♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we're the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Being in our own opinion, of course Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you how to use a TENS unit
with inner, outer or general ankle pain.
We're basically gonna show you correct pad placement.
That's the main thing we're gonna do in the video.
At the end of the video we are gonna show you
just a general treatment for ankle pain,
we'd like to do that as a bonus.
The first thing we're gonna cover
is how to use a TENS unit.
Well, Brad and I have used dozens and dozens of TENS units,
and there are, I don't know, it seems
like there's hundreds of TENS units out there.
- There is lots if you Google it, they're all over.
- Yeah, and a lot of them are really good.
What we have found all, that some of them
don't have very good instructions.
Some have virtually no instructions,
and that's important.
So, we decided after a while, that we're gonna dorce
one brand, and it's called iReliev.
And what we've done is we put together
a series of videos on TENS unit.
If you go to bobandbrad.com
Go to our program section, under the program section,
you'll find TENS, under the TENS,
you'll find some videos, individual videos
on three different models, that we did demonstrations of.
Step by step, 13/13, 50/50,
and the 80/80, that's their numbers.
- Right, so that's introductory level,
so this is the 80/80.
- 80/80, One of our favorites by the way, 80/80.
- And the 50/50 is wireless, no wires.
- Yes, yeah, and we have a link towards these units,
(mumbling)
Decide you wanna buy one.
If you are useing the TENS unit from somebody else,
you're gonna just have to use their instructions,
'cause we cant cover all the instructions.
Along with the videos, we offer also a free pdf,
that's a printout you can do.
- Right, which is a big time saver.
- Yeah, big time saver.
So, once you watch the video, you can just print out
the sheet and it'll show you where to put the pads.
- Right, kind of a review of the video.
- Okay, so Brad, why don't we start off with...
You just here showing a unit here
and typical unit has two leads.
One lead, two leeads - Here we go.
- And each lead could hook up to two pads.
- Right, so that takes four pads.
You can use either two pads,
we call that one channel, or both channels
and you do four pads, and we'll go through that
in just a second.
- Yeah, why don't we start off with the two pads Brad?
We're gonna do inner ankle pain.
So, yeah, there, this is the indicate that he's got pain.
That's not some growth he has on him or something.
- [Brad] Yeah, that's the painful area,
we're gonna use just the pads without the leaves
being hooked up, just so it's a little easier for this.
So to start out with, there's more than one option
and it's gonna vary from person to person.
You can start with putting the one pad right over
the painful area, and then the next pad,
you don't wanna put it too close, at least
the width of the pad itself, or you can go a little farther.
But you're not gonna go up by your knee.
So, two to three inches or so,
and then you'll put that there,
and then you'll go ahead and energize the unit.
And it-- - [Bob] There's really
not willing to go below it, is there?
- [Brad] Yeah, 'cause you're gonna be walking on that
and your foot is typically, if there's a sweaty area
they don't stick or conduct as well.
So you wanna stay away from that.
So this would be a good option, you could leave it there,
you could work it over here.
- [Bob] It can go down below.
- [ Brad] Yeah, if you wanna go around the pain,
which sometimes people have better success.
You could go here or here.
The nice thing, usually people don't have a lot of hair
on this part of their foot.
Up here is a different story.
- [Bob] Yeah, that's the problem.
- [Brad] Now we're gonna go
and actually - [Bob] One above, one below.
Or one below, one above.
- [Brad] There you go.
Now, if you do have a hairy leg,
you're gonna find that if you shave the hair
off the pad, stick better, they work better,
and they last longer.
But just to try it out, you can do it
without shaving your hair.
You find out it's a good location,
definitely shave your hair.
- [Bob] And yeah, a lot of times,
clean the surface with soap and water,
helps take the oils of the skin off,
also deteriorates the stickiness.
- [Brad] Right, I took a shower today.
- [Bob] Oh, good.
You hear that?
- [Brad] We're clear. - [Bob] Something new?
First time this month or...
- [Brad] Well, we don't wanna talk about that Bob.
- [Bob] All right, the thing is, while we're at the point,
we should maybe right away Brad.
Is that there is no absolute correct way
to put the pads on.
You're gonna experiment to see which works best.
Now, we did one above one below,
you can also do one side by side.
- [brad] I guess the only exception is you
can't put them too close together.
that would be...
Oh, there you go.
- [Bob] Yeah, again, he's worked his way around it.
All right, let's say you have general ankle pain,
then you would wanna go ahead and use all four pads.
And there's two ways that are very similar
that you can do that.
Brad's gonna show you here, method number one.
So by the way, the yellow one indicates
that's channel number one in our mind.
Your pads won't come colored like that,
they're gonna be just black and black.
Maybe black and white, or white I should say,
not black and white.
Just lied.
And we just did this so you can tell where we're placing
the pads, and so there's channel one, and there's Channel 2.
And that forms, kind of an x,
is what you do in there.
Or is that the cross?
- [Brad] Yeah, one way or another, the current actually goes
from yellow to yellow, and then green to green.
They always do that, channel 1 and channel 2.
So if you imagine that direction of current,
it crosses each other, and that could be more effective
to get a broader area.
If you've got pain all over, this may work much better.
- [Bob] Now, you could go and make it more like this bread,
if you don't mind, I'm gonna grab on here.
- [Brad] Oh gosh, we'll be all right, there you go.
- [Bob] Where that water really did help these stick better.
- [Brad] Yeah, so Bob was just referring when these do get
less sticky from whether it's dirt or too much hair,
or Oils on your skin, you can use water
to clean them up a little bit and refresh them.
- [Bob] Yeah, and you can use a washcloth
or you can use your fingers,
and it just revitalized them.
They really stuck. - [Brad] Yeah, I'm amazed.
- [Bob] So, as now in this case, see it's more of a x,
is what he's made now.
So, again, that's just general ankle pain,
you can put them over here more,
to get the front of the ankle more.
- [Brad] Right, exactly,
I have the pains on the top of the foot
in a global sense, like Bob was saying,
"We could simply do it like this".
- [Bob] There we go.
Now the only thing we have left is,
we did inner pain, right?
Ankle pain, now we do-- - [Brad] Yeah.
- [Bob] Which is gonna be similar to what we just did
with on the inner.
- [Brad] It really is, it's just a matter of--
- [Bob] You can put one on the pain, one above the pain.
you can put one below. - [Brad] Here, Down here.
Probably not on the heel, 'cause--
- [Bob] You got the wrong one Brad, though.
- [Brad] Oh, my goodness, I got the green, sorry.
One thing is over callous, I've found that
it doesn't conduct as well. - [Bob] Ah, interesting, yeah.
- [Brad] But you're probably not going to go over your...
'Cause you don't wanna put on any bottom
of your foot anyways, because you're stepping on that,
and it will probably interrupt with--
- [Bob] If you're trying to use it
and you're gonna try to walk, then you--
- [Brad] Right, if-- - [Bob] Yeah, we're gonna show
the bottom of the foot later,
but you can't walk on it then.
- [Brad] So there, again we could put this over here,
if you wanna do the all four, two channels,
it's the same as the inner.
We can put it here and here, we can rotate it slightly,
and you know, again-- - [Bob] We'll have pictures
of all these, so you can take a look
if you wanna decide which one you wanna try.
There you go.
- [Brad] These are getting a little close actually.
So, the ankle, depending on how you place it
is gonna be questionable,
and it depend how big an ankle you have.
Some people are larger and statue.
- [Bob] And that's where you may wanna stick
with just the two pads.
- [Brad] Exactly, yeah.
- [Bob] All right, the exercise.
As a general treatment for ankle,
we like to keep it moving, and one way to do that
is we just have people do ankle ABCs.
So basically, Brad always likes to say,
let's say you take a piece of chalk
and you would tape it to your big toe,
and you put a chalkboard in front of you.
What I'm gonna try to do is actually
write out the letters of the alphabet in capital letters.
So I'm gonna go, a and then b, and then c.
And you go all the way through
and you probably can't go all the way through,
because you're gonna get tired.
But, it's a great way to move the ankle
in multiple directions and planes,
and get some movement, and even a little bit strengthening.
- And it gives you something to think about,
let's say the first day of do it
you only get to the letter d,
'cause it starts to become sore.
And as ankle gets better, in three days
you're already up to m.
You get a upjective sense of how much better
your ankles is getting,
and that's when it's pretty sore.
So, it's always worked good for my patients, so.
- Movements always good for joints,
as a general rule of thumb.
It creates its own little lubricant,
really to a large extent.
So, you don't wanna have a joint that just sits there.
- Yeah, exactly.
- And then she gets worse, so.
- I did wanna mention one thing Bob.
When you're done with the pads, keep the clear,
this plastic sheet that it come on,
keep that clean and then you put them back on there
to maintain that cleanliness, because cleanliness
is godliness when it comes to your electrodes.
- I think cleanliness is next to godliness.
- Next to?
- Yeah, it's not-- - Did I...
- You said, "Is godliness".
- Well, perhaps I'm gonna have to
do a little research on that one.
- All right, we'll see who's right on that.
Thanks for watching.
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