♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ the two most famous physical therapists, ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
(claps)
- Hello!
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Scrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- We're the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our humble opinion, Bob.
- Today we're going to talk about three secrets
to living with back pain.
Plus we're doing a give away,
which actually connects with the living with back pain.
By the way, if you're new to our channel,
please take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos on how to stay
healthy, fit, pain free, and we upload every day.
Also, you wanna join us on social media channels
because, just like today,
we're always giving something away.
If you go to BobAndBrad.com, go to the giveaway section,
you'll find out we're giving away
a Thermotex infrared heating system today.
- Right.
- Very nice. These are very nice. We'll talk about that.
You can also go to Facebook and find it there.
If you want a short version of us,
go to Twitter or Instagram.
We got a 60 second version of our program.
- Brad, you live with back pain. Can you tell about
what you all do to keep it under control?
- Sure. The biggest thing is I modify some of my activities.
I don't do a lot of heavy bending and lifting.
A little bit at a time, good judgment.
One of the biggest things for back pain that I did
was change the lumbar support in my vehicle.
- And we're gonna get to this--
- Right.
- Basically, Brad does all three things
that we're gonna talk about today.
- Right, yep.
- The first one is we're gonna mention the giveaway.
The Thermotex infrared heating pad.
I have it on right here (laughs).
- Ah yes!
- We were both looking for it (laughs).
That's how sad we are at our age.
So what's nice about the Thermotex heating pad,
it does come with extra straps
if you order through our link.
- And you can actually walk around with it.
So it's got a six foot cord,
and I often use it like if I have a little bit
of the knots up here, I'll put it on
and work at the computer while it's on.
And it's funny, just real quick, I gotta tell you,
a nurse, I was telling her she could go ahead
and put it on because she was having some knots,
she goes, "Well I can't walk around with that on."
She came back and put it on and she was doing
her paperwork with it on and it worked for her too.
What's nice about infrared heating,
much better than regular heating pads,
is that it penetrates 2.36 inches.
- Much deeper than a conventional--
- Much deeper, and so it's going to get into the joints,
into the back joints that could be giving you trouble.
Brad and I use it both, we just put it in our chair,
not our chair, your chair or my chair (laughs).
We don't live together, we have women, we have wives.
(laughs)
Anyway--
- Make that clear, Bob! (laughs)
- So anyway, we just put it in a chair.
I leave mine on. And it's fantastic as the weather gets cold
to lean against it.
- I actually use my lumbar support,
and then I put it on top of that,
so it gives me-- that works well for my back.
And everyone is a little different that way.
- Well, let's jump into that. Let's mix things up.
The second secret is you gotta position your body right.
And that's no matter what,
if you're sitting, standing, or sleeping.
- Right, right.
- You gotta make sure-- can you take this off Brad?
- Sure.
- You gotta make sure that your back is in
what we call the neutral position
where you have, you know,
the spine goes in, the spine goes out, the spine goes in.
- Right, the natural curve of the spine.
And that's a little bit different with everyone.
Some are more pronounced and some are less.
- If you're going into this flexed posture,
no matter if you're sleeping that way,
if you're sitting that way, or you're lifting that way,
you're gonna have problems.
So, with sitting, quite often what we recommend
is that you do wanna use some type of back support.
Now you can take a rolled towel--
do you wanna grab a rolled towel, Brad?
- Oh yeah. This is a good way to start out
so you don't purchase something that
may not fit your body right.
- Right. Because if you have a more slight build,
I would say I have a slight build.
- Well you're slender, you're six and a half foot tall.
He looks like--
- I'm seven feet tall here (laughs).
So anyway, I don't need as much of a roll
as somebody who'd be, let's say a larger person,
or maybe a little bit more ample in the butt.
They're gonna have more of a gap there
and so they're gonna need more of a roll.
So you can start off figuring out what size you need
by rolling up a towel.
We put a little tape around it.
- Here's an example of a thicker-
- A large towel, right, exactly.
So you're gonna slide your butt all the way back,
you're gonna put this along the belt line.
Very important like in the car where you sit a lot
and you're actually getting some shock absorption too.
But even at your desk too if you're gonna sit
for a long period of time.
- In the car when I finally found the one,
we don't have the exact one here,
but I always used to get out of the car
and felt like, "Oh man, it's hard to just straighten up,"
and I'd walk and in about 20 steps it'd feel better.
I got the right lumbar support, almost gone.
90% of that, those symptoms, are gone.
- Yeah, and that shows you right there,
because I know before that you maybe thought,
"I just have a bad back," and really,
you were hurting your back. You weren't allowing it to heal.
So it's really important that you position right
with everything you do.
So, let's even go to sleeping at night.
There's a couple things you can try with sleeping at night.
One is, if you're laying on your side like this,
your back is actually sagging down in here.
There's supposed to be normally
a little bit of a gap here.
So you can take a sheet and roll it around you,
or you can also-- what do they call these again, Brad?
- Sleep roll.
- Sleep rolls.
- You can get a sheet or towel roll like this,
you can start out with to fill in that gap
Bob was talking about.
- What's nice about if you have it
all the way around the back too,
then when you roll on to your back,
it also gives you some support.
- The whole thing is your mattress does not accommodate
your body because you may need a different mattress.
But that's expensive, this is a good way to go around that.
- Yeah this is a good thing to try,
especially if you're waking up with pain.
If you're waking up with pain, something's not right.
You need to make some adjustment at night.
And again, this holds true if you're a larger person
with a larger buttock, you may need more of a gap,
more something to fill in the gap than you would
for a slighter build person.
So those are a couple of positioning things.
We're not going into great detail on this,
what we're trying to tell you though
is that you can be in control of your back pain.
You can knock it down quite a bit
if you just do things right.
So that's number two.
Number one was Thermotex, number two was position right,
number three is move right.
- Sure.
- So let's say I'm gonna take the simple act
of getting out of a chair, Brad.
So let's say I'm like this and what do you normally do?
A lot of people bend forward like this
into that bad posture.
- Yep, so it's rounding that lower back.
- What you want to work on is actually,
I'm using the Booyah stick here as a guide.
- Oh let me--
- You want to show where I have contact points, Brad?
- Head's touching the stick, mid-back,
and down by the low back, the sacrum.
You know, you can use anything straight
that you can get contact.
Now that forces Bob when he has those contact points,
it looks good.
- Yeah now let's say I'm gonna do it wrong.
Now I'm down to one contact point, I'm getting forward.
Now if I want to get up right,
I'm going to keep all three contact points.
I'm going to lean forward and the movement is occurring
in my hips, not my back.
My back is staying nice and steady.
So this is the same, this is very true in getting out of bed
in the morning.
So all night long, the discs in your body,
the discs between the vertebrae that are in your back,
they're filling up with fluid.
So your back is very vulnerable in the morning.
So a lot of people-- what's the first thing they do, Brad?
They get up and they--
Well no, they get up like this.
- Right, they lean-- - Lean forward--
- And at that point a lot of stress on the back,
a lot of stress on this,
and then they get up the same way.
So what we want you to do,
is you're laying flat on your back,
roll over like a log. Don't go like this segment.
Everything, the shoulders, hips, knees all roll over
together like this.
So everything is staying straight.
Bring the legs off, I'm pushing up with my arms,
keeping my back nice and straight.
And then it's the same thing again,
I'm gonna go ahead and get out of bed
keeping my back straight.
Obviously, if you even think about this,
it's gonna help.
I was telling my wife to do it,
pretending like the stick was in place there.
And that's all she needed and then she does it correctly.
- So really taking your time with
some of these movements that can irritate your back
and do them right.
This is just a tool to help.
- A training tool-- - A training tool.
- You don't have to sleep with a stick
and get out like that (laughs).
- No, no.
- This is what they clarify, Bob.
- Exactly, right. So you wanna move right,
you wanna position right,
and the Thermotex helps it heal
and helps the muscles, if there's any spasm, calm down.
- Right, from relaxation.
- Okay, remember Brad and I can fix about anything--
- Except for?
- A broken heart.
- There you go, Bob!
- I put it over here today, Brad.
- Oh okay, here you go.
- We're working on it. Hey don't hit the heart!
- What? It's a tough one (laughs).
- All right, thanks for watching.