(upbeat jazzy music)
- I'm Bob Shrupp, physical therapist.
- And I'm Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion. - In our opinion.
- What's up today, Bob?
- We're gonna talk about Parkinson's disease
and this is a disease that tends to afflict people
as they get older, although you can get it
when you're younger.
Michael J. Fox got it when he was younger
and which reminds me if you are 40, 50 years old or older,
you're gonna wanna subscribe to us on our YouTube site,
Physical Therapy Video because we are offering
constant videos on how to stay fit and healthy
well into your elder years.
- Right. And again, it's physicaltherapyvideo.com.
- Well, we also have a website, physicaltherapyvideo.com.
So, alright, let's, we're gonna talk
about Parkinson's disease and we're gonna, basically
we're gonna talk about some exercises you can do.
It's not gonna cure the disease by any means
but it's gonna help try to keep it at bay.
And Brad and I were just talking,
it is something you can do obviously in the early stages.
I have had people probably in the middle stages of it
even that have been able to continue to do this.
And it does help delay the effects of Parkinson's.
And one of the things that you see of Parkinson's,
which is a neurological disease, affects the midbrain.
And we're not gonna go too much into the details of it.
But one thing you do see is a lot of rigidity or stiffness
and tightness of muscles. - Right.
- And that gets worse over time.
So, you know, you're gonna see this person that
can hardly move and they have trouble initiating movement
quite often. - Right.
- So it's really gonna be important to keep up your,
the stretching and your strength.
So we're gonna break this down in two parts.
This is part number one, we're gonna do the stretching part.
- Sure.
- So, we got our assistants today
a couple physical therapy students.
You wanna have 'em come in or not?
- Yeah, bring them in one more time.
Matter of fact,
- Sam and Brittany.
- Yeah.
- Hi.
- University of Wisconsin Lacrosse.
That's my alma, that's where I went to school.
(all laughing)
- He's real intelligent folks. - Yeah.
- By the way tell 'em what the temperature is
outside right now.
- It's cold.
- It's cold baby!
We're in Minnesota.
It's like 30 degree wind chill - Right.
- 30 degree below wind chill, - But we like it.
- All right.
- All right, thank you girls.
Thanks, thanks girls.
- All right let's start off here.
It's all on me now, baby.
We're gonna start off with just a stretch for the arms
as you're gonna see, actually in a lot of the elderly,
because they never bring their arms up they start to
lose this motion from here to here
and it just starts creeping down further and further.
And all of sudden you start seeing this where
they can't lift any further than this.
So all you need is a cane or a broomstick
or some type of wand. - A piece of PVC pipe.
That's light. - PVC piping, yeah.
So palms down, hands about shoulder width apart
and you're just gonna bring it all the way up
and stretch back. - Right.
- And you can do this in a chair.
I'm doing it on you know, on a bed.
- You'll find a lot of people won't be able to go this high
but you go up as far as you can tolerate.
- Yep. Give it a stretch when you get up here.
- And how many repetitions Bob?
- I would say at least 10. - Yeah.
- 10?
- That's what I normally recommend people do.
- We'll do 10.
- 10. If they cannot get to 10,
if their shoulders they've got some problems or
it's too much, but that's the goal, 10.
- All right. While we're in this position
and while we got the cane the other one we're gonna do
is we're gonna stretch the trunk or the back,
or what would you all see?
- The abdominal muscle.
- Yeah, the (indistinct) muscles.
This is one that's very important
because as I see Parkinson's patients,
they definitely tend to get very rigid and they don't get,
they start losing
that rotation. - Right.
- And that helps, that actually hurts them in
in their balance. - Right.
- So. - Just daily function.
- So I would grab the cane,
you could grab it like this palm on the side here
and the other palm on the side here
and you can just, you're gonna rotate yourself.
Now, the thing is, you just don't do your arms.
You know, you actually are trying to turn the back too.
- What I'll do with patients is I'll have
'em go with the cane and I'll give 'em a little cue
with my hands and rotate the shoulders as far
as you can and go the other way, watch out for people
beside you, don't want to injury anybody
with your elbow or the cane. And we'll do that.
And once you do this a few times, then you know,
- Good posture, by the way. - Right.
- Always up real straight. - As tall as you can.
- This is a good cue, Brad
'cause I am, the first thing you're gonna see
as your students you'll find out, they'll do this.
They're just not moving there. - Just the arms, right.
- All right, the other thing is the neck.
You want to, same thing with the neck,
they start to lose their rotations.
And this is with all elderly, you know
you start seeing the person where they can't look
behind themselves when they're backing the car
out out of the driveway.
So you really wanna make sure good posture
and you're gonna turn all the way to the left shoulder
all the way to the right shoulder.
Again, 10 times in each direction
just a wonderful one to do for everybody
but definitely when you have Parkinson's disease.
- And my saying is, as far as stretching
a little bit of something,
is better than a whole lot of nothing. So if you don't
wanna do 10 repetitions. - Right.
- Three or four is a lot better than nothing.
- Exactly. If you're pressed for time,
just get some in, right.
It makes a huge difference, so.
All right Brad's got something he's gonna do
showed laying down.
- So these you can do in bed,
before you get out of bed, in the middle of day,
you're gonna take a nap.
You can throw in some of these
before you take your nap or before you get up, okay?
The first of all, you're laying here.
We're gonna do what we call bridging.
Now this one, you need to bring your knees
up and depend on your knee condition,
if you got a knee problem,
you can't bring your knees up far enough
which you know, I'll see occasionally, it's not unusual.
You may not be able to do this one.
If you can, you're gonna be up to here
and you're gonna lift your hips up towards the ceiling,
hands down on the bed.
And you're gonna push up to here.
And the goal is, is to get it up nice and high.
You may not be able to get it up up this high.
If you have weak hips, it's gonna be difficult
but at least see if you can get your bottom
off the bed and you're gonna do 10 of those.
Okay? After you get 10 of those
then we're gonna do what I call a clam shell
where you're gonna take your knees and just
let 'em separate apart and then bring 'em back together.
Okay, and again, you go, as far as you feel comfortable,
if you have a hip problem
and you start to create some sharp pain in your hips,
you're going too far.
You wanna bring it in not so far
and just work those. Again the goal is 10 repetitions.
Okay. And the next one,
what was the following one? - [Bob] Rotation.
- Ah, rotation. - [Bob] So kind of a repeat.
- Exactly, you're gonna bring your knees up to here.
And I like this one for myself.
- [Bob] Yeah, this is a great one.
- Yep. You're gonna take your knees,
keep 'em together gently
and then bring 'em together and tip 'em off to the side.
Now look at my shoulders, I'm not going this way.
I'm gonna try and keep my shoulders flat to the bed,
rotate here. You're gonna let this hip come off
and you can see on this side,
this hip is actually gonna come off of the bed
and rotate that way if you can.
So you can get some of that trunk
and that low back rotation stretch.
And again with this 10 repetitions if you can get there,
if it's too difficult,
do as many as you feel comfortable with.
And that's the set laying down in bed.
- [Bob] And I think, did you mention Brad, a great time to
do that is even before you get out of bed?
- Right, yeah.
- I mean, that's a fantastic one to do
before you even get going in the morning.
So, all right, what we'll do now is we're.
If you want to look for the one on strengthening,
it's gonna be called
Parkinson's disease strengthening program.
So that's the next section.
- (together) Thank you.