♪- Bob and Brad, the two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, you wanted to talk today about
how do you determine whether or not
your arm pain might be coming from your neck.
- Right. Because oftentimes as, as therapists know,
or people in the medical field, if you've got pain raiding
down the arm, there's a fair chance that it's coming
from the low neck typically.
- Right.
- So we need to differentiate that. And here's,
we're gonna show four tests,
- Three tests plus a bonus.
- Right, on how to do that. And a couple of these tests
are a little bit hard to do, you might need to
be a therapist, but we're gonna show you
cause they're not gonna harm you.
- Yeah, sure. You can try 'em and see what happens.
- Right.
- So,
- And the neat thing about this is
if three of 'em are positive, it doesn't mean it necessarily
is coming from the neck, but it's a stronger chance.
- Yeah. You're leaning towards it then,
that's a good possibility, so.
- Okay.
- Number one.
- Alright. Neck rotation. If you're sitting in your chair
with good posture, normally, people can turn about
90 degrees.
- Yeah, right, all the way looking at me.
- Right.
- You're lacking a little bit, Brad.
- Right. 60, if you're less than 60 degrees,
and if you don't have a goniometer,
if you're about looking halfway, that's about 45.
If you can't go much more than that, that's about 60.
And if you can go less than 40 or less than 60 degrees,
each direction, that would be a positive sign.
- That would be one sign, so,
- Okay.
- I can't go that far this way,
I can't go that far this way.
- Right.
- Positive sign. - Right. Now you have to--
- Positive means bad. I mean,
that means that you might have,
it might be coming from your neck.
- Right. And remember, there's some people
who couldn't go 60 degrees before their problem.
- Right.
- So you gotta keep that into account.
- Right.
- Okay. The next one is Spurling's test.
- Okay.
- Okay. So if it's on your right arm, you got pain going
down your right arm and you take your head,
look straight forward and bring your right ear
towards your right shoulder like this.
And then you put gentle pressure straight down,
and if that increases symptoms or pain or numbness
down that right arm, that's positive.
- Now, the way we would do it is I would actually
go ahead and apply the pressure as a therapist.
- Mm Hm.
- And again, that's squeezing all those holes together
where the nerves come out and it, it makes less
room for 'em and that's why it'll send pain down the arm.
- Right, right.
- Really good test.
- Yeah. We don't really, it's best
for someone else to do it, but you could, you can--
- You could give little push.
- try it by yourself.
- Don't go crazy.
- And the next one is to test the median nerve,
the nerve that comes out from here, runs down,
it's one of the nerves down into your hand.
- Right.
- Okay. And let's go over here. This one--
- Follow us over here.
- To do this properly, it needs to be done laying down and
by a therapist.
- Right.
- We're gonna show you a way you can do it--
- Kind of a modified way.
- Right. So if it's my right arm, I'm gonna take my hand
out to the wall, turn like this so the palm is up
and it's about straight out horizontal.
And then you're gonna stretch here.
And then, if you take your head, already,
you might increase the symptoms.
If that's it, that's a positive.
If you get to hear and it doesn't increase the symptoms,
you would turn your head away from it.
And if that sends sharp pain
or increases those symptoms a lot,
that's a positive.
- Right.
- If, if it's really positive,
you won't even be able to get to hear it
and it's gonna turn on.
- Yeah. It'll just start going, even a little bit
and you'll start feeling symptoms.
- Right. You might be able to just go like this
and it'll turn it on.
- Alright. The bonus one, Brad,
is one you'd have to have someone helping you with.
- Right. And this is a pretty easy one actually.
But you, you do need two person, two people--
- You need a victim and you need--
- Okay. So Bob, his right arm is painful,
going down his arm, you lay him down.
You probably don't have a plinth at home,
but you're gonna lay down in bed, the other person
grab a stool or something. And you grab right here,
underneath the ears, and the occipital bone,
that's the bone right behind the ears.
And you just gently pull on the head.
- You're giving him traction.
- Yep. And you're not gonna pull very hard.
And if this works and all of a sudden, Bob says,
- Oh, the pain is better.
- Yeah. And his arm, the tingling in his fingers or
down the arm improves, and they are very happy
with you pulling on their neck, that is a positive sign.
That means you may have a problem from your neck,
the problem's from the neck, one thing,
it could be a herniated disc, it could be stenosis
where you just have the gap that is too small.
There's some other things we're not gonna get into
but those are the four tests.
If one or two of 'em are positive and two are negative,
eh. If all four are positive and you really know what
you're doing with these, it's a very high correlation
that you have a neck problem, but that's probably
done by a therapist to get that kind of accuracy.
- Sounds good. As you guys might have noticed,
we're both rocking our Jerry Garcia ties today.
- I noticed that Bob. Yeah, you're very observant today.
- We're like the brothers.
- Oh.
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