♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrup, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapist on the internet.
- Kind of opinion, of course, Bob.
- Imagine that Brad sleeping on the job.
Today, we're gonna talk about how to sleep in a recliner
with back pain or sciatica, et cetera,
because there might be other reasons you're sleeping
in a recliner.
- Sure, Sure.
- Sometimes people just do that, have their legs up,
or I don't know what they're doing,
but they do it for different reasons.
- Right.
- By the way, if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on Stay Healthy, Fit, Pain-free,
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Bobandbrad.com because we're always giving something away.
What it is, we don't know because this is a future video.
Brad, if we could look into the future, we'd know.
- Exactly.
Look on our website and it'll--
- Or look on Facebook.
- Oh yes.
- It'll be pinned at the top of the page to give away.
Sometimes we're giving away really cool stuff
like a SleepOvation mattress.
The other thing you want to maybe try is Instagram
or Twitter or TikTok because we do a 62nd version
of our program every day.
- That's right.
- So our first advice with sleeping in a recliner
with back pain and sciatica is, don't do it. (laughs)
- Right.
There typically is nothing but bad gonna come from it.
But there are some things, if you really want to,
that we're gonna show,
that's gonna make the bad things minimal.
- Right.
The problem with if you're sleeping in the recliner
is still somewhat of a flex position.
And even if it feels better,
you're kind of teaching your body
to be in that rounded L position.
And it'll carry over to your walking.
You're going to get more bent over.
Having said all that, however,
we know there's people that just literally could not sleep
unless they're in the recliner.
I mean, I've had people, like they're in so much pain
lying down on the bed.
- Right.
Yeah.
- And you need sleep.
Sleep is more important than the recliner versus the bed.
- Exactly.
There are some cases with some back pain.
Like if you got stenosis, that's understandable.
But if that's the case,
listen up to show us what the options are.
So it's gonna minimize things from getting worse over time.
- The first thing you might want to try
if you haven't been able to sleep in bed
is actually trying to sleep in bed with a wedge.
- A leg wedge.
- And we're gonna show you what that is.
- Yeah.
Let's do that right now, Brad.
So you can grab one of your pillows there.
The reason this is, it's kind of almost similar
to sitting in bed, isn't it, Brad?
I mean, it's similar stand.
- It is.
It does put your hips similar position to the recliner.
- You see what is happening here.
Now, your hips are kind of flexed like they're
in the recliner.
And I've had people that if they slept in a recliner,
we were able to transition to this, go back to this.
And I've had some people, it still didn't work.
So, I mean--
- Right.
- We really never know.
- It is successful this way.
After a while sleeping like this, a number of days or weeks,
you know, they can transition back to normal sleeping.
- Or maybe a couple of pillows underneath.
- Sure.
Yeah, underneath the knees.
- So these are leg wedges.
They're only like 25 bucks to 20 bucks depending.
And some of them are a little bit longer
and some are a little bit higher.
But it's worth a try.
That's a comfortable position for a lot of people
with back pain.
All right.
So if you have to be in a recliner,
do you want to be the recliner person today, Brad?
- Yeah.
So first of all, you want to have your legs up.
- Right.
- And most people appreciate that and like that anyways.
And when I'm sitting here,
we advocate not sleeping this way,
but actually taking the recliner back
so you're back as far as you can.
And hopefully, you can tolerate that.
- Right.
You want to be as flat as you can.
Now, the thing that we wanna add in this position always,
we wanna give you some back support.
- Right.
- So there's a lot of different ways you can try this,
one is you can just try a throw pillow and put it
in your back, and that's gonna help put that arch
in your back and kind of prevent that rounding out
from archerig as much as it normally does
when you're in a recliner.
And the recliner, it's dependent on you,
how big your curves are.
- Right.
- It depends on the recliner, how soft it is.
It's all these different factors.
That's why we can't really tell you which thing to try.
- Right.
This feels a little bit big for me.
This is a firmer recliner actually.
But I've had patients say they had old recliners
and they were just literally wore out
and they would put
a full pillow - A full, yeah.
- like that just to take up the wearing out space
of the recliner.
- You might get by with just a roll towel there, Brad.
- Yup.
Now, this support is obviously more specific.
It's going to support where it is and that so broad that may
or may not be good for you, you'll know because
when you put it in there and you lean into it,
it's gonna feel good.
That's what we're looking for.
- This is an experiment, this whole thing.
You may take a larger towel, roll it up,
or you may take a small towel and just fold it.
- Sure.
- I mean, there's a lot of different options.
If you eventually find something that you like,
you might even try something more permanent that you can use
in your car and sees, but Brad,
you tend to use this one right here, right?
- Yeah, this is exactly what I use in my recliner.
This, for me, it's too round.
I've got spondylolisthesis,
which is different than sciatica
But this works good.
It's a memory foam, it gives me support
from my sacrum up to my mid back.
And I really like the memory foam aspect
because you sink into it and it just supports well for me.
- For you. - For me.
- That's what we want to say because there's gonna be
a lot of people.
If you try this, it may not work for you at all.
- I gotta say a lot of people that use this,
they say it feels too big.
- Right.
- It did for me a little bit,
the first time I used it,
but then after I let myself sink into it, I was like,
"Oh, this is good."
So I wish we could say this.
- Find the one that's gonna work for you for sure.
But we just can't.
- Right.
We're just being honest for now.
- And what you also want to do a long with this,
believe it or not is as much as possible is,
especially if you have to go out and get up
and be able to bathroom or something like that,
walk a little bit because it's always good to break it up
and not lie down for too long a time
when you have back pain, especially in a flex position.
- Yeah.
So those potty breaks in the middle of the night
work out to your advantage.
- There you go.
Just make sure you have a nightlight on
so you're not falling or stumbling.
- Oh, I got a story about that,
but we don't have time for that now.
- Yeah, I can't wait until here.
(Brad laughs)
So, Mackenzie has a bunch of different roles too
that you can try,
especially if you're thinking about your car
or your office chair.
- Sure.
- But give that a try.
Like we said, if possible avoid it,
but if you're stuck with it, make the best out of it.
- There you go.
- So thanks for watching.