♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet. ♪
(clapping hands)
- Hi folks.
I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- The real most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna teach you how to sleep without pain.
How to train yourself good sleeping positions.
Which is the key, isn't it, Brad?
- Right, there's a couple things that if you understand
and realize, you can get through the night
feeling much better and sleeping all night.
- Right, and sleep is very, very important
as many people know, if you don't have a good night's sleep
that actually can add to your pain.
I mean, it can feed into the pain for the next day.
- Slows down healing, and it's just, oh,
as we all, I think, no one will disagree with that.
- Alright, finally. - There you go.
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We're not giving anything away today
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- Tomorrow! - a giveaway, yes.
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You're blocking the back.
- I know, I forgot about the Bob and Brad.
- Okay.
- Covered up by a tiny mattress.
- Oh, there we go.
- Okay.
So, Bob, we had a request for this one and it really does
it actually right now, I'm going through this exact problem.
- Sure.
- I injured my hip, cross-country skiing
and I'm limping around a little bit
but last night sleeping, if I rolled to either side,
it was gonna wake me up with a lot of hip pain.
- Sure.
- Right there.
So, I actually used two or three of these last night.
- Great.
- Let's start out.
First of all, to sleep comfortably all night
in one position, it's really key
to have a good quality mattress
that gets along with you and you get along with it.
In other words, doesn't create pressure points
which cause circulation problems as well as pain
and you're comfortable in it
and allows your body good posture.
- Right, so you don't want to have something,
that is so soft that you actually sink into it,
and give you bad posture and yet you don't want something
so hard that the pressure points are hard.
- Right, the shoulders, the hips, the knees.
All those points that are, when your pressure points
then it creates circulation and for some people
can cause skin breakdown and actually open sores
and those situations.
So, a good quality mattress, you know,
we like to use is the.
- SleepOvation mattress.
This isn't a commercial for it but
I mean it's just, this is just part of the video today
and we're just gonna tell you the one we use.
- Right we both have them and actually just love them.
This one does not have a cover on by the way
so that's why you can see all
the little individual mattresses.
So other than that you get a good quality mattress
like this one and with that,
let's talk about - Some of the positions?
What position, like I need it to sleep on my back
so let's talk about supine or sleeping on your back
if that's your desired position,
for breathing, for hip pain, whatever it may be.
- You have a leg wedge over there?
- Oh yes, I've got it hidden here.
I have one of these in my house
because with my, I have a back issue
that occasionally flares up
if I abuse my back doing a household chore
like yard work and my hip's a little sore right now
so it's not working the best
but when I get here, this is exactly
how I went to sleep last night at 9:30 at night
and I lay down and I fell asleep
and I slept like this until 2 o'clock.
- You did, so are you held in that position
until that time--
- Now with this, it's really hard to roll on your side
because the leg wedge keeps my hip comfortable
as well as my back and it's there
so you just don't wanna roll over
because it's there and it's telling your body--
- It also gives you a little elevation
so might help with some swelling
and also a lot of times it's nice on the knees
so a slight little bend of the knees and hips
so a little comfortable on those quite often.
- And then the next thing is make sure
your pillow is not too thick.
If you have a thick pillow that lifts your head up,
that puts stress on your neck
and that can cause neck pain,
so make sure you have a thinner pillow--
- If you're on your back.
- Right, if you're on your back.
There you go.
And the next thing if you don't have a leg wedge
or maybe you don't need a leg wedge
then you're just going to use--
- Put some pillows?
- Yep, get some pillows and you can put 'em,
a long body pillow really works well
we don't have one here
- Oh, sure.
- But put it so that when you roll you feel those pillows
and typically people don't roll off the bed
because it's in your mind ingrained so well over the years
and so the pillows there can help you maintain
that supine posture.
- If you're like me, my wife hogging the bed,
I'm right towards the edge already
so I just have to put pillows on one side.
- Does she ever push you off?
- It's been close, it's been close.
- We don't have to go there.
Bob, I cannot lay on my side - Side
So I need you to do that - So you want me to do that
Alright, so when you're on your side
and I'm gonna go on this side
because my mic is on on the other side.
One thing, now in this case now you do want
to have pillows are a little thicker
because here you now, if you look,
I have a little bit of a gap here
and I don't want to be like this
so you wanna find that in-between,
you want to have enough pillows so
that you're right in the neutral zone there.
Now right here, what's nice about this mattress again,
they got the individual mattresses
so my shoulder sinks in quite nice,
there's not as much point pressure
but if you don't have that, what works for me
and I actually do use this,
I use a throw pillow, have a nice day by the way
- [Brad] There you go!
- Have a good day.
- [Brad] That's a nice one.
- So you create a canal and now I can go on there
and if I had the double pillow and I'm like this
- [Brad] There you go.
- I'm gonna hit my mic anyway.
But I've got this canal
and it's taking pressure off the shoulder.
You also when you're on your side,
quite often if you're crossing one hip over,
I actually get this hip pain,
I was talking to Pat Bachman
I shouldn't say her maybe name on this.
- Oh yeah, she's gonna hit yer.
- She was having the same problem
and she actually keeps a pillow between her legs now too,
it just takes the stress off the hips.
So a little couple of hints there
for when you're side-lying.
- And if you're a side-lying sleeper
and that's the desired position,
if you have a firm mattress this is even more important
because it's more pronounced as far as a double pillow
and the pillow between the knees and whatnot.
- And I know I should go without saying
but don't sleep on your painful shoulder
and I can't tell you how many people do it,
I mean it's probably 50 to 75%
of the people I talk to that have painful shoulders,
out of habit they sleep on that shoulder.
- Right, they'll start out on their back
but within an hour or two they roll on their shoulder
and then they wake up with a painful shoulder
and it's hard to get back to sleep.
- Yeah, so if you are gonna,
by the way if you're on your side
and this is the painful shoulder
then you kind of like quite often
you can take one pillow, do we have another pillow?
- Yeah here, use this one.
- And you actually use two pillows
and prop it up like this because even like this,
you see how it's kind of coming down?
Brad, do you see that?
- I do see it Bob - You didn't respond at all!
- I thought you were talking to our reviewers!
- So now you have it up - Reviewers.
- and you can actually,
you really want to go ahead and experiment,
you wanna work around to see
which position's gonna work for you.
So what's next Brad?
- He didn't even catch that.
(laughs)
- Reviewers?
- Yeah, you did catch that.
- Yeah, I catch everything.
- That's going out.
- What's next is this is something I've used
when I had a shoulder problem,
I had a dislocated shoulder
and if I would roll over, which I did, I wake up
and it was just painful
and then it would drag the injury on
so I would tell myself before I go to bed,
it's kind of like that subconscious thing
you don't roll off the bed
but if you tell yourself, and I do this,
"Stay on your back, stay on your back and be pain-free,"
and I do that about 10 times and then I'd fall asleep
and I would say it was helpful.
- It just, you've trained yourself mentally
- No, it's funny, I've used stuff like that myself,
like I use it sometimes if I have
to remember to do something and I'm out on a run
and I said, as soon as I get in the door,
and it's gonna come into me what I need to do
and it does, every time I come into the door,
oh, also that pops into my head!
- Sure, it's that subconscious training,
that that does work.
And lastly, and this is one of the techniques
I used last night.
I was laying there, I didn't want to have my feet up
on the wedge, four hours was enough.
- So you were at 2 o'clock in the morning
you got up and did this?
- Right, because I was laying just like,
man, I like to roll on my side typically
and I knew if I fell asleep I might do that,
so I went to the living room
and I laid on my couch.
Because the couch, my one side was against the couch,
the vertical side of the couch,
and the other side I wasn't gonna roll off
because that's already in my mind
and it was, I got a nice firm couch.
I bought it that way.
And it was comfortable and I could lay there comfortably
and it really made a big difference.
- Things are cool with you and your wife?
- Oh yeah, it had nothing to do with that
that wasn't the reason - Okay, Bob, I just wanted
to make sure.
- And then lastly as I have had patients
that I've done this myself,
I don't like to have people sleep in the recliner
but if it's a difference between re-injuring
your shoulder, your hip, or your back
and you need to sleep on your back for whatever reason--
- I've had a lot of back patients that have had
to sleep that way, they just, and I think
it's in part because they don't like the back
all the way straight, they like a little flexion,
it takes the stress off the joints
and I often have them try the leg wedge
because it's almost like sleeping in a recliner
when you sleep on a,
and sometimes they can do it
and sometimes they can't.
- So I usually if people with stenosis,
maybe spondylolisthesis where their--
- Or arthritis, you know some of them have
pretty severe arthritis
and they like to have a little bit of their back bent
a little bit while they're sleeping
and that's what the recliner does.
- Yeah, so you know the couch and the recliner
are I call the last resort options
- Yeah, I'd prefer that you stay in bed
because it does promote kind of poor posture
a little bit, especially the recliner.
- So, by the way, if you haven't already understood this
Brad and I can fix just about anything.
You didn't know what I was gonna do, did you?
- No, I'm on the wrong side, normally I'm
on the right side of you Bob and I--
- We can fix just about anything.
- Except for
- A broken heart. - There you go, Bob.
We made it before 10 minutes!
- Yeah, we're working on it.
(laughs)
Thanks.