♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ on the internet. ♪
- Hi folks. I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- Because we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- We're getting used to a new camera lady right now.
- Yeah. Well, we're always,
we're men, so it takes a while.
- Yeah. That's why we're slow thinking.
So today, we're gonna talk about three sleeping positions
you must avoid with neck pain.
Plus, we're gonna show you some products
to help you with neck pain.
- Right.
- We're gonna do both.
- Yeah, and we're gonna show you some ways
you don't need products.
- Yeah.
- So it works all directions.
- Yep.
If you're. What?
- Go ahead, Bob.
- If you are new
to our channel, - - Oh, there you go.
- just take a second to subscribe to us.
We provide videos, how to stay a healthy, fit, pain-free.
We upload every day.
Also go over to the Facebooks and like us,
because Brad and I, as children,
it's a sad, sad tale, were not liked,
but we're turning things around.
- Why Bob? Why? - I just got contacted
by an old roommate from college.
- Did he like you?
- Yeah, he liked me. - Oh good.
- And apparently he still likes me, so.
All right.
So the first thing, Brad,
the first position you wanna avoid,
is laying on your back with too many pillows.
And this is very common.
I see a lot of people, especially when they got bad posture,
and 'cause what's gonna happen, you're gonna be like this,
and look what my neck is doing.
- It's flexed or bent forward.
- Yep. All night long.
Especially if you sleep on your back.
And what you wanna do,
is you're trying to line up your ears with your shoulders.
So your neck is trying to be back like this.
So when you're laying on your back,
you wanna thin pillow.
- Right.
- Basically.
- Yeah, I've had people and I just said,
"Just go down from two pillows to one pillow."
Problem solved. One of those easy fixes.
- Well, and sometimes it may take a while,
especially if you're already inherently tight.
- Right. That's true.
- You might have to work your way down
from two pillows to a thicker one pillow,
and then down to the thin pillow.
- Right.
- But a lot of people, some people,
put all three pillows in there.
I mean.
- Yeah.
Well people that like to watch TV -
- Yep. - or read books,
and they're trying to get their head up
so they can see what they're looking at.
- So they're like this or they got their phone in the bed,
which by the way, don't recommend because of the light,
keeps you awake.
- Sure.
- That blue light or whatever.
Or is it the white light? I dunno.
But anyway, yeah, they watch TV or they're reading a book
and this is just a bad position for the neck to be in for a
- Yeah. No good, no good. - prolonged period of time.
So conversely, now though, when you're on your side,
now you've got a bigger gap you have to fill in here.
- Right.
- And so we don't want your head like this
and we don't want it like this,
we want it right in the middle to be the most comfortable.
So if I got one thin pillow here,
and especially you have any wide shoulders at all, -
- Yeah. If you're one of those big
muscular he men. - Even if you're not,
'cause I'm not and look at me.
My head is tilted to the side all night long
and that's just not comfortable.
So you either double up your pillow,
which some people do, right?
- [Brad] Sure.
- Or they go like this.
Some people put their hand underneath here.
I'd prefer not to have that because you're
putting pressure on the nerves when you're doing that.
- Right. And you can, the wrist thing,
there's some carpal tunnel issues that could arise.
- So ideally you wanna find the two pillows
that are about the right thickness
to put your head in the middle.
- Sure.
Or I just take my wife's pillow
and then she wakes up and wonders, where is it?
But it all works out in the long run.
Or you could just, if you have one pillow
and you don't want to have two
if you're a side and back sleeper,
just fold it up like that.
- There we go.
- There.
And you know, the other thing, Bob,
we've been talking about mattresses in the last few weeks.
If you've got a firm mattress, you might need more pillow.
If you got a soft mattress, your shoulder sinks in
and that may have a variance on the pillow thickness.
- Sure.
The final position that you really wanna avoid
with neck pain,
is gonna be laying on your stomach.
- Sure.
- And the reason being is that when you're on your stomach,
there's no way you can get around
having your neck turned all the way
in one direction or the other direction.
And if you know anything about the body or joints,
the joints don't like to be at end range
for prolonged periods of time.
- Right.
- So, even if you take your arm and go like this
for a prolonged period of time,
it's gonna start to hurt after a while.
- Sure.
- So, it doesn't wanna be all the way over.
Now, it's fine if you lay on your back
for 15 minutes or something like that,
which I do sometimes. - Your stomach?
- On stomach.
- Right. - I'm sorry.
But don't be sleeping that way all night long.
A high incidence of headaches seems to be occurring
with people who sleep on their stomach all the time,
especially those cervical headaches.
- Sure.
- So, there's no studies that show that
but we just from,
I was in a classroom once
and we asked people who sleep on their stomach,
how many of 'em had headaches?
All of 'em did.
- Sure.
- So.
- And I know we get comments
that people say they've been sleeping on their stomach,
and there are people who they probably got a really
flexible neck or however,
but you're talking about general, across
the general population. - Right.
I suppose you could get one of those massage donut things
and you could sleep like that all night long, right?
- I would just imagine someone sticking their face in the...
(both chuckle)
- There's somebody I'd like to put their face in the pillow.
- You can get one of those breathing things
for a scuba dive.
- There you go.
- You could breathe all night long, be kind of fun.
- All right.
So, now that you've set off that tangent,
let's talk about some things that might help you, Brad.
- Okay.
- First off, if you're gonna do the reading in bed
or the watching TV in bed,
you might wanna get one of these bed wedges.
Is that what they're called, Brad?
I always mix these up.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- The other ones are called leg wedge, right?
- Yeah. Leg wedge.
This is just a wedge and you can Google it.
- Yeah, they're not that much.
But look, I'm still in good posture
and you can put a thin pillow here
and I can still see the TV.
I could read a book.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- It's just a nice little, yeah.
- Now this is one of those things.
My sister's a respiratory therapist
and she talks about this with people with some
respiratory problems. - Breathing difficulties?
- Right.
And this is nice because if you wanna get,
like a hospital bed,
and now they make all kinds of beds that -
- Adjust. - adjust.
but they're very expensive.
- Right.
- You're talking hundreds or,
my mom just bought one at $1,500.
But what is this? - Sure.
- 20, $30,
and you have something. - Right.
Yeah, exactly, it's a good alternative.
- Especially if it's temporary.
- And then you can find out if it works.
- Precisely.
- You can do the job that you need.
The other thing is, we'll grab one of those pillows, Brad
and we'll take a...
Sometimes what helps people if they're having neck pain,
is to get a little bit of support.
You have that gap in here,
this gap in the cervical spine when you're laying down.
And sometimes it helps to fill in that gap
with a rolled towel.
- Yep.
- So all you need to do is take a towel.
We've actually taped this one up
but you don't need to do that.
You could pin it up I guess,
or just roll. - Rubber bands work good.
- Oh, there we go.
- Just so it doesn't unravel
and then you don't have what you're looking for.
- So now, when I'm laying on my back
it's gonna fill in that gap, really quite nicely.
And you can experiment around how big the towel needs to be.
- [Brad] Right.
- Or how big the roll needs to be.
But it also just supports me when I lay on my side.
- Move your hand, Bob. - Sure.
- The people can't see that. There.
Yeah, so normally you don't just stick it anywhere
but you put it right on the inside edge.
- Yes you have. The end of the pillow.
- And the pillow case holds it there.
- Yep.
So now I can go like this
and I could even put another pillow here -
- Sure.
- and still get some support here.
But, and actually this isn't too bad
because this is a fairly thick pillow.
- [Brad] Sure.
- So.
- If that works but it feels like it's helping
but it's a little uncomfortable,
then you might wanna invest and you can buy a cervical,
they call a cervical roll.
And this is a McKenzie cervical role.
Again, we always list these products
in our Amazon preferred
down below. - Right.
- Just for your convenience to be able to find them.
- Right. So if you order something,
you know you're getting something that's gonna work well.
'Cause these, I've been working with these for 20 years
and they're solid. - Yeah, they're making them
solid time, so.
So, all right.
There's actually pillows too, you can buy.
Yeah, this is the NURSAL pillow.
We got this one listed below.
The thing I'm gonna warn you about these,
these are highly individual.
I mean, there's some people that,
my daughter's a good example.
She really likes these pillows.
The first one she bought was this one.
This is the first one she bought.
- Yeah. - But she didn't like it.
- It was yep. That's the one.
- Yeah. She bought this one and it didn't work.
She was having some jaw difficulties.
And she bought the second one and it worked great.
- And that was because of, just slightly different -
- Slightly different foam. - foam, or?
- Or in the density of the foam
and also slightly different on the dimensions here.
- Sure.
- So, I don't know how to get around that
except you try them and if it, maybe if a friend has one,
you can try it and see how it works.
- Like, here's another, a similar pillow,
and you can -
- Yeah. - just see the difference
in the shape of this one.
It's made to shape around and get into your shoulders
and round your neck properly, or so it fits you,
so again, individual. - Some people really like 'em
and some people, nah,
didn't really make much difference to me.
So, but it is an option.
Another thing you can try actually,
is the, did we get the pillowcase, Brad?
Oh, it's on the floor, of course.
This has worked with some of my patients.
You take a pillow case and you're gonna fold it into threes.
- Yep.
- Like this.
And you can actually... - Threes?
- Well, three parts.
- Thirds.
- Thirds, okay.
Hit the threes. I know what I'm saying.
- Now, this is one of those home remedy things
that cost you absolutely nothing and you can...
- You can give it a try.
- You can really have some nice results.
And if it doesn't work it
you're absolutely out with nothing.
But we've had patients that have
a good result with this. - Yeah.
If you're having some neck pain to help calm things down,
it's gonna give some support overnight.
Be careful if you pin it so you don't get pinned.
But I'd probably tape this one.
I wouldn't use a rubber band on this one.
(Brad chuckles)
So.
- Yeah, any kind of tape works good.
- It just gives you a little bit of support
and it actually feels good.
Especially, like I said,
when you're going through -
- Sure. - a flare up of neck pain
And also, it's there in every position,
no matter what you're at, so.
- Even one of the famous physical therapists
recommends that, Brian Mulligan, right?
- Right, right. Yep.
- And he's been around for longer than both you and I even.
- Yeah. He's one of our heroes, Brian Mulligan.
He's out of New Zealand and the Mulligan techniques.
So we've used a lot of his, so we wanna
give him some props too, so. - Sure.
- Brad, anything else you wanna add?
- No, I really think that between all of these,
you're gonna find something that's gonna help -
- Help you sleep at night - your sleep comfort at night.
- Yeah.
- When you sleep better, you're happier in the morning.
And I don't know, what else can I say?
- Hopefully, nothing else.
All right. Thanks for watching.