- Hi.
Hi, I'm Brad Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Brad, I've met a couple of people
that this subject has come up
and in the end, we kind of assumed
that it might be costochondritis.
So we thought, you know what? Let's do a video on it.
- Sure, costochondritis.
- Let's break down the word, Brad.
Costo, what does that stand for?
- It refers to the rib.
- Right, rib.
Chondro refers to cartilage. - Yep.
- And then the itis refers to?
- Inflammation. - Inflammation, so...
- So we've got inflammation of cartilage near the ribs.
- The junction between the cartilage and the ribs.
Matt, this is something you may actually wanna look at here.
So on a normal person here, a normal skeleton.
You've got the ribs that come around.
And then right here,
this part is actually made out of cartilage.
It's not a rib itself.
And where the rib meets the cartilage,
that's the costochondritis,
that's where the costochondritis often occurs.
Right at that junction.
- So this tissue here is cartilage
and it allows the rib cage to expand and contract
and give it that flexibility.
- Exactly, so you know,
one of the most tell tale signs of costochondritis
is when you push the fourth, fifth and sixth ribs.
So here's one, two, three, four.
Fourth, fifth and sixth.
And generally, if you push on this junction,
so if I went down on me and pushed right here,
there would be tenderness there.
That's quite often an indicator
that you may have costochondritis.
But the number one warning,
what's the number one warning Brad,
before we even start with that?
- If you're getting that chest pain
and chest pain, you always must rule out
a heart problem.
- Yeah, you never ignore it. Never.
I don't care how long you've been having the chest pain.
I don't care if you've been having it for months.
- Right, then you probably even better
(indistinct) - Yeah, a little bit sooner.
- Right, yeah, you better see the physio,
get it checked out so you gotta go see the doctor.
- And Brad thinks he maybe even had
an experience with costochondritis.
Why don't you tell your story real quick, Brad?
- You better believe it.
I experienced chest pain.
The first time I felt it was about two years ago,
rolling on an exercise ball.
And you've probably seen our videos
where I lay on the ball to do some exercises,
and I felt it, "God, I got pain right here."
I didn't worry about it.
And it kind of lasted for, you know,
on and off for a few weeks.
It might have been a couple of months, I don't know.
- That sounds exactly like costochondritis.
- Actually, on my 50th birthday,
I was out playing with the kids, playing football,
and I was throwing this football as hard as I could,
which I rarely do,
and pretending I was Aaron Rogers, you know.
- Who is he?
- Anyway, that night I woke up at three in the morning
and I had this chest pain on the right hand side,
and it's like, "Oh."
And it kind of hurt a little bit to breathe
and I tell my wife, and she gets excited.
The next thing you know, we're going to the emergency room,
and it's like "Oh jeez."
You know, you get in there and they put oxygen on me
and they give me this and that,
and they've got me laid down.
And they're testing for everything
and I stayed there the whole night and half the next day,
and they came back
and they said "You got nothing wrong with your heart."
- Right, so that's what we want all of you
to make sure that you've done.
- Right, don't ignore that first.
- And after that's been ruled out
and they think it is costochondritis,
which by the way, just to give you some
of the characteristics of it,
it more often than not is on the left side
than the right side.
Often is caused by an arm movement
or mild trauma.
It could be preceded by an infection.
An upper respiratory infection.
But a lot of times, mild trauma would probably be
the rolling on the ball that you did.
So the other thing is,
it tends to be more in adolescence, Brad,
which maybe fits with you.
- Oh yeah, I'm adolescent at heart.
- A lot of common children, 10 to 21 years old,
females more than males.
70 to 30%, which always surprises me.
I've seen one guy with it
that had it and his actually ended up being an infection,
which is less common.
But if it keeps persisting,
I would talk to your doctor about whether or not
you do have to have blood work done.
'Cause in this guy, it was just such a mystery,
and it ended up he had an infection,
they had to put him on an antibiotic.
- Sure.
- But normally, the treatment Brad
is just pretty, you know, mild.
Pretty passive.
Ibuprofen.
To try to get the inflammation down.
Heat or ice. Either one is fine.
And really, you're gonna have to hold off
on performing any exercise right now
- That'll irritate it.
- The vast majority of the cases,
they tend to go away on their own.
But it's kind of a little bit hard for someone
who's heavy into exercise to hold off (indistinct).
I would recommend doing the things that you can do
without firing it up.
- Right.
But I want to finish my story Bob.
- Oh, jeez. Thank God.
- You know, so it wasn't my heart.
And the greatest thing about that was
I left there feeling so relaxed
to know that everything tested good with my heart,
blah blah blah, it's probably just...
You know, and I was trying to think of what it was,
and I thought about throwing the football
and the previous pain, the mechanical problems
with the ribs.
So it made a lot more sense.
I was so far relaxed and did not have to worry about that,
and jeez, maybe I would wake up dead
or something with a heart attack.
- It's possible in your case,
even though what you did too
that you sometimes can strain the muscles between the ribs.
- Sure.
- Either case, the whole scenario's the same
about how you're gonna treat it, and so...
Costochondritis, look it up.
But again, you know, please heed our warning.
You're gonna wanna go and see the doctor first.
It's not something you ignore when you have chest pain.
- Right.
- Brad, you know, Brad's a physical therapist
and he didn't ignore it.
- You better believe it.
I went in there and got it checked out and...
This is a nice skeleton, Bob.
- I think he fell asleep when you were telling your story.
- Yeah, look at this.
(indistinct)
See you guys, later! - All right, bye.
- Subscribe to us.
- Yeah.