♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Because we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we are going to talk about
How to Heal Trigger Finger with four exercises that work.
We should really put at the end of that,
"real patients", Brad.
- Real Patients!
- Because we have a real patient! Right?
- Well, some people would consider me real.
- Okay. (scoffs)
- Not everyone. One way or another,
these exercises are real nice, and uh,
I'm excited to talk about this.
- And it helped with you right?
- Yes.
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- Make sure you smile.
- Oh, smile! Yep.
- My wife said we should smile more.
- Yeah, that's right.
- [Brad] Anyways, uh, trigger finger.
I think most, that everyone knows what it is.
But if you have it, you probably do.
It's when, it's usually, uh, one of the fingers
and thumb doesn't get it to often. Um.
It's when you bend your finger down and
you feel a click and it gets stuck down there
and then to get it un- it's usually,
pain it associated with it.
And it clicks open and then it's there.
It's typically worse in the morning.
Getting out of bed is more painful.
I've experienced this over the last month or so.
(painful grimace)
- You're saying, you have trigger finger Brad.
- Right, it's getting much better now.
As a matter of fact, I was hoping I could,
- Make it click?
- Yeah!
- But you've, you've cured it!
- Thursday it was doing this and
I just hit it really hard because I wanted to make sure
what I said worked and it's working.
I mean, it's almost gone!
Anyways, you know what, if you had that trigger finger,
um, causes of trigger finger.
They really don't understand it fully, but it's typically,
it happens a lot with people with rheumatoid arthritis.
- Definitely, I've seen with rheumatoid arthritis.
- Just osteoarthritis, uh, people that have a lot of
repetitive motion with their daily job or at home.
Uh, but again.
- If you're like, trimming the bushes,
you know, or something.
- Sure, right. Yep, or.
- It's not an electric one, you're doing the squeeze on.
- Right. Or If you do a lot of gripping at work.
At the job I used to work before I had a lot of that.
- Sure
- Um.
- Which may indicate why you have it now.
- Well, that was 20 years ago.
- Yeah. I know.
- (laughs) Delayed onset.
- Right.
- Anyways, uh, we'll go on to that.
They talk about the reason it happens is,
the muscle is down in here,
your flexor muscles that flex your fingers are here.
And the tendons run up to your carpal tunnel
and then to each finger and if you do this with your thumb,
and you just relax your hand and you push on there,
your fingers will flex because you're tightening
those tendons and the tendons go through,
each finger has what they call a "pulley", uh,
and that tendon goes through that pulley
and that's where it gets hung up on,
which is at the base of the finger.
So, I got a little demonstration
I thought would be fun to show people.
- Yeah, I think it's worthwhile showing this,
because it's gonna help you when you treat it.
- Right.
- You know, understanding why
you're doing what you're doing.
- So, when we do this in a normal hand,
the tendon is going through the pulley like this.
- Nice and smooth, no problems.
- Um hmm. Now when you get some scar tissue or
whatever it is that makes that, uh,
tendon not go through its like this knot right here,
and it gets hung up in there and you get it to go through
and then when you try to open it, it gets hung up.
Typically a little more and you pull it and it pops through,
and then it's smooth here, but when you get
to that one point, every time that knot
or that scar tissue gets to that pulley, it hangs up.
So what we want to do is eliminate that scar tissue.
- Yeah, we want to break that scar tissue up,
so you have a smooth sailing all the way through.
- There you go, and that's what we're gonna show ya.
All right, Bob, should we show'em?
- Let's show'em!
- Okay, four steps.
First one is, uh, just working that hand
and getting it moving, uh,
throughout the day is gonna be helpful.
Typically in the morning it's gonna be more painful.
Do what you can. If you can pop through that,
painful spot and open up and pop through it,
you can do that, if it's too painful,
just do range of motion in the pain-free range.
- Yeah, don't get it fired up.
- Right.
- But, uh, do you want to mention, Brad,
that sometimes you'll find the tender spot down here,
and you can actually hold on to that while your doing range?
- I was gonna, I was gonna tell'em that later!
- Oh, okay. Sorry. I jumped in.
- We're gonna get back to that.
- Okay.
- So, active range of motion first and do that,
you know, 10-20 repetitions in the pain-free range,
and then also range the finger arc to the end range.
- Gotcha.
- Okay, so mine was my middle finger or the third digit,
so, when you open it up, push just that finger.
That's the end range. Stretch it that way 5-10 repetitions
and then go the other way, you're gonna have to go
through the trigger part and then push it down.
This way is the more painful side.
If this really flared up,
a week ago I wouldn't have been able to do this without
saying bad words, uh, but I can do it now.
It's comfortable, but I have been doing this as well,
and you can do that 2-3 times per day.
You're not gonna want to do that all the time.
- Sure.
- Because it's just too aggressive.
Now I think this is the, this is the real...
- This is the one that's gonna make the big difference.
- Right, and this is, I'll show ya what I've done
and then you can show that, that bonus one.
- Okay.
- Is you're going to find where that pulley is,
and it's gonna be the tender spot,
right at the base of the finger.
- So it's at the base of this finger.
- Yep. Yeah, I'm doing it this way
because that's actually the finger that I've worked on,
and what I did is I used my thumb here
and I take my hand and hold on to the back,
and then I would use this thumb, and then I would,
I actually, instead of, we talked about cross friction,
going across, I did all directions.
- Yeah, and that's what I would recommend too.
- Yeah.
- Absolutely in all directions.
- This is really incredible,
because I'm pushing pretty hard without much pain
and just three or four days ago when I started this,
this was not comfortable.
- Yeah, you want to find the tender spot basically.
- Yep.
- And, and , and you start off, you know, initially,
you have to do it lightly.
- Yep.
- And then over time, you can work it to be more aggressive.
- Right, um, if this is, if your trigger finger's
really flared up to begin with and this really hurts,
just don't do it, you may want it...
- Let it calm down.
- Yep. You may want to put a cold pack on it,
maybe do some ibuprofen if that works for you,
um, but as this improves,
I am just happier and happier that I can work this.
It's wonderful Bob!
- Yeah, so what I was mentioning before.
- Oh yes, another option.
- Is that you can actually find that tender spot sometimes,
and, and then do range and it just seems like it helps,
guide that pulley through the system there. Um.
- So if you do this and it triggers and it clicks,
if you push on it and then,
as a result of that pressure you can go through
the range of motion.
- See, see if you can.
- Yep.
- See if it makes it better.
If it doesn't, it's not worthwhile doing.
- But if it does.
- If it does, that's the way to do it.
- Yep, work that as well.
Remember, you gotta get that knot outta there,
get it smooth again. Um. Oh!
The next thing, this is probably not as important,
but it is nice, you wanna, you wanna.
- Sure.
- Do the green one?
- Yep.
- You gotta rubber band.
You can just pull out a rubber band out of your
junk drawer at home, if you have one, and you simply
open up and that's gonna strengthen the
opposite muscle group, which can get weak
because you're not using that finger, um,
and helps range out the hand and do, you know,
10-15 of these, once or twice a day.
- So Brad, aren't you gonna mention the apple cider?
Or not.
- Well, I wasn't going to on this one, but we could.
- I think it, I had, you know, it seems like an
anti-inflammatory effect on your finger.
- Well, there's a little longer story to this.
My both hands were very tight in the morning, painful.
Arthritic tight, (oww) especially this hand,
and this finger was by far, the worst, uh,
and about three and a half weeks ago I started drinking
2 tablespoons of apple cider because we
did some research on it.
- Apple cider, apple cider vinegar.
- There you go, with the mother.
- With the mother, right.
- We've got a video on it.
- Yeah.
- Uh, every day I drank it, mixed it with water, drank it,
and now I get up, my hands aren't tight anymore.
- And how long had your fingers been that way?
- Two years.
- Two years?
- Yeah.
- And so this is the only thing you changed?
Is you started drinking apple cider vinegar.
- Right.
- And all of a sudden it went away.
- Right.
- And.
- It's actually, I'd say, 90 percent.
- 90 percent better.
- It's not 100, but this finger was by far the worst,
the trigger finger one, and now that one,
was 50 percent a week ago, since I've been doing this,
I would say that's about.
- You're gonna be brand new.
- Yeah! Which is really important because I,
I really enjoy my, on my off time,
I really like to do things that I work with my hands.
- Yeah, yeah exactly.
- Um.
- It really limits you in life.
- Yeah! It was gonna change my whole,
I was getting kinda depressed about it and
now I'm starting to feel pretty good about it.
Life is good!
- Um, apple cider vinegar,
I wouldn't take it if you have reflux.
- Oh, yeah.
- That's gonna make things worse, let me tell ya.
- Yep. Yeah, if you've got any medications you're taking.
- Yeah.
- Any things like that. You better.
- You gotta check in with your doctor.
- Yes, for sure.
- By the way, if you.
- Oh yes!
- We can fix just about anything.
- Except for.
- A broken heart.
- There ya go.
- But we'll work on it.
- Yep.
- Overtime, we're gonna put overtime this week on it.
- Oh, you want? I'm not gonna.
- I am!
- I'm taking a break.
- All right, thanks for watching.