♪ 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 are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you a simple breathing exercise
for COPD that's backed by science.
That's Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.
And Brad and I have seen a lot of patients
with this disorder or disease.
- For sure, thousands of patients between the both of us
- over the last 20 to 30 years.
- It's very, very common.
We see a lot of patients from nursing homes.
And one thing that we see quite often from this
is they get COPD exacerbation,
which means that it worsens again,
they need to go back in the hospital.
If you can do some of these breathing exercises,
you can decrease the incidents of that happening.
And a study actually showed that.
- Right, so the reoccurrence is gonna drop down.
And it makes a lot of sense as therapists, you know,
physical therapists,
we're always trying to strengthen muscles
so that people have better balance,
walk better, get out of the chair better.
It makes complete sense
that if you strengthen your respiratory muscles,
you can breathe better.
- Exactly.
And we'll get into that
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All right, so what we're talking about here today
is actually a device called The Breather.
This is an inexpensive device.
It's been proven.
It was developed by a respiratory therapist.
38 years in the business, I believe.
- Right, she's been around.
- Yeah and she knew what she was doing.
And she kind of was frustrated
in that she didn't have a way
to improve the strength of the muscles
of the respiratory system.
So she went ahead and developed this.
You wanna think about it like weight-lifting for your lungs.
- Right.
- Isn't that the key?
- Yeah, right. - There you go.
- If you want your biceps to get stronger,
we know that if you put some resistance on there,
and overwork 'em a little bit,
but not too much,
they'll get stronger on daily,
you know, week to week.
- So anyway, she developed this device
and it became the number one selling respiratory
strengthening device on the market.
They've sold over a million of these.
- Right, and that's quite a few.
- But now they took this one off the market in 2017
and they actually redesigned it,
made it even better.
They were listening to the patients,
and they made the knobs easier to turn.
They spent, I guess, a lot of the engineering time
on this mouthpiece alone,
because it's a scary thing when you have COPD.
'Cause you often are short of breath
and you can't get air. - Right, right.
- And you don't wanna have that feeling that you're
not getting air when you're doing your training.
- Yeah, you wanna feel very comfortable.
The more relaxed you are, the better the training will be.
- So what can this do for you?
If you've got COPD,
it's a lot of the simple things
in life you're missing out on.
You wanna go on and get your mail from the mailbox.
You wanna go ahead and play with your grandchildren.
- Right, right.
- You might wanna take your dog for a walk.
- Up and down the steps, you know,
you can get to the top of the steps
and you're just,
you know, you have a hard time
getting to the chair after that.
- Exactly.
I know one thing my wife would miss
is yelling at me.
She would just,
that would be horrible if she couldn't yell at me any more.
I mean-
- What would the neighbors think?
It's quiet over at the Schupp's.
- That's right, something's wrong.
Did he kill her?
So, anyway this is gonna help improve your quality of life.
It's gonna make,
if you have to take any inhaled medication,
it makes it more effective. - Right.
- Less sleep apnea at night. - Yep.
- Less shortness of breath.
And like we've said, less re hospitalizations.
- Right.
You know they measure the oxygen saturation levels
in the blood.
That gets better after use of this.
It doesn't happen after using it one or two days.
You know, like any strengthening,
there's some time involved.
- But interestingly enough,
I was talking to some people who have used this a lot.
And they said within like four to five days,
people are feeling better.
- Sure.
- And within three, to four, to five weeks,
now you're starting to see the changes.
I know it takes a lot.
Even if you're in a wheelchair you can use this.
Even if you're on oxygen you can use this.
And I know it may be intimidating
because you're short of breath already,
to try to do an exercise.
But you start off slow.
And that's what's neat about this,
it's actually got knobs that provide resistance for
inhaling and exhaling.
- Right.
- Your inspiratory muscles and expiratory muscles.
- Yep, they're completely independent of each other.
They've got valves in there which do that,
which really it's well engineered, well designed.
- Yeah, it's really cool.
So for inhale they have one through six.
And exhale they have one through five.
So I'm not sure why those aren't lined up
but they work for me.
- Why, I'm sure if we talk to the people there,
they'd give an exact reason.
- Yeah, all right.
Now, we're gonna show you today how to use it.
But to be honest with you,
they have videos that are much better than ours.
- Yeah, there's are professional.
- And by the way we'd had this discussion on here.
The girl that is doing the instructions of the video,
to me she looks like Sara Jessica Parker.
And Brad didn't know who she was.
- Well, that's 'cause I'm kind of out of
the loop in general, but
- She was in Sex in the City
and a lot of movies.
- She's a movie star. - The Hollywood one?
- Yeah.
- No, Vegas. - well, maybe not.
- Oh, yeah, Honeymoon in Vegas.
- With Dennis Cage,
which is why I have heard of her.
- Not Dennis Cage, Nicholas Cage.
- Oh, well, one of 'em.
- Well, you really have (indistinct)
- Let's get on with the program
- All right, so okay, let's go ahead and show
how to use this.
First Brad, you've got to learn diaphragmatic breathing
- So what are you talking about, diaphragmatic?
I've- diaphragms, - Yeah
- Yeah, so that is the big muscle that's just below
your lungs-
- Can you throw me a pillow, Brad?
- I was trying to describe diaphragms
- Oh yeah, that's right, go ahead
He was talking about the big-
Yeah
- Right below your lungs, so that muscle it's like a pancake
but it's shaped like a diaphragm.
That' why it's called a diaphragm.
And that allows you to (inhales deeply)
- Take in more air - Right
- And a lot of people think when you take in a breath,
your muscles should go like this, but actually your muscles
in order to expand the diaphragm, it actually, your stomach
your abdomen, should go out. - Right
- And what we like to use is a little stuffed animal here.
This is Simba from 'The Lion King',
Brad didn't know that either.
- Well, I recognize the lion anyways,
but, and this is something, that your daughter,
who is a respiratory therapist.
- She's a speech therapist
- Speech- well, they
(conversation overlapping)
same organs.
- But they use this.
- That's their exercise
- Right, so, when you breath in (inhales)
Simba should actually go up - Right
(Deeply inhales and exhales)
- You really have to concentrate on
- Yes
- So that you're not, cause you know society says
that you shouldn't have a big belly so you hold it in.
And then you get a habit of keeping your stomach tight
when you're breathing.
Then your ribs expand, which is not what you want.
Look at Simba go up and down.
- So we're teaching you to do this laying down but you're
gonna need to then translate it to sitting
- Sure
- So when I breath (inhales deeply) in Simba goes up
When I breath out, I'm breathing through pursed lips
(exhales)
- And again, with Simba there you can visually see
that going up and down and you wanna make that happen.
- And then you're gonna work on it going into a chair
- Right. Yeah, because you don't want to use this device
in a supine or laying down position.
You do want it in a chair,
with upright, passed your shoulders back, head in that
neutral position, which, if you've ever watched
our channel, we talk about posture a lot.
Because it is important.
- So you're gonna follow Sarah Jessica Parker,
or the woman that looks like her on the videos
but, (indistinct) they have a bunch of literature too
that you can look at.
They have studies, I mean, this is definitely backed
by science.
They have a whole bunch of studies for a whole bunch
of disorders. - Right
- And you can go ahead and read those papers if you want to.
If you don't, we're of that nature that we like
that type of stuff. - Right
- But they also have a check list for the pre session.
What you should start to do, you know, first,
how do I feel now, posture, it's really important
that you have good posture.
If you have difficulty, you know,
holding up and straight posture,
you can lean back against the chair.
- And they go through that on their videos
and in their website they cover all of this in more detail
than we could do in just a few minutes here.
So, don't worry if you're-
- We're just trying to, you know, give you a taste of
it, basically. - Right
Cover the highlights.
- The Breather comes like this in a kit, very cool.
By the way, if you use our link below,
you're gonna get 20% off and free shipping.
Very reasonable, this whole device is.
Probably gonna start off, you're wanna go to the point
where you aren't working too hard,
you shouldn't be puffing your cheeks.
One person mentioned that you should be about 50% of effort.
You know, both Brad and I are starting on 1 inhale
and 1 exhale - Right
- Just to get a feeling of where we're at with it.
- Sure
- You get the good posture, the dials are set,
you're gonna be diaphragmatic breathing.
So basically, what they usually start, have you start with
is by breathing in and doing the diaphragmatic breathing,
so I breath in,
my abdomen goes out,
- You can do a practice one without the device
- Right, and then I'll go through,
breath through pursed lips.
- Pursed lips means-
- Like you're blowing out a candle
- Yeah. Exactly.
- So I breath in,
(inhales)
breath out,
(exhales)
bring my device up
and we said, gotta bring it up like this Brad, right.
- You know you could put your hand just below your ribcage
and that'll also be like Simba.
You wanna feel that hand go out
and then in with your breathing.
- Right, so - Are you ready?
- Yes. I'm gonna go all the way in, I'm gonna do a breath.
Oh, you're already ahead of me.
- Sorry, I couldn't wait.
- Do one without it first - Okay.
(exhales deeply)
(The Breather whistling)
- You can keep going Brad, while I'm talking.
So when he's breathing in you see his abdomen is going out
and generally they recommend about 2-3 seconds going in
maybe pause for a second
and then 2-3 seconds going out.
So when he goes in and goes out that's one repetition.
You're gonna want to do 10 of 'em.
Now for those of you who haven't done this before
you may get dizzy.
If you get dizzy you stop. You take a minute,
whatever it takes.
Let the dizziness subside.
- Or light headed.
- Or light headed. Right.
- Either symptom is, you wanna stop and take a break.
It takes awhile, sometimes you may be doing this
for a few days before that goes away
but it should improve day to day.
- And eventually you gonna wanna work your way up,
you're gonna, you know, you're gonna wanna increase
your resistance just like weight lifting.
So, you know, if you feel pretty good,
you're gonna move up to the 2 - Sure
- If you get sick, you're gonna maybe wanna go back
down again - Right.
- And start over.
- So we're looking for 10 repetitions in a row,
that by the time you're done with 10 you should feel
a little tired from it.
- And then you do another set of 10.
- Right, take a break.
- Good thing that you brought it up, Brad.
I kind of veered away from that.
So 2 sets of 10 - Right,
in the morning and then later in the afternoon
or later in the day another set or another 2 sets of 10.
- They have a video on how to clean this,
we're not gonna go over that today.
But it's important, you should probably almost clean
it every day.
- Yeah, it's very simple. Just soap and water.
- Yeah, so. It's really important to go by that.
Is there anything-
Oh by the way, they have a training manual
that, a training journal, I should say.
And this, you can help keep track of your settings
and what the recommend is that you're gonna do this
at least 6 days out of the week.
6 days out of 7. So you pick 6 days, it doesn't matter.
And, you know, this journal works out really well,
you can print it out and that way you can keep track
and you get motivated.
- Sure
- This is hard. I understand you guys are gonna have to
work hard.
But stick with it and you'll see the benefits
and you're gonna feel a lot better about yourself
and your quality of life's gonna improve and
you're gonna be able to start doing those things.
Okay, just a couple more point we're going to bring up
that we missed.
And again, if you watched our videos, they're gonna be
a lot more complete than we are.
But one thing, if you start getting saliva in your mouth,
you're gonna want to go ahead and stop
and swallow the saliva.
- Take it right out, swallow, make sure you get things down.
You know, if you do get some phlegm coming up,
you may wanna, not swallow that, but spit that out.
Get rid of that - Sure
- If you happen to be breathing and you breath through
your nose while you're doing this,
and you're unable to control that, then you will
with the other hand - plug your nose
- And breath like that, or you know, some people
have nose clips, like for swimming.
- And you can try it that way first and so
- Sure
- But we want to emphasize this is really,
if you've got COPD or a family member has COPD
this really is the answer, I mean, this is gonna make you
give them a lot better quality of life.
And what is more important than that?
- And the cost is-
- Is minimal.
- It is. For a medical device, I'm really surprised.
- Remember, this is drug free and it's evidence based
so we got all the things you want in life.
- All right. Thank you. - Thanks for watching.