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 we did one on this earlier as far as regarding the upper extremities
but this today, we're gonna go how to tell what is causing numbness in your feet or legs
common causes
So yeah, and there we've got about half a dozen things that could possibly, we got at least seven. Well actually we got bonus we got 8
I know you don't like that number eight you like seven
Liz likes even numbers. She likes the eight okay, so carry on
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Alright, the first thing we're gonna talk about this is just these are some common ones that happen to people sometimes, it's happened to me
not necessarily this first one but especially women if they cross their legs like this
They're putting pressure right on a nerve right here as it goes over the fibula just below the knee. Yep
Just below the knee and you can actually that can cause numbness especially if you do it, you know
Repetitively day after day. So it's the perenial nerve and
so in order you know, if you start getting tingling down the side of your cap, you're like
Well, what's causing that it may be as simple as that there. Just pressure on the nerve when you cross legs
So just don't cross your legs anymore. I've seen some bony people that even laying, you know, like if they sleep on a hard surface
So the other one is if you take a big thick wallet like Brad has it's so full of money
I don't even have it with me, gave it to my wife
She's going shopping, there's the old joke about a wallet. Did you hear that my
Wife's wallet was stolen, but we figured it was cheaper for the thief to have it than for her to have it
Hope our wives' aren't watching. They never watch. So anyway
You put a thick wallet in your back pocket
You can get pressure on your sciatic nerve. Sure
This happened to me when I was driving one time and my leg started going entirely numb and I couldn't hit the brake
I mean it was terrible. Yeah scary. I had to switch feet
That's why I put my wallet in my front pocket, that's what I do
I usually just put it on the seat next to me, alright moving forward
okay, next thing so those are very easy things to correct now the
Next one is called tarsal tunnel syndrome. And this is a you know, we have a nerve that travels Brad's going to demonstrate here
We have a nerve that the posterior tibial nerve that
Travels right down behind the medial malleolus or the inside
Ankle bone. Yeah right there and there's a little tunnel that goes through just like carpal tunnel
you know and up in the upper extremity you have tarsal tunnel in the foot and this can get worse by if he's got like
Flatfoot and putting stress on it, you know, yeah
if you sprained your ankle, sure either swelling, stretched whatever
It's gonna put pressure and you can test it by just tapping, right
Below the ankle bone and the heel bone there in the hollow spot
And just start tapping there for about 30 seconds and see if you start getting symptoms into the foot
Sometimes you'll even see it swollen there. Sure. I mean you can so yeah anything happening Brad
no, I think I'm pretty clear
My coloring is coming off
So I'm getting better. All right, the next one Brad very common especially nowadays with diabetes is peripheral neuropathy
now with peripheral neuropathy
Peripheral means out to the sides, you know central neuropathy would be you know
The trunk or spinal cord and
neural means nerve and pathy means abnormality. So usually your nerves are damaged and they can get better
I mean they can heal especially depending on the damage but there's really a lot of different types of neuropathy
There's like a hundred types. It's one of those kind of
Words, that's may be abused and people don't really understand it and, just well it can affect the motor nerves it can
Affect the sensory nerves it can affect the ones that are sending
signals up and the ones that are sending signals down so you can get burning a cold sensation
Anything that involves the nerves. You know, it can be shiny looking, usually its global
It's not just on one side of the foot or the other I call it stocking distribution
Like if you pulled a long stocking up wherever the stocking is, it's probably both sides too, oftentimes yes
so that's gonna be a clue and that's obviously something generally your doctor is gonna diagnose
We don't have any stretches or any tricks to get that in except for maybe exercise with circulation
Yeah Hopefully the more circulation, the more it would heal, we've done a video on that before sure so next one is a
peripheral artery disease now instead of the nerves being affected it's the arteries and
Generally what you're finding that is the arteries they don't have as much blood flowing through them
There may be some atherosclerosis, you know, some buildup of fat, they're getting plugged up. Yep
They're getting plugged up good way of saying it Brad and there's not as much blood flowing through there
So what often you'll see in this case is
Someone will walk so far and they'll go oh I'm getting pain in my calf
Right, right
And it's kind of a lot of times equal
The concern with this is if you have this if there's blockage down there there could be blockage
In the heart and there could be blockage up in the brain
So you're at risk of a heart attack or a stroke
So you definitely want to get that diagnosed to see if that's the case. Yeah
I'm very familiar with that because my father had it here. He had it in his coronaries
And his heart was plugged up, he was pretty much plugged up head to toe his last two years
So and he always after he had walked a few blocks
He would say everything is painful and he thought it was an arch problem
He was convinced his arches in his shoes weren't any good. I'm sure it was this blood flow issues. Exactly very common
I've seen it when I've worked with people with
Amputations because of the loss of the limb. All right next one is a herniated disc
So a lot of back problems can send pain and numbness
And tingling down into the legs
If it's a herniated disc one of the simple tests you can do, so the disc is pressing on a nerve
is just have the person lay down and
So let's see he's getting the pain on this side a lot of times it's one-sided
And you can bring the leg up like this
Straight knee. Yep, and you can put that one down. There you go
I'm going like this and then I'll go up to the point where he starts to feel a little bit of pain
I'll back off and then I'll push the foot down like this. Mm-hmm
this is called a straight leg raise and
We're checking and if this increases not the stretching pain if it increases your numbness and pain and pain in the back
Pretty good sign you have a herniated disc, particularly go up to there
Let's see you start to feel some pain there
And then you add that dorsiflexion of the ankle movement and that really hurts here not here
That's a real positive test
You can even have the person bring their head up too. You do that it really stretches the nerves and the spinal cord all the way along there
So just a little helpful hint you may need a little help there to do that one if you want to check
It's hard to do that one by yourself
Now Brad can speak to this next one these next two really kind of spinal stenosis and spondylolisthesis
Right, in both of these cases
You're gonna probably gonna be getting pain down the leg
And in both of these cases, it's gonna feel better when you kind of bend forward
So they call it shopping cart syndrome like it feels better when you lean on a shopping cart when you're walking. Yeah
Yeah, walking typically is uncomfortable. But if you lean forward a little bit, it feels better. I know myself
you know if I squat down like this that feels so good because we're opening up taking the pressure off the nerve and
Sitting feels better it gives you
These are the people that will say I can walk so far and then I just have to sit and when you sit down
It's immediate relief right it feels better right away. You do that one where you put your foot up on a stool too don't you
Yeah. Yeah. I've been fortunate I've been able to treat mine
So it's not near as bad as it was and that's gonna be case by a case
but I do this and that helps and I think I've got
An SI issue that compounded with it. Is there anything else you got Brad?
I'm afraid to go to the doctor and find out. I'm really impressed with Brad.
I've said this before, if Brad wasn't a therapist I think you'd actually be disabled
I mean, I think you would probably have had surgery already and I think you would have been, yeah, who knows
Instead of just mentally disabled you'd have been right
From the neck up. We don't want to go there but from the neck down things are okay
So the bonus issue is sometimes they have what is called false
Sciatica where you actually have the piriformis muscles involved
piriformis is a small muscle in your butt goes across the sciatic nerve or sometimes the sciatic nerve pinches or
Pierces it goes right through the muscle, you were born that way
You're born that way, they call that an anomaly
So generally, one way to test it is, you know, if you're having pain down the right leg
I usually bring the leg up and pull it over to the opposite shoulder. This one goes down, right? Yeah
I usually do it down and right there's where that
piriformis and if you test one side to the other
And this one feels really tight and then I do this one and this one goes much further and feels good. Yeah
It's a possibility. There's other signs that we could go over but we're gonna try to keep this video simple
So we just wanted to go over just the basics,
You know if we went to detail on all these we could be here for about a week. Yeah
And people are already tuned us out.
All right, everybody. Remember we can fix just about anything, except for a broken heart. There ya go. But we're working on it.
Thanks for watching