- ♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Shrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- What are you doing over there?
- Ah, just go on with your show.
- Today, we're gonna talk about the three rules
for proper bed positioning and pain free sleep.
There's the rules, you don't want to break them, Brad.
- You follow the rules, everything goes into place.
- That's right. - You'll sleep well.
- By the way, if you're new to our channel,
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pain free, we upload every day.
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Bob and Brad.
Because we are, actually, right now,
doing our Sunday giveaways and-
All week long. - Sure.
- You can sign up for our giveaway of a mattress,
and we're giving away the Sleepovation Mattress.
700 tiny little mattresses in one.
And we're gonna show you later why this is a great mattress.
- Right.
- We're gonna show you as part of this video.
- Don't worry, it comes with a cover, though.
It's not like this. - Yeah, that's right.
We're, we took the cover off,
'cause we wanted to show it's guts.
- [Brad] Okay, what are the rules, Bob?
- All right, rule number one is, when you're sleeping,
you wanna avoid end range joints.
Of your joints for long periods of time.
- What are you talking about, end range?
- End range, so let, one example would be the shoulder.
Now, I'm way at the end of its range.
Well this is in, in between the range.
- Right.
- So, you don't wanna sleep
with your arms overhead at night.
Do I got any armpit stains, or I'm okay?
- I was gonna mention that Bob, but,
it doesn't bother me.
- You see people that do this, right?
And their hands, you know, go numb a lot of times.
- Oh, right, if I sleep on my stomach like that,
my hands go completely numb.
- Right, so, this is not good for your shoulders,
especially for a long period of time.
- Right. - And, obviously, again,
it can put a little pressure on the nerves.
- Right.
- Which you can end up falling asleep.
You don't wanna have,
that's why you don't wanna sleep on your stomach either.
'Cause what happens when you sleep on your stomach?
You turn your head all the way to the end.
- Right.
- What, did I stump you there?
- Wondering what happens to you.
I know what happens to me when I sleep on my stomach.
I don't sleep.
- So, I can sleep this way for a short, you know,
any of these are fine for a short period of time.
I'll sleep on my stomach for a little while.
But your neck is turned all the way to the side.
So if you're like that all night long,
you could end up with headaches just from that position.
- Stretching everything on one side and,
it's just, you know, it's one of those things,
like if you hold your finger back
like this for too long, it hurts.
- It hurts. - It's the same concept.
- We're kind of getting into that range, Brad,
'cause we're gonna talk about
wrist flexion or elbow flexion.
So, some people lay,
lay on their side like this.
Lay or lie?
Lay on their side.
- [Brad] We're gonna get a mess-
- I know we are.
And they sleep with their arm underneath them, like this,
and their elbows flexed all night to the max.
And their wrist is flexed. - [Brad] Right.
Major contributor to carpal tunnel-
- Carpal tunnel syndrome, yup.
- Just sleeping with a wrist brace on, oftentimes,
can really reduce or eliminate those symptoms in the,
here, for the carpal tunnel.
- And you really wanna not have,
especially if you're having carpal tunnel,
you don't wanna lay with your wrist and
elbow flexed all night long.
It's just gonna make it worse.
Another one, some of the ones that
you may not think as much about,
but if you're sleeping on your side,
and this is what I was doing myself for a while, Brad.
I was putting one leg way over like this.
And it was, one thing, it was rotating my back all night,
which wasn't a problem, but it was putting stress on my hip,
and I was starting to get really sharp hip pain.
So I've gone to the point now where I do sleep
with one of those little
wedges between my legs.
I, I tried a pillow. - [Brad] Right.
- But the pillow was too warm.
You can buy those little foam wedges that, that are,
that go between the legs, and they work out really well.
- That works good? - Yeah.
- Okay, well, good.
- So, and that's also hip abduction, you know,
you're bringing the hip too far over when you're
sleeping on your side. - Right, right.
- So, that's rule number one,
avoid the end range joints for long periods of time.
Rule number two, you wanna try to decrease
the pressure on the bony parts of your body.
- So,
example?
- [Both] The shoulders.
- That is a really good example.
- Hip. - Hip.
- Knee. - Knee.
- Can be down, ankle or the heel.
- Or the heel, exactly, and he just hit 'em all.
So let's talk about those once, you know,
a lot of people, especially, I just had a patient,
she's got shoulder pain,
and what do you think she does, Brad?
- [Brad] She sleeps on her side.
- She sleeps on that side.
- On the, on the side, yeah.
- So, you know, one thing that you can try is,
what we do, quite often, is, if you sleep on your side,
we use a two pillow system, here.
Do we have another pillow, Brad?
Oh, here, I'll use this one as my pillow.
- Yep.
- And this is what I showed her.
You can take a smaller throw pillow
and you lay on your side, you make a gap, a canal, here.
And now, as you can see,
it takes the pressure off the point of my shoulder.
'Cause I'm taking it more here now, on my chest cavity.
- Spreading that across the rib cage,
and then the head, and the shoulder has that area to,
to have less pressure.
- I sleep like this myself.
Whenever I sleep on my side, I use this.
If you wanna take even less,
put less pressure on the point of the shoulder,
you can even lay back a little bit.
- Right, yeah.
- It gets more on the scapula too.
So, as far as the hip, you know,
on the point of the, the hip,
it's really hard to, to make adjustments to,
with your regular bed.
- Right.
- This, that's why we like the Sleepovation Mattress.
I hate to put a plugin for it right now, but this,
this is why it does really well at spreading forces out.
- Right.
- So, if you're having hip pain,
if you lay on it, the, the individual mattresses
spread the pressure out a lot better.
You, you had good luck with it
'cause of your shoulder, right?
- Right, yep, laying on my side,
on my shoulder, very uncomfortable-
- On a regular mattress.
- I can feel the point of the shoulder, but this,
sinks right in and allows that shoulder to go in,
while still supporting my head and my body properly.
So, yeah, it's a, it's a wonderful deal.
- So the other points are your knees,
especially as they come together,
and that's really uncomfortable.
And, you know, so the simple solution to that is,
yeah, just to take a pillow.
- Get that pillow in between there.
- That works out well, and you can even do ankles.
Yeah, it can get ankle and knee at the same time.
- Yeah, you may wanna purchase a few pillows.
- Yeah.
- We're gonna, Brad and I just
bought stock in pillows, so we're hoping,
yeah, hoping you go ahead with that.
The other one is the heel,
and this is people that we find that,
that are bedridden quite often.
- Right.
- And they get, their heel breaks down.
- [Brad] Oh, it's very, it's very common
with people who are immobile and are very weak.
And once you get a skin breakdown on that heel
it can be very challenging to heal, because, oftentimes,
if you're diabetic, especially, it's major.
- Heel to heel.
- Heel to heel. - Yeah.
But yeah, I had an instructor,
she was only in her fifties, and she had osteoporosis,
and she ended up with a compression fracture,
ended up in bed for a while,
and she said she used to just
push through her heels to try to, you know,
give some pressure off her back.
- Yep. - And her heels broke down.
I mean, she wasn't that old,
you know, only in her fifties and-
- Right. - So-
- Yeah, so they develop some open wounds and it's,
you can't walk very well with it.
It just makes life miserable.
- So, I mean, if you're, you wanna make,
an easy solution, just put a pillow underneath your calves.
Again, which will raise up your heels a little bit,
take some of the pressure off.
- You, you sleep with your shoes?
- Yeah, I sleep with my shoes, I like that.
It's really comfortable.
I'm ready to go in the morning then, when I get, get going.
You can also see how the Sleepovation Mattress, again,
you know, how it-
- That goes right there. - Yep.
The individual style will just
allow the relief on that pressure point.
- [Brad] And there's no pressure point that way.
- So, all right, sorry to keep mentioning it.
We won't mention it again.
Well now, we're gonna go for rule number three.
You really want to have, as best as you can,
good spinal alignment when you're sleeping.
- Right.
- The most classic one is the neck, isn't it?
- Sure.
- People, when they're sleeping on their back,
if they have too many pillows,
their heads forward, like this.
You wanna have your ears lining up with your shoulders.
So, you know, right here,
look how my ears line up with my shoulders.
Now I'm in good spinal alignment all night long.
- [Brad] Yeah, if you imagine the,
the red stick, you know, we want the, the, the spine
in line with that stick, obviously, not perfectly straight
'cause the spine is not straight, but,
general rule of thumb.
You get that head up like that,
and it's gonna cause problems.
If you have a TV on the wall that you watch, do not do that.
You know, I'd actually just get rid of the TV.
If you like to watch TV, just use one of these.
There you go.
- Yeah, or if you wanna read in bed on your back.
- Yeah, there you go. - This works out really well.
You can still put a pillow between, behind your head.
- And it's a simple, this just a, a body wedge.
They're, they're not very expensive.
For breathing problems too, that people can use them.
- Yeah, it does work for and GERD, right?
- Yeah.
- Reflux disease, doesn't it work well for that too?
The other one is,
a lot of times, your mid back or,
or let's say, talk about the low back.
You know, if you wanna maintain that arch in the low back.
Sometimes you could take,
you could roll up a sheet or a towel and tie it around you.
Or, you can actually buy these lumbar rolls.
What are they called, sleep rolls, what are they called?
- Sleep roll, yep. - Yeah.
- By McKenzie, you know, this would be an example
of a towel roll that, that you could use,
and offer support to that lumbar spine and low back.
- Yeah, so now when I sleep on my back,
I've got a little bit of an arch there.
It gives my back some support.
But if I lay on my side,
my, my back's not sinking down.
It's, it's actually staying a little bit of an arch.
- Right. - So, to the side too.
So, it's just a little more comfortable for your back.
- Helps keep that back in a neutral position.
- You can easily experiment and try this.
I mean, you can try, you know,
take a rolled sheet and put it around you,
and see if it feels better.
And if it does, maybe then, you want to go ahead and
get a more commercial model here.
What else?
Low back rotation.
Your, your back-
Boy, my pants is drifting up here, Brad.
- [Brad] Oh, Bob, you're gonna have to get some new pants.
- So, as I rotate like this, your back, my,
if my knees are together,
my back actually is rotated a little bit, here.
So, and that's not in good alignment.
So that's where you, again,
you'd want to use a pillow between the legs.
- There's this.
- That pillow between the legs,
there's a lot of reasons to do it.
One that we failed to mention, Brad, by the way,
is that one, yeah.
When you're, when you're laying on your back like this
sometimes, for some people, that's too much back extension,
especially if you have like-
- If your Stenosis-
- Yeah, Stenosis.
- That Spondylolisthesis.
But this leg wedge, it's not very expensive, and it really,
anybody, most people, even just back pain,
find this very comfortable.
- Yeah, I like it and I,
I don't even have back pain, but I don't,
I don't use one, to be honest with you, but you do.
- I keep one right by my bed.
If I-
I don't, I don't use it every day,
but I'd probably say once a week.
Depending on what I'm doing.
It's a wonderful, wonderful-
- So like, if you're going to bed,
and your back's a little bit sore,
you might even fall asleep with that on?
- Oh, yes, yep, just like this, I put it there.
If my back is sore, 'cause I, maybe I've overworked it.
I'll put a cold pack under my back,
and fall asleep like this.
Two hours later, I wake up,
throw these things on the floor,
and sleep away, and I'm good till morning.
- Wakes up in the morning, trips over it,
and falls down, breaks the hip.
- Well, you know, that's a possibility-
Well, let's go on, Bob. - All right.
Well, that's the three rules.
Number one, again, you wanna avoid end range of the joints.
Number two, you wanna decrease pressure
on the bony prominences, or the bumps on your body.
And number three,
you want to aim for a good spinal alignment.
- Sure.
- That all is gonna help you sleep pain free.
That's gonna help you keep, you know, REM going.
- REM sleep. - REM.
- Yeah. - Rapid eye movement.
- Rapid eye movement.
- All right, thanks everybody for watching.