upright back rest.
Get your seat back in the chair, no slouching with it.
Good posture.
And you're gonna start out with,
number one, is protrusion or think,
I always tell my patients,
think about someone pulling your chin out like this.
Okay, so we're not going down.
It's out like that and then back.
And you're gonna do that 10 times.
And if anytime you feel symptoms increasing
down into your arm and your hand as a result of doing this,
that's a very strong indication you got neck problems.
- Yeah, now you might have both.
And you can even have what is called Double Crush Syndrome
where you get a pressure on the nerve here
and pressure on the nerve down here.
But either way, this is gonna help.
- Right, so this is not the exercise to get it better.
This is just one way to assess it.
And after you do that, then I want you to go chin tucks,
which is the opposite direction.
And if you do this,
and I've had people on their first chin tuck
they'll say, oh, it hurts back up in here,
or it makes it worse over in here.
That's a good sign that you've got a neck issue
and you need to work that out.
And again, it might be both,
but you may get that and it may clear up the whole arm,
particularly if your carpal tunnel exercises
have been doing nothing,
you may clear it all up just by working your neck.
But do that and if you can do it up to 10 times,
your first time it may not do anything
or it may make it worse, but after you do two or three
of them it starts to feel better,
well, this actually could be an exercise
to help out the problem. - Yes.
- We don't know that for sure yet,
but you're just gonna make a little note on that
so the first one is protrusion--
- Chin tucks really are a great exercise to do
for almost everybody anyway.
- The third one is then lean back in the chair,
do a little chin tuck,
and just see if you could extend your neck back like this.
Now, I've found that so many times as people go to here
they'll get about this far back and, oh,
it's uncomfortable in the neck or the arm,
or it might even shoot pain down that arm.
If that's the case,
it's pretty clear that you've got a pinched nerve
up in your neck associating or producing this arm pain.
- Yes.
- And you can work with that.
This video, we're not gonna go in detail
on how to correct it.
All's we're doing is letting you know
that you've got a neck problem.
- And you need to correct it.
- You're right, exactly.
- You need to correct that,
maybe in addition to the carpal tunnel,
but sometimes you take care of that problem
the carpal tunnel goes away.
- Right, and there's one more technique,
or one more exercise you can do to assess,
is side bending.
And if you can side bend right and left,
both about the same range of motion with no symptoms,
well, that's, you probably don't have a nerve problem.
- I think you just went right and left.
I think you went the wrong direction.
- Well, that's 'cause I'm looking in the mirror.
- Mirror image. - Looking into the camera.
- But, yeah, anyways this is another one.
Typically if you have the pain or the symptoms
in the right arm when you go the opposite direction
to the left, that may make the symptoms worse.
- Yes.
There are cases, though, where it actually makes it worse
going that way, too.
That's why you check both directions.
- Right, so one way or another,
those four assessment exercises can help determine
that if you have a pinched nerve up here verses here.
Or like Bob said, it may be both.
- Yeah, and if you want to look for the treatment,
just type in Bob and Brad on YouTube
and put, like, Mckenzie, M-C-K-E-N-Z-I-E,
yeah, you got the book here even.
- He's got a nice book.
This is printed and written for the lay person.
For just these specific problems.
It's a real nice book and they're not that expensive.
- What's it entitled completely?
- "Treat Your Own Neck."
- Yeah, by Rob McKenzie.
We'll put a link down below. - Yup, sure.
Help take care of yourself.
- Yup, give it a shot.
Either case, it's gonna help your neck
even if it doesn't take away your carpal tunnel.
- Right.
Very good, good luck, and, well--
- Remember, Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Oh, that's right except for--
- A broken heart. - Right.
- But we're on it, we're on the case.
- These exercises aren't gonna help.
- No, they aren't, no.
Thanks.
(bright music)