- 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.
- Yes.
- Brad.
- What?
- Is one of your legs longer than the other?
- It very well could be.
- Alright.
Well, this is a question we quite often get
from people and you know, it can cause a problem.
- Right.
- If you're, what,
if you have one leg longer than the other,
eventually it could kind of put stress
on your sacroiliac joint,
your SI (which is your lower back),
or your back itself.
- Sure.
- So, if you're getting some pain,
and they find out you have one leg longer than the other,
you may want to correct it.
- Sure.
- So, we're gonna show you just a simple test to figure
out whether or not one leg is longer than the other.
- Did, did we wanna mention now,
like after a hip replacement,
- Yes, very good.
- or fractured hip,
- Yes.
- that can be one problem where you never had a problem
with your leg length. You go through the surgery
and next thing you know, you're,
you're walking and every time you go out,
it looks like you're going over a hump on that leg.
- Right.
Or after knee replacement,
although I, I'm gonna warn you, a lot of times
people think they feel longer after, after a surgery
like that.
And we measure, a lot of times it was the same.
- Right.
- It just feels longer.
- Yeah.
- So beyond the obvious fact where like, if you look
at somebody, Brad, and their belt is kind of tilted
like this,
- Right.
- meaning that one leg might be longer, or
if they're wearing shorts and you look at the creases
in their knees,
- Yeah.
- and one's higher than the other, beyond that
really one of the best tests you can do without
using expensive equipment, like x-rays or something
like that,
- Sure.
- is just to measure where the pelvis is at.
- Um hm.
- Right. So if we're looking at Napoleon here,
bone apart,
(he laughs)
alright, we look at the top of the,
the pelvic crest here,
the iliac crest.
- Yep. Mm Hm.
- Well, that's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna take you, you wanna take your fingers
and you're gonna dig in on your body and you're gonna
have them like this.
And you can see these two are level, alright.
So that's what you want to see, is that if one is higher
than the other, that leg is longer than the other.
- Right. So yes, if we're standing here,
Brad and we,
- Yeah.
- You stick your hands in to the adipose,
which is fat on some people,
and you, and you level out like this,
you're gonna see if one hand is higher than the other.
- Right.
- Why don't we do it on you? And you can,
let's actually make it higher.
- Now, I know what some people are gonna write in and say,
you know, you can do this, but they might have
a hip problem where the SI joint
might be anteriorly rotated.
- Right.
- So there are, you know, this is not-
- You're absolutely right.
They could have something that made it higher on that side.
- Right. Okay.
- So, why don't you step on that side Brad.
- Alright. So I'm gonna put that.
You want me to, well we'll exaggerate it a little bit.
- [Bob] Yep.
- [Brad] Ok.
- [Bob] Put your,
why don't you put your hands in there once,
and stick 'em out forward.
And so if you're, you gotta actually get the shirts
out of the way,
but you can see that this one's higher now.
Now one way to, if you find out,
let's say you find out it it's,
there's a half inch difference.
You would not correct the full half inch.
- Right.
- You would correct probably just half of that.
- Right. 50%.
- So I'm half inch higher on this side.
- Um Hm.
- We're gonna put a quarter inch on this side to correct it.
- Right.
- Does that make sense, Brad?
- Yes.
- Alright. Cause that'll like get you fairly close,
but it won't correct it completely.
- No, Bob, I think, I think that's,
if I'm short on, I'm a tall on this leg.
- Yeah. So you're putting on this leg.
- Right.
- Okay.
- Had me thinking-
- I caught Brad on that one.
- Yep.
- Alright.
How, how can you try this without expending a lot of money.
First off, you can actually
just take some paper towels, Brad.
- Yeah.
- Fold 'em up. And this one gets to about,
this is probably an eighth of an inch.
- Mm Hm.
- You, you'd probably have to do another paper towel
to make a quarter inch.
- Right. You could cut cardboard,
anything that'll fit in your shoe.
- Yep, carpet.
- Yeah.
- We got some foam here.
- Yep. This was actually some nice material.
- Yeah, you could just slip it in your shoe and,
and then stand up and then you can kind of,
you know, remeasuring,
you might have to have somebody with you looking at this,
- Right, yeah.
- to see if they level and that kinda levels it out.
Then, walk around with it for a day or two.
And see, does it make a difference in your pain?
- Right.
- You know, does it start to level out?
A lot of times people will say,
if it is a painful thing when they're walking it out,
it tends to relieve it fairly quickly.
- Sure. Right.
- So if, and then if you find out that it works,
then you may wanna get something more permanent.
You can get a permanent heel cup,
something you can get at one of the big box stores.
If you go to their foot section, they'll often
have these little inserts you can put in your shoe.
- Right. This leg length thing is,
is kind of a, a touchy one, and it,
it's kind of, you know, they might wanna go
to a therapist and have it really looked
at by a professional, but you can experiment.
And if you have anything negative happen
if you put it in, and you're, it starts hurting worse.
Definitely-
- Right. Exactly.
And that's why we felt comfortable in doing this,
cause people could try this, you know what,
if it works, fine, if it doesn't work, just stop doing it.
- Exactly.
- It's not like we're doing surgery here, Brad.
So yeah.
So, alright, good luck to you.
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- Start my ball.
- There we go. Thanks a lot.