♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Bada-bing Bada-boom
Hi folks! I'm Bob Shrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In on our opinion of course, Bob.
- Today, we are gonna talk about the TENS unit
for low-back pain and/or sciatica pain.
We're gonna show you the electrode placement,
is basically the purpose of this video.
- Right, where you physically put 'em on your body
so that they're effective,
'cause it's really important to understand this.
- So with TENS, what we're talking about it is
transcutaneous electrical neuro-muscular
or nerve stimulation.
One of them.
- Right.
In other, it's easier just to say TENS
and know it's for pain management.
- Right.
And we're gonna talk about it in just a second,
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- Yes.
- Right now, well, go to the give-away
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Right now, we're giving away, I think three of these.
- All to the same person?
- That's right, no.
- (Laughs)
- It's gonna be three different winners.
- Okay. - And these are nice and soft.
I really like these foam rollers.
These are really nice. - Right.
Yep, the density is nice.
They look nice.
They're just a excellent quality.
- Yeah, and you can clean 'em.
Yeah, oh absolutely. - Yeah, so.
I don't know why you'd get it dirty.
You don't do it in the..
You do it in the clean floor.
- All right, now the, I do it all the time.
- Anyways, just continue TENS.
- All right, so, how does TENS work?
There's really kinda two theories.
One, electrical pulses.
I don't know if you've ever seen a TENS or not,
but you basically have the TENS unit.
You have the lead and it goes to the electrodes.
Now they also have, we tend to like
or we really like iReliev.
- Right.
- The brand name, we'll have the link below.
They also have a wireless unit.
- Sure.
- So that the pads are, these are actually
serve as the pads.
They call 'em pods and yeah, instead of that
you have this, so you can really,
especially with sciatica, you can put it
without worrying about the lines, the leads
coming down.
- Right, so the leads don't get in your way,
they get caught up on things,
and they can be a problem, particularly
if you're doing down the leg with 'em.
Yeah, so if you'll use our link below,
you're gonna get a hefty discount.
We make sure of that.
- For the whole unit.
- For the whole unit, right so.
So, it's gonna give you electrical pulses
that help prevent the pain signals from
reaching the brain.
- Right.
- That's the simplest explanation of it.
- Right, there are some people who
do not want to use TENS.
I'll just mention some of the big ones.
Like if you have a pacemaker.
- Yeah, there's precautions and contraindications.
- Right.
Pregnancy, you wouldn't wanna go over the,
you know, area of the fetus. - Abdominal area.
- So you don't put 'em on your eyes.
You don't put it on broken skin.
- Right.
- There's a lot different things.
- You go to iReliev units.
You can read through the list,
but those are some of the big ones.
So anyways,
- The second thing TENS can do,
it can actually stimulate your natural endorphins.
And, if it does that, it can actually have
some carryover then.
So, like you put this on, you take it off,
and it still may control the pain for awhile.
- Sure.
- Now, we're gonna say this as kind of a overall
statement regarding back pain and sciatica.
We would prefer that you first try some videos
to take it away.
- Right.
- Like, you know, exercise.
Like, the McKenzie technique.
- Right.
If you go to our playlist, Bob and Brad for Sciatica,
you'll get a number of options to do this
through exercise to, instead of just masking
up the pain, get rid of it the way you should.
- Right.
- It might be just a posture problem.
You're sitting in a bad chair.
- Yep.
So, you wanna make sure you address that first,
but there are people that it just doesn't work.
Their exercises don't work and they're
living with sciatica pain or they're living with
back pain that's chronic.
- Right.
- And that's where we would recommend
something like this.
- Right.
Matter of fact, I've got a woman right now.
She has it and the doctor right away
gave her an opioid.
So it's...
- And that's what we're trying to avoid.
- Right, exactly.
- We're trying to help you manage your pain
without having to use,
especially these strong medications,
the narcotics. - Right, sure.
- If we can do that, this is definitely worthwhile.
- Exactly.
- So, let's talk about the placement of this.
- Okay.
- Obviously these are gonna go on the skin.
We're gonna show you.
It's actually on our clothing just so you can
see 'em better, but you actually,
obviously, wanna put this on skin.
Again, you don't wanna have broken skin
and you wanna make sure the skin is clean.
- Right.
- A lot of times they have you take
an alcohol wipe or...
- If you happen to be a hairy person, you may have to
shave the hair off, because - Good point.
- it doesn't get the contact it needs, and then
when you pull it off, it's not so comfortable either.
- Right, you might say some bad words like you
like to always say. - (laughs)
- So, the guidelines for placement, number one,
and this is probably the biggest thing you want
to take away from this.
You don't have to be that specific, I mean,
it's an experiment.
- Right.
- You know, there's no real right or real wrong
except I guess wrong would be if you have
pain here and you put it up here.
- Right.
- So, suggestions.
You find, the first thing I'm gonna have
you do is find the painful area,
and surround it with electrodes.
- So in other words, it's gonna be four.
Four electrodes. - I would use
four electrodes in that case,
although you could go with two.
Just go on one side - Sure, yep.
- of the pain.
So, we're set up here for kinda low-back pain
and sciatica here.
Brad, you wanna point out how we've got
these electrodes set up?
- Yep.
So, let's say we had, the pain was here,
and it was running down the buttock area,
and it came to here.
This is the central part of the pain, right here.
So, you can, if you use four, you're gonna
surround the area, and..
- And they're gonna have the two leads
are gonna cross.
- Right, I'm gonna tell that right now.
- Oh, you're gonna show that.
- This would be one channel.
One channel is two leads, okay.
Now these are black and these are white so you see.
So this is gonna be one channel
here and here, and the current wants to go
from here to here electricity.
And then the other channel is here and here.
So, they make a crisscross pattern and
that's typically the most effective
for pain relief using your TENS unit.
Again, like Bob says, if you just wanna
use one channel and not use two channels,
you'll cross the pain in either direction
and see which way works the best.
- Yeah, so, again, these are the ones that
hook up to the wireless one
and this is the unit for that.
Another way we can do is just follow
the path of the sciatic nerve.
- Right. - ...down.
And that's what Brad has done here.
So a lot of times the pain runs down
in the back of the leg.
You can put one here and here.
We generally like 'em to have
a couple inches apart. At least you don't have 'em
- At least, yeah - right on top of each other.
Right, you can't do that.
- You could also put one here,
wow, that really sticks, and one here,
because your pain might go into the calf.
- Sure.
- And you're again catching both.
You can, like if you're having back pain,
you know, another suggestion is you can put
the electrode right on the pain, if you want.
- Sure.
- Or if you like have a trigger point.
- Right.
- You can put it right on the trigger point.
- But then the other one has to be
- Farther away.
- farther away.
- Right.
- So you're not gonna put one pad up here
and one pad way down by your ankle.
That's too far apart.
- Right.
- You know, if you get one or two palm-widths
away, your starting to push it,
you know, that distance is probably
the farthest you're gonna go between
the two pads.
- And you wanna keep in mind, you know,
like you put it here,
you're gonna keep in mind you know,
go down here where the sciatic notch is,
sort of right here.
You have to sit on it sometimes.
- Right.
- You don't wanna really sit on
an electrode.
- Right.
- I would say, yeah.
- You'll know 'cause if doesn't make
a good connection, you'll feel
where the pad is connecting to the skin,
and it's not real comfortable,
so you may have to adjust.
Make sure you have clean skin.
It's really important that your skin
is clean and it's not, doesn't have
a lot of oils on it and you'll
have to wipe that off with
one of those alcohol pads works good
so you get good contact.
- Right.
- So the electrical current.
If you're a little concerned about
getting electrocuted,
you're not going to with these.
These are very well controlled.
It's a small unit.
They just work off of, well these are not..
- Yeah, they won't get electrocuted.
You can get a good jolt though.
- Oh yeah.
- (laughs)
- Yeah.
They're strong.
They're very, that's been the surprising
thing to me is how powerful these things are.
- Right. - Cuz you can actually use 'em
for muscle contractions.
- Sure, sure.
- To actually stimulate muscles that way.
So basically, it's an experiment.
Again, to re-iterate, you know you can
cross 'em over, you can use two,
one at the start, one down the path further.
You can put it right over the pain.
You can put it right over a trigger point
or acupuncture point too.
- Sure.
- So that's basically it and on a, you
wanted to say a nutshell or a knot-shell,
or the knots, remember?
- (laughing)
Yeah, I remember, but (laughs)
- Alright.
- We don't wanna go there.
- Alright.
Remember, I've got your shirt on.
- Alright, strong like bull.
Bob and Brad, there you go.
- Yep.
♪ (electric chord) ♪