♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(clapping)
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Yes, we are seriously physical therapists.
I think some people question.
Sleep like this, your neck pain will never go away.
So we're gonna show you some of the ways
you want to avoid when you sleep at night.
- Sure.
- Because they can be causing your pain
and you don't even know it.
I mean, you might not be aware that,
this is why you're having pain--
- Sure!
- When you wake up the mornings.
- But Bob, but first.
- If you're new at our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on how to stay healthy, fit, pain-free,
and we upload every day.
Sometimes, we try to be inspirational.
If you also have a chance, to go bobandbrad.com,
because we have the giveaway section.
Go to that, and we're always giving something away.
Right now, we're giving away some TENS units.
Transcutaneous electrical neural muscular stimulators,
and these are great for pain control,
and they're also great for if you have weak muscles,
like you're trying to come back from surgery.
- Right.
- It's got the EMS component them, muscle stimulator.
I'm really having trouble, aren't I?
- Let's go on, Bob.
- All right, so you can also go to BobandBrad
on Facebook, or if you want a short version of us,
go to Twitter or Instagram.
- There you go.
- So, your neck pain is often made much worse
by prolonged poor posture.
You're putting stress on ligaments, muscles, joints,
- [Brad] Discs!
- And discs, yep, I forgot the disc.
So the most common one that I see, Brad, is,
and I'm sure you do, too,
they're sleeping on their back with too many pillows.
- Yes.
- So, I might exaggerate a little bit for effect here,
- Well, that's okay, Bob.
- This is just two normal pillows here,
and you lay down like this, and you think,
"Well, this is comfortable,"
but look what my head is doing.
Brad, can you point out what my head is doing?
- All right, so his body is basically going this way,
look at the spine, and then his neck
is at an angle like this, so he's flexing forward,
which puts pressure on that lower neck, particularly.
People will do this to read, to look at their cell phone,
to look at the TV on the wall.
- And some people sleep this way.
And the other thing that happens, Brad,
and I'm sure you're well aware of this, is creep.
The tissues start to creep out and stretch out,
and all night long, they're getting stretched out.
And then when you wake up in the morning,
they're actually kind of putting things
out of place a little bit
because they're not holding things together
like they should.
- And this might not happen over one night,
but if you sleep this, week after week,
and all of the sudden, you got a real bad neck,
and you can look right or left, or up,
and you kinda wonder why.
- And you're wondering what happened,
and it was your sleep pattern.
Ideally, if you sleep on your back, mostly,
you wanna have a thinner pillow, or one pillow.
- Right.
- And now, when I go down like this,
now my ears are more lined up with my shoulders,
my spine is all in alignment.
- Right, right.
- Now, if you do wanna read in bed,
or if you want to watch TV in bed,
a good alternative is to get one of these.
What are these called again, Brad?
I always forget that.
- Sleep wedge.
- A sleep wedge.
They're not that expensive.
What are they, like 30 or 40 bucks?
- Right, and I think you can get it less than that,
but make sure it's this shape,
because it's similar to the leg wedge
which we talk about for your back,
but it's straight like this, just like the wedge.
- Yeah, it's not the same.
- Right. - Right.
So if you put a pillow on there, Brad.
- Oh, sure.
- So now, I'm keeping my spine fairly straight,
aligned with my neck, and my neck,
everything's all in kind of straight,
and now I can read a book or I can watch TV, or,
I don't know what else you wanna do in that position, but--
- Well, I don't know, but some people
will do that for reflux.
- Oh, for reflux, absolutely.
- Or breathing, if they got fluid in their lungs
and they gotta, you know, for gravity to take--
- Excellent point, Brad.
- And typically, you know, a therapist, the kind that,
Respiratory therapist-- - Respiratory therapist
would make that recommendation.
- Exactly, or your doctor.
- Actually, my daughter,
who has a little trouble with reflux,
we did recommend this, and she's been doing this--
- Oh really?
- She's been sleeping on, yeah,
and it made all the difference.
- There you go, simple things.
- All right, when you're sleeping on your side,
what people do is that they don't have enough pillows.
So here, they put one pillow down,
and I'm gonna have problems with my mic here,
but now my head gets, I'm gonna put the pillow out,
gets bent this way.
And that's just as bad.
Again, you're gonna be stretching the neck
on the opposite side.
You wanna have your spine all aligned up here.
So you wanna have often two pillows,
or maybe you bunch up one pillow.
My wife, what she does, is she has a pillow
that has kinda the down in there.
She pushes it all together to create--
- She crumples it all up in there.
- I'm not thrilled with you taking your hands here,
you're crunching all that up, then,
you could start ending up having problems with your arm.
You could end up with carpal tunnel.
- Right.
- It's not the worst, but ideally,
you should just have pillows do the positioning,
not your arm.
- Right, yep, I understand.
- All right, if you're having neck pain,
just a little hint that we've tried with some people
that had worked, you take a pillowcase
and you fold it in half and then you fold it in half again.
- That would make fourths.
- Is that what it would be?
- I think so, Bob.
- Okay. - I just wondered.
- So anyway, you can go all the way around like this,
and you can just tape in place,
so it's kinda like a soft splint.
- But not too tight.
- Not too tight, right.
So what's nice about this is, it's gonna give you
kind of a reminder not to bend forward
or off to the side, but yet, it's a gentle reminder.
- It's amazing what something like this,
just a little, we call tactile cue
that allows your mind, it gives you that feedback,
and even subconsciously, you'll keep your neck
where it should be with something like this.
- And just a reminder, too.
Kind of just a, like you said, a tactile reminder.
- Right, it doesn't work for anyone,
but it doesn't cost anything, there's zero,
you're not gonna have any problems with this.
- We won't charge you for this one, so glad.
Give it a try.
Last one, and this is a shout-out to my niece,
who sleeps like this all the time,
and I'm sorry that I had to reveal this to her, but, so,
you don't want to sleep on your stomach all the time,
because what happens is, when you sleep on your stomach,
your neck is turned all the way one direction
or the other.
And joints, no matter what joint of your body,
they don't like to be at end range.
- That's all at end range,
unless you're incredibly flexible.
- My elbow, this would be at end range.
If you slept like this all night long,
you're gonna have arm pain.
- Oh, yeah.
- Shoulder, if you have your shoulders up over your head
all night long, that's at end range.
Now, I think you can sleep on your stomach
for short periods of time,
I slip over there for 30 minutes at a time, or so,
but beyond that, you're asking for trouble.
So I asked my niece, does she have headaches?
She goes, "Yeah, I wake up with headaches."
It's like, "Well, there you go."
It can often cause those cervical headaches.
Basically, that area right on the suboccipital area,
right at the base of the skull.
- Right.
And invariably, we have comments that, people,
they've been sleeping on their stomach all their lives
and don't have any problems.
And there are some people that's gonna, they're gonna
be the exception, but I have a feeling,
without them knowing it, they probably rotate their head
right and left considerably throughout the night.
- They may.
Also, I went to a class one time of physical therapists,
and there was 50 people in the class,
and of all the people who slept on their stomach,
100% of them had headaches.
So I mean, you know, you might be seeming,
"I don't have any problems, I can sleep on my stomach."
"Well, do you have headaches?"
"Well, yeah, but it's not caused by--"
It may be.
So just to give you the warning--
- Yep!
- We're not saying you have to do anything we say,
but we're just making recommendations
to try to make your life better, so.
- Because we care, Bob!
- Because we care, that's right,
we'll send you a get well card,
if you're not doing well, so.
All right, thanks for watching, folks.