-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, Bob
30 second self traction for neck pain pinched nerve herniated or bulging discs
Self treatment Bob once again we want to show our viewers
You know that's why they're here to find out if they can help themselves, right try some things
Something simple and this is a real simple
Technique that you know we got to go through a little explanation, and then we'll demonstrate it
But Bob. There are some people out there
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Right Sam we were picked on we are bullied, so we're trying to turn things around and become liked
Yeah, so anyways we think it's working
Yeah, so the neck okay all right traction on the neck. Why would you even consider doing
Some traction on your neck so we need Sam for the model and we need to look a little bit closer
At the cervical vertebra and even more importantly the cervical
So we have seven discs, we have seven cervical bones here, vertebrae
That the first seven make up your neck right,
We better look on this shoulder can you zoom in on this Lonnie?
Alright, so if you look at these yellow
Nerves they look like pieces of spaghetti that is actually your nerves that come out, and they ended up going down into your arm
So all the lower nerves on this neck, cervical spine go down onto your arm
They are not cut off like this
Just this is just strictly a model
But they do go end up going down so if these nerves any one of these nerves can get a little pinched or
Irritated you can cause pain in the neck and the shoulder down in the
Often times in the back shoulder blade area
And sometimes you know the hole that they come out of there that foramen overtime might get a little narrower because of
Arthritis and so if that nerve gets inflamed and flared up
There's less room in that hole so that can send pain down the arm, so if we can make that hole bigger, that's gonna
Relieve the pressure relieve the pain, the other thing is a disc could be bulging or pushed into that foramen and
Squeezing this so there's a number of things that could cause a pinched disc
But we're gonna look at one simple treatment and see if that will relieve it, in all cases
Yeah, whichever one we mentioned if you pulled the neck apart you can take some of the pressure off
Yeah, we're not gonna you know
You want to show it on here Brad? Yeah, let's look at that
Do we want to talk about squeezing that
That one of those nerves if it happens to be by a disc and we have let's say this is
C6 and C7 a couple of your lower
Vertebra and the green ball represents a disc, okay now here we got the disc and the nerve would be coming out here
If you have a bulging disc like this
That's squishing into the nerve and I pull up on this top vertebra watch what happens to that disc
If I pull up and give it some room
Go back. It could retract. Yes, okay, so bulging
Put a little traction on it get that in pressure off the nerve life is good
And then a lot of times if I I can see take it even further a lot of times if you can pull it back
Then if you go back like this you know
That's the basis of the McKenzie Technique, is you know do
Traction and then you can do McKenzie and that helps push it and stay in hopefully
Yep, so that's standing on one step past our traction
Should we look at the technique Bob?Let's first talk about
How would you maybe test to see whether or not
And this is you're gonna do it to me? So this is one thing Bob and I will do
Just to assess to see if traction may be
A good option, very simple to understand
I'm gonna push down on his head
And if that makes his symptoms worse that means that compression is maybe part of the cause so I
Usually just grab like this Brad, and I push down
I don't push down real hard
But I just see did that bring on any symptoms, right and the other thing before that happens I need to be up tall and straight
Good posture you know and the therapist needs to be aware of that
The other one is I just grab you know on the occipital back here and underneath the chin here, and I pull up
Straight like that and I'm looking to see whether or not the symptoms decrease so now if you pull his head off
That'll decrease the symptom, so it doesn't take much pressure to go up if it works, I've always find
They say oh does that feel better
It's pretty clear and once you notice that then it's like well this can be a treatment they can do at home
But if it feels worse obviously when you pull up that's not the answer
So let's say we press down it may or may not make symptoms worse
But we go up and it clearly feels better with some pressure then we're gonna try this you take a towel roll
Go corner to corner and flip it around like that so you got
Something there should we should we show this on Sam? So what we're trying to do and it works quite well
If you got a lot of hair you have to get your hair out of the way
But we're getting around the occipital, this part of the bone, and we're gonna go here, Sam
We're getting pretty close aren't we
And we're just gonna pull up like this putting that traction right through the neck how does that feel Sam?
It would have been kinda funny if we would have popped his head off
Okay, so there's two ways to do this you can do this in a seated position, which you could try right away
I'm gonna go to the side, yeah
So good posture
Your head is going to be up and
You're gonna pull in this direction, and you're going straight up and I get some traction
And I don't have a neck problem, and it still feels good
So from the straight on view
I'm gonna pull
Like this okay now the direction you pull you go straight up. You could go a little bit
A little bit forward maybe a little back
A little bit to the right or a little bit to the left and the way you're gonna know which way to pull is
Which ever way makes it feel better, if you have some symptoms in the shoulder in the arm
What you're looking for is the symptoms more in the arm to go away
So if I did this
And I pull my right arm was having pain and numbness and
I pulled up this way and a little bit this direction or this way whichever way makes the arm feel better
That's the way I'm going to emphasize and pull more in that direction
It's gonna make it feel better
And it's gonna make it feel better right away while you're doing it, I wonder Brad if you are having pain in one arm
If it's possible you could get a long enough towel you could grab it with one arm, sure
That is the problem
That can be a problem with self
Traction is if your arm pain is quite a bit that may not be an option if you don't have it
But you could try
With one arm and
The thirty second the only reason I have well one of the reasons I have for thirty seconds cuz after thirty seconds you get tired
Yeah
The other thing you can try is laying down, and you may need to get to the edge of the bed
There we go and we can simply do it this way and this way is actually a little easier
And I'm gonna hold that, I bet you could do that with one arm, couldn't you Brad
Yep
There you go, and you know you could do it so your head is resting and pull and you look quite stylish too, Brad
Thank you
I do I feel like I'm getting a hairdo or something
But again you're only going to continue with this is
If it clearly makes you feel better while you're doing it
And then after you're done you may go thirty seconds three repetitions
And it feels good each time and then when you're done you put the towel down it continues to feel better
And you could do this throughout the day sure and you could do this every hour if you want as long as it feels good
While you're doing it and for afterwards. Yeah, you're gonna repeat it frequently and then eventually again
You could probably start going to the McKenzie technique where you actually
Do the traction and then after that you try to bring the neck back like this and
That might help hold things in place, and it's the same thing with that that has to be painless
If it's causing pain when you do it it's not correct. And for that
We've got some good videos to get to go more to detail on the Mackenzie
Yeah
Cuz when we're talking about pain too especially if the pain's going down the arm
The pain should go out of the arm
When you're doing these if it's actually making the neck feel better but the pain in the arm is worse no
That's a red flag. Just discontinue. They want the pain to retract up the arm, and into the upper cervical spine
They're gonna have a chance here, good point by the way Brad remember you know we can fix just about anything. In our mind
Except for that
Broken heart
Bring it in, but we're working on it
You know I'm thinking I'm gonna get my degree in cardiology pretty soon so thanks for watching