♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Well, hi there 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 how to perform nerve flossing
for a pinched nerve in your neck.
So that could be the median, ulnar, or radial nerve.
So we had a video where we talked about this, Brad.
- Sure.
- Flossing, basically,
you're trying to get the nerve to glide better.
- Right.
- And it might not be gliding well now
because there might be some scar tissue holding it down,
or maybe the hole where it comes out of is narrowed up.
- And keep in mind if you're not familiar
with this flossing in the nerve.
So the nerves come out from the lower neck,
and they come down;
there's three of them that we're gonna talk about;
down all the way into the arm and into the hand;
past the wrist and into the hand.
So we need to get those nerves moving
as they're supposed to be,
as opposed to sometimes they get locked in or scarred in.
- Yeah, so the idea is you're getting pain
all the way into the arm. - Mm hmm.
That's why you're doing this.
Now, I don't know about you, Brad,
but I tend to do this
as somewhat of a treatment of last resort.
- Yeah.
- I try other treatments first.
- I agree.
- And because the reason behind that is
this can help greatly,
but it can also make it worse.
And so we're gonna talk about that today
on what you gotta watch out for.
- Right.
- So first we want you to check
with a healthcare provider
to see if the flossing is correct for you.
And you're gonna need to know which nerve to floss anyway.
- Right.
- Don't floss all three.
You just lost the one that's giving you trouble.
- Right, and there's...
We'll show you the different techniques.
- Yeah. So if you're getting pain, numbness, and tingling;
let's say for example, the ulnar nerve,
you're gonna feel that in the pinky
and half of the ring finger.
- Right.
- That's a sensation.
You're gonna go, "Oh, there's pain here."
- Right, yeah.
- "There's a weird sensation here."
- Yeah, it could go numb actually.
- Right. Or weak.
- Yep.
- So we'll show you how to floss that,
but you figure out which nerve you're gonna do.
Let's start off with the precautions, Brad.
- Sure.
- We want you to be very careful.
First off, if you're doing this,
you're gonna do it 10 times the first day.
If there's any pain, you stop immediately.
- Right. If it makes it worse-
- Yep, you stop.
- Yep.
- And you could try it again maybe in another week-
- Yep.
- if it hurts.
If it doesn't hurt,
just do a 10 times that day,
and then you can repeat it the next day and try it again
and see if you can do it without pain.
- And with any luck,
the next day your overall pain level should be dropping
a little bit.
So you wanna continue to stretch it
but not too aggressively.
- Yeah, it can take awhile.
This is not always a "one day gets better."
It might be three weeks before it starts getting better.
The way the gliding works.
All right, let's talk about the median nerve first, Brad.
So the median nerve,
it's actually the nerve that is involved
with carpal tunnel.
- Right, the same one goes through the...
Well, the carpal tunnel.
That's why we call it that. - Yeah, we actually have
people do this gliding with carpal tunnel too.
- Right.
- So you're gonna have pain, or tingling, or numbness,
on the thumb, the pointer finger, the middle finger,
and half the ring finger.
- Right.
- I got it right this time, Brad
(laughing)
- It's kinda interesting how it's half, but it is.
You have patients say, "It's numb on this side,
but over here it feels normal."
And that's normal.
- So you can do this seated or standing.
I'll do it seated right now, Brad.
- Sure.
- So I'm gonna bring an arm out. (chuckles) Okay?
- That's a long arm.
- Yeah, a long arm out, and you're actually gonna...
So this is my painful side.
You can actually bring it back just a little bit.
- So this way.
- It's that way, yep.
And my palm is pointed towards the ceiling.
And what you're gonna do,
you're gonna bring the palm down,
and while you bring the palm down,
you tilt your head at the same time.
That's flossing the nerve.
If I went this way, I'm stretching the nerve.
- Yep, ooh.
- So this is allowing it to floss forward.
Now, what you'll generally find,
if you compare the two sides,
like you might have much better motion on this side.
- Sure.
- This one you might...
It'll only maybe let you go a little ways.
- And you'll know if you're stretching that nerve
cause you're gonna feel that painful sensation
throughout your arm and up in your neck.
It's usually not like a muscle stretch pain.
- Right, so if you can't go as far,
don't push it and cause pain,
just bump into the pain.
It hurts a little bit, but that's okay.
- So I always imagine if there's like a string
from your fingers to your head,
when the fingers go down,
it pulls your head with them.
- There you go. Good one, Brad.
- So that gives a visual cue for some people
and that makes it easier
cause it can be a coordination thing.
- Right.
- It's like doing this and whatever that thing is.
(Bob laughs)
- Patting the head and circling the stomach.
All right, next one for the ulnar nerve.
This one's kind of an interesting one.
So this one, actually, it's like you're making glasses.
- Oh, yeah. This is a fun one.
- So, yeah, you make a circle like this.
And I actually grasp onto my jaw,
and I go up like that. - With your fingers?
- Yeah, with my fingers.
- You get a little finger hold there.
- And that stretches.
Now at the same time,
you've gotta bend towards that side.
- And if you're...
Like I'm a little...
I'm not flexible in my shoulder.
And I have a hard time doing this one with my...
There we go.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, remember this when you were a kid?
- Yeah. (chuckles)
- Well, I could do it when I was a kid, but not now.
- Now, the same thing with this, Brad,
what you'll find is
that you maybe only go this far to start.
- Sure.
- You might only be able to go like this.
- Yep.
- Make sure you're tilting the head again on this one.
- I'm gonna do the left side cause I don't-
- One. Yeah, me too. - You might be touching
the mic. (laughs)
- One, two,
then maybe you could go up little higher, three.
I'm not that great on this side either, Brad.
- My left side is-
- My left side is tighter. - Well, my whole left shoulder
is tighter too, but it's getting better.
That'd be good for other range of motion to it.
- So same thing with that.
Again, be very careful.
But don't increase the pain by all means (indistinct)
Right, if you that weird, unusual, that nerve pain,
and it's uncomfortable, just stop.
So the radial nerve, the last nerve,
is actually half the thumb on the outside here.
In the back, it's actually the full thumb.
And then it catches the tops here of some these fingers.
- Sure.
- Now the radial nerve; yeah, actually,
I think I'll do this one standing.
Mike, you okay if I stand up?
All right, so I'm gonna put my arm at my side
with the palm twisted out like this.
It's like you're looking for a waiter's tip,
they call it like.
Like you're trying to get a tip from somebody.
Get it from...
The sneaky tip. - Right, from the back.
So the palms face down.
And now you're gonna flip the palm up to the ceiling,
and while you're flipping up to the ceiling,
you're bending your neck towards the side again.
So I'm going like this again.
- Oh, so we're going...
The palm goes up and the head goes towards
the palm. - Towards it, right.
- So this is just the opposite of the median nerve.
- Right, yep, exactly.
- So you're trying...
Your fingers are coming up.
You're gonna bring your ear
or your side of your head towards your fingers.
- Yep. And again, you'll probably be on the painful side.
You won't have as good a motion
as you do on the non-painful side.
- It is helpful to compare one side involved
to the other side.
- I would try with all these,
I would try the non painful side first,
so you know what you're doing.
- Oh, I thought you meant, give yourself a hand. (laughs)
- Yeah, give yourself a hand. (laughs)
- Yeah, I agree.
That's one nice thing about working arms and legs,
you can compare one side to the other.
So I wanna see if I get Brad to open his wallet up.
I don't have my wallet, Bob. (Bob laughs)
Do you think I'm silly? I don't bring my wallet to work.
- By the way, this video is part
of a series of videos on neck pain.
- Oh, yeah.
- If you go to Bobandbrad.com,
go to the neck pain section,
and you'll find 20 or 30 videos on neck pain.
Watch the ones that pertain to you.
They're all very helpful.
- You just scroll right down the videos,
look at the title,
if the title pertains to your problem,
you got about a 10 minute video.
There's also a PDF where you can click on that,
and it'll print it out on paper,
a review, and exercises of the video.
You can keep that.
It's all a wonderful and tight package
for your convenience.
It's free. We do not even ask for your email.
- Yeah, so you just need to look
for the ones that catch your fancy.
- There you go.
- That's the way we want.
- If you wanna watch all of them,
you can, but pick out the ones that work for you,
that you need.
- Tickle your fancy? - Tickle, yeah.
- I think catch your fancy too.
I think they're both appropriate.
- Well, Mike's younger. He doesn't understand those things.
(Brad laughs)
- All right, we'll check out here.
(Bob and Brad theme song)