- [Brad] (laughing) Whatever.
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
And together we are
the most famous physical therapist on the internet
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we are gonna talk about
the best sleeping posture to improve that hunchback posture.
You know that...
- Yep.
- Rounded out posture.
That's really not desirable.
It's not good for you.
It's not healthy for you.
- Right.
- And it causes pain quite often.
- Right. So there's some things you can do
while you sleep to improve that.
And we're gonna get to 'em in just a moment.
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- Yeah.
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All right, Brad.
So you wanted to show the hunchback posture
- Right, when we're talking about hunchback
in the medical field, you call it, kyphosis.
- Sure. Okay.
- Thoracic kyphosis, which means the mid part
of your back is curved.
And that's this, what we call hunchback
and you'll get it up below the neck.
You'll get that bump there.
And what happens is not only does your back hunch like this
but in order to keep your head up your cervical,
your neck has to hyper extend,
which can lead into more problems
with headaches, neck problems down into the shoulder.
So it's just not here where it's gonna cause
- It's a cascade of problems.
And this goes from one.
- Wow, - Yeah.
I thought I'd throw that out there.
- You've been reading books again.
- Yeah, that's right.
- That's good.
But so how can we straighten this
and how can you do it with the bed as a tool?
- Right, so you definitely wanna
work on it during the day,
but if you sleep with bad posture all night long
you're gonna undo everything you did
just throughout the day,
- Precisely - All
- So we want to make sure you don't do that.
- And the first thing is, check your mattress out.
If you've got a mattress that's worn out
and it's kind of got that bowl
- It got the bowl in it
- Right. - Yeah.
- You need to do either replace it.
Or if you can't afford a mattress, cause a good mattress
costs a little bit more than you'd like to spend as usual.
But if that's the case, what can we do to just fix that?
Well, one you can do is you can flip it, right?
Yep. You can also take plywood.
I did this when we were,
I dunno why you always laugh at this,
- (laughing)
but my wife and I took plywood
and put it between the mattress and the box spring
when we were...
- Just married.
- Just married
- Don't even talk about it anymore,
but yeah, you put-
- That right there and it firm things
up so that we had a better, I mean
some people will take it, put it right on the floor.
The mattress on the floor.
- Sure. I mean
- If they're having back pain and stuff like that
- I was just talking to someone this weekend.
He had a very firm mattress.
He can sleep better on the floor than he can-
- I've heard that too - On the mattress right now.
- I've heard that too.
- But you know, when he says flip it
you can flip it upside down.
You can rotate it 90 degrees or 180 degrees to get the
the better part of the mattress that you're sleeping on.
Those little tricks can save you some money
and be successful.
- All right.
So if you are gonna buy a mattress, you shouldn't
buy a soft one though.
You should, you're gonna wanna have least one
that's medium or firm.
- Right.
- Cause otherwise-
- When you go to buy one
they'll say that's the three grades,
soft, medium, firm.
- because you could see if you have one that's really soft.
You're just gonna sink down into it
and it's gonna play right into that kyphosis.
- Right.
- You know, so you don't want that.
So if we, you know, a lot of times we get asked
for recommendations, we do.
There's one mattress that we do endorse by sleepovation.
This is it right here.
What we like about it is a number of things
but just a quick commercial, it's got 700 individual cells
here that provide different, you know
it helps take the pressure off the pressure points.
So like your back, shoulder, hip.
- With kyphosis
you're gonna have a pressure point particularly right
along the spine where you have the, the hunch so to speak.
And this is going to even it out just like the
- Yeah.
- The roll hole cushion.
- So the reason Brad and I really like this cushion
when we first saw it is because we've been using a cushion
like this for years with patients
- 30 plus years
- 30 plus years, it's the number one cushion
for people who are having trouble with pressure sores
on their bottom or pressure on their bottom.
- Right. So this cushion goes in a wheelchair
for people who aren't able to move much.
And it really is comfortable
and does a lot of good things for their bottom.
- Yeah.
- For circulation comfort, et cetera
- And proven by science. I mean,
they have a lot of studies that show
this is the best cushion.
So you look at this very similar to that.
So if you purchase, you know, through the link below
we do get some off a small fee that we use to
help offset the cost of making these videos.
But you get $300 off.
- Right.
- Plus if you put in the code,
the code word which is down below, you get another $50 off.
So $350 off.
we never do things unless you benefit from it.
And we never endorse things unless we really like them.
- Right.
- All right. Let's move on, Brad.
- Okay.
So the next thing is pillow thickness.
Now you got your mattress, a new one
or you've corrected, you're old one.
The best that you can.
The next thing is to make sure
if you're do have that kyphosis not-
- I think this shows it really well, Brad, right?
- Your head gonna be up here and you're gonna need a pillow.
That's the right height.
If you get a real, a too thin of a pillow
and your head's not supported
that might be too much force on your back.
It's gonna help straighten your back out.
But it may be too much too uncomfortable.
- You may have to work your way down to it, right?
Yeah. You wanna work your way down
to the thinnest possible pillow,
when you're laying on your back.
- You could start with two pillows.
= Sure.
- So you're getting some stretch
and it feels like you're getting a little straighter
and you know, over a few weeks
or maybe a month or two, you may take a pillow out
and you can see how the spine is starting to straighten out.
Unfortunately, one problem is
we all normally move when we sleep
we don't sleep on our back all night long.
It's almost impossible to, so we need to work
with this and then we need to dress sideline
which we're going to in a little bit too.
- Oh, one thing I wanna mention Brad,
since we're in this position here,
the other thing you wanna avoid is,
you wanna put another pillow on there.
- Sure.
- You wanna avoid this,
reading in bed like this.
- Right.
- You know, the alternative to that would be
you can get one of those.
You wanna grab that wedge over there, Brad?
- Oh, yes
- You can. Cause someone had just ask about this
and they were like, would this work well for reading?
It's like, yes, absolutely.
So you can see how I can actually stay in pretty
good posture or put one thin pillow here.
And now I'm just a right posture for reading.
And yet, you know, my kyphosis is not getting worse.
- Right and so many people have TVs on the wall.
- Yeah. That's the other thing.
Yeah. Watching the TV would be the other way.
And these are inexpensive.
- Yeah. this is a sleep wedge,
not a leg wedge.
- It's a sleep wedge.
Okay. Gotcha.
- Okay. Good.
Bob. I wanted to talk more about supine position
and I know you personally use this technique with your-
- I've done this for years.
I would like to think this is my invention.
- Yeah. Very good.
I think so too, but it's, you know, I bet you
someone else might be doing it.
- Yeah. So what I do is I take, this isn't it
this is a little too large.
I take a throw pillow,
a smaller pillow - From the couch
- From the couch and yeah, my wife gives me
a hard time about it, but-
- That's what I was just wondering
- So as I lay here, could you see how this kind of
brings my chest out a little bit?
- Yeah. So right here, elevating his chest
then that's gonna help take that kyphosis and reverse it.
- Yeah. So, you know,
I don't know if you can tolerate this,
it might be something you have to work into.
But then what I do is when I go to lay on my side
this works out pretty slick.
Is I just pull it down a little bit here.
I create the canal
for the side sleeping for the shoulder.
- So it's taking the pressure off the shoulder blade.
- Yeah. So now I don't have any pressure
on the shoulder and I can lay on my side.
Now. I usually like a thicker pillow.
When I lay on my side
- You might double it up
- Double it up - or you have a second one.
- Or have a second one. Right.
So I just lay like this and now I'm in great position.
Pressure's off the shoulder pressures off the
you know, the back.
The back's all lined up really well
and just works out real well for me
- You could take your wife's pillow. (laughing)
It just kills me, when I make
- She probably- - These jokes
(both laughing)
I'm trying to kill somebody, okay?
- Prone, what about sleeping on your stomach.
Now, if you got hunchback, chances are
you're not gonna sleep on your stomach
cause it's gonna be very uncomfortable.
- You could try a pillow underneath you.
Sure. We generally recommend that you don't sleep
on your stomach, but for short periods of time
- Just for, you know
you may wanna just do a good stretch that way.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- And it may be only
for 30 seconds to a few minutes, depending
on what you're tolerated and how severe your hunchback is.
- Yeah.
- If it's real severe, it may not be an option
but if it's not so bad, you may be able to lay
on your stomach and feel that stretch.
- Do you sleep on your stomach at all?
- Not at all.
- Don't you? See I'll sleep on my stomach
for I'll bet you a half hour or something.
- Sure.
- And I just go back again.
- I used to when I was younger and I don't anymore.
- Sure.
Okay. We talked
about the side sleeping already, right,
- Right. Side sleeping.
So the next thing we did want to talk about is
another stretch.
We talked about stretching prone, if you wanna lay
on your stomach, but also laying on your back
before you sleep and when you get up
or maybe if you get up in the middle of the night
you can throw this in too
- Sure
- It's the hallelujah stretch.
- Yeah and you know, you can do this just
in bed with laying flat without anything.
And you can just work on
you're gonna go ahead and just stretch way out
and you take a nice deep breath while you're doing it.
- Right.
- And you want to expand that rib cage and
and let that back stretch.
- Yep. And as you're breathing
think about getting really tall, arching your back up.
So your chest is going up towards the ceiling.
Bob's six and a half foot tall.
He's gonna pretend he is gonna go to 10 foot tall
and let everything stretch out.
- I do a stretch like this in the morning.
I'm stretching my hamstring and this shoulder actually
doesn't go all the way down in the morning
until I stretch it.
And then it, then it reaches down.
Oh, you know, cause the chest is tight.
- Sure.
- So it's stretching the chest.
Now, if you wanna add a little more, you know, stretch to it
go ahead and take that throw pillow again.
- Oh right.
- And now you go over it like this
and now you're getting even more of a stretch here in bed.
- This will be the more advanced by the time you get to this
your kyphosis or your hunchback is probably almost back
to normal and you're really doing well.
- You certainly could try this even with the kyphosis.
- Sure.
- And see if, you know
you can get a little extra stretch
cause you don't have to stay here a long period of time.
- Right.
- You can just give it a good stretch like that
but that'll be a good bonus there.
- Sure.
- So...
- Wow, Bob, I think we pretty much covered it.
Head to toe.
- Yeah, I think we did.
So. - All right.
- Thanks everybody for watching.