♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we'll show you step by step
how to use a simple TENS unit for pain control.
Now as Brad and I have mentioned
in other TENS videos,
that we've seen a lot of TENS units,
dozens.
And we decided that we're gonna endorse just one,
the iReliev TENS unit,
because there are so many of them out there,
we wanted to pick one that we knew
was effective and powerful and compact,
but it had good instructions, too.
- Sure, you bet.
- So, we're showing you three of the,
no, four of the iReliev TENS units
that we're gonna be using.
Today we're gonna show you the 8080.
So, what I like, this, the 8080 X, Brad,
is my favorite one.
And the reason I like it is because,
as I said, it's effective, powerful, compact,
but it's also got a rechargeable battery.
If you're going for a less expensive one,
there's the iReliev 1313.
- Right.
- But that one, again, you have to use batteries,
so you gotta keep replacing the batteries,
it can be kind of a little bit of a pain.
- You can recharge that through a USB port
on a computer or that, so it's very user friendly
and it's up to date.
- Right.
It's got two channels.
And also, another advantage
it's got the EMS and the TENS.
So if you want electrical muscle stimulation
and also the TENS for pain control,
you've got 'em both.
- Right.
- It comes with four smaller pads,
here's two of them.
And it also comes with two of the larger pads.
So these can go on to larger areas,
or I guess they're just a lot easier to use because
you could hook up both channels to it at once.
- Right, it just gives you some more options.
- Right.
It gives you the leads,
it gives you two sets of leads
because it has two channels.
So you could set up four pads at once
if you want for a larger area.
We'll show that.
I like the fact it's got a little bit of a larger screen
for some of us that are getting a little older,
can't see as well. (laughs)
And it, the screen is back lit too,
and I'll show you that in a minute.
- Yep, it's-- - It's got two,
go ahead, Brad.
- Convenient for light settings,
if you're in low light setting and all.
- Right, exactly, which you may find yourself
in a low light setting.
It's got a two year warranty,
excellent instructions.
All the pads are self-adhesive,
so that's always a great thing too, so.
It's got a carrying case,
and it's got a little clip on it too
that you clip to your belt.
I just like it, it's a really convenient little unit.
They've got excellent instructions,
I think I alluded to that before.
Let's go ahead and start with this,
so we can show what this does, Brad.
Can, how are you, Mike?
How are you doing, Mike?
Okay, I'm gonna go ahead.
You can see we've got the on/off button,
and then we've got channel one, channel two, mode.
And we start by pushing the on button,
and there she pops on.
Now, how you doing now, Mike?
Okay, you can see we've got P2,
that stands for program two,
there's actually eight of them,
and I'll show, I'll go through those.
Whoops, and I'll go through those.
It's got TENS and it's flashing,
that's because I just hit mode.
When you hit mode, it's gonna flash to TENS first,
and, oh, there I went to P2,
program two.
Let me go to the start, so we can go and start over again.
I'm pushing program, hit TENS.
If you want to go to the EMS,
you just hit channel up or channel down,
positive or negative.
And it'll go back and forth between top,
it'll go back and forth between TENS and EMS.
I'm going to keep it on the TENS.
And now it lets you choose the channel.
I pick mode again,
now I can go up for three,
down, back to two again.
If I like that one, I hit mode again.
Mode is the one you keep going back to.
And now I'm on the time.
You can see we've got 55 minutes,
if I wanted more,
I could take it all the way up to 60 minutes,
or I can take it down to five minutes if I want.
I'ma hit mode again.
And now we're ready, we're ready to start.
So now you have to pick channel one or channel two,
I have channel one hooked up.
So I'm gonna hit channel one,
and now I'm gonna turn it up.
I'ma turn it up until I feel it.
I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna bring it up to ten.
And you can see a little bit of pulsating here.
(laughs)
Our camera's roll out there.
So, and that's not necessary for it to work.
In some of these you won't get pulsating.
But I just wanted to show you that it is working.
And it should always be comfortable.
You might get some muscle stimulation,
but it should always be comfortable
and should be working to decrease your pain.
- Right.
- Is that, you say that's a true statement, Brad?
(laughs) - When you start out,
yeah definitely when you start out,
keep it at a comfortable level,
and make sure you're comfortable with how it works.
- Now after awhile it locks in.
See, the ten is no more longer flashing.
When it's locked in, I can hit the negative button
and it just goes right down to zero.
If you want to turn the unit off,
you have to actually, it has to be
in that,
I mean, you can hit the mode,
but you can actually just hit, hold it like this,
and it'll turn off eventually here.
Oh I'm sorry, it's hitting the mode right now.
Gotta go all the way through,
channel two, channel one.
Okay, if you want to turn the unit off,
I just hit mode and the TENS is flashing,
so everything has gotta be no longer flashing
in order for it to work,
so I'm gonna hit mode again,
then the program flashes.
Now I'm gonna hit mode again,
then the minutes flash.
Then I hit mode again,
now it's ready, you can turn it off.
There we go.
So, one thing we wanna warn you,
is in Brad's going to talk about,
is when you're turning up the intensity.
- Right, so I wanna use this.
Can you zoom in on this, Mike, and see it?
Okay.
So, with this unit,
Bob said there's eight modes,
eight programs. - [Bob] Programs, right.
- And on some of the programs it's actually
four, five, six, seven, and eight,
you'll see that they're variable.
So they automatically, the intensity goes up
and down, up and down automatically.
You can't control that, it does it by itself,
it's programmed in.
And this takes a few seconds,
this isn't over a minute or anything like that.
And they change, maybe from two or three second
to somewhere, five to eight,
I don't have the exact times memorized.
But, let's say you turn the machine on,
and you have it at a high intensity,
you push it up to a higher intensity so you feel it,
and it happens to be on this part of the cycle.
Well, it's going to automatically go way up to here,
and this may be too high,
and it might be painful for you.
So when you use four through eight,
make sure you start out low,
so when it goes through the high cycle,
it's comfortable.
And then raise it up before,
and before Bob asked me about the intensity,
and the reason I paused was,
once you get comfortable with the unit,
you actually want the high part of the intensity,
if you're using the variable.
It shouldn't be painful, but you should have it so
you can feel it
almost to the painful part,
but not painful.
The higher it is, the better pain relief we get.
But you don't want it so bad that it's--
- [Bob] Yeah, you want
to put it as high - uncomfortable.
- [Bob] as you can absolutely tolerate
without being uncomfortable.
- Right, yeah. - [Bob] And, yeah,
what Brad was saying about the intensity,
it can take a few seconds to wrap up.
So let's say, right away you put it at a four or five,
and then you feel, I don't even feel anything.
So then you turn it up to a ten,
and then all of a sudden it cycles up,
and it just happened to be.
I was doing it on like program five,
I was like, nothing's happening.
So it can take like, I mean,
that seemed like it took 10, 15 seconds, Brad,
to cycle up.
- Yeah,
I don't know if they tell you the seconds, actually.
- [Bob] They, I think they do on somewhere on it.
- If you look into it, yeah.
But, you know, just start out slow,
give it some time.
- [Bob] We're not trying to make a big deal out of this.
It's just starts out slow
on the intensity, is all we're really trying to say.
- And that's nice, it's easier things
that make the machine more versatile and more useful
as you become more comfortable with the TENS unit,
it gives you more options
for pain control. - Yeah, that's a good point,
Brad,
because some of these are gonna work on some types of pain,
and not work on others.
And you need that modulating variable intensity
to work on some types of pain.
- Sometimes you'll find program four works really well,
but after a week of using it,
your body adapts to it.
But then you switch to say program seven,
it's a completely different modulation,
and then that becomes effective.
So, it changes up your,
your pain control,
which is a big advantage.
- Excellent point, Mr. Br'Heineck.
- Wow, Bob.
- All right, thanks everybody for watching.