(upbeat music)
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- Think you're pretty?
- My hair needs to be adjusted.
- We are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna talk about the difference between
TENS, T-E-N-S, and muscle stimulator.
Which is usually called EMS.
- Sure.
- And we'll talk about those in just a minute,
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We're actually giving away a TENS unit.
Actually it's a TENS and EMS unit in one.
- Great--
- This is by iReliev,
we really like this company,
we'll talk a little bit more about them later.
- Sure.
- I think we're giving away two of these, Brad.
And then we're also giving away, oh,
do you wanna grab that pain gel?
- Yes, yes.
- We're gonna give, to some of the runner-ups,
we're gonna give this pain gel away.
It's just easy to apply, roll-on.
- Right.
- Which you can roll right over the pain area,
and helps knock your pain levels down.
- Yeah, I been using it myself
and it's a nice product.
- Where do you use it?
- Just on my back.
- Oh, you are. Okay.
- Right before I go to bed.
- Hard to apply, though.
- No, it works good and that's why I liked it.
- Oh, you did? Okay.
All right, so TENS,
Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation.
- It's a mouthful, Bob.
- And it had Electrical Muscle Stimulation,
is the EMS.
- Yeah, that Emergency Medical Service.
- That's right, that's funny.
There's a lot that can have dual meanings, don't they?
So, the short answer is,
they both use electrical pulses.
- Sure.
- You know, they both use leads and pads.
- Right.
- And a little unit, in fact,
like I said that this one both.
But TENS, generally, is for pain relief.
- Right, right.
- And EMS is primarily for muscle growth,
or muscle recovery or conditioning.
- It develops muscle contraction when you use it,
which, with TENS, sometimes that happens,
but it's not the goal.
- It's not the goal, right.
So, like I said, luckily many units have both,
again, our favorite TENS and EMS unit is the iReliev
and the reason I like this company is because
their units seem to be really well made and easy to use.
- Right, right.
- So, I like this one.
This is the 80-80,
80-80 I'm sorry.
- That's the model number.
- Yeah, and it's got TENS and EMS
and you toggle between the two real easy.
- Right.
- And I'm gonna go ahead and turn it on once here,
and hopefully it'll work,
I got it on EMS right now,
Electrical Muscle Stimulation,
I am not doing that, this is doing it for me, oh!
- And you can adjust the intensity.
- Yeah.
- He's got it up higher,
it depends on what the goal is,
but you probably wouldn't do this,
you know, and he's just doing it to show that--
- Yeah, to show that the dramatic display, right?
- Right.
And the reason Bob said he hopes it works
is not because of the unit--
- It's because of me.
- Yeah.
(both chuckle)
- It's getting it set up.
- Now, they also have wireless ones.
- This is pretty cool. - So you got it right here.
- And this also has EMS or TENS.
- Right,
and that's their bestseller, actually.
Do you wanna turn it on, Brad, for us?
- Sure.
So here's the control,
you can put that in your pocket or whatever.
And I've got the--
- Right on, it's not even turned on right now,
but, I'll turn on (mumbles).
- You gotta hold 'em for a little bit.
A blue light will go on.
- I'm not gonna mess with it right now,
but anyway, so this is how they get into place
and you can see that way, there's no worry about wires.
This is microphone wire, by the way,
this isn't the wire for the--
- You're right--
- So, TENS, what does it do?
So, you have electrical pulses that prevent the pain signals
from reaching the brain.
- Right.
- So you've got pain in your arm,
you wanna cut off that pain pathway
so it doesn't reach the brain,
you don't feel the pain at all.
- Right.
- I mean, that's putting it--
- That's the simple version of it.
- Right, we're not gonna get into
the technical gate theory which--
- Yeah, in fact is actually stimulating
smaller nerves that cut off the larger nerves.
- Right, you really need a chalk board
and a half hour lecture to get into that.
- But it also can stimulate the production
of natural endorphins,
you know, kinda your endogenous opiates.
- Ooh, nice word, Bob.
- Yeah, so the whole idea is that you can maybe get,
if you're on opioids you can maybe get off them.
- Right, right.
And the nice thing about these is,
you can usually have your TENS unit,
once you figure out where to adjust it
and get it working well for you,
you run it for a half hour, 30 minutes to an hour,
and then you turn it off
and it continues those natural endorphins.
- After the fact, right.
Good point.
And, you know, this could become,
you know, you put it in your pocket
and this doesn't become as obvious,
you know, that you're wearing one.
- Right.
- I can ave long sleeves on, or whatever.
- Especially with the wireless one,
you know, you can put that in your pocket.
I've got one of these cool--
- Yeah, he's got the flip belt.
- Yeah, the flip belt.
They're really cool, I can put in my mic thing under there,
if I'm running you put your wallet in there.
- It's a great running belt.
- It's great for outdoor stuff,
I'm really liking it.
- The EMS set,
the one I have on right now has EMS and TENS,
but you're gonna stimulate muscles to contract
and, you know, it helps to like gradually increase strength,
especially after, like, surgery.
- Sure, right.
- Like if you're trying to strengthen your quad.
It's also good to increase blood flow to the area.
- Right.
- Which helps healing.
- And I know one thing I was reading on this,
I haven't done it yet,
I've been talking about using it for,
and after you work out--
- Right, recovery.
- A recovery system for your muscles.
So you don't get that soreness
and it gets your blood flowing.
- The astronauts would use it, did you know that?
- Oh, that would make sense.
- It would make sense, yeah.
And I know, in fact, someone was gonna send us this,
they wanna use it after stroke,
for a sublux shoulder.
- Yeah.
- And they have a smaller device
that they keep on most of the time, I guess.
- Sure.
- So, and it helps decrease blood clots.
You can put 'em on there,
we had one there, remember that?
You could actually stimulate the muscle--
- Oh, that's right.
- To work on the tone,
so if you put,
at the link below,
they have great discounts.
- Sure.
- But, obviously if you wanna try a different type,
that's up to you.
- Right.
- We just wanted to explain the difference between the two.
- So in general,
TENS unit isn't something you just buy and put on
and you know how to use,
you gotta spend a little time with it,
you gotta, you know, look at the videos
on how to use 'em properly.
- Yeah, they got great videos and great instruction
on how to do all these things.
- Right, 'cause there are some people,
like if you have a pacemaker,
you're not gonna use one.
- Yeah, there's precautions and cautions
that you can't use certain things.
Like if you're pregnant, you don't wanna
put it over your abdomen and all that.
- Right, so make sure you
do your little bit of homework before you use one.
- Right, thanks everybody for watching.