♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- 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.
- Today we're going to show you how to perform traction
for neck pain or pinched nerve without equipment.
If you call a towel no equipment.
60 seconds and it's going to decompress your spine,
especially the neck.
So neck traction may be appropriate
for a pinched nerve or disc arthritis.
Somewhere, somehow, the nerve is getting pressure on it.
- Right.
- And so we're going to show you a couple ways.
Now we should make sure this has been approved
by your doctor or therapist.
- Right.
- And we would almost suggest Brad, too,
that you might want to watch our video,
"The Number One Stretch and Exercise Program
"for Neck Pain or Pinched Nerve."
That's the McKenzie program.
- Oh, sure.
- May want to try that first before you even do traction,
because you might not even need it.
- Sure.
- And we'll tell you how to get to that program,
or that video, at the end of this one.
- Oh okay, yeah. We'll direct you.
- Yeah, we'll direct you.
So to determine if traction's even going to help you,
we're going to have you try just two things.
One, we're going to have you do compression.
So we're actually going to have you
lock your fingers above your head like this,
and you're going to press down gently,
but you want to see if that
actually increases your symptoms.
- But before you do that, make sure you're not slouched.
- Yeah, you want to be in good posture.
- 'Cause there's a good chance you're slouched naturally.
'Cause most, not most, probably a lot of people are,
let's put it that way.
So make sure, a firm chair is probably good.
Good posture, head and ears over the shoulders.
You're not going to compress like this.
We're going to go like this, here both hands,
I'll put it here, but I'm going to press straight down.
And you don't have to push real hard.
It's really kind of hard to anyways on yourself.
I know when I do this to a patient,
I do not put that much pressure on.
- Right, I do it gently, too. Same with me.
- It doesn't take that much if it's gonna trigger the pain.
So if that triggers the pain, that's positive.
You don't want to keep pushing on it, then you're done.
- We know then that compression makes it worse.
Now we're going to find out if traction
or distraction makes a better.
- Mm-hmm.
- Do you mind bringing Sam over real quick here?
- Wow, Sam. - He's all tapped up isn't he?
- Wow, Sam, why? Why the tape?
Well, we'll work around it.
- So if you look at Sam here, and I don't know
if you're going to be able to see this real well,
but he's got two bumps here.
These are the mastoid processes.
- [Brad] Yup.
- [Bob] Right there, do you see that?
- [Brad] Right behind the ear,
you'll feel them, they stick out.
- You're going to put your palm so that
that bump goes right between the two meaty points here.
- Should I take off the... ?
- Yeah, why don't you take off...
So, Brad won't be able to talk, now.
So he's going to put it, yup, right there,
and right there, and he's gonna cup over his ears.
You can actually go the ears, Brad, like that.
There.
You don't like that, huh?
- Well, no.
- Your ears are too far forward.
- Well, I got big ears, it runs in the family.
- Okay, so you're just going to, in that position,
head up towards the ceiling with his fingertips.
Fingertips are straight up.
He's pushing up, and what you want to just see,
does that give you some relief?
Does it decrease the symptoms?
And if it does, you may want to try some of these, then.
You may want to try the actual traction.
So let's start with the first one, Brad.
So you're putting your elbows like this.
You're doing that cupping, like we talked about.
And then with that in place, you can actually lean back.
And you can have the head bent forward a little bit.
Yup, bend forward a little bit.
And you can really put some pretty good pressure on there.
Is that correct, Brad?
Yeah, he's telling to keep the low back arched.
So that it's going to help keep
the neck in a better position, too.
But you can really put pretty good stress on it.
Pretty good distraction on there.
We're going to have you do these
for 15 seconds the first day.
Just 15 seconds.
And then if it was okay,
the next day you can do 15 seconds times three.
And if that works out okay,
the third day you can actually do three times 15
a couple of times a day.
You can do it throughout the day.
Right, if it irritates it all, you don't want to do it.
"Okay" means it doesn't make it worse,
or even makes it better.
Ideally it makes it better, otherwise why even do it?
- That's right.
- So it should take away your symptoms.
Now we're also going to show
the exact same thing with a towel.
So basically you'd use the towel
to capture the mastoid processes.
Those same bumps, he's catching those.
And then you can go straight up,
palms kind of up like this, Brad.
Yep, there you go.
And that, yup, you can apply the same pressure.
- I'm not looking up.
- [Bob] He's bent forward a little bit.
- Can't go too far, or the towel will...
- Yeah, yeah. 15 to 20 degrees.
And you just need a little bit of flexion.
And now if he's got pain down,
let's say he's got pain down his right arm,
he's going to actually, he could try to do this
with one hand and that's going to be a lot more comfortable.
And it's going to be better for that arm.
So again, you're looking for decreased symptoms,
same things.
You do it for 15 seconds the first day.
And I don't want you to do it more than once,
because you want to see how you tolerate it.
The next day, you can do it 15 seconds three times in a row.
And the third day, if it goes okay,
then you can start doing, you know,
two to three times a day, the 15 seconds.
If you're getting pain down the arm from a pinched nerve,
ideally what you want to see
is that the pain the furthest away starts to improve first.
So like, if you're doing the traction,
if the pain starts going up the arm
and leaving the forearm, that's a good sign.
If the pain travels all the way up the arm
and leaves the entire arm pain-free,
that's even a better sign.
Now, for some reason, if the pain got worse in the arm
and better in the neck, bad sign.
- Right.
- You want things to get progressively better as you go up.
- If you happen to get dizzy or lightheaded with this,
you're done, you do not continue.
- Sure. - That's important.
'Cause there are some arteries that feed the brain
that could be getting occluded.
I've never had it happen, but it's possible.
- Yeah, it is.
I kind of usually check for that a little bit, but...
- Sure.
- The last thing:
You can actually do that towel thing again,
and while you're doing it, you can actually,
if your pain is on this side,
you can tilt your head a little bit while you're doing it,
away from the pain, you tilt the pain away from the pain
and that gaps that side a little bit,
so that actually gives the nerve a little more room.
So see how Brad has turned to the side?
That means he has pain on this side,
he bent away from it, just slightly turned away from it,
bent away from it.
And you want to see if this helps.
If this helps decrease the symptoms.
it's just another thing to try.
While he's getting his mic back on,
this video, by the way, is a part
of a series of videos on neck pain.
So we had initially mentioned a video you could watch,
"Number One Stretch and Exercise Program
"for Neck Pain and Pinched Nerve."
Go to bobandbrad.com, go to the programs section,
look for ones on neck pain.
There's probably 20, 30 videos on neck pain.
Watch the ones that you want,
feel that are pertained to you.
Especially, like I said, watch that
"Number One Stretch and Exercise Program" one.
- Sure.
- And Brad, you want to take it from here?
- Sure. So after you've watched it,
looked at the exercises,
on this one, you may want to go back,
because the mechanics of these
have to be done, again, pain free.
It should improve the pain.
If it makes it worse, you're done with traction.
You're just going to skip that part.
- Yup.
- But you can get a PDF printout with a review of the video.
Print it out, and then you don't, you know,
you can look at it and review it
without going back at the video and watching our faces
and our explanations and our babble.
(chuckles) So anyways...
- But it'll help, you know, you might want to have both.
Look at the video again, look at the...
- Sure, right.
Write some notes down on it that help you out.
And all this is done for you.
There's absolutely no charge.
We do not even ask for your email.
You won't get bothered by us.
So... - Yup this is our gift to you.
- That's right. - Hopefully it helps.
- Please leave some comments below
if there's anything that we're missing,
or if you think this is helpful.
(laughs) - We'll keep babbling.
- Yeah. We'll keep babbling.
(cheerful outro tune)