♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we're the famous as a therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna about how to use a tens unit
with upper back pain
and we're going to show you correct pad placement.
At the end of the video, as a teaser,
we're going to actually show you an exercise
to do for upper back.
- Right.
- That we have found to be quite successful.
Actually a lot of people have used it.
- And that's what we're gonna use this for.
- Right.
- Something you can do at home very easily.
- Yeah.
And stuff you can find at home.
- Oh right, yep.
- We're going to start off by,
we wanna to show how to use a tens unit,
what we're gonna actually do,
Brad and I have used,
experimented with like dozens of units.
We've been sent a lot of units and we've tried them.
They've all been--
- We've been around for 25, 30 years so.
- Yeah, they've all been good,
they've all been powerful.
Some of them have really poor instructions,
in fact, I really couldn't follow them.
So what we did after a while,
we decided we're gonna go ahead and endorse one brand
because we felt comfortable with them,
they're FDA certified,
they're compact, they're powerful,
and they have really good instructions.
So we're gonna endorse the iReliev brand.
We have a link below.
We also demonstrate step by step,
how to use three of their different units.
They have the 1313, which is on their lower end.
It's not rechargeable, but it's a good unit.
Then they have the higher end, which is actually wireless,
and that's the 5050.
- Right. - And then in the in between,
the one we kinda like the most is the 8080
to be honest with you.
- This one.
- Yeah, just nice and compact,
does have wires.
So if you go to bobandbrad.com,
go to our website,
go to the program section,
go to the tens section under the programs,
look for the videos on 1313, 5050, 8080.
And each video comes with what Brad?
- A PDF printout
so you can refer to it, watch your video,
go back, refer to it.
And all of them on this program section have that.
- Yeah and so this video you're watching today,
if you go there,
you can print out the suggestions
we're making for where to put the pads for your upper back.
Now, since none of you want to see Brad or I
with our shirt off,
we have have asked our cameraman Mike
to come out and serve as our subject for applying pads.
- He volunteered, right?
- He volunteered after we forced him.
- Well yeah, we coerced him.
- We didn't put a mic on him either
because we don't want to hear his comments do we?
- Mike with no mic.
- So he's going to show us first his shirt,
he's so proud of it.
A SpongeBob shirt.
He's a big fan.
There it is.
Wonderful.
And Mike's luckily does not have a hairy back,
if you do have a hairy back,
you might want to shave it
because the hair can interfere with the pads.
So if you had the gorilla back,
you may have to shave it off.
- Yeah, it really is necessary unfortunately.
- Same with the oils on your skin
can actually be affected by,
can affect the pads
and you may want to use some soap and water to clean them.
- Right, they won't stick as well
and the life of them will be dramatically shortened
if you do not wash very well.
So, we have four pads comes with each unit.
It comes with two pads,
or you can call them electrodes, per channel.
So we've got two channels,
we've got two leads or wires you can call them.
Each wire or lead splits off and they call them pigtails
and each one goes to a pad.
We have these color coded.
They're typically black when you pull them out,
sometimes they're white,
but they're not yellow and green.
That's just so you can see one channel from the other
as we demonstrate.
- Yeah, so channel one is yellow
and channel two is green.
- Yup.
- So right, we're gonna first talk about,
let's say you have upper back pain that is one sided.
Just on one side so kind of a smaller area.
- Right there.
- So you're gonna probably just use
one channel and two pads.
You don't need to use all four for that.
- Right.
- So Brad's going to show you some suggestions.
- All right, so I' gonna take them off
the little plastic sheath they have,
make sure you keep them on there
when they're not on the skin, keeps them clean.
And I'm gonna put this right over,
right over the top of that pain.
Let's say Mike says right there it hurts.
So we'll put one there.
Again, these will be connected to those.
- And what we should say right at the outset here
is that this is is an experiment.
There's not really a absolute correct way to put them on.
- Right.
- And there is some guidelines for not putting them on,
but so you're in experiment and see which one works for you.
- Okay, good job.
So, I do want to say one thing for sure
is you cannot have them touching each other
or even close to each other.
They should be about the same width of the pad
as a rule of thumb apart.
And definitely not this far apart either.
So, we're gonna be right in this area.
We can try it here.
Again, this is the location of the pain.
Try that, turn the unit on,
ramp it up, see how your pain responds.
If it feels like it's kinda missing the pain,
it's not quite right,
you could go above,
you could go to the side,
you could go below or actually anywhere in between.
Typically, you're gonna find the right place,
you're not gonna typically go 10 spots
before your spot finally.
It'll probably, couple three tries.
- And we'll probably avoid putting a pad
right on this bony spine.
So right along there.
- We could go across.
- Yep, go across it
and stay in more of the soft tissue area there.
- Sure.
- Another option Brad, for the two pads?
- Let's say the pain is there and you wanna go,
I'm gonna say bridge it or across
and I'll explain why.
The pain is where my finger is.
Now with tens,
it's electricity going through your skin.
It's a very small amount of current.
It's not going to injure you by any means,
but it goes from one pad to the other.
That's just how electricity works.
And so we're gonna have that electricity,
the tens effect go right through the skin there.
We could do it here.
We could go here.
We could go at different angles,
but we're crossing over that,
that main hot spot, - Main area of pain.
- That feel that painful spot.
If the pain is broad kinda over the neck
and the shoulder blade area,
you can go with four electrodes or pads, two channels.
And so we have the green.
The placement here is one thing we need to talk about
and this is why we specifically
color-coded the pads or the electrodes.
So that again,
we mentioned that the current goes from here to here
and now channel two,
the green one goes from here to here,
and they crisscross.
And that's the pattern you want.
We could go like this.
We could rotate it a little bit.
- Far more of a cross on that one.
as opposed to or a T instead of a cross, a X.
- Right, if we're going up and down
and you can actually rotate,
you don't have to go 90 degrees.
You could vary that a little bit.
- And that can be moved over so that you're going you know,
across the whole span of the upper back.
- Good point Bob, maybe it hurts all the way across here.
That's a good time to do this
here, here, here, and there.
- There we go.
- And there we have our cross.
Now, this is one place where you don't want to make the T
because then you're gonna have to go--
- Right on the spine.
- So that's not going to be an option.
So, but this is a common pattern.
- And we're getting probably pretty far apart there.
You could probably go that far but not much farther.
- Yeah and you'll be able to tell,
they'll be able tell if it's working or not.
- You'll feel it.
- All right, Well thank you Mike.
And we're gonna just show our exercise real quick now.
- Oh yes.
- Which you can do along with this.
So quite often,
what we have found
with people that have upper back pain
is generally they do tend to be rounded out
in this area here.
They tend to be,
it's not uncommon at all for them to be,
kind of have the forward head.
- Yes.
- It's a posture issue, kind of rounded out here.
And it's really hard to stretch this area
and it's heavy ligaments, it's tough to do.
So what we like to do Brad,
you mind just standing facing the wall here?
- Oh absolutely.
- So if we're going to stretch on Brad,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a ball,
now I've got a lacrosse ball here
which is pretty heavy duty,
we can also use a tennis ball,
especially if you're just starting.
But what I want to do is I want to put the ball right here
between the spine and between the shoulder blade.
And he's going to lean up against that on the wall.
And that's going to stretch that area out.
So you can hit this area right here.
You can hit this area.
You can work your way down
and I'm staying again
between the shoulder blade and the spine.
And I'm gonna kinda hit like usually like six areas,
one, two, three, four, five, six.
And what's nice with the sock,
you can actually put it behind you,
you can lean up against it.
- Yeah, so.
- And find the spot that you want to put it in.
- You want to be like Bob mentioned,
it's going to be on the muscle,
you're not gonna go on the bone.
And actually, you know, you can roll it.
I'm gonna just kinda of hold it here
just so it doesn't fall.
- Right, I always forget that Brad.
- Yeah, you can go up and down,
you can go right to left,
you can make little circles.
But up and down,
because that muscle group right there is not real wide,
but real long, the whole length of your back.
And so I'm going to drop down
'cause I can tell I'm not on the spot.
And you'll know.
Oh yeah, that feels better.
- If you're a little more advanced,
you could lie on the ball.
- Oh yeah.
- But that's going to be a lot more aggressive,
a lot more aggressive.
And--
- Especially with a lacrosse ball
'cause they're very hard.
- Especially a lacrosse ball.
You might get by with a tennis ball on that one.
And I know you start off,
you use the backup pod, right Brad?
- Oh yeah, that's what I'm using.
- You started off with a towel on it first, right?
- Yep.
- And now you're using it without a towel, right?
- Yep.
- So it's something you after a while,
you get accustomed to
and you're able to tolerate it.
- And you're not gonna,
if you do it on your bed,
it sinks into the bed, the ball does,
and it's not as aggressive
than if you go to the carpeted floor.
There's a big difference between that.
- Right.
- The bed I don't think it would work.
- Really not.
- You're gonna sink too much.
- Yep, and you'll know.
- All right, thanks for watching.
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