♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Why Bob?
Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Remember "Get Smart?"
And together we have the most famous physical therapist
on the internet.
- Oh, in our opinion of course, Bob.
I didn't watch that movie or whatever it was.
Okay, today we're gonna talk about heal spurs right, Brad?
- Right.
- Home treatment.
- Yes, what you can do at home.
- Do it yourself.
- Exactly, cause there are a number of things
you can do at home without going to the doctor
and going through all the fuss and stuff.
- Just give it try.
What does it hurt, right Brad?
- First, let's talk about heel spurs.
Can you put your foot up Bob?
- I got the wrong foot though, actually.
- No, that's fine.
Just turn this way.
There, like that.
Heel spurs typically form right in this part of the foot,
right by the calcaneus, that big bone there.
So if we look at underneath his skin
and then we tear that off and here we go.
We got our skeleton bone apart.
- Turned the other way now.
- Yep, turned the other way.
The red bands represent the planter fascia,
some real strong connective tissue.
- Right, ligaments basically.
- Yep and as you walk, they spread and they get pulled.
They get a lot of pressure.
And they pull where they connect up to this bone
and they can actually pull away from that bone
in a micro sense.
And what the body does to heal
it puts calcium deposits on there
and starts to form calcium and bone,
they're same thing, starts to form bone, extra bone.
And they're shaped like a spur, pointed.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- And this blue putty here, represents
this is a pretty big bone spur here.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- But they can get pretty big.
You can see me see them on x-rays, actually.
And once you get that bone spur, that can cause problems.
Keep in mind, people can have bone spurs--
- [Bob] And not have pain.
- Right, so if you see x-rays on your foot
and you got bone spurs--
- [Bob] Don't necessarily freak out.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] Because there's, you know,
plenty of people that don't.
And you know it follows along the tendon as Brad was saying.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] And it won't necessarily give you trouble.
But if it is, these are some things you can try.
- [Brad] Right, so we need to loosen up the tissue in here.
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] So Bob, can you bring your foot up?
- [Bob] Sure.
- [Brad] If you loosen up the tissue, get the--
- [Bob] One way to do it is you can just go ahead
and take your two thumbs and go ahead
and spread them apart like this.
And give a massage to your foot.
Oh boy, my foot sensitive.
- [Brad] Yeah.
- [Bob] Probably need to do this.
- [Bob] I'm not touching that thing.
There you go.
- [Bob] So you can work along, you know,
up here where the spur would be.
And you can go ahead and make sure that
the tissue is as pliable as possible.
- [Brad] He's getting in pretty deep.
Your thumbs are gonna get tired quick.
- [Bob] Yeah.
I'm feeling this.
- [Brad] Yeah, Okay.
If your thumbs get too tired, you can take a tennis ball.
- [Bob] Sure.
- [Brad] Okay, this isn't a tennis ball
but it's the same shape.
- [Bob] A lacrosse ball.
- [Brad] It's a lacrosse ball, yeah.
- Can you see this Lonnie, down here?
So you can go ahead and start working it that way.
You can do it one of two ways.
One, you can just put pressure on it,
for like 12 seconds up to a minute.
Or you can start rolling it back and forth like this.
- [Brad] If you get to a real tender spot,
you're probably gonna wanna stay away from
that real tender spot and work around it.
- [Bob] Yeah, work around it is exactly right.
Work on the spots that are less tender at first
to stretch out the band.
- [Brad] So there's a variety of things,
Bob was talking about pressure hold it for 12 to 30 seconds.
- [Bob] Then move up a little bit,
another 12 seconds to a minute.
- [Brad] Right.
And then you can work that in various locations.
If you wanna try doing a cross massage,
like you were doing with your thumbs, with the ball,
that's an option.
And then also, I like to go forward and backwards.
And you do what works for you.
Cause there's different theories and--
- [Bob] Yeah, just figure out what works for you.
That's what it comes down to.
- [Brad] Now, if the ball does seem, does good work for you
there's a device here.
- [Bob] This is made by Massage Track.
It's called the body track.
- [Brad] We're not gonna spend a lot of time on it.
- [Bob] What's nice about that is that you can do one ball
but with this you can actually do two balls.
- [Brad] Sure, two for the--
- [Bob] You can work different.
The balls can be different width apart.
Cause there's this, these are two wider tracks.
These are two narrower tracks
and you can actually work the foot that way too.
- [Brad] We've got a video just on this if you want.
Bob's gonna link up.
- [Bob] I'll be right there, baby.
- [Brad] Okay and the final thing is
get yourself a different pair of inserts
that are inside your shoe.
Where's your shoe, Bob.
- [Bob] It's right here.
- Depending on the kind of shoe you wear,
like this type of shoe, dress shoe,
almost never has an insert that you can pull out.
I don't, nope.
Yours is glued in.
But if you have an insert that you can go to the store,
I've got some Spenco ones here.
I find they're a pretty good product.
I've used them for years,
but use whatever trips you trigger.
You can go to Rogan's or a shoe store
and they'll usually have a wide variety.
And you're just gonna--
- That's the wrong shoe for that one.
- Yeah, that's alright, Bob.
It doesn't matter.
No, go ahead take that one off.
So you're gonna get an insert
that's cushioned and you may or may not need
more of an arch support, depends,
if you're flat footed you may not want an arch sport.
It's gonna be too much in the shoe.
You're gonna have to experiment with that.
One thing I do like to have is soft.
If you have an arch support in there
it should have some give to it.
I don't like rigid hard arch supports.
- Right, I'm not a big fan of those either.
- I like to have some flexibility with that.
So unfortunately, I can't say, "go and get
this specific arch support for your foot."
You have to kind of experiment.
To be honest with you what I do is
I take them out of the box.
I put them on the floor and I put my foot on it
and see how it feels.
- Brad!
- I know, but still if I, you buy them
and then you have to take them back
cause it's the wrong one.
But if you work with this a little bit,
I know which ones I need now
cause I've worked with it for a while.
As a matter of fact, I've got about six, eight old ones.
I keep the old ones
because you never know if I need them
for another project I got with my other shoes
- And we just, I just had a couple laying around
that my wife used for plant fasciitis too,
for the same reasons, you know?
- Sure, yep.
So you can work and they're usually about $20 to $30.
If you get a pair of custom ones made they're about
$300, $400 and if they work it's great.
And if they don't...
- You're just out two, three hundred dollars.
- Right, so it's a good option for that.
- Yes, It's nice to take a few bucks and spend,
and these might just do as well as the custom made ones.
- Yep, oh sure.
I've experienced that.
Anything else Bob?
- Nope.
Just remember we can fix just about anything.
- Except for a broken heart.
But we've been working on that
and just before we tried a new thing with a stapler,
but it didn't work.
- And it didn't work.
- But we'll keep going.
- Thanks.