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
Successful spondylus
Spondylolisthesis
Spondylolisthesis treatment. Live active and pain-free without surgery or pain meds
That's the title of our program today
And we have our expert here at my side, because Brad is living with it. Spondylolisthesis diagnosis grade 2
diagnosed approximately ten years ago
I know I had it longer than that, but that's when I had the x-rays taken to confirm it, although
I know when I was in my early 20s. I did not have it and I think I know the accident
I had that got it moving. It was a water skiing accident. A knee boarding
Yeah, I jumped the wake, the knee when the board went into the water, which really hyper-extended my back, and it was a painful
little accident
Grade two is fairly
progressed, right
but it's not severe, well, it's fairly severe wouldn't you say? Yeah, we'll get into it here, so
Bob there's 2700 people out there, way too big numbers, so of course in case you are new to our Channel
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were not liked and we are trying to turn things around. Well we were liked a little bit. Well. Maybe you were, I wasn't.
I can believe that, okay spondylolisthesis
If you have been diagnosed with it, and you hear this big name
and it may just completely scare you much more than it should,
5-10% of the population in the U.S. study shows have it to some degree, there are people who do not even
know they have it, and they don't have symptoms
What happens is your vertebra literally slip, and that's what the term means if you break the term up its Greek
Spondyl means vertebra, listhesis means slippage, so your vertebra actually slip on each other usually
at S1 and L5 or L4 and L5. Mine are L4 and L5
So the whole thing is, is you want it to stabilize and avoid it from slipping in further there in the future and
that's what I'm gonna give you, so the primary objectives here are to live without pain
Continue to be active
Avoid surgery, live your life, right, be able to do the things you want to do. You may have to modify things a little bit
right
But you still can move on, Brad's a good example, very active
Still running and typically if you have a flare-up of this or you maybe you've had an accident like I did it which created it
This is something that is not going to cure within a week
You can control the pain
but to get to the point where you're
really active, if you happen to be an active person
it's gonna take some time. How much time? I don't know, I can give you some idea on mine, but
But you're very dedicated and very
I mean you stuck with it as far as an exercise program, right
I follow these simple rules that we're gonna get to, so common symptoms if you have spondylolisthesis
It's very common for these people to say if I'm standing in one spot for a long time and it may be 5, 10
20 minutes for sure
You start to have back pain, oftentimes you get pain numbness, tingling down one or both of the legs
Typically when you sit down, feels much better, ok so there's a little component of stenosis
But we just need to know the symptoms
Other thing, extension, let's say you're washing or painting an overhead ceiling
typically bothers a back when you get into it. I remember I was doing a project once with my brother
working on drywall overhead, just by the end of the day
even sitting down, it didn't feel so good, it was so fired up
Yeah, yeah
So extension activities that go backwards, you need to avoid that. So how are you going to
stabilize that spine and keep it from shifting or irritating
so you don't have to live with chronic back pain or symptoms down your leg, that's what we're gonna go through. So number one
avoid painful activities, it's as simple as that.
Anything that fires it up is not good. I mean
If you take a hammer and you start hitting your thumb
and it hurts, stop hitting your thumb. Right the concept is exactly that so
The nice thing about it Brad by the way is
this gets you out of some shopping trips right? It does. You can only shop so long
I'd be like, I gotta get this thing, because when I'm with my wife you know my spawny's acting up
And it's truthful, it is true
Okay, the other one walk as tolerated. Bob talks a lot about it and he emphasizes more than I do
But I clearly agree with him. Walking is a great exercise for back
problems, as long as your bag tolerates it, in my situation
Three to four years ago for a period of one to two years
I could not walk no more than
3/4 of a mile and my right leg would start to get tingly and numb down to the foot
So I would never walk that far, just a half mile, actually now
I just walked three and a half miles the other day
No problems at all. You ran it you said. Well I can walk and run. I walked with my wife yesterday,
I ran it. The day before I walked, nice
Yeah
So walk as tolerated and here's the big thing: you really need to do some core
strengthening and focus. Core strengthening refers to the whole core when we're thinking from a therapist or trainer point of view
But you need to focus on the abdominals
Okay, not so much back here, but really think about getting these muscles
Tightened up and strong because they're going to help support that
Minimize or prevent that slippage of the vertebrae on each other, now remember if you have a little slippage
You've got some scar tissue that has to heal and that's not a quick process
So we're gonna build muscles up around to support those vertebra
And you let that scar tissue build up on each other and we've got a whole video on
strengthening with the ball right. Oh I love the ball Bob,
yeah, if you go to our playlist and on two or three of them
I call if my famous four. There's four exercises that I do and they only take about three minutes
Depends on how many you do and how fast you do them, but they're pain-free
They really help the core, and that's been part of my success for sure
Now the other thing is you want to continue to maintain range of motion. You just don't want to only do flexion exercises
So I will do extension exercises, but I will not
overextend, and I won't do it a lot, and part of my exercise program
on the ball is a little bit of extension. Yep. I do some extension. You do that one where you do some
you could show real quick. I'll just show, you're gonna use the ball and
I'm gonna extend and work these muscles
this much, yeah some people might say you're not extending your back, but you are, yes
you are, as a therapist you look at the biomechanics, and we have some extension there
We have strengthening going on. I put my hands here, and then I'll do a little bit of extension,
but I won't go real high. I'm not trying to arch real high and now also put
I think this is critical you add some rotation
So that your back
Maintains some mobility and rotation. Again I'm not trying to twist really far and definitely a pain would be your guide here
These are completely pain-free for me
And it works well so maintain some range of motion as much as you can
Now I'm going to show you some other things some gadgets that help ya get through the day
Brad and I was talking about it, when somebody's in pain we like to give them tools right and
some of the tools will work for you and some may not
but these are the ones that have been working for you right, in a couple of weeks
I've got a project going on we got some trees they got to get done, I'm calling over some friends
We're gonna do some brush pile and cut some trees. I'm gonna be wearing this right here
This is a back belt that works really nice. It pulls up really tight and
so I'm gonna wear this not all day long
But when I'm out doing the lifting and stuff because even that I got to watch myself
But I can still do it, this gives me a lot of support, this one was from Brace Ability. Yep
and
They've got a lot of nice braces, but what's cool about It is
that's how it tightens up, and it's very rigid and it works
well, easy to tighten up and loosen up
I've worn a lot of braces, and I like a lot of them, but this one is by far my favorite
Okay, next thing cold packs, man get your cold pack out if you got a sore back, lay down
and I've done this many times I
use my leg wedge, which I love and then I put a cold pack right under here
You're gonna give me a pillow Bob?
I'm being a nice guy, he does care about me, and Bob and I talk about this position, not for back pain and for spondi
it's really wonderful, as a matter of fact when I've been flared up because I've done silly things
This is how I go to bed. I'll they like this
I'll fall asleep and eventually I take it out then, but for a good half hour to an hour
I'm in that really comfortable position, and it's a good way to, we've got this listed down below in our Amazon
Products. I'll try to get some of these other ones in there, too. I'm sure we don't have them all in there
And then ibuprofen
Whatever you like, just don't overdo that, calm the
inflammation down. I only use that very rarely. Pain meds from the doctor? I've never used any pain meds, I
just don't need to, I've been able to easily control it this way. Oh
hot pack, I will use a hot pack now
Only if it's not flared up. If it's flared up, and it's sore I will not, otherwise hot pack
I'll use this. You actually use a little more than hot pack, that's infrared which goes deep
Because I want that scar tissue to heal
So that's Thermotext infrared
That's gonna
Go over two inches deep, normal heat only goes very minimal, a couple millimeters
Right just a hot pack, but you need something like that to get in and Bob
You know this has been one of my favorite things is
This memory foam lumbar support, we've got that listed below
I've used a lot of lumbar supports over the years, and this clearly is the best one I've ever used for my back
Let's make sure we also say I don't like it. He doesn't like it, I don't like it for my car, right
I like it for my office chair
So I don't know if this is going to work for everybody, it certainly works for me.
Yeah, you you've really gone on and on about it. It's really been a lifesaver.
When I first put in my car, I was like this is too big
There's no way I'm gonna like this, and then you settle into it after a few minutes, and then it's like oh
I forgot it was there. Ah so that
is the recipe right there.
The exercises are the biggest thing: avoid doing silly things, and then use your tools
I think that was kind of a day in the life of Brad Heineck. Say no more Bob, they're really bored now
They're probably all off the channel. I'm sleeping. Thanks for watching